title: My Ancestral Voices: Stories of Five Generations of the Blackburn Family from Slavery to the Present Day
author: Dr. Joice Christine Bailey Lewis
description: Dr. Lewis has been married to her high school sweetheart for fi fty-seven years. They have three children, nine grandchildren and one great grandchild. She and her family reside in California.
zlib_text: ![](images/00001.jpg)
  
  * * *
  
  
    
    
  Some Passages from the History of the Chomley Family  
    
  
  
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com
  
  
  # Some Passages from the History of the Chomley Family
  
  
  ### Elizabeth Gaskell
  
  
  
  
  
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  The majority of men are so much occupied now-a-days with the present and the
  future, that they are unwilling to cast a glance upon the past. It seems a
  matter of little importance to them that even the very names of families, the
  members of which played a busy part in the history of their country, should
  die out unnoticed and uncared for. Yet it would not surely be so if we were
  better aware how much of interest lies in the story of the lives and careers
  of some of the "forebears" of our English gentry. Still it is not often that a
  fortunate chance enables us to see our ancestors as they lived and moved among
  their cotemporaries. Too frequently the 