The Culture of Family History

THE QUESTION OF MOTIVE

For those of us who are engaged in family history, the question of motive cannot be ignored. To the wives, relatives and friends of many of us, our interests are a closed book.

My wife, for example, immediately half-stifles a quiet, cosmetic yawn when the topic is raised and hurriedly finds some pressing household task that needs attending, or flies to the closet to check her wardrobe, clothes matches, and fashion accessories.

And even those of us who are consumed with tracing particular lines and scaling apparent ‘brick walls’ can be remarkably casual about the concerns of other family historians.

My only foray to a family history society meeting here in New Zealand confirmed my suspicion that most people attend because the meetings offer a captive audience – but one that soon develops glazed eyes too. There is ‘nothing it seems that is more interesting than one’s own family – and nothing less interesting than someone else’s’.

And yet, for all that, I am prepared to contend that it is a noble endeavour - as long as it stresses commonality, the lessons of everyday life, and our shared humanity.

In my own case, the most obvious wellsprings are clearly the loss of my father prior to my birth (and with it the family stories belonging to his forbears); the desirability of providing some kind of account of their ancestors for my young sons and their offspring down the line (as an ageing father); the reinforcement of the importance of some kind of family continuity given my migration from the United Kingdom to New Zealand; and the yearning to attest in some way to the lives of loved ones who had died.

The Wikipedia entry on Family History introduces some interesting points touching on the wider value of family history research; including the importance of ancestor veneration in some religions, the link to nation-building on the achievements of pioneers, and the desirability of stressing the importance of continuous immigration and population flux as a background to the increasing diversity of western societies.

SPECIAL STRANDS

In my case, there are a number of other strands as well. One source, which may surprise some, given my UK background, was Alex Haley’s 1976 historical novel ‘Roots: The Saga of an American Family’.

This was based on rough and ready research about Haley’s family history, starting with the story of a male ancestor Kunta Kinte, who was kidnapped in The Gambia in 1767 and transported to the Province of Maryland to be sold as a slave. Haley claimed to be a ‘seventh-shirri’ descendant of Kunta Kinte. Haley's work on the novel ostensibly involved ten years of research, intercontinental travel and writing.

‘Roots’ was eventually published in 37 languages, and Haley won a Special Award for the work in 1977 from the Pulitzer Board and was also adapted into a popular television mini-series that year. The serial reached a record-breaking 130 million viewers.

When I went to The Gambia on a consulting assignment in 1980, I brought back an African drum for my infant son Matthew, drawing on Haley’s story.

The second unusual link is the concern with lineage in Buddhism.

A lineage in Buddhism is a record of teachers and their disciples, or students. Zen Buddhists maintain records of their historical teachers who, according to the traditional history of that school, have passed the Dharma, or Buddhist teachings, from generation to generation in an unbroken line since the time of the Buddha.

This vertical line is a lineage of spiritual ancestors, in Zen also called patriarchs, who have run the gauntlet of testing and ‘transmission’, provides validation of the purity of the teachings that have been handed down.

Apparently 27 ‘generations’ link Buddha to Bodhidharma, a red-haired ascetic who ‘came from the west’ (probably from modern Afghanistan) bringing the teachings or Dharma to China in the 5th century.

As Chan or Zen subsequently flourished in China there were many branches in the lineage, some of which later died out and some of which continue unbroken to the present day.

Some of these lines were transmitted to Japan, establishing the Zen tradition. Perhaps the most famous of these transmissions to Japan was that of Dogen who travelled to China for Chan training in the 13th century, and after receiving Dharma transmission in the Caodong line he returned to Japan and established the Soto line. The Linji line was also transmitted to Japan where it became known as the Rinzai line.

A third influence has been rubbing up against Maori culture here in New Zealand – and I have more to say about that in the next post.

And I suppose, I have always been interested in and involved with research challenges. So the increasing availability of online birth, marriages and deaths records fuelled my curiosity. This in turn was enhanced by the advent of genetic testing, the publication of books like Stephen Oppenheimer’s ‘The Origins of the British’ and Bryan Sykes’ Blood of the Isles, the opening up of community sites like GenesReunited, and the attention more recently focused on the topic by TV programmes like ‘Who do you think you are?’

GETTING PERSONAL

For me though ultimately, it is mostly about the story and the linkages that they demonstrate between us all. As I pledged to my own family when I wrote my Family History, ‘no family members were harmed in the preparation of the text’.

More than that, I hope that the stories provide in some cases a kind of memorial to those who have gone before. And that they provide a real and, in a sense, living link to deceased family members.

In this, I can’t help but feel some resonance of the sentiments reported recently in the newspaper of Jaqueline Milledge, the NSW Deputy State Coroner. Commenting on the evidence given at an inquest about the death of a troubled young man by a friend, she said:

‘We now know him as very much a complex, three-dimensional character. You have served your friend very well indeed. I can tell you that he would be very proud of you - and I’ve got a very strong faith and do believe that people do know what’s going on once they leave us’.