Nothing Will Save Us From Boredom

Mike Elgan—who finds genealogical research "boring"—looks forward to "The Mother of All Genealogy Databases," which he expects to appear in ten years or so.

Such a database would enable you to do absolutely amazing things. For example:

• Enter your unique ID info (probably your Gmail username) and that of any other person, and the site would trace you both back to the most recent common shared ancestor.
• Follow a timeline that shows the locations and migrations of ancestors all leading up to the descendant that is you.
• Track down every living relative.

Boy, that'll be great.

Here are a few quick observations:

• Not all ancestries are traceable.
• DNA cannot solve every genealogical mystery.
• Records, even if digitized, require interpretation.
• Data submitted to websites—even Web 2.0 sites—can be incorrect, inconsistent or incomplete.
• That computer algorithm that can reveal your genetic ancestry "in minutes" won't reveal your ancestors' names—even if you give it a couple of hours. Finding common genetic ancestry ("We're both Chinese!") is not the same as finding a common ancestor ("We're both descended from Jackie Chan!").

The gist of the article seems to be that aggregating and "mashing up" content from disparate sources will somehow fill gaps in our genealogical knowledge left by traditional ("Web 1.0") methods. This may be true to some extent, but not to the extent Elgan predicts. If "The Mother of All Genealogy Databases" exists in ten years, it will only be as accurate and useful as the data it contains. Rooting out errors and omissions would require more than an algorithm; it would require good, old-fashioned, boring genealogy.

Genealogy vs. Family History

Schelly Talalay Dardashti blogged recently about a debate sparked by an article in the Lebanon Daily News. James M. Beidler's "philosophical question about whether we should call ourselves genealogists or family historians" elicited responses from adoptees to whom the distinction really does make a difference.

Mary Eleanor Urso of Florham Park, N.J., wrote that her birth record is in Louisiana — “a state that will never open birth records to adoptees.”

“I have been restricted to the genealogy of my adoptive parents,” Urso wrote. “When I get to my generation, I put ‘adopted’ by my name and by the name of my three adopted siblings and my parents’ branch of the family tree stops there. ‘Family history’ and genealogy are not and will never be one and the same. It’s as simple as that.” [Link]

As a genealogist, family historian, former philosophy major, and uncle of seven adopted nieces (three of whose adoptions were finalized on Monday), I suppose I'm qualified to comment on this.

The genealogy of "genealogy" leads to a Greek word that may be translated as "race," "family," or perhaps (depending on context) as something else. If I were translating a passage from Aristotle, the exact meaning would matter. In determining how the word "genealogy" is currently used, and even in prescribing how it should be used, Aristotle's opinion matters far less. The fact that the English word "pencil" shares its root with the Latin word for "little penis" shouldn't keep us from pulling one out at the Family History Center.

Genealogy and family history are commonly distinguished in two ways (some have suggested a professional/amateur distinction, which I don't find persuasive):

1. Genealogy is concerned with genetic ancestry, while family history may include non-genetic relationships (adoptive parents, step-parents, etc.)
2. Genealogy is concerned with names, dates, and places, while family history is concerned also with biographical details that "flesh out" the lives of its subjects

I tend to think of genealogy as a field that embraces family history (all family historians are genealogists, but not all genealogists are family historians), since it would be difficult to record a family's history without reference to names, dates, and genetic relationships. Then again, it would be difficult to engage in genealogy without also engaging in family history. The biographical details sought out by the family historian are often the clues necessary to establishing lineage. In practice, the second of these distinctions may be less important than some suppose, and the common conflation of "genealogy" and "family history" may be, in many cases, justified.

It is the first of the distinctions that provoked the most passionate responses to Beidler's article. Though adoptees are most directly affected, anyone who discovers a "non-paternity event" in his family's past faces the decision whether to follow the genes or to follow the surnames—or to follow both. The answer depends not on disputed definitions but on one's answer to a second, larger question: What's the point of genealogy and family history research?

I won't attempt to answer that question, but I will say this: The choices and experiences of one's ancestors can have a great influence on one's life. This is true whether one is genetically indebted to these ancestors or not. I was dismayed to read this comment from an adoptee:

"I am not interested in researching a family to whom I am not related by blood — it’s not my ancestry. I find it interesting hearing stories of my adoptive parents’ relatives and ancestors, but it’s really the same as listening to my neighbors or co-workers talk about their families’ past."

I will spend the rest of my days making sure my nieces never share that sentiment.

Genealogy is Bunk

After reading Richard Conniff's article, "The Family Tree, Pruned," in the July issue of Smithsonian, I have decided to give up genealogy. After all, "genealogy is bunk," and genealogists are nothing more than celebrity chasers.

