Family Secrets, Privacy, and Responsibility
For the July–September 2018 issue of NGS Magazine (volume 44, number 3), editor Deb Cyprych shaped an issue focused mainly on discovering family secrets and how to conduct research to find out more. Six of the magazine’s articles discuss Civil War desertion and courts-martial, divorces, the mentally ill, prostitutes, Civil War pension scams, and the 1880 Supplemental Schedules for defective, dependent, and delinquent classes. A seventh article covers methods for technologically securing the sensitive data you discover.
I’m put in mind of a television medium/clairvoyant a few years back whose clients came to her in hopes of contacting and communicating with one or the other of their deceased family members. The medium began each session with the same question: “Do you want to know everything?”
It’s a reasonable question. Her clients were generally seeking some measure of relief, or assurance, or connection, or forgiveness; whatever they thought they needed to be able to move on with their lives. But once the session started, who knew what would come up? And sometimes entirely unexpected things did. Sound familiar? As family historians, we are in essence both the living family member seeking answers about the dead and the medium charged with uncovering them. Do we want to know everything?
As someone who believes that secrets slowly strangle those of us who keep them, and as someone keenly interested in human behavior and family dynamics, my answer is unequivocally “Yes.” And that answer informs my personal philosophy about family history. Regardless of what my ancestors did or did not do, I attach neither pride nor shame to them or their actions. I do not seek to lionize my ancestors, nor do I seek to demonize any of them. I want only to humanize them, to love them in some way for who they really were in all their beautiful, imperfect messiness.
But that’s me. I have to remind myself from time to time that it’s not reasonable, fair, or right to assume that everyone else feels the same way. And I have to recognize that as some imperfect actions get closer and closer to the living, I have to be careful. I was recently faced with a situation that brought all of this to the fore. Some of the details of this story have been altered to protect the privacy of the living.
At some point in the last decade, I spent some time researching the family of someone who I’ll call “Lynn.” Some discoveries were certainly made, but nothing upsetting or outrageous. More recently, however, Lynn’s stepmother privately contacted me with a bit of information and a request. According to her, Lynn’s father was not the father of Lynn’s sibling, “Pat.” The stepmother and Lynn’s father were the only living people who knew this. Lynn and Pat’s mother was deceased. So was Pat’s alleged father, who had been a close friend of the family. The secret was eating her up.
She felt Pat deserved to know who his/her father was, and she was concerned there could be real health ramifications if Pat never knew the truth about half of his/her medical history. She didn’t want to put me on the spot, but perhaps as a genealogist, I could encourage Lynn and Pat to take an Ancestry DNA test? Then, they could make the discovery themselves through the test results.
I was so thrown by the whole exchange that I didn’t immediately know how to respond. I told her I’d think about it and get back to her. And I briefly actually considered it. If I were Pat, I’d certainly want to know. But I really shouldn’t have had to mull it over at all before I told her “no.”
My deep desire to know the truth about my own family should not be automatically transferred to others. Neither Pat nor Lynn had raised any questions of paternity that they wanted me to investigate, whether or not either had questions in their own minds. Nor had I stumbled across a particular record in the course of normal research that revealed this information. I had simply been told an unsolicited family secret. That family secret isn’t mine to relay, either directly in words or indirectly through the encouragement of DNA testing specifically for the purpose of forcing discovery. The latter is actively manipulative and particularly unethical.
As it turns out, Lynn had already taken an autosomal Ancestry DNA test on his/her own specifically to explore ethnic origins. Lynn had chatted with Pat about those results, but Pat maintained that commercial DNA tests were bunk. (Perhaps Pat has some suspicions that he/she has no interest in confirming?) I’ve not said anything to either of them about DNA since.
In cases like these, genealogy’s requirement to resolve conflicts of information and my personal desire to get to the bare truth of things must take a back seat rather than risk derailing a long-stable family dynamic. Now, when working with a client, a friend, or a relative on matters concerning siblings, parents, or grandparents, I make sure they understand in advance what that research could reveal. And I take my cue from that TV medium, asking them “Do you want to know everything?”
