Our rural ancestors, with little blest,
Patient of labour when the end was rest,
Indulged the day that housed their annual grain,
With feasts, and off'rings, and a thankful strain.
~Alexander Pope

Sometimes we need to be reminded of all the blessings that have come our way.  Do any of you remember what it was like to have to write letters to courthouses, for birth, marriage and death information. The very, very long wait for an answer ... any answer.

To find your ancestor in the census you had to look at rolls and rolls of microfilm. No Index. Oh, there are books of indexes, but your ancestor may not have been in that index and you ended up looking at a mountain of film to find them.

The letters to the courthouse would come back, no one by that name lived here.

Is there any family researcher who has not heard the pharase, "Oh, those records were lost in the fire back in 1800-something or other."?

Because if you have not heard these plantiff crys, you may not feel quite as blessed as those of us who have waited months to be told, " No one by that named lived here." or "The courthouse records burned." Today you are very blessed to have never had to hear those words. So much is now available to you right at your finger tips.

Everytime you boot up your computer say a thank you to some great mind that discovered the microchip. Ahh.

This Thanksgiving those who use Apple are saying thank you, to Steve Jobs, PC operators are saying thank you, to Bill Gates and every Genelaogist is, oh so thankful, to the internet ... who ever invented it!!

Spend time with family and enjoy the day, but get right back in there and work on finding those missing ancestors.

Posted the Will of Christopher Barbee (d1792).
http://barbeeresearch-thebook.blogspot.com/p/wills.html