The temptation is to pay attention only to the good news, and look on the family lineage as a golden thread leading down from some glorious ancestor straight down to the lucky modern-day descendants.

Boy, he really knows what motivates genealogists. I don't add anyone to my GEDCOM without checking first to see if he's glorious.

Conniff argues that sharing DNA is less important than we think ("In theory, you may possess no genetic connection whatsoever to your own great-great-grandfather"), and that not sharing DNA is more important than we think ("Go back ten generations in virtually any family, and the odds are that someone has climbed unacknowledged up the family tree"). In other words, I might not have a genetic connection to my great-great-grandfather, but that's irrelevant because odds are his wife was a tramp.

Not only is genealogy bunk, it's pointless. We all have common ancestors a few millennia back, so "Our genealogy is, in a word, identical." Analogously, my brother and I share a common set of parents, so I must also be husband to his wife and father to his child. Unless our mother was a tramp.

Yes, I'm giving up genealogy. If our genealogies truly are identical, I'll just wait until you've finished yours. And then copy it.

A Guide to Internet Genealogy

I've whipped up a flowchart that lays out in the simplest of terms how genealogists use the Web. It will appear in the appendix of my forthcoming book, Internet Genealogy for Complete and Utter Morons.

He'd Rather Be Selling Paper Clips

An interview in the Des Moines Register with office-supply retailer Dick Triplett ends on a sour note.

Q. One more question. What's the nationality of the name Triplett?

A. (Dick) That's a good question. My father was French and English. There's some German. Some day I'm going to research all that. I believe it's a lot more fun selling office products than doing genealogy - the rewards are greater. [Link]

Achieve Life Balance With Genealogy!

Since Miriam asked, I have achieved balance in my life with the help of Genealogy™.

Before discovering Genealogy™, I was a 97-pound weakling. My cat ignored me and my relatives despised me. Now I weigh 98 pounds, my cat tolerates me, and my relatives hate me for a completely different reason!

Just one dose of Genealogy™ lasts a full 24 hours—long enough for me to climb out of bed, transcribe one census page, then crawl back into bed. Genealogy™ addiction support groups are a great way to meet girls—some of whom are younger than my mother!

Yes, Genealogy™ has changed my life in many ways. No longer do I waste time doing my laundry and taxes. My only concern now is supporting my habit and getting others hooked on Genealogy™!

Warning: These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA or The Generations Network. Not recommended for children under 3. May cause drowsiness in others.

[Photo source: Pentothal by eurok]

Genealogy to the Extreme

An AP story making the rounds today calls the use of the Internet and DNA testing "extreme genealogy."

Just as modern equipment has made it possible for any reasonably motivated person to climb Mount Everest or dive to the Andrea Doria, new technologies have made it possible to achieve incredible genealogical feats with relatively modest effort.

Now, it takes nothing more than casual curiosity and a few hours of research to discover that New York-based civil rights activist Al Sharpton is descended from slaves who were owned by ancestors of the late South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond, a staunch opponent of desegregation. [Link]

I think the writer has shortchanged some truly extreme genealogists here. It's far easier to retrace the steps of a pioneering researcher than to make the discovery oneself. Knowing where to look and recognizing what one has found are skills that require more than a modest effort to develop, though the clues may seem obvious in retrospect. Genealogy becomes "extreme" when we're blazing new trails—not when we're following bread crumbs left by others.

An Open Letter to Lee

Congratulations on deciding not to become "one of them." Because you are clearly not one of them; you are one of us. One of the millions of us—amateurs and professionals alike—who practice genealogy because we love genealogy, and who share our experience and research because we want others to share in our passion.

Don't let those professional genealogists who only "fight for the right to be included" define the profession. It's not hard to find others who fight for what is truly right: open and equal access for all. The impulse to exclude is found in every profession, and is always repugnant. It certainly should be stamped out in genealogy—a field in which every human being with ancestors ought to have an interest.

Unlike you, I've never considered becoming a professional genealogist. Those people on the APG list who would bicker over the placement of commas in citations would become apoplectic if they ever saw my footnotes. They would turn blue and die if they ever saw my filing cabinet. But I am proud to call myself an "unprofessional genealogist." (I'm thinking of having business cards printed up.) If anyone asks for my help, I give it without warranty, and it generally meets with their approval. I can see the advantages of becoming certified, but I've never had need of those advantages.

I understand your reluctance to be associated with anyone who seeks to deprive the average genealogist of needed resources. But don't deprive the genealogical community of your advice, experience, and good humor. Those are needed as well.

The Downside of Digitization?

I learned through Irish Roots Cafe of a provocative new article by Emily Heinlen called "Genealogy and the economic drain on Ireland: Unintended consequences."

