The history in my bones
Apr. 13th, 2010 12:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pjthompsonThe other day Peter Serafinowicz (serafinowicz) tweeted, "All this time I thought I'd been lying to myself, but I was just kidding myself."
I've been pondering it ever since, one way or another. It's become something of a mantra in recent days—or at least, the litmus paper that I slap onto each gooey life illusion of mine to see what colors come up. Results still pending, so I won't be going into all that, but I've been thinking about that remark in another context, my other obsession du jour: family history. Family history is sometimes fraught with illusion and projected realities. Nothing is ever as simple as it seems, even historic puzzles. You must take many things on faith alone, and often the things you find out change everything you thought you knew.
I've been interested in genealogy since I was twelve or thirteen and I can't tell you the number of hours I've spent pouring over musty books in libraries or blinding myself by squinting at microfilm and microfiche searching for my roots. Mainly, it's the historic puzzle of it all that intrigues me, the ferreting out of long-buried information that relates to the formalized mating patterns of long-dead people. It's not something I've pursued steadily for all these years, but every several years or so I'm seized with a renewed passion which lasts a few weeks or months before it dies down. It's been stirred up recently by the NBC show, "Who Do You Think You Are?" and by receiving email from unknown "cousins" referred by other unknown cousins who knew I was researching a particular line. Also probably stirred up by the NBC show.
Apparently, there's a British version of this show. Over there, psychologists and the like are warning people that you may not like everything you dig up about your ancestors. Some people do tend to have this view of their sainted and glorious ancestors when they go into this, hoping they'll find they're descended from kings or what-have-you. This has never had much appeal to me. The things that get me excited are discovering that an ancestor actually fought in the Civil War, or that one of them went down to New Orleans to fight with Andy Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans in 1812. Or the tragic and sad love story of that man's parents: two young first cousins who fell in love and decided to marry. Being Quakers, who did not in that day believe in marriage between first cousins, they had to leave their faith and their family to be together. Less than two years later, the girl died in childbirth giving life to the son who fought with Andrew Jackson. That son survived the battle just fine, but on the ride back from Louisiana to his home in Ohio was killed in a tragic and stupid accident. Fortunately for me, before he left for the war at age 39 he'd fathered seven or eight children or I—and thousands of other descendants—would not be here. These are the things I love finding out about.
Even so, researching one's family history is a matter of blind faith. What people often seem to forget (or they wouldn't be so insulted by the not so nice things they find in their family tree) is that mental illness, adultery, betrayal, murder are not inventions of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. These things have always existed, and it does no good to have blinders on about your own family. There is absolutely no guarantee that I am really, truly descended from all those names I've applied to my family tree. There is no guarantee that every husband and wife has been virtuous, that every marriage was voluntary and strictly before consummation, that no one committed violence against anyone else. There is no guarantee of anything except the DNA nestled inside me—whoever put it there, whatever the story. My bones contain the only unassailable truth of who I am.
But this is a realization I came to quite early on in my historic pursuits, so it doesn't trouble me. I still want to solve the historical puzzle of these people who, if they didn't sire me, at least raised the people who sired me. I love the stories of who they were, whether they are truly reflected in my bones or not. I love the dark stories as well as the light, though some of the things I've learned have been rather disturbing. It's all part of the true fabric of human lives, human existence, of my family history. All families contain both dark and light and we're foolish to ever believe otherwise.
I have a hard time understanding people who don't want to own up to the bad stuff, to know it and accept it as just as much a part of their heritage as any courageous westward migration or honorable war service. But not everyone can accept this mixed heritage. They want it all sanitized for their protection. I've had personal experience with the Pandora's box. In my youthful intemperance, I made the mistake of telling the unvarnished truth to some of those "cousins." If they ask, I'd still tell them, but I no longer volunteer the information unasked.
Then there's the stories my father used to tell, some of them true (sort of), and some of them more creative, and the screwy family legacy that's caused...Ah, but that's a story for another day. Perhaps tomorrow.
I've been pondering it ever since, one way or another. It's become something of a mantra in recent days—or at least, the litmus paper that I slap onto each gooey life illusion of mine to see what colors come up. Results still pending, so I won't be going into all that, but I've been thinking about that remark in another context, my other obsession du jour: family history. Family history is sometimes fraught with illusion and projected realities. Nothing is ever as simple as it seems, even historic puzzles. You must take many things on faith alone, and often the things you find out change everything you thought you knew.
I've been interested in genealogy since I was twelve or thirteen and I can't tell you the number of hours I've spent pouring over musty books in libraries or blinding myself by squinting at microfilm and microfiche searching for my roots. Mainly, it's the historic puzzle of it all that intrigues me, the ferreting out of long-buried information that relates to the formalized mating patterns of long-dead people. It's not something I've pursued steadily for all these years, but every several years or so I'm seized with a renewed passion which lasts a few weeks or months before it dies down. It's been stirred up recently by the NBC show, "Who Do You Think You Are?" and by receiving email from unknown "cousins" referred by other unknown cousins who knew I was researching a particular line. Also probably stirred up by the NBC show.
Apparently, there's a British version of this show. Over there, psychologists and the like are warning people that you may not like everything you dig up about your ancestors. Some people do tend to have this view of their sainted and glorious ancestors when they go into this, hoping they'll find they're descended from kings or what-have-you. This has never had much appeal to me. The things that get me excited are discovering that an ancestor actually fought in the Civil War, or that one of them went down to New Orleans to fight with Andy Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans in 1812. Or the tragic and sad love story of that man's parents: two young first cousins who fell in love and decided to marry. Being Quakers, who did not in that day believe in marriage between first cousins, they had to leave their faith and their family to be together. Less than two years later, the girl died in childbirth giving life to the son who fought with Andrew Jackson. That son survived the battle just fine, but on the ride back from Louisiana to his home in Ohio was killed in a tragic and stupid accident. Fortunately for me, before he left for the war at age 39 he'd fathered seven or eight children or I—and thousands of other descendants—would not be here. These are the things I love finding out about.
Even so, researching one's family history is a matter of blind faith. What people often seem to forget (or they wouldn't be so insulted by the not so nice things they find in their family tree) is that mental illness, adultery, betrayal, murder are not inventions of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. These things have always existed, and it does no good to have blinders on about your own family. There is absolutely no guarantee that I am really, truly descended from all those names I've applied to my family tree. There is no guarantee that every husband and wife has been virtuous, that every marriage was voluntary and strictly before consummation, that no one committed violence against anyone else. There is no guarantee of anything except the DNA nestled inside me—whoever put it there, whatever the story. My bones contain the only unassailable truth of who I am.
But this is a realization I came to quite early on in my historic pursuits, so it doesn't trouble me. I still want to solve the historical puzzle of these people who, if they didn't sire me, at least raised the people who sired me. I love the stories of who they were, whether they are truly reflected in my bones or not. I love the dark stories as well as the light, though some of the things I've learned have been rather disturbing. It's all part of the true fabric of human lives, human existence, of my family history. All families contain both dark and light and we're foolish to ever believe otherwise.
I have a hard time understanding people who don't want to own up to the bad stuff, to know it and accept it as just as much a part of their heritage as any courageous westward migration or honorable war service. But not everyone can accept this mixed heritage. They want it all sanitized for their protection. I've had personal experience with the Pandora's box. In my youthful intemperance, I made the mistake of telling the unvarnished truth to some of those "cousins." If they ask, I'd still tell them, but I no longer volunteer the information unasked.
Then there's the stories my father used to tell, some of them true (sort of), and some of them more creative, and the screwy family legacy that's caused...Ah, but that's a story for another day. Perhaps tomorrow.