Taken from “Talk Capsules”
by Albert L. Zobell, Jr.
Genealogy
A friend of ours has a wife with a peculiar quirk. Barring Smiths and Joneses, she is unable to believe that any two people can have the same name and not be the same person.
The other day she saw a headline stating that Dick Johnson had broken the pole vault record.
“How exciting!” she exclaimed, “I’m going to phone and congratulate him.”
“Huh?” the patient husband looked up perplexed. “It’s not the same Dick Johnson as I go to work with. He’s fifty-five, weighs 235 pounds. He couldn’t vault a fire hydrant!”
“But it said Dick Johnson,” she insisted.
“Another Dick Johnson” my friend went back to his part of the evening paper. Just as he’s tried to explain that Elsie Harper, their Saturday cleaning woman isn’t the same Elsie Harper who writes mystery novels and that their mailman, John Williams, isn’t the man wanted by the FBI.
Whatever we think of a story like that the story has a point. The point that proper identification is a must. And if proper identification is a must in a circle acquaintances, how much more vital proper identification becomes in the great work of genealogy.
Happy Family History Friday! Love, Joy