Heinlen argues that digitizing genealogical records has had the negative effect of discouraging people from traveling to Ireland and spending money. As more records have gone online, she says, fewer genealogy tourists have made the trip. The number of visits actually increased from 1999 to 2000, but dropped by almost a quarter in 2001, and remained stagnant through 2004.

I'm curious why she fails to address the obvious explanation for a precipitous drop in tourism in 2001. Given the aftereffects of 9/11, I'm not sure that the correlation between digitization and lack of tourists is as strong as Heinlen needs it to be. (You can check out Irish visit stats for all classes of tourist here.)

That being said, some of Heinlen's recommendations to raise more genealogy tourism revenue are worth a read. And listen to the January 30 Irish Roots Cafe Podcast for an interview with the author.

Update: Megan says She's Got It Backwards on her Roots Television blog.

[Photo source: Aer Lingus A330 on approach by Rob Colonna]

Genealogy Under Attack

Zoe Williams (check out her less-than-flattering Wikipedia entry before it's edited) climbs on her soapbox today at The Guardian to trash genealogy.

I called this a branch of history, but in fact scraping round for ye olde DNA is the very opposite of history. Historical inquiry would always direct you to the heart of events, whether in the traditional sense (royals) or the revisionist one (radicals, grassroots movements, that sort of thing). From neither perspective can the criterion "they've got to be related to me before I'm at all interested" be anything but an impediment.

A genealogist speaking to the Times at the weekend commented: "It is not just about collecting names. It is about understanding who you are, and how you came to be who you are today. It is about knowing yourself." Superficially that doesn't mean much - in the furthest reaches of the nature/nurture debate, nobody has ever suggested one's distant second cousin could be anything more than a curiosity. And yet that tells you all you need to know about the kind of person who family-trees for a hobby - who thinks that's time well spent, getting to "know yourself, understand who you are". If therapy is for people with more money than sense, genealogy is for those with more time than either. [Link]

See A Defense of Genealogical Obsession for my response to the equally specious arguments of Cary Tennis. I would add that my ancestors were always at the "heart of events," though perhaps not events that Williams would deem sufficiently historic to study. She denies by implication that the life of any given 17th-century peasant is worth researching, making her guilty of the very snobbishness she pretends to abhor in her final paragraph.

The best family historian possesses all the skills of a "real" historian—including that personal connection to his subject which is always the mark of good historical writing. That the connection is familial makes no difference. In fact, I've found that the sense of familial connection gets weaker as the generations recede, replaced by a more general connection of the sort shared by any two human beings. It's harder then to make the connection personal, but with enough research and empathy it can be done.

I'm not greatly offended by this article, because—like Tennis—Williams is attacking a caricature of a genealogist. Let's leave her alone on her soapbox to hurl insults at the straw man she's created. We have important work to do.

A Defense of Genealogical Obsession

Someone has written to Salon.com with the complaint that "My parents are obsessed with genealogy."

They are baby boomers and have been tracing their lineage for several years now. They are obsessed with their new hobby. This is strange because they are not the type to have obsessive interests. Every time I see them, they tell me about Great Great Uncle Jonas who died of smallpox or Great Great Grandma Enid who campaigned for the mayoral candidate of New York. At our last get-together, my mom talked so much I wondered if she was manic (although she has never had a mood disorder). I have never, at any point in my life, seen her this enthusiastic, even about anything that had to do with her children.

Advice columnist Cary Tennis responds with some armchair analysis that reveals a shaky grasp of both psychology and genealogy.

My basic take on genealogical research is that it would be wonderful if the purpose of it were to broaden our sense of common humanity, not to find evidence of some innate superiority. For such are the ideological roots of racism -- a belief in innate values that come invisibly in the blood.

Better to look for evidence of our connection, rather than our difference. [Link]

I'm not sure what "evidence of some innate superiority" would look like, but I'm quite sure I've never run across it in my research. And even an ignorant Klansman would know that "innate values"—were they to "come invisibly"—would come in the genes, not in the blood.

Sure, genealogical research may be twisted to evil purposes, but only by evil people—not by overly enthused baby boomers looking to spend their kids' inheritance. Mr. Tennis's dim view of genealogy crumbles to dust when exposed to this truth: the avid genealogist can be equally interested in other people's ancestors. That's why we answer queries from strangers and transcribe reams of records for others to use. It's about the thrill of the hunt and the joy of discovery, not the self-indulgent ego-stroking that Mr. Tennis describes.

