Every Genealogist's Nightmare
1852 New Year’s resolutions

1. No man is truly well-educated unless he learns to spell his name at least three different ways within the same document. I resolve to give the appearance of being extremely well-educated in the coming year.
2. I resolve to see to it that all of my children will have the same names that my ancestors have used for six generations in a row.
3. My age is no one's business but my own. I hereby resolve to never list the same age or birth year twice on any document
4. I resolve to have each of my children baptized in a different church --either in a different faith or in a different parish. Every third child will not be baptized at all, or will be baptized by an itinerant minister who keeps no records.
5. I resolve to move to a new town, new county or new state at least once every 10 years -- just before those pesky enumerators come around asking silly questions
6. I will make every attempt to reside in counties and towns where no vital records are maintained or where the courthouse burns down every few years.
7. I resolve to join an obscure religious cult that does not believe in record keeping or in participating in military service.
8. When the tax collector comes to my door, I'll loan him my pen, which has been dipped in rapidly fading blue ink.
9. I resolve that if my beloved wife Mary should die, I will marry another Mary.
10. I resolve not to make a will. Who needs to spend money on a lawyer?
11. I resolve to not clutter up the good farm pasture with headstones that will just get broken or fade with time anyway.
12. I resolve to protect my family and friends privacy, by giving false names and places for events.
13. I resolve to never give the correct accounts of misdeeds in the family, so when Uncle Lem shot that guy and was tried for murder, my kids will be told he stole a cow.
14. I resolve to never trim the family cemetery of brush and tangle weed, to keep out any one doing that silly Genealogical work.
15. I resolve to always alternate my kid's' and wife's first and middle names.

From Phil Bailey