At first glance, a family tree looks like an exercise in narcissism.
It turns whole centuries, histories, and diaries into little more than sands in your hourglass. All of the battles ever fought and deeds ever done lead down to you.
In reality, every family tree sits in a forest, branches tangled in other branches, one limb gnarled into an odd position, another missing and scarred over. Every fork cradles more fallen fruit sprouting. In time, the roots spread farther than the leaves, in ways the trunk will never see or comprehend.
Your parents’ meeting is one bud—in a hundred-year-old, hundred-acre wood.
Yet, as it turns out, we can only understand the complicated whole by picking one such union and spreading out from it. A family tree doesn’t say everything, but you can hang as many facts on it as you like. Nothing awakens history in the imagination quite like knowing your sixth great grandfather fought the British redcoats or your second great grandmother lost her little brother, never to see him again, while arriving on a New York City dock.
Every tree and family has a historian. Not every immediate family maybe, but every extended American surname certainly. Maybe an uncle spins the family mythologies, or a cousin quilts significant events, but someone keeps track in their own way. These days a family might have a bunch of relatives on Ancestry.com, but only a few of them will have the makings of a true researcher.
You probably know the relative I’m talking about. Real historians preserve the original documents and artifacts, not just digital files. They handle with linen gloves. They note which sources say grandmother was born in 1923 and which sources contradict with 1924. If you roll your eyes at such attention to detail, you are probably not your family’s historian. Care is the first thing to care about.
Genealogical research taught me that knowledge is both strong and frail. Relying on sources over stories, you understand how tenuous the truth becomes with time. If all you have of an ancestor’s existence is a record of the day he was born and another record of the day he committed suicide—one sad line of calligraphy in a ledger—it is difficult to reconcile with a whole human life.
When papers and objects become human remains and stories splinter with uncertainty, care becomes critical, as do all rituals in the face of doubt.
Then you solve your first mystery. You find a photo of a lost ancestor that carries a recognizable family trait, or discover a grave in the strange location you alone determined, or you prove a family legend actually happened, banishing all skepticism. When you understand the fragility of answers, certainty becomes gold, and certainty rests on recording every detail.
A family historian preserves treasure for everyone in the family.
In the mobile device era, the ability to snap and scan has made the ephemeral even more fleeting. We settle for low-resolution digital image substitutes over our priceless original photographs and film negatives. Movements toward ease and simplicity reduce heirlooms and artifacts along with clutter. Virtual archives give us a greater excuse to throw away. Scan it and chuck it.
“Who has the time?” family members ask, and they are correct. We have lost the patience it takes to properly care for our histories in our modern life. Thankfully, family historians speak and act for our long gone loved ones and their remnants. Contact yours today and ask to hear your family record.
It might just be the encouragement they need to keep the story—and the work—going.