The Ten Tribes of David Stiles
The Stiles family has been highly fortunate in its historians
both as to excellency of personnel and the quantity of interesting
and valuable data, which they collected and preserved for us,
recording an unbroken line of descent from the time of our
English forefather, Thomas Stiles, of Millbrook, Bedfordshire,
England, down to the year 1896. These genealogists, excepting
Judge La Fayette Stiles Pence, were not in direct lineage with
the Kentucky family of Stiles though springing from the same
colonial forefather. All of them, including Judge Pence, have
persued the records, diligently and unselfishly, for all branches
of the family, though many of them were but remotely connected
with their own lineage. But for the love they bore their kindred
and their interest in the families meanderings many of us would
have long since lost all knowledge of our ancient origin.
~by Lewis Ogden Stiles, 1939.
We are the chosen. In each family there is one who seems called to find the ancestors. To put flesh on their bones and make them live again. To tell the family story and to feel that somehow they know and approve. Doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts but, instead, breathing life into all who have gone before. We are the story tellers of the tribe. All tribes have one. We have been called, as it were, by our genes. Those who have gone before cry out to us: Tell our story. So, we do. In finding them, we somehow find ourselves. How many graves have I stood before now and cried? I have lost count. How many times have I told the ancestors, You have a wonderful family; you would be proud of us. How many times have I walked up to a grave and felt somehow there was love there for me? I cannot say. It goes beyond just documenting facts. It goes to who I am, and why I do the things I do. It goes to seeing a cemetery about to be lost forever to weeds and indifference and saying - I can't let this happen.
The bones here are bones of my bone and flesh of my flesh. It goes to doing something about it. It goes to pride in what our ancestors were able to accomplish. How they contributed to what we are today. It goes to respecting their hardships and losses, their never giving in or giving up, their resoluteness to go on and build a life for their family. It goes to deep pride that the fathers fought and some died to make and keep us a nation. It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were doing it for us. It is of equal pride and love that our mothers struggled to give us birth, without them we could not exist, and so we love each one, as far back as we can reach. That we might be born who we are. That we might remember them. So we do.
With love and caring and scribing each fact of their existence, because we are they and they are the sum of who we are. So, as a scribe called, I tell the story of my family. It is up to that one called in the next generation to answer the call and take my place in the long line of family storytellers. That is why I do my family genealogy, and that is what calls those young and old to step up and restore the memory or greet those who we had never known before.
"It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were doing it for
us. It is of equal pride and love that our mothers struggled to give us
birth, without them we could not exist, and so we love each one, as far back
as we can reach. That we might be born who we are. That we might remember
them. So we do. With love and caring and scribing each fact of their
existence, because we are they and they are the sum of who we are.
So, as a scribe called, I tell the story of my family. It is up to that one
called in the next generation to answer the call and take my place in the
long line of family storytellers. That is why I do my family genealogy, and
that is what calls those young and old to step up and restore the memory or
greet those who we had never known before."
~by Della M. Cummings
Wright; Rewritten by her granddaughter Dell Jo Ann McGinnis Johnson; Edited
and Reworded by Tom Dunn, 1943.
Kentucky
David Stiles' homestead.
Henry Reed Stiles
Second Stiles Family Historian
Joanne Perkins
Joanne's writings
England
Ancient Stiles Family History
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