Quest for ancestors' lives, places, and legacies

 

West Michigan Genealogical Society guest speaker Oct. 7, 2023

From 1:30 to 3:30 members of the public and of the Genealogical Society got together for the monthly meeting at the auditorium of the Grand Rapids Public Library to listen to advice and anecdotes from a long-time professional ancestor researcher. She spoke this time about the kinds of sources online and in public libraries that one can tap into remotely; not having to be physically present with printed matter. Although she sometimes travels to verify grave details, chase down archives without any digital presence or indexing (or local colleagues to help do the search), the majority of her work is carried out from a computer at home. After several decades helping many clients find their roots, her database of individuals numbers about 70,000 names.

Something like 50 people were in the audience, mostly above the age of 50 or 55. Perhaps it is most natural to take a personal interest in ancestry around that time as one's own parents and grandparents have died or are dying. One's own mortality usually comes next in order, although there are also many examples of a child dying before the parent. Thinking about the wealth of digital sources and ways to find and then engage with them, the present moment is a particularly fine time to pursue family trees. Much like the detective skills of TV dramas, there is also an art to building up a mental picture of the person one is chasing after. The transformation of a living person with a history and with aspirations to become a mere mention in the branching structure of a family tree seems inevitable as stories, images, and preferances are seldom recorded or written down, hence lost to memory. But turning the bare details of name, dates, locations into something more three-dimensional and palpable takes a little imagination.

Looking at the transformation from 3-D person filled with life to flattened, streamlined name and dates can be sobering when considering one's own place in the tree; an ancestor yet to be. And even if somebody in the distant future were to wonder what sort of person was one's own self, there are limits to what that can know. Perhaps there are video clips and photos that describe some of one's moments and decisions. Finding a signature invokes a kind of surrogate presence; a proxy for one's own hand and by extension, one's whole self. Anything you author may partly reflect something of one's voice and worldview, too. Personal writing like journals, diaries, or letters offer a lifelike trace of oneself. But even if a future person had the benefit of all these sorts of clues, along with the generalized context of the historical moment, probate records of one's chattels at time of death, and census records of basic household particulars for a place and a time, the resulting composite image of the person would not be filled with breath, words, and glint of eye. So bringing the names on a family tree back to life is only a dim reflection of what was once a fully formed social calendar and cultural landscape.

Deduction is a powerful way to invent some probable details of the person's life, based on contextual circumstantial particulars. The state of the art for medicine, transportation, (tele)communication, and so on can be pictured for most points in history and possibly fine-tuned according to location (rural vs. urban, semi-tropical vs. temperate) and social patterns for people similar in socioeconomic status (education, employment, wealth). According to the guest speaker, though, until about 1960 many local papers would chronicle individual accomplishments, travels, and other notable experiences of interest to the general readership. These "society pages" gradually disappeared after that, though. But finding one's ancestor's doings there can bring them back to life, if only for a moment; making them flesh and blood, again, something greater than the "born__ - died__" hyphenated lifespan. See the guest speaker's notes and illustrations in blog form at https://genealogyframeofmind.blogspot.com .

Putting one's branching ancestry into visual representation produces a fan of bifurcating lines, something like the branches radiating from a central tree trunk. But the custom of following a single surname on the father's side leads to less effort and therefore knowledge of the surnames collateral to the father's own line, and neglect sometimes of the bloodline of the mother, as well. When asked how many generations to travel back in time before the many lines are too confusing or blurring into a point of relatedness to thousands of others, the guest speaker said her practice is to continue until there are no more records to go back in time.

In an immigrant society, one's own image (presentation of self) and one's own abilities for successfully doing particular products and services is more highly valued than one's status resting in a family name. In other words, you see yourself and others define you by what you DO, not WHO you are. As a result, roots and relatives are overshadowed by the luster of gainful work and peer-praised recognition. But by middle age and into elder years, the urge grows stronger to know one's roots and to know where one fits into the larger family tree. The surprises turned up in the genealogy process may be happy or sad, or something in-between. But thanks to software and personal computers interacting with online databases, there is a pretty good change that one's searches will bear fruit: names and dates will come up. Then it remains to turn the dust-dry data points into real lives, if only long enough to trace into the family tree in fullest form.

Ancestor Investigations Performed Here

This curious sign above the side-by-side computer stations along the wall nearest the bookshelves that have been dedicated to genealogical study and reference materials caught my eye. It would be interesting to measure the extent of interest in ancestry among people in various societies: immigrant countries like Australia, Canada, USA, South Africa, as well as most of Latin America would seem to have the most urgent motivation to learn about family lines before, during and since the moment of immigration. But perhaps even among non-immigrant countries there are demographic patterns in the study of one's ancestors; for example, it could be keenest among those with landed property or those poor in cash, but rich in ancestry, noble or ignoble.

click for full-size image: "Ancestor Investigations Performed Here" at library

There are several building materials available for making meaning of one's life, the aspirations projected for one's children, and the longings for continuity to one's ancestors. One's life meaning can come from achievements, worldly and economic on the one hand, or more intangible markers on the other hand. One's purpose can come from one's occupations and preoccupations, whether they are gainfully paid and require vocational training, or whether they are avocational in nature. One's significance and consequence can derive in peer respect given and received, or rooted instead separate to peer approval or disapproval, governed and estimated instead by other measurements attained. One's direction in life can come by benchmarking one's peers or one's (extended) family members to show one's position relative to theirs: adhering to the precedents or on the contrary purposefully not conforming to those patterns.

Looking at the many journals, newsletters, reference books of ships' passengers, marriages, deaths, census and church records, in principle all names since record keeping began (and earlier still when the reference book brings data from overseas sources before that) will appear in one or more of these publications. So one should be able to identify and trace all appearances of a given soul from first instance to final disposition. And by this same logic, those of us alive today, will be recorded in various forms so that future generations may discover our presence in publication form the same way.

While there is hardly a crowd of hobbyist or professional researcher filling the space of this specialized treasury of names and dates, still there are many who do have some degree of interest in one or more lines of their own families' trajectories that intersects with the living descendants contemporary to the genealogist herself or himself. These quiet shelves hold the answers to many peoples wonderings about who they are, who they could be, how their lives measure up to those before (and by implication, too, measuring up to those who will follow in turn).