About Author
Aaron Goodwin
Aaron is a genealogist and house historian specializing in New York City research across all time periods, from the Dutch colonial era to the 20th century. His book, New York City Municipal Archives: An Authorized Guide for Family Historians, won the National Genealogical Society’s 2017 Award for Excellence: Genealogical Methods and Sources. He is also editor of NGS Monthly, former contributing editor of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, and former editor of the Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine. In 2011, he received the American Society of Genealogists’ Scholar Award.
By following a record trail and a lucky find in Google Books, I recently discovered a treasure trove of letters and legal documents written by and about some of my direct ancestors. These are archived public domain letters from the slaveholding South of the early and mid-19th century and contain graphic racist incidents and language. Personal, sometimes disparaging, information about the relatives of others in their communities appears in the letters. While I feel an obligation to write, publish, and place this information in a historical context, I have done so with some trepidation. While these are primary sources of precise human experiences that are sometimes lost in the generalities of history, I still feel an odd sense of betrayal in making public the private communications of my ancestors.
I concur wholeheartedly with your views. The question that I have is with respect to other descendants of your ancestors. As has been cogently pointed out, we do not own our ancestors – they belong to numerous other descendants as well (at least in most instances). If you report factual information about an ancestor which might offend another descendant, is there a duty to protect that potentially offended descendant?
My answer, for what it’s worth, is almost always No. Assuming the individual in question is deceased, I generally have no problem making public information about my ancestors. I am hesitant if children of the individual in question may be still living, but not beyond that (sorry grandchildren). And, while I may not be thrilled with what some of my ancestors did (e.g. bigamists, children out of wedlock, murderers, murder victims, losing the farm for criminal actions, etc.), we cannot choose our ancestors. That and the recognition that almost no one is all bad or all good all the time.
Chris
Very interesting article by Aaron Goodwin. If I was doing research into a person’s deceased relatives and a different family member contacted me and spilled the beans about the person who asked me for help and requested that I, the researcher, to tell my client about the deceased relative about the problem, I would politely tell that different party the two letter word. NO. I really believe that it is the responsibility of the parent to sit down with the adult child and tell them the truth. And answers all questions. Believe me it will not kill that person to tell the truth one and for all. That is what my mother did to me when I was asking about a certain relative in the family that I never heard about until I was in high school. After doing research into that certain person, I fully understand what my mother did. So glad mom did not take that to her grave.
A few years ago I discovered a distant Cousin, doing genealogical research on one of the main websites. The initial discovery was based on DNA, and some initial and more in-depth research revealed a more specific connection. When I contacted her, it was not clear how we were related, she was not at all familiar with some of the connection surnames. When asked, she revealed she did not know who her father was, her mother who was still alive was either unsure, or not being completely frank. Our relationship and research evolved, and it was clear to me that she was open to whatever the truth may be. Almost 2 years later she contact me, via e-mail, to say she had the first DNA match with the last name “………”. and it was extremely close and she thought this might be her father. In the e-mail, she sent me a screen shot of the match. I went in and searched but could not find the user. I e-mailed her to ask if she could share her DNA results with me, as a “guest”, so I could actually see this individual’s shared matches, tree, etc. She did, and I did a few days’ research. It was not her father, but it was her father’s living brother, and I ended up finding her father, who died a few years before. Since, she has been in contact with her DNA match “Uncle”, and some other family members, and it is progressing. I know not everyone wants to “know it all”, and “I get” the professional genealogist approach to being sensitive about these things (much like a doctor has to be about what they say, how they say it, etc.), but to me, “it is what it is” or “it is what it was” is just the simple facts. Is the truth brutal sometimes, certainly, but it is after all just the truth. Just because someone has the education or experience to bring something into the open, that is really discoverable by pretty much everyone if they tried hard enough, isn’t wrong. The way I look at it, if I am trying to help someone, and somebody else is subsequently upset because some facts (that were, after all, publicly available, or how did I find them), then that is not unethical (not that I am a “pro” and have some ethical oath I have taken). Most folks involved in these type issues/events are adults, and they should know that everything is not rose, everybody is not descended from some president, King, Queen, or hero, some folks can trace their roots back to some infamous person, but then…..it is what it was applies….those are just the facts.