What is History?

©Bizarro Piraro

The comic above is funny, but history and our ancestor's stories are not always funny, pleasant, uplifting and inspiring. Life and thus history is full of tragedy and comedy, beauty and horror, and some parts are difficult to face. Survival is not guaranteed, because we are human.

My family has endured crime and tragedy; my mother's father was convicted of child rape, and spent time in prison. My dad's only sibling, his little brother, drowned when only 13, and my Grampa Cowan, Donald's daddy, found his body. Terrible tragedy in the lives of both my parents, yet they went on to build a house and a life together. They raised my sister and I in that house, and my mother lived the rest of her life there. I think the security of living in a house they owned was a comfort to her, in contrast to the chaos in which she had been raised. 

The reason I've been thinking about telling the whole truth of our families is that there is another a way of thinking about history which is being promoted lately by some in and out of government [1]. That version of history, American history, is a single narrative, which should be positive and inspiring. That is opposite of what history IS. History is a search for the truth, for evidence, for context. So as we research, we need to seek out all of it, both the ugly, the beautiful and even the coincidental.

 

wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Theatre_Masks

History was created by many events, and sometimes natural factors such as geography, weather, geology, topography, even accidents and chance. People respond based on their own situations, culture, family, social position, and their own understanding. MaryLynn's story about her relative in the battle of Bunker Hill 250 years ago illustrates how a bit of research can tease out a story that the family had long forgotten. Other people in that same place and time chose to support the colonial hierarchy, and stayed loyal to the King of England, rather than supporting the rebels whom we now think of as Patriots. If you have Loyalist ancestors, their stories should be told too.

Not all the people in New England and elsewhere in colonial America were of English heritage; there were also native people, immigrants from around the world, including enslaved and indentured people. A full account of history of even one event must include multiple points of view. 

As we have all found out during our research, family stories and even records are not always correct, and sometimes contradict one another. This is natural, since people are the ones who remember the stories and create the records. One reason DNA evidence has been such a boon to many of us is that that DNA doesn't lie, although it takes some skill to interpret it. Weather records of the time, properly correlated with witness accounts, can shed new light on events of the past. And looking at factors such as demographics, social history, geography, geology and so forth provide rich context to our stories. 

"History is written by the victors." This has been true forever; reading histories written long ago makes that very clear. Even some of the county histories we love to find because they give context to our ancestors' lives, show views of say, the original inhabitants or newcomers, that can be difficult to read. I think it is important, though, to understand the opinions of the time. Often there is no mention of important groups of people; that tendency to exclude is worth our attention. Whose voice is not being heard? There may be events and people that should be part of the story. If nothing else, the Genealogical Proof Standard demands that we investigate the full context of our family of interest in their own place and time. 

 

Research can be painful. When I came across a possible slave holder ancestor, I stopped researching for a few years, then concentrated on my father's side of the family where I knew there was no slave holding. I have finally re-gathered my courage, and have been learning how to do this difficult research. Full Text Search on the FamilySearch platform has made it easier on the technical level, thank goodness.

 

The search is worthwhile, no matter what we find. After all, we don't do this work to bring glory to our ancestors, but to understand them, and understand ourselves.  

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1. The Push to Revise American History at the Smithsonian, podcast by the NY Times 

 

Valorie Zimmerman

 

 

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Send your stories to m.strickland@skcgs.org

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