Anyone who starts his research with the aim of finding noble antecedents soon discovers that the paupers outnumber the princes, and that the princes were mighty prolific. We all descend from kings, and all kings descend from stableboys. We're all cousins, and cousins are never too far removed. You don't have to advise us, Mr. Tennis, to "look for evidence of our connection." We can't help but find it everywhere we look.

Genealogy: It's Not For the Living

It was the title of Henry H. Crapo's 1912 family history—Certain Comeoverers—that first caught my eye. "Comeoverers," as it turns out, was what Henry called his immigrant ancestors. The word hasn't yet caught on, for reasons that escape me.

What kept my interest was the prefatory note Henry wrote to his nephew, William W. Crapo, explaining why he had spent time cataloging dead people, and why William shouldn't become a genealogist himself. If only I had read this advice when I was a boy.

Here's how Henry begins (emphasis mine):

My dear William:

At the present lustrum of your life you are, and should be, supremely indifferent to your ancestors. They are dead and gone and that's an end on't. Your utmost powers of receptivity are properly absorbed by vital considerations. "Dead uns are nit"—as you would put it. In presenting you the following notes I ask not that you consciously attempt to change your present attitude. Inevitably there will come a time when these records of your forebears will have for you at least a passing interest. To you at that time I dedicate them. I hope, indeed, the time will never come when the pulse of glorious life will beat so slowly that you can afford to devote it to genealogical study. A lonely and a sterile life alone can find sufficient satisfaction in the dry-as-dust occupation of delving into dreary records to find a name, a mere name, the date when the name was born and died, the date when the name married another name, and the dates of all the other names that went before and came after.

Hoping to save you from so deplorable an expenditure of vitality, I, not inappropriately, present to you the names of many of the men and women who are responsible for your existence.

Genealogy an Effective Anesthetic

From The Toledo (Ohio) Blade of Aug. 25, 2005:

Bowling Green: Cemetery tales told as living history

By JENNIFER FEEHAN
BLADE STAFF WRITER

There are nearly 9,000 stories tucked away inside Bowling Green's Oak Grove Cemetery.

Ten of them will be told on Sunday during the second Oak Grove Living History Day sponsored by the Wood County Genealogical Society.

[snip]

Whenever possible, the Oak Grove committee lined up descendants of the deceased to play their relative's part.

"They do it in the first person and we try to limit it to four minutes," [Dorsey] Sergent said. "We keep the genealogy out of it because if you get into too much of that, pretty soon people's eyes glaze over."

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

The Self-Amputating Aquatic Scotsman

From The (London, U.K.) Times of June 11, 2005:

Myfamilyandotherweirdos.com
Ben Macintyre

Thanks to the craze for climbing our family trees, we now see history from a more democratic viewpoint

MY LATE FATHER liked to shock strangers by claiming that he might be the illegitimate son of George VI. The sole basis for this outlandish assertion was that my grandmother had met the Duke of York then at a party in Perth, Australia, the year before my father was born, and got on very well with him.

There were other, equally unverifiable tales of our ancestry: the grandfather who supposedly died, post-prandially, after falling down a manhole outside the Sydney Bridge Club; the hard-hunting 19th-century Irish aunts who rode their horses up the stairs; the Macintyre clansman who severed his own hand and hurled it to the shore in order to win a swimming race; mad Aunt Rachel who turned out, post-mortem, to be an uncle.

I have no idea whether these stories of my forebears are even remotely true. The reality was probably much more prosaic: hairy Scots-Australian sheep farmers on one side, English sailors and a smattering of vicars on the other. But I have always clung to the family legends of self-amputating aquatic Scotsmen and peculiar Wodehousian aunts.

Today, thanks to the internet and DNA testing, I could find out my origins for sure, as millions of others have already done. The tracing of family history is the world’s fastest-growing hobby, no longer restricted to brassrubbing or to elderly folk with time on their hands.

[snip]

The craze for family genealogy has democratised history in a way that was impossible a generation ago. The ordinary, everyday lives of your ancestors and mine hold as much fascination as the actions of the great and good, the famous and the infamous. This reflects the wider shift towards personalised microhistory: the simple men who fought the battles and not just the great men who ordered them; the women who sewed the clothes rather than the duchess who wore them. These people traditionally fell outside official history, acknowledged only as faceless cannon fodder or social statistics.

[snip]

Family genealogy can be addictive, and expensive. James LeVoy Sorenson, the American catheter billionaire, so enjoyed discovering his Scandinavian origins that he decided to draw up the entire genetic map of Norway, at an estimated personal cost of $500 million.

[snip]

I, for one, will not be submitting my DNA to a genealogy database. For there are some things about the ancestral past one would rather leave ambiguous, and some legends best left undisturbed. And I know my cousin Prince Charles feels the same.

[Read the whole story]