Genealogy: What Matters to You?
The New York Times recently published an opinion piece by author John Sedgwick with a title that refers to an old, familiar conflict: “The Historians Versus the Genealogists.”[1] Sedgwick begins by describing how historians typically view genealogists.
At a time when history has been so widely and blissfully ignored, and not just by our president, millions of Americans are busy spitting into DNA-collection tubes, scrutinizing old newspapers and tracing their family history back as far as they can via the website Ancestry and other services. Historians like me tend to scoff as these attempts.
He then describes an event that altered this view: the discovery that he was related to Harriet Gold, an early 19th-century Connecticut woman who married Cherokee Elias Boudinot. Both are featured in his new book, Blood Moon: An American Epic of War and Splendor in the Cherokee Nation.[2] Unsurprisingly, the couple’s union was not particularly celebrated by Gold’s family or community. The new couple left New England for the Cherokee Nation.
Importantly, Sedgwick made the discovery of his genealogical connection to the story only after he had finished the book.
As a historian, I couldn’t take the story past the facts. But as Gold’s relative, I felt I could hear her brother’s shrieks [in opposition to the marriage] and imagine what she must have felt while fleeing Cornwall and entering a strange new land full of rising tensions. The whole lot of it.
For Sedgwick, this single experience shaped a new view of the value of genealogy. It helped him feel.
[I]t delivered a more felt connection to the story than straight historiography had been able to provide. Obviously, history can’t depend on genealogy. But history shouldn’t scorn it, either. History can make use of the genealogical perspective and its transporting empathic power.
Sedgwick’s op-ed is both brief and slight. Its primary purpose appears to be publicity for Blood Moon, which was published just a week earlier. Even then, there are so many small points to argue that it’s hard to know where to start. So I won’t be doing that here. Instead, I’ll focus on his boiled-down assessment of genealogy:
History and genealogy, after all, are two radically divergent takes on the past. The first says, “This matters.” The second says, “This matters to me.”
Re-stated, genealogy is an egocentric view of history. Considering this idea prompted me to examine my own experience with genealogy.
It began in 1979, when my great-grandmother hand-wrote and distributed multiple copies of the “Gregory Family Tree,” three pages of what she knew about her and her recently deceased husband’s families. I was 12 that year when I first saw “1798” scrawled next to the name of my earliest known ancestor, John Gregory. Until then, the only things I knew about the world before I existed were vague concepts of 1776, the “War of Northern Aggression,” and the fact that Cherokees used to live where we lived then in western North Carolina. I cared about none of those things, but I did care about that “1798” written in my great-grandmother’s hand in reference to our family.
In terms of my initial interest in genealogy, Sedgwick is right. It was entirely about connections to me.
After earning a Boy Scout badge in genealogy, my fascination soon faded, as did a long list of other short-term interests that stumbled in and out of my adolescence. I didn’t think about genealogy again until 2005, when my interest re-emerged, and I began to study, research, and write in earnest. It was in this process that genealogy surprised me in at least two different ways.
First, as I studied the various aspects of my ancestors’ lives (religious, occupational, military, ethnic, etc.), a clearer and broader picture of America’s development began to emerge. And that picture, now a mosaic of many smaller pictures, was far larger than just my family, far more complex and nuanced than the vague notions of historical events and processes I’d had before. For me, genealogy served as a doorway to history, particularly American history.
Second, the more research I conducted, the more I developed an equally strong interest in others to whom I have no direct relationship. A search for records of my Gregory family in Philadelphia’s St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church (now St. George’s United Methodist Church) did not turn up any references to them. But sitting in the church’s tiny archives, I stumbled across the story of Richard Allen, a man born into slavery in 1760, who bought his own freedom and ultimately founded and became the first bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. His significant community-building work in Philadelphia made him a true Founding Father, but one that had long been forgotten outside of the AME Church and some small, local circles.
I wanted to know more, so I embarked on a two-year genealogical research project of Richard Allen and his family that resulted in two articles for the Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine.[3] It also resulted in an infinitely deeper understanding of African American history during the Federal period and a deeper understanding of my African American friends and neighbors now.
