Here is a question that plauged me for the longest time:
How many generations does it take until you are completely forgotten? I have no idea who my great^6 Grandmother is and I doubt I could find out even if I wanted to.
Well, I knew one of my great grandmothers really well, and another one slightly. I know who some of my great-great grandparents were,and a couple of the previous generation, but that’s about it.
I suppose it has a lot to do with how well records are kept, what records are available or lost, and also when people migrated, because it’s easy to lose touch with family history when that history is based around an area 3000 miles away.
I’m sorry, what was your name again?
About 2 seconds.
Well, I discovered that a lot of stuff was written about my 9xg-grandmother: she was hung for witchcraft in Salem in 1692. Other ancestors include Charlemagne, and Al the Great, in addition to Fridfrod the Pretty Good, and Basil the OK. So some people are remembered, or re-discovered long after they’re gone.
Ever hear of Adam and Eve? :rolleyes:
I believe the OP was referring to real people.
Well…I suppose there’s a difference between “forgotten from memory” and “unable to track down because you / her / he is lost in the annals of time”
With modern technology and record keeping, I down the next 10 generations will have much trouble tracking down their family history.
I would say that anything above Grandmother / Grandfather is probably not in your ‘top of mind’ awareness…
D.
err…by I DOWN meant to say “I doubt”…
Thanks!
D.
I don’t think there is any definite answer to this, but the question has intrigued others. Way back in the late stages of the Jurassic Age, when I was a lad, a short story appeared in an anthology called The Bedside Esquire. The story was But For This, written by one Lajos Zilahy, and it outlined in sparse language the fictional life of one John Kovacs, a journeyman carpenter who died in 1874.
The story then recounted how, one by one the people who knew him died. The last time his name was spoken was at a drinking bout by some of his army buddies. A girl he had courted thought of him as she died which was the last anyone who knew him did that. The cross that marked his grave was used as firewood by a hobo in 1901. And finally, in 1923 a young man was making an inventory of his father’s estate and came upon a receipt bearing the name of John Kovacs for work done in refinishing two chairs. The receipt was thrown into the trash and then a refuse dump where the rain gradually washed away the name and all trace of John Kovacs disappeared 47 years after his death.
I think that it is this way.
Your kids remember you, obviously. Your grandkids too. After that, it becomes dicey. If you are lucky enough to be around to interact with your great grandkids, they will remember you. By the next generation, you are forgotten unless you are a historical figure.
Just go to an old cemetary and contemplate who the people who died in the mid 1800’s were and whose graves now are neglected.
I would say the major factor is how notorious/famous you are. If your name was George W. Bush, you’re gonna be memorized forever by unhappy school kids and eulogized by compilers of encyclopedias.
We all “remember” George Washington, Julius Caesar, Mary Magdalene, Moses and the like - not because we are related to them, but because they were famous/notorious people.
Read Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” sometime for a poetic answer to your question.
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/gray4.html
or Bryant’s “Thanatopsis”:
http://www.bartleby.com/102/16.html
for a slightly briefer version of the same sobering truth.
Or Shelley’s Ozymandias, which does it in a mere 14 lines.
How about if we alter the question a bit. Make it the earliest born person you personally knew. When no one alive remembers you, then you are forgotten. Is this allowed? Am I a hijacker? Please don’t hate me.
I can remember, just barely, my Great-grandmother. She died in 1952 at just shy of 105. Born in December 1847.