fellow genealogists would certainly agree
that finding distant relatives, a generation,
maybe two, or if you’re lucky, three’s a testament
that most of us will fade into obscurity, i must
admit a lucky thread runs through my family tree

~kat

For Jane Dougherty’s Stanza a Day Challenge. Taking a breather today from royal name dropping. Royals are like cockroaches. If you find one, there are dozens more hidden between the cracks. Mostly because there are scarce records kept on common folk like me and…I won’t presume to speak for you… 😊 What records that may exist are often locked away in dusty church archives…baptisms, marriages, deaths…like the one I have pictured here. It is the burial record of my 15th great grandmother, Joan Pilford, born in 1536 in Braunton, Devon, England, to John Pylforde (surnames often changed generation to generation) and Joan Thorougood. She married Walter Wyatt in 1556 and had one child, a daughter, Margaret (my 14th great) in 1569. Joan died in 1589. She was here for a blip and then gone but for a few blots of ink on fading pages, in tomes piled high in dusty archives. I think I relate more to old Joan than many of our more notorious greats. But it is kind of cool to know they’re out there. 😉