Real People.

One Good Woman by Cherie Call

Mary Chilton never knew what the salty winds would do

When she stepped aboard and sailed away on a 1620 autumn day

At Plymouth Rock she was the first to touch dry ground

But she became an orphan when the winter came and the tears fell down

But she grew, and married a good man

And they had eleven children

And they would never understand what she'd been through but they knew 

That a girl of just thirteen 

Crossed one big ocean 

And that she grew up to be

One good woman

And Polly Angel didn't know what the hands of time would show

When she dressed in white and said, "I do" in the fall of 1832

Her life would change that very year forever more

When they heard the message of two strangers at their door they headed west

And Polly had six children, but only two survived

And they could never understand what she'd been through

But they knew that a woman of great faith

Crossed one big country

And that they were being raised 

By one good woman

There they are, written in the spaces of a family tree

Till it all comes down to me

I know that I can never say that I'm the only one who's prayed 

For pain to end or love to last or for time not to go by so fast

But it will fly and in a hundred years from now

Will there ever be someone who reads my name and wonders

If I laughed

Or if I believed in Jesus

Or if my heart were ever broken

They may never understand what I go through

But I will live the best that I know how

For one big lifetime

It's not too much to ask

Of one good woman

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     To forget one’s ancestors is to be a brook without a source, a tree without a root. 

(Chinese Proverb)

I know I've shared the following quote before, but I love what President Gordon B. Hinckley said about remembering the pioneers...

“I will never get over being thankful to them; I hope you never get over being thankful to them. I hope that we will always remember them. . . . Let us read again and again, and read to our children or our children’s children, the accounts of those who suffered so much.”
- Gordon B. Hinckley  

Joseph Smith said that "The greatest responsibility in this world that God has laid upon us is to seek after our dead." Just remember while doing genealogy... That those people are not just names on a page. 

They really lived and breathed.

They quarreled with their siblings

They fell in love.

They worked for their families.

They were homemakers.

They played with their kids.

They burnt dinner.

They laughed and goofed off.

It's hard for us to imagine sometimes... but when you research your family history or do ordinances for those who have died... try to picture them. 

...I'll bet that they're up there with a smile on their face, so grateful to you for completing the work they couldn't finish while on the earth.