Excerpt from History of the Gift, Kern and Royer Families While we are enjoying the results of the labor of our ancestors, their memory is fast fading away, and sinking into the darkness of oblivion. Time is indeed swiftly blotting from the records, those whose memory we desire to perpetuate, and their history would be lost forever, if not soon gathered from the fast disappearing pages of memory, and as time passes, family ties grow more and more uncertain and finally drift apart. Often these connections become hazy and obscure making the historian's task difficult, yea almost impossible. It has indeed been a difficult task to gather the material from public records, private records, and authentic tradition and to arrange it in proper order. It has been my lifelong design to do this, so that the history of our ancestors and their descendants may be properly preserved and transmitted to posterity. I have labored many months trying to make this little volume as nearly correct as possible; and the records in the following pages are probably more nearly so than they could be made by future generations. It is a matter of painful regret that no more data and records were made and preserved by our early ancestors. If this had been done, the writer would have had an easier task. Nevertheless the preparation of this little volume has been a tedious but a pleasant work. The new acquaintances which have been formed, are in themselves very valuable and esteemed. In order to gather the proper facts and material, it was necessary for the author to do some traveling to different parts of the country. This proved, however to be an expensive luxury, yet we do not in the least regret it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.