Everyone has leisure moments which are apt to hang heavy upon one's hands unless employed in some sort of recreation. One turns to golf and outdoors, another goes forth with gun or rod, a third arms himself with a camera. Many dabble a little in science. Some take to the telescope and star-gazing, while the microscope claims others, who haunt scummy ponds with jars and bottles in search of diatoms, and other denizens of a drop of stagnant water. One goes in for bugs, another for ferns or fungi. Others, of a bookish turn of mind, do their hunting in the dark corners of second-hand bookstores, hoping to stumble upon a first edition or some other treasure.

But it is doubtful if the whole range of hobbies can produce anything half so fascinating as the hunt for one's ancestry. This combines the charm and excitement of every other pastime. What sportsman ever bagged such royal game as a line of his own forebears? What triumph of the rod and reel ever gave the thrill of ecstasy with which we land an elusive ancestor in the genealogical net? If any proof be needed of the fascination of this pursuit, behold the thousands who are taking it up! The nooks and crannies of civilization are their hunting-grounds—any corner where man has left a documentary trace of himself. Behold them, eager enthusiasts, besieging the libraries, poring over tomes of deeds and wills and other documents in State and county archives, searching the quaint and musty volumes of town annals, thumbing dusty pages of baptismal registers, and frequenting churchyards to decipher the fast-fading names and dates on mossgrown tombstones, yellow and stained with age, or cracked and chipped by the frosts and rains of many seasons!

A tidal wave of ancestry-searching has indeed swept over the country. Genealogical and biographical societies have been organized. Periodicals have sprung up which confine themselves exclusively to this subject. Newspapers are devoting departments to it. The so-called patriotic societies and orders have become a host, with branches in nearly every State. They count their members by tens of thousands, their rolls are steadily increasing, and new societies are constantly being organized. There is scarcely an achievement in which our ancestors took part which has not been made the rallying-point of some flourishing society. All these draw life and nourishment from the mighty stream of genealogical research. We must prove that we have had ancestors, and that one or more of them had the distinction celebrated by the particular organization at whose door we knock for admission.

Librarians and the custodians of public records bear witness to this great movement. The libraries have become wonderfully popular, thronged by multitudes who have enrolled themselves in the army of amateur genealogists. So onerous has become the work of handing out historical and genealogical books that in some large libraries such works have been gathered into alcoves which are thrown open to the public, where the ancestry-hunter may help himself.

Formerly such public records as deeds and wills constituted the special preserve of the lawyer. But his monopoly is a thing of the past. The genealogist has invaded this domain and established equal rights. He still leaves to the lawyer the dry searching of titles to property, choosing for himself the pleasanter task of sifting out important data for the biography of an ancestor, or for the proofs of a line of descent.

Old church record books, with their marriage and baptismal registers, have acquired an extraordinary value. In many cases these volumes have been rescued out of dark corners and from beneath accumulations of dust and dÉbris where they had been tossed as ecclesiastical junk. But the pastors and church secretaries who unearthed them, at the instance of inquiring genealogists, have now discovered a profitable occupation for their leisure in transcribing items for correspondents. Indeed, a number of societies are now engaged in collecting these old registers, or in making transcripts for their archives.

What is the subtle attraction which draws these multitudes—the fascination which lures so many into genealogical research? We have hinted that the pursuit of ancestry yields the exhilaration both of the chase and the stillhunt, kindling the suspense of expectation into sudden thrills of discovery, as keen as those when the wary canvas-back flies low over the blind, or a pair of antlers comes crashing through the brush.

But while genealogical research affords all the excitement of the chase, it is followed by no reproach for having taken life, but by the permanent satisfaction peculiar to the benefactor of mankind. The ancestry-hunter does not kill, but brings to life. He revives the memories of the dead, and benefits the world with an honorable contribution to the science of history. For a trophy he does not show a string of fish, nor a few birds and skins to distribute among friends, but a genuine historical work of ever-increasing value, which hands down his name to an appreciative posterity.

We have compared the peculiar delight of establishing a family link, long shrouded in mystery or attended with harassing doubts, to the angler's joy in landing a notable catch. In both cases the issue may long hang in the balance between skilful manipulation and a possible stroke of bad luck, which no skill can guard against. The fish may be reeled in or given his head without a single mistake of judgment. But who can foresee the sharp rock, the hidden snag, which cuts or entangles the line? And so, too, is skill most richly rewarded in searching for ancestors; but what can it avail against the positive wiping out of indispensable records?

We recall one of these genealogical tragedies, which cast its shadow over a remarkable record of successes in tracing a number of interesting lines for a gentleman who could start us off with no more than the names and birth-places of his parents. Two lines remained which pointed back by strong evidence to European connections of the titled class. All that was needed in one case was a clue to show to which of several branches of the family in Great Britain, the first American ancestor belonged. But to this day that clue has eluded every attempt to pick it up by research here or abroad.

Cases which are parallel up to this point are not uncommon. But the tragedy has yet to be told. At the colonial homestead of this ancestor we learned that his personal papers had, indeed, been preserved from generation to generation. Their last owner, a maiden lady, had carefully kept them in an old trunk, which was itself an ancient heirloom. But she had never taken the pains to examine their contents, and only a short time before our investigation brought us upon the scene, these hoary documents, after surviving the vicissitudes of seven generations, had been destroyed in a fire which reduced the old house to ashes!

