The Family Historian and Temporal Orientations Towards the Ancestral Past

Abstract

In a society preoccupied with the future, genealogists or family historians devote a great deal of effort to constructing family ancestry on paper and in the mind, and situating the ancestral family in its historic time and place. This study explores the temporal orientations, and the content of these orientations, which genealogists bring to this activity. Findings are reported from a 1994 mail survey of 1348 members of a Canadian genealogical society. In addition, this paper examines the relationship between historical time and autobiographical time, and the impact of the family historian role on personal identity and family culture.

Practising family history: ‘identity’ as a category of social practice

“…The appeal of genealogy is said to lie in its ‘ability to both embody and individualize the past’ (Nash : 194), with the idiom of family connection governing genealogy making it ‘easier than expected to project oneself into the historical past, to imagine oneself into the character and historic experience of one's ancestors’ (Kramer : 442). Practitioners ‘disseminate information about the family to interested parties’ (Lambert : 137), operating as ‘memory workers’ in which an ‘important part of these memories, beyond the mere “facts”, are the arguments and interpretations that genealogists advance in favour of their ancestors’ ( Lambert : 125). Such narratives are ‘well‐rehearsed’ and ‘cast in story form’ (Lambert : 125).…”

“…Family historians frequently frame their accounts as telling a ‘good story’ about ancestors, recovered from the dusty past as flesh‐and‐blood individuals, with stories often having a ‘polished’ feel (Lambert , ; Yakel and Torres ). Clearly an extension of those ‘family stories’ which are part of the ordinary currency of family relations (Gillis ; Smart ), such accounts of ancestors as acts of recovery also operate as stories of research success, and of the family historian's accomplishments in the archive.…”

“…Research on family history has concluded the practice demonstrates the ‘creative and negotiated dimension of kinship’ in which ‘people take as much pleasure in making themselves connected and rooted, as in being rooted and connected’ (Kramer : 393). But a key pleasure here rests in the successful performance (and display) of the research , with practitioners gaining a ‘major source of personal satisfaction’ in ‘learning research skills, the challenge of problem‐solving, the thrill of discovery, [and] associated feelings of competence’ (Lambert : 136). That accounts so often take a particular form – recovering ‘interesting’ ancestors – is related to these internal goods.…”

“…The tracing of ancestors within archives also requires the execution of specific competences and skills. Frequently a time‐consuming, painstaking, sometimes expensive pursuit, family historians often refer to the ‘addictive’ or compulsive nature of their ‘hunt’ for ancestors (Lambert ) with the hobby described as ‘an infection, an obsession, a bug you catch and cannot shake off’ (Nash : 38). Rather obviously, practitioners take up family history to find out more about their family history.…”

Identifying the genealogical self

“…One of the four main motivations for undertaking ancestral travel, identified by the Scottish government, is to ''connect with the self'' (VisitScotland 2006). In Ronald D. Lambert's (1996) study of the Ontario Genealogical Society, the statement that received the highest number of responses marked ''important'' was: ''to learn about my roots, about who I am''. But where do such claims come from, how are they articulated and what is the role of archives in this search for the self?…”