LITTLE ROCK — Like most families, mine can be divided into two groups, planters and foragers, although in these modern times, craftsmen and collectors might be more appropriate designations.
Less politely put, some people create art and some people create clutter. I’m definitely among the latter. I seem to spend half my life creating messes and the other half trying to straighten things out.
Surely a head doctor could make much of this, but I don’t need one because I’ve already come to a satisfactory conclusion about it. A lifelong devotee of logic problems and the like, I enjoy sorting things out, even to the point of creating conundrums where none exists.
Ah, but there’s been no shortage of those in the last few years. Ever since I started excavating the roots of the family tree, it’s been one riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma after another.
Sometimes I long for a proper summer vacation such as we enjoyed as schoolchildren, three whole months in which to do nothing but traipse around far-flung courthouses, libraries and other repositories, digging, digging, digging, but I know better. However much time one has to devote to such pursuits, that’s what they remain, pursuits, because there’s always another piece of the family puzzle eluding them.
And don’t think for a minute that just because someone has traced his or her family back to the Mayflower, that’s the end of the line. Before America, there was Europe and Asia and Africa and-well, you get the idea.
I try not to think about that, though. Six years into this hobby, I’m still pretty much stuck in the middle of the 19th century with most strands of my lineage. Partly that’s my fault. IfI’d asked more questions and taken more notes when my parents and their parents were alive, I might have worked my way back to at least the War of 1812 by now. Given all the chaos I’ve found in records leading up to the Civil War era, it’s become sort of a goal.
Speaking of which, I hope this generation of record keepers is doing a better job of preserving data for those that will follow. Between careless storage practices, natural disasters, fires and wars, the official records of our ancestors have taken quite a beating.
That’s particularly true in the states of the Old South. Obviously, my people who lived there in the 1800s came from somewhere else, but finding out where is a constant frustration because so many records have been destroyed. I’ve read several accounts by genealogists who say that the Civil War hump was the most difficult one they’ve encountered.
No wonder DNA projects are becoming so popular with researchers. Paper can go missing and is easily destroyed, and computers are hardly foolproof, but as long as there’s a living male among your kin, there’s a way to link up with the past (not to mention hundreds or thousands and someday maybe hundreds of thousands of kinfolks throughout the world).
Trying to link up with the past the old-fashioned way has more charm, of course. A few old wills I’ve come across tell something of how people lived, and Bible entries suggest which family members stayed in touch and which did not. I’m well pleased with the few such tidbits I’ve managed to gather.
However, nothing quite touches the emotion I felt upon realizing that the transcriptions of a collection of letters I’d run across on the Internet some time back were, indeed, the words of my great-great-grandfather’s brother.
I hadn’t bothered to read them the first time around, but once the family connection had been confirmed, their value to me became immeasurable. I’ve read them over and over again, each time wondering if that’s how my great-great-grandfather would have expressed himself under comparable circumstances. I’d always thought that people in the olden days were stoic, totally lacking in the capacity to express sentiment.
My grand old uncle, for that is how I think of him now, however many times removed, apparently had it hard as a prisoner of Union forces, but what resonates is how lovingly he wrote to his wife and how tenderly he instructed his children. I have no doubt that his desire, his need to returnto them is what kept him alive. And that is what brought him, as well as my great-great-grandfather, to life for me.
History gleaned from books is, well, just history, a dry recounting of facts, and usually without human context. Love letters are much better in that regard.
Associate Editor Meredith Oakley is editor of the Voices page. An earlier version of today’s column appeared on May 16, 2007.
Editorial, Pages 15 on 06/23/2010