Living history

Over the past three decades I have dabbled at family history research. Descending almost exclusively from common dirt farmers, I have no illusion about having forebears who were famous, powerful, or rich, nor am I searching for such people in my family tree. Rather, I enjoy this research for several other reasons.

First, I like seeing how history has played out in my family—my ancestors as actors in events such as the American Revolution, the Civil War, land runs, gold rushes, and almost unbroken economic hard times until my generation.

Second, family history research is a mystery story with clues, false leads, witnesses of dubious credibility, and surprises like murders, illegitimate children, and army desertions. I get to be the detective, sifting information, doing research, interviewing witnesses.

Third, I have the chance to connect with other family history detectives, some who are kinfolk and some who are not. Among the most interesting are my distant kin whose own forebears stepped out of the family migration and are still living on the land of our common ancestors and who still know many of the stories of those ancestors.

History, of course, is an incomplete account, usually focusing on big events and ignoring the yeomanry which comprises my ancestors. One’s family history is typically a mix of fact and fiction, often more the latter than the former—scant government or church records, Bible entries, unverifiable stories muddied by time, old photos. Nevertheless, even a hazy tale can pique the imagination and remind us that ours is only the latest chapter in a long chronicle that extends back beyond memory. Knowing even a bit about our own history offers the understanding that although our own life is made up of unique details, the underlying story is a universal cycle of birth, growth, decline, and death that is marked by a few singular events that will soon be forgotten by one’s descendants.

What particularly interests me are the questions of what motivated my forebears to act as they did. For example, what caused my ancestors to leave Europe more than two centuries ago and move to the howling wilderness of the Appalachians and the Deep South? Or why did one of my forefathers desert the Confederate Army and become a Union guerrilla? Is my paternal grandmother’s mother really her mother? How did my grandparents end up in Oklahoma when all four were born elsewhere?

Even though I doubt I will be able to answer these and similar questions, they remind me that I am descended from real people who were involved in and affected by the events of their time. Such questions also remind me that I am not just a product of my own experience and education but that I am also the legatee of all of my ancestors—not a legatee of property or money, certainly, but rather the inheritor of the DNA, decisions, and actions of real people. As a screenplay or novel, the story of my family would be completely unremarkable to most people. Yet, for me that story is an absorbing saga of decent men and women, ne’er-do-wells, farmers, soldiers, drunks, and even a few preachers—all pilgrims on the road to their own Canterbury. Best of all, I am part of the procession.