John Amphlett

“ I wonder how many readers of this page can tell straight off the Christian names of their two grandmothers—very few, I suspect—and yet these are facts very close at home in any one's genealogy. I am sure no one who has not especially looked up the point could tell the Christian names of his great-grandmothers, though they also stand at the threshold of a pedigree. Unless recorded in the family Bible or otherwise committed to writing, such names soon fade from the memory. People are anxious enough that they themselves shall not be forgotten. Such a feeling is the root of all ambition ”

“ If to be educated and cultivated is an object of ambition, and if there is anything in the doctrine of heredity, it may be supposed that the members of a family who have been of importance enough to leave their names scattered on the bank of the river of time have had a better chance of being polished, and of handing down their good qualities to their posterity, than those who were swept away by the tide without leaving any mark. ”

“ In fact, it seems to me that the higher the state of culture of society becomes, the more care will be demanded in matters which so closely concern the family and the race; the more society will ask what it is and whence it springs, and in an increased degree will it be true that "the glory of children are their fathers."—Gentleman's Magazine. ”

“ Fortune's wheel has many surprising turns, and sometimes carries those round with it who least expect to be raised from their station underneath it. To those higher in rank also the due recording of such things is equally important, for many facts concerning their families can be jotted down which must be interesting and may be useful to those who come after them, and which their posterity can learn in no other manner. ”

“ But people are not so desirous to perpetuate their father's memory, or to hand down to future ages their grandfather's name, and they take no steps to that end; and the consequence is that of the mass of the people below the class immortalized in such books as Burke's "Landed Gentry," but few know whence they come, or anything at all about their antecedents. And yet among all ranks of people, from the highest to the lowest, there is some curiosity upon the subject, which, though usually languid, is always ready, should circumstances so direct, to burst into a flame. ”

“ Of course it may be that the Howard in question is really sprung from the same ancestry as the Duke of Norfolk; and, indeed, the longer back a family can be traced to have existed, the more likely it is that some of its collateral branches will have sunk down to a lower level of society and have lost all knowledge of their origin. In fact, in the neighborhood of the seat of an old family are usually to be found persons bearing the same name, in all ranks of life, from the yeoman to the laborer. ”