Of the twenty-five compiled genealogies and record abstracts I’ve published in genealogical journals in the past eleven years, none of them are about or contain my own ancestors. My interests have become much broader. And I know I’m not alone in the field.
Genealogy, then, is not (necessarily) an egocentric pursuit. But in my case, it might still be argued that it’s what “matters to me,” if only because what matters to me is now more than me.
Pretending that genealogists are all cut from the same cloth with the same purposes and perspectives is as foolhardy as any broad generalization. To be clear, I believe that any motivation to study genealogy is a valid one. My purpose here is simply to prompt self-inquiry and to ask, “What matters to you?”
What does genealogy mean to you? Why did you start it? And do those same reasons compel you now? What did you determine to learn through genealogy? And what did genealogy teach you that you didn’t expect to learn? There are no incorrect answers, but I’d be curious to hear some of yours.
[1] John Sedgwick, “The Historians Versus the Genealogists,” New York Times, 12 April 2018 (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/12/opinion/sunday/historians-versus-genealogists.html : 16 April 2018).
[2] John Sedgwick, Blood Moon: An American Epic of War and Splendor in the Cherokee Nation (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018).
[3] Aaron Goodwin, “Richard Allen, First Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church,” Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine 46 (2010), 197–212; “The Richard Allen Family of Philadelphia,” Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine 47 (2011), 25–46.
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.
My journey into genealogy began out of a desire to complete a small family tree in my daughter’s baby book. After finding out that my own grandparents knew even less about their families than I knew, my drive shifted to learning as much as I could before they were no longer with us and to share that information with them. As with other people, the reason for continuing in the search evolves.
I started doing research when I inherited histories for three of my four grandparents’ families and felt it was only fair to add the fourth. What I’ve learned is that the history we’ve learned (and which I have studied in an academic context) is incredibly biased, and that I disagree profoundly with the assessment that what we learn of history is “what matters”. So many individual stories raise questions of “why”, and questions of how many other people dealt with the same problems. These stories matter, because often the same conditions and conflicts exist in our lives today, and we have no background for dealing with them.
My interests, whether in TV shows I watched or books I read, always centered around history and/or investigation. It was about a week into my tinkering with creating a family tree on Ancestry that the light bulb went on, I had the ah-ha moment, genealogy was the perfect combination of those two passions. My journey into the world of genealogy began.
Genealogy ties the past to the present. The Filles du Roi, the War of 1812, the raid of Harper’s Ferry are events we can learn about; tying an ancestor to these events enables us to go beyond just learning and into understanding and relating to important moments in history. History immediately transforms from words on page to a human story. It’s one thing to read about a battle fought in 1812, it’s another to discuss the battle over a glass of wine with the General’s 4th great-granddaughter.
Genealogists pick up where Historians leave off. Historians tell us that 2,400 men fought at the Battle of Trenton on December 26, 1776. Genealogists tell us what those men did next. Where did they settle? Did they purchase land with their war pensions? Did they pursue an occupation based on skills they learned in the army?
I recently did some research for a dear friend and colleague. One of her Dutch ancestors purchased land on the tip of Manhattan from the natives in the early 1600s. He built a home, farm, and a tavern on his property that bordered on a road he called Paerlstraet. She read the report in her office located on the 12th floor of a building located at the corner of State and Pearl street. This highlights that the phrase “it’s a small world” relates to time as well. We learn through genealogical research that time spans in history are more compressed than we think and the results of actions and decisions made in the past, no matter how long ago, are still playing out today.
I disagree with Sedgwick’s assessment that history and genealogy are two radically divergent takes on the past. They are complementary studies running in parallel. Historians review the play while Genealogists review the actors.
