The Impenetrable Mist

One of the complexities of a family genealogy project is the reality that information sought is often difficult or impossible to obtain. Since leaving Sharpsburg, I stumbled on a might-be-relative (Dr. Lemuel Line) who similarly documented his ancestry...except he did it during the 1893. At the beginning of the document, he writes better of the difficulties which I find.

"It is difficult to write a history of ones ancestry when every thing that he has to rely upon is so enveloped in a mist that is impenetrable and no matter how one may yearn, to look into that realm of the unwritten past his effort will almost prove useless, as the record is only written upon the minds of those who slumber in the grave. What an age has passed we of this latter day can fully appreciate, and yet our lives are like dying embers at first a flicker, then another and with a mighty effort to survive, it flashes up only to go out as those who have gone before- we sit and muse and wish that the ashes of the past, might once again, assume their ruddy glow, and tell the tales that oft they had heard - yet we in our progression can not give the inanimate speech nor portray with an adequate justice, the many scenes in wood and field-Their deeds and actions can only cast their reflection through the generation of the present, and as we labor on in our daily avocation our lives displaying many of the traits of the forgotten dead-The restless spirit of man although limited by the laws of the body is yet as boundless as the universe-In his curiosity he is adventuresome and fears no restraints that may seemingly be in the way-The heat of a tropic zone or the rigors of an arctic winter did not quench the desire for adventure among those sturdy yeomanry of a century ago, and although many heroes have their names enrolled in the archives of history, yet many, who have performed heroic deeds have moldered in the dust and are forgotten these many years ago."

I wish I wrote like this!