How Exploring Family History Can Enrich and Refine Your Perspective
Commentary
This spring, I found a card sent to me as a child from my paternal grandmother. In addition to her usual expressions of love and advice, my grandmother suggested that one of my ancestors came across the ocean on the Mayflower. Forgetting she had made such a statement years ago, and wanting to personally connect with a significant part of American history, I spent the last few months tracing every line on her side to find the connection.
While I did not find any Pilgrims on my father’s side of the ledger, I did find them on my mother’s. Mary Chilton, reputed to be the first female to disembark upon Plymouth Rock, is my 12th great-grandmother. Caring for Mary and her compatriot Pilgrims on the first Thanksgiving was Chief Massasoit of the Wampanoag Tribe. His granddaughter married an English settler and established a progeny that resulted in thousands of descendants—including me—only ten generations later.
Shifting over a few contemporaneous branches on that same family tree, I was astonished to learn that the renowned poet of Paradise Lost and Areopagitica, John Milton, was my thirteenth great-grandfather. His heroic pieces likely paved the way for my feeble writing efforts. I echo Milton: “What is dark within me, illumine.”
Genealogy is more than genetics, and we are not simply a product of our environment. Those who breathed, ate, nurtured, drank, celebrated, mourned, and reproduced over the ages conceiving us had something to do with every inclination, impulse, attitude, prejudice, belief, and purpose emanating from our bodies, minds, hearts, and souls. Weave enough of our bloodline stories together, and we will find a rich tapestry of scars and stars in the past capable of guiding us through our temporal challenges and pains to a bright future.
In a recent podcast highlighting his new book for children, “I Am My Ancestors,” author Jonah Barnes referenced compelling research by Marshall P. Duke, Amber Lazarus, and Robyn Fivush in 2008 showing a “knowledge of family history is significantly correlated with internal locus of control, higher self-esteem, better family functioning, greater family cohesiveness, lower levels of anxiety, and lower incidence of behavior problems.”
Sure enough, rather than allow for melancholy to set in, I started keeping track of family history stories during the lockdowns. Beyond notable mortals like Massasoit, Mary, and Milton, I discovered marauders, martyrs, mythologies, and many Mormon pioneers preceding me. Despite the good-natured teasing from my kids as I relayed my findings over dinner and during car rides, we found genuine happiness in our genealogical experiment despite the occasional heartbreak in our grandparents’ experiences. Their hearts are turned to their fathers.
On my dad’s side, my great-grandfather made his way from a small village in northern Denmark settling as a farmer and herder in southern Idaho 150 years ago. He was a stern man who lived a hard-scrabble life dependent on the rain and God’s good graces. His ruggedness was a vestige of our Viking forefathers like Halfdan Sveidasson or the sea-king Sveidi of the Orkneyinga Saga.
Go back enough generations, and everyone is related to nobility from fiefdoms largely lost to time—but the reality of death throttles any feelings of superiority. War, political strife, and ravaged kinships during the rule of my 35th great-grandfather, Oleg the Wise, overseeing the rise of the ninth century Kievan Rus, continue today. Some things never change.
In my high school U.S. history class, we were required to interview a living person about their experiences during the Great Depression. Fortunately, all four of my grandparents were still alive, and each of them left me a treasure trove of cherished memories from their younger years. They endured severe economic strife. Yet, I was moved by how they lived with such joy even as the government implemented gas and sugar rations, drafted them to war in far-off places, and killed their livestock in a sordid attempt to stop inflation. How do our attitudes to hardships compare?
More than pictures on a page, my long-lost relations are very real intermediaries to a world of tradition and faith that becomes more beautiful the longer I study their lives. Like a rough stone rolling down the hill, their stories continue to refine my perceptions of history, constantly smoothing any sharp assumptions I am tempted to make about my very fallible forefathers. We find out quickly they really were not that different from us.
Families who want to forge stronger bonds with their present kin should expose themselves to family history. Start with the easy stuff: Search the branches you know, and then make a goal to fill in the gaps—large or small—with the stories of men and women who literally animated you. And if your tree is devoid of substantial roots, start branching out by authoring your own story.
After all, it’s for the children.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