I started doing genealogy because my mother was so sure that one of her “gone with the wind” stories about her paternal ancestors was true. Well, of course it wasn’t — but doing genealogy is sort of like getting trapped in a jigsaw puzzle-spider trap with no end. And endlessly fascinating, not just your own families but the historical times and events they lived in and through — and which you never really learn about in school. To be fair, there really isn’t enough time for history teachers in school to even begin to touch on what you learn while doing genealogy; but what you can learn, historically, while doing “your” genealogy is endlessly fascinating, and can give you a whole different perspective on the past. I agree with Andrea Georger (above): “I disagree with Sedgwick’s assessment that history and genealogy are two radically divergent takes on the past. They are complementary studies running in parallel. Historians review the play while Genealogists review the actors.” And the two, together, are “endlessly fascinating”.
I began my pursuit of family connections at age 15 when I found a list of people in my fathers family bible with birth, marriage and death dates and the names of their spouses. Who were these people? It is forty one years later and I love untwisting the puzzle pieces and putting the families together, and like Aaron sometimes find someone totally unrelated but so interesting I can’t help but dive into their family’s life and discover some truly extraordinary people.
For me the pursuit of my husband’s roots and my own family ancestors has been also been a pursuit of the history so intricately tied to their lives.
I was in a store yesterday and came across your book. The illustration on the front just pulled me in and I wondered if I had read something about it or heard of it on a podcast. I became distracted by my own shopping but now I will go back and pick it up.
Thanks,
Jeanette
As with so many other respondents, my interest in genealogy started with my own family and some inherited work from my grandfather. But as I’ve looked into the families of clients, I’ve had a new perspective on the various bits of history, society and geography that they touched. It’s really brought history to life because instead of dealing in generalities like “many men fought in the war,” I’m dealing with specifics like “George fought in the war.” And I can follow the evidence of what happens to him as he does so, and what happened to the family he left behind. It’s putting an individual face on the larger picture.
I have a degree in History that started with a love of wondering about my family. My grandmother sat with me and told me stories of how the family came from the old country of Germany. She laughed about how if my great grandfather was alive he would be 105! I wanted to know more and was lucky enough to have a high school history teacher who not only encouraged my love of history, but who also encouraged me to explore genealogy to learn the “human” details about the people. This was in 1973 well before the days of internet research capabilities, when we got our information from family members, books, photos, and family friends. They were able to take events and day to day lives and add the 5 journalistic “W’s” that we historians use and added that human touch that genealogists use to round out their stories. I taught 30 min lessons to K – 3 graders and I would always bring in a plate with the food the people might eat, some examples of clothes, and even toys young children might play with. The kids loved it, asked a lot of history questions and also would ask things like “do you think my grandmother wore that? do you think my mom could bake something like that for me or even I have a toy that looks kind of like that.” The blending of history and genealogy is a perfect match for giving us not just facts, lessons, and stories, but that human quality that helps us to understand where we are from, why we do the things we do, where we might be headed, and provides that connection that shows our ancestors laughed, cried, and lived just like we do, just in another time. I am a firm believer that if you want to unlock the whole story find someone who can help you do just that and most times you will find their eyes will light up as much as yours do.
Thank you for such a interesting article. My personal response to the question is that you cannot have one without the other. Meaning Genealogy work IS history! All history is made of personal stories which lead to larger stories and finally to history itself. It seems that the Times author only got interested in his Genealogy when his family history matched his world view. I for one, am interested in both, but really in the end, “self knowledge is priceless”. I want to know it all, because the more I know about my Ancestors, the more I know myself and finally, the more future Generations will know about themselves.
Aaron, what is most profound, to me, since becoming a certified genealogist, is how ignorant I am of a lot of American history. Sadly, our history is not taught correctly and in some places, now, not at all in America.
I have a passion for our revolutionary history, all the hundreds of events, the everyday folks that lived then, and what they went through. There are thousands of individual stories out there in millions of records. I feel sad that our children are losing our history by leaps and bounds and I feel helpless that our country’s current culture is denying our children their heritage. So I will carry on telling my family story, person by person, hopeing that in the future someone will read my writing and a spark will be lit. Hey that is MY great grandfather! He fought in the Revolutionary War, therefore I exist!