To Your Health!

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Doing genealogy is good for us

No matter how you define it, learning family traditions, story, lore, and placing ourselves into the flow of history is good for our health. And for those of us who do research, the thrill of discovery and of connecting with cousins can't be beat. Pure joy.

There have been some academic studies about the value of knowing our family and community history for youngsters, but we don't need studies to know that those benefits stay with us all our lives. In this increasingly fragmented world, a sense of belonging keeps us centered. Those who plan or attend family reunions often build memories that last for a lifetime. 

Milestone celebrations such a births, birthdays, shared holidays, graduations, engagements, weddings, housewarmings, homecomings and funerals are fundamental ways of structuring family ties, even when our relatives and ancestors leave us. There is something solemn and sacred about leaving flowers on a grave; we do this for ourselves and our family, and to honor those who have gone before. Humans have been doing this since before histories were being written; archaeologists study these practices and sometimes even the remains in the burials. More connection to our ancestors.


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"Reinventing Yourself After 70" is a recent post mentioning the value of genealogy. The author says about a recently retired woman: 
Years ago, Suzanne, who is white, discovered that James Meredith, the first black student to enter the University of Mississippi, was her second cousin. She learned more recently that she was related to 30 other slaveholders, back to the 17th and 18th centuries. And soon she was collaborating with like-minded people on WikiTree’s US Black Heritage Project. She told me, “Being 70, and healthy, gave me an opportunity to develop my passion, reparative genealogy, and work on it in a really satisfying way.”
I found this quote when Suzanne linked it in the USBH project mail list. More connections! I am also descended from some slaveholders, and want to learn how to make  this information available to all the descendants of those enslaved, whether or not we are related. 

It takes some courage to investigate the records of ancestral slaveholders, and so far, I have not done that. I have been practicing by working on my son-in-law's Black ancestral line, and that of Mary Jane Green, a formerly enslaved woman who died in Everett [1]. It began with our own Black Heritage of Franklin project, which I wrote about here: Voila! Finding Context for Your Research and Family History and Adventures in Genealogy: Connecting the Dots. Join us and do some local research which may take you elsewhere too!

The investigation needed can be extensive and grueling, digging into tax, probate, sales records, newspaper notices and deep local, legal and historical context. I think this depth is what we all aspire to do as cracker-jack family historians, but this particular work may uncover some emotions that we often avoid. The discoveries can be painful.

When I came across a record that meant that one (or both) of my third-great-grandparents in Russell County, Kentucky were possibly descended from slaveholders, I stopped researching. Could not face digging into that. I hope I can power past that fear this time with the help of BGRG, Coming To The Table, the Wikitree USBH Project, and the support of my cousins and other friends and relatives. I think it takes all of us to uncover more of the full truth of the past. Whatever your own family story is, it is worth the work to discover and share the tale so it is not forgotten.

1. https://skcgs.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-magic-of-collaboration-and-wikitree.html,  https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Unknown-560609&public=1

 

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Share your story with us! send to m.strickland@skcgs.org


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Valorie Zimmerman




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