Family Branches and Leaves

I was at Pesh and Ken's for Shabbos, my aunt and uncle. Shabbos was nice, I had my new black hat finally, Tuviya was there, Ita and Rachel too, it was lots of fun. Rachel won Settlers of Catan.
Motza'ei Shabbos though, Ken showed me some stuff. He showed me the family tree he's been working on for a year or so, and the pictures from the Poland trip. It's amazing how much info he has on the family. He has gone back til saba great-grandparents, Savta's great-great-grandparents, and if some of his information is correct, then he can go back another 3 generations or so, for around 10 generations. Like, holy mother, he has information from the 1930 census, he has papers from a boat in 1911 that came from Austria, with Savta's mother on it. It's ridiculous. It was really cool though to see my family. My great-grandfather, my great-great-grandfather, etc. Saba's maternal grandfather's name was Shmuel Gesang. And Schwarzmer in Polish is spelled Szwarcmer, there's Avraham Szwarcmer, Mendel Szwarcmer, Alter Moshe Tzvi Szwarcmer. There's Pakulas, there's Gottfrieds, there's even a Koenigsberg. There's a Kohane, Saba's great-grandfather. Ken though, said we can't take anything at face value, because, as he said, all these records are Polish, so if these Jews only did this Jewish weding thing with some rabbi, they Poland wouldn't recognize it, and they gvet he kids the mother's last name. Therefore, when Pesh found an application Saba filled out for an id, it didn't say David Schwarzmer (or Szwarcmer), but it said David Gesang. BHYY Saba changed his name to Schwarzmer when he came here...even though Gesang means "to sing" in Yiddish (or thereabouts), and that's what our family was blessed by HaShem to do....to sing. And back to where we were, Pinchas Kohane's last name could be from his mother.
It got me thinking. When people die, they're remembered a little bit after, but after a while, we start forgetting them, their decendants aren't told about them. You think I knew about Alter Moshe Tzvi Szwarcmer? Pinchas Kohane? No. Not at all. I had no idea who they were. And Ken was able to tell me about Savta's mother's family. Her mother was a seceratary somewhere, I forgot what her mother did, but Kenny was able to find this out.
We can't forget about our past. We can't forget about our ancestors, where we came from, who we came from. Who knows, maybe you came from the Rambam, or the Vilna Goan? Or maybe you came from a simple person, but everyone liked him/her, and if you asked about them, you would be told they were unbelievable people. Who knows?

There is only one way to find out though...