ROOTING FOR OUR ROOTS
by Doris O'Brien
Americans' fascination for genealogy is growing as fast as our
fannies. In this technological age, we have far more sophisticated
tools than the shovel and pick with which to dig deep for our
undiscovered roots.
As someone who is less interested in where people came from than in
where they are going, I confess that genealogy is not my bag of
bones. Yet there are increasing numbers whose curiosity is aroused
sufficiently to search out their origins. Some genealogical sleuths
even appear to be more interested in ancestors than they are in living relatives. In some cases, forebears are accorded more attention in death than they ever merited in life.
If technology now enables us to delve into the past, the paucity of it in previous generations can stonewall genealogists, leading them to a dead end. On the other hand, information gaps give license to travel broad, imaginative highways of speculation. Skeptics may question what part of one's charted lineage is fact and what is good-intentioned supposition. Our family trees are winter trees: more
limbs than leaves. It is only human nature to fill them out as best
we can.
Shakespeare wrote, "The evil that men do lives after them. The good
is oft interred with their bones." But genealogists, no matter how
rigorous the standards of their pursuit, seem willing enough to give
ancestors the benefit of the doubt. Thus, family cads become
charismatic figures; ordinary people eking out a living are viewed as
unsung heroes who braved adversity; a suffocating shop transport in steerage class morphs into a grand ocean voyage of discovery to the New World. It is within us to presume the best of our forebears. We
do as much for our own sakes as for theirs.
Technology is not the only element driving the present-day frenzy in the field of genealogy We live in ever more impersonal times. As
population swells, the individual shrinks. Homogenization settles us
into sameness. With our identities becoming harder to assert and easier to steal, many of us feel increasingly lost in the crowd. Extended families scatter, and the hometown — our immediate roots —
turns into a place to visit on the holidays.
Under these diminishing circumstances, it is not surprising that many
Americans have nourished a new-found interest in their roots. It
puts us in touch with earlier times, when priorities were ordered differently. When we glimpse the sepia photos of our ancestors from a
few generations back, in their formal attire, fussy dresses, conspicuous hats and elaborate hairstyles, we can relate — even become a "relative to" — something that we know is gone from our
own lifestyles forever.
We may shudder at the bustles, girdles and crinolines that burdened our female forebears. Or snicker at the starched collars, bowler hats and Sunday suits of the men who self-consciously gazed into the
camera's eye. But who among us in this casual age has not secretly
thought how splendid such touches of elegance, however occasional, must have been.
Even those of us not "into" genealogy can savor the fruits of others'
efforts. Recently, a distant cousin e-mailed me some turn-of-
the-20th-century photos discovered among the few items in the estate of her mother, who died last year at the age of 101. The cache,
still intact, was all the more extraordinary for having survived the
wrath of Hurricane Andrew, which totally destroyed her house in Homestead, Florida, while she was traveling in Europe.
I had never seen a picture of my deceased father taken before he was a Doughboy in World War I. Yet there he was on my computer screen, re-discovered in a salvaged album, a lad of four years old or so,
dressed to the nines in coat, boots, and knickers, with a frilly
ascot at this throat, and a small riding crop in his hands. He was
probably miserable in that Little Lord Fauntleroy get-up, but I'd
have known him anywhere!
So far, someone on my husband's side of the family has traced his maternal line back to its arrival in the New World in the mid-17th
century. The claim could be questionable. Still, even a skeptic like myself finds it easy enough to get entwined in the roots of her
past. After all, they're family.
