Excerpt from Memorial of the Walkers of the Old Plymouth Colony: Embracing Genealogical and Biographical Sketches It is the custom with some persons to depreciate, and even to ridicule, genealogical inquiries and labors. The study of pedigree, seems to them, not only tedious, but profitless. They have no reverence or love for the past, and it is a matter of indifference, who their ancestors were, or whether they ever had any. This is sometimes an eccentricity, - sometimes a proud independence, which ignores ancestry, in order to increase its own importance, and show that its heights and honors have not been attained through the wealth, patronage or name of progenitors. But a more fruitful cause of this low estimate, has been the boasting and arrogance of some, with reference to their distinguished ancestors. There is a false and foolish pride of lineage, which deserves censure and ridicule. It was such conceit that prompted the retort of Cicero, when a patrician said to him, "Yon are a plebeian." "I am a plebeian," replied the eloquent Roman orator, "and the nobility of my family begins with me, but that of yours, will end with you." The vain reliance upon remote and donbtful pedigrees, and the arrogant assumption of place and honor by reason of distinguished descent, without corresponding merit, was well ridiculed by Lord Chesterfield, when he placed among the portraits of his ancestors, two old heads, inscribed -Adam De Stanhope, and Eva De Stanhope. It has been justly observed, "all that a man can rightfully lay claim to, is his own name; the embellishment should be his own, not that of his defunct predecessor." This thought has been expressed by Chapman, with great felicity and force in these lines: - 'Tis poor, and not becoming perfect gentry, To build their gloriea at their fathers' that; But at their own expense of blood or virtue, To raise them living monuments; our birth Is not oar own act; honor upon trust. Oar ill deeds for…