GENEALOGY RELATED FUNNIES

The public ceremony in which your distinguished ancestor participated and at which the platform collapsed under him turned out to be a hanging.

When at last after much hard work you have solved the mystery you have been working on for two years, your aunt says, "I could have told you that"

You grandmother's maiden name that you have searched for for four years was on a letter in a box in the attic all the time.

You never asked your father about his family when he was alive because you weren't interested in genealogy then.

The will you need is in the safe on board the Titanic.

Copies of old newspapers have holes occurring only on the surnames.

John, son of Thomas, the immigrant whom your relatives claim as the family progenitor, died on board ship at age 10.

Your great grandfather's newspaper obituary states that he died leaving no issue of record.

The keeper of the vital records you need has just been insulted by another genealogist.

The relative who had all the family photographs gave them all to her daughter who has no interest in genealogy and no inclination to share.

The only record you find for your great grandfather is that his property was sold at a sheriff's sale for insolvency.

The one document that would supply the missing link in your dead-end line has been lost due to fire, flood or war.

The town clerk to whom you wrote for the information sends you a long handwritten letter which is totally illegible.

The spelling for your European ancestor's name bears no relationship to its current spelling or pronunciation.

None of the pictures in your recently deceased grandmother's photo album have names written on them.

No one in your family tree ever did anything noteworthy, owned property, was sued or was named in wills.

You learn that your great aunt's executor just sold her life's collection of family genealogical materials to a flea market dealer "somewhere in New York City."

Ink fades and paper deteriorates at a rate inversely proportional to the value of the data recorded.

The 37 volume, sixteen thousand page history of your county of origin isn't indexed.

You finally find your great grandparent's wedding records and discover that the brides' father was named John Smith.

On the grave of Ezekial Aikle in East Dalhousie Cemetery, Nova Scotia:

Here lies

Ezekial Aikle

Age 102

The Good

Die Young.

In a London, England cemetery:

Ann Mann

Here lies Ann Mann,

Who lived an old maid

But died an old Mann.

Dec. 8, 1767

In a Ribbesford, England, cemetery:

Anna Wallace

The children of Israel wanted bread

And the Lord sent them manna,

Old clerk Wallace wanted a wife,

And the Devil sent him Anna.

Playing with names in a Ruidoso, New Mexico, cemetery:

Here lies

Johnny Yeast

Pardon me

For not rising.

Memory of an accident in a Uniontown, Pennsylvania cemetery:

Here lies the body

of Jonathan Blake

Stepped on the gas

Instead of the brake.

In a Silver City, Nevada, cemetery:

Here lays Butch,

We planted him raw.

He was quick on the trigger,

But slow on the draw.

A widow wrote this epitaph in a Vermont cemetery:

Sacred to the memory of

my husband John Barnes

who died January 3, 1803

His comely young widow, aged 23, has

many qualifications of a good wife, and

yearns to be comforted.

A lawyer's epitaph in England:

Sir John Strange

Here lies an honest lawyer,

And that is Strange.

Someone determined to be anonymous in Stowe, Vermont:

I was somebody.

Who, is no business

Of yours.

Lester Moore was a Wells, Fargo Co. station agent for Naco, Arizona in the cowboy days of the 1880's. He's buried in the Boot Hill Cemetery in Tombstone, Arizona:

Here lies Lester Moore

Four slugs from a .44

No Les No More.

In a Georgia cemetery:

"I told you I was sick!"

John Penny's epitaph in the Wimborne, England, cemetery:

Reader if cash thou art

In want of any

Dig 4 feet deep

And thou wilt find a Penny.

On Margaret Daniels grave at Hollywood Cemetery Richmond, Virginia:

She always said her feet were killing her

but nobody believed her.

In a cemetery in Hartscombe, England:

On the 22nd of June

- Jonathan Fiddle -

Went out of tune.

Anna Hopewell's grave in Enosburg Falls, Vermont has an epitaph that sounds like something from a Three Stooges movie:

Here lies the body of our Anna

Done to death by a banana

It wasn't the fruit that laid her low

But the skin of the thing that made her go.

More fun with names with Owen Moore in Battersea, London, England:

Gone away

Owin' more

Than he could pay.

Someone in Winslow, Maine didn't like Mr. Wood:

In Memory of Beza Wood

Departed this life

Nov. 2, 1837

Aged 45 yrs.

Here lies one Wood

Enclosed in wood

One Wood

Within another.

The outer wood

Is very good:

We cannot praise

The other.

On a grave from the 1880's in Nantucket, Massachusetts:

Under the sod and under the trees

Lies the body of Jonathan Pease.

He is not here, there's only the pod:

Pease shelled out and went to God.

The grave of Ellen Shannon in Girard, Pennsylvania is almost a consumer tip:

Who was fatally burned

March 21, 1870

by the explosion of a lamp

filled with "R.E. Danforth's

Non-Explosive Burning Fluid"

Oops! Harry Edsel Smith of Albany, New York:

Born 1903--Died 1942

Looked up the elevator shaft to see if

the car was on the way down. It was.

In a Thurmont, Maryland, cemetery:

Here lies an Atheist

All dressed up

And no place to go.

But does he make house calls?

Dr. Fred Roberts

Brookland, Arkansas:

Office upstairs

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