When we were kids, if one told another kid something, they might insist that you swear it was true.
You would put your hands over your heart and say: “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
Meaning, if you were not telling the truth, may the Lord strike you dead.
Also, a common bedtime prayer went as follows:
Now I lay me down to sleep.
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
— Roger W. Smith
January 2017
Please send me your mailing address. I will send you my lineage from Benjamin Congdon and John Albro.
I am interested in further information on early Congdons, and now have some letters written in the 1840’s from Cattaraugus County NY from a Lady to her brother in Rhode Island, have not yet deciphered who it was, but she had excellent grammar and handwriting, and seemed to own property and manage her own financial affairs, unlike Eliabeth Albro, whose inheritance from her Father John was signed for by her husband Benjamin Congdon.
Thank you
— James Dean, Sebring, Florida