Who can express the sorrow of it? No finder of Captain Kidd's buried treasure could gloat over Spanish doubloons and glittering gems with half the delight with which we would have contemplated those ancient parchments. How fondly our fingers would have turned the precious pages and smoothed the creases of those yellow papers! But now no hand may touch them, no antiquarian's eye explore nor pen exploit their contents to the world! If our friend had only sought his forebears earlier, and launched us sooner upon the voyage of discovery!

The other line, it is true, had no disappointments for us. It even yielded the discovery and possession of an original parchment pedigree, signed by an official herald of arms, which the ancestor had brought over with him, exhibiting his descent from the many Sir Williams and Sir Johns of an ancient Lincolnshire family extending back nearly to the Conqueror. It also enabled us to confirm the connection through official sources in England, and to prove that the emigrant was the son and heir in the line of primogeniture. For these kind favors, we trust that we were truly thankful. But they could scarcely comfort us for the lost papers which might have carried back another line in the same distinguished fashion.

Thus, genealogy has its griefs as well as its joys—some disappointments among many triumphs. But so it is with life and with everything worth while. Who would care to measure skill with a gamefish if the creature had no chance? Or who would glory in the death of a bull-moose that a look could bowl over? In genealogical research it is the part played by skill and by the unknown quantities which gives to it all the fascination, with none of the risks and evils, of a great game of skill and chance.

Another pleasure is the sensation of original discovery. Would you experience the feelings of a Columbus? Then set forth to explore the unsailed seas and hidden continents of your own or some other person's ancestry! If your own happens to be virgin territory you are one of fortune's favorites, with the ripest joys of life just before you. Nor is it any question of great achievements or high social position enjoyed by the ancestor. The truth is that all ancestors are remarkable persons. In the first place they are our ancestors, and in the second place it is a noteworthy fact, as mysterious as delightful, that every homely feature about them wears a wondrous glamour and dignity. Their homesteads, their property, their church affiliations, their signatures, any little act of barter or sale,—all these items create an absorbing interest as they stand recorded in old archives.

We remember, as if it were yesterday, the peculiar charm of the simplest details in clearing up our family history. The most that parents, aunts and great-uncles could give was a vague tradition of a certain great-great-grandfather, a captain in the Revolution whose chief distinction seemed to have been his success in getting captured by the British and having his silver knee buckles stolen by a Tory. Of course he subsequently escaped, met that Tory, knocked him down, and recaptured the silver buckles.

Turning to the records we were able to identify this energetic patriot without trouble, although in the process he dwindled from a "captain" to a "sergeant," and even held the latter title on a rather uncertain tenure, having been once "reduced." Indeed, his military record ends (shall we confess it?) with the rather compromising word, "deserted." But what of that? This flesh-and-blood progenitor is much more to our liking than any starched and laced dignitary of the imagination. And while history saith not concerning the knee buckles, that he was ready with his fists seems altogether probable in the light of his subsequent career. His title of "captain" was acquired at sea. He commanded a craft in the waters of Long Island, where he met an untimely death—through "foul play," says that old gossip Tradition, whose tongue we dare not trust. Features of mystery still remain, and if we knew all, it is possible that we could lay claim to a picturesque pirate—a most desirable addition to any family line, and especially so if he escaped hanging.

Much as we delighted in this liberty-loving individual, the reader will understand that we thought well to look backward for a more sober character to maintain the family dignity. We found several who filled the rÔle of quiet respectability to perfection, and thus reached the emigrant-founder of the line, a gentleman who drew our special affections by the extreme littleness of his greatness and the romantic character of his surroundings. He was of French Huguenot descent, a weaver by trade, and possessed of a "frame for a dwelling house ... twenty foot in length and sixteen foot in bredth," and other realty in the shape of an acre of woodland and an acre of upland "lying in a place called Hog-Neck," bounded by "a cove west" and "ye Goose Creek north." What distinctions! Not every one can boast such a progenitor, a wielder of loom and shuttle on the lordly promontory of Hog-Neck, where the gentle waters of Goose Creek flow into the sea, near the ancient town of Southold.

We could not doubt that such a character had other claims to distinction; and sure enough, the achievement of having loitered in this world for ninety-six and one-half years is carved upon his tombstone in the old cemetery where he rests beside a third wife, who herself attained to ninety-two summers! Peace be to their ashes! We can almost see this famous ancestor, the patriarch of the village, toiling down its long street under the weight of the honor of his many years, responding to the greetings of man, woman and child with a cheery nod and a pleasant French accent. We would not have one single feature changed in order to place him upon a higher pedestal.

His father and grandfather, as we learn from old documents, were elders and leaders in one of the French churches established in England by the Huguenots in the sixteenth century. But the dignity of these men, banished from their native soil by the atrocities of St. Bartholomew's day, can not outshine the quiet glory of the aged weaver of Hog-Neck and Goose Creek, nor even put to shame the restless career of their later descendant of the Revolutionary epoch. In fact, throughout the entire ancestral line we found every progenitor perfect in his place and after his kind. And so has it ever been with the genealogist, and so will it be to the end of time.

We may add that genealogical work is literary work—a fact which adds immensely to its fascination. The genealogist tastes all the delights of authorship, added to those of research and discovery; and it is the purpose of this little volume to bring these pleasures within the reach of all. For is there a reader of books who would not take delight in making one, if he thought himself competent and the labor not too great?