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Genealogy's 14 Commandments
1). Thou shalt name your male children: James, John, Joseph, Josiah,
Samuel, Richard, Thomas, William, or Isaac.
(2) Thou shalt name your female children: Ann, Elizabeth, Mary, Martha,
Margaret, Sarah, or Susanna.
(3) Thou shalt leave NO trace of your female children.
(4) Thou shalt, after naming your children from the above lists, call them
by strange nicknames such as: Ike, Eli, Polly, Molly, or Sally ---making
them difficult to trace.
(5) Thou shalt NOT use any middle names on any legal documents or census
reports and only where necessary. You may use only initials on legal
documents.
(6) Thou shalt learn to sign all documents illegibly so that your surname
can be spelled, or misspelled, in various ways: Stark, Starks, Starke, Starck,
Stork or Starche.
(7) Thou shalt, after no more then 3 generations, make sure that all family
records are lost, misplaced, burned in a court house fire, or buried so that
NO future trace of them can be found.
(8) Thou shalt propagate misleading legends, rumors, & vague innuendo
regarding your place origination:
    (A)   You may have come from : England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales....or Iran.
    (B)   You may have American Indian ancestry of the _________ tribe......
    (C)   You may have descended from one of three brothers that came over from
____________.
    (D)   You descended from Royalty and the copy of the family Coat of Arms that
you brought with you has been lost.
(9) Thou shalt leave NO cemetery records, or headstones with legible names.
(10) Thou shalt leave NO family Bible with records of birth, marriages, or
deaths.
(11) Thou shalt ALWAYS flip thy name around. If born James Albert, thou
must make all the rest of thy records in the names of Albert, AJ, JA, Al,
Bert, Bart, or Alfred.
(12) Thou must also flip thy parent's names when making reference to them,
although "Unknown" or a blank line is an acceptable alternative.
(13) Thou shalt name at least 5 generations of males, and dozens of their
cousins with identical names in order to totally confuse researchers.
(14) Thou shalt name several children after famous people, and then use
ridiculous nicknames to make them unrecognizable in censuses and other
records:   George Washington (Joe), Andrew Jackson (AJ, Jack); Marquis de
Lafayette (Mark, Lafe) Abraham Lincoln (Bram, Linc); Alexander Hamilton
(Sandy, Ham).
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