Excluded but Not Forgotten

Excluded but Not Forgotten
Genesis 36:1- 37:4

Some years ago I decided to try to discover what I could about the Goldingays of the past. It’s probably easier for most British people to investigate their ancestors than for most people in the United States, whose families came from a different continent. So I have (for instance) a copy of the marriage certificate of John Goldingay, who married Sarah Massey in 1841 in the same parish where this John Goldingay lived just over a century later. The certificate does not give their ages; it simply says they were “of age,” over twenty-one and free to make their decision about marrying. Sarah was a brickmaker, and she could not write; she just made her mark on the certificate. John was already a widower, and I wonder about the story behind that. Until I write this, I guess few people have thought much about John and Sarah over the past century or so. As Ecclesiastes comments, we are born, we die, we are forgotten...