Why genealogy is bunk

I agree it's racist and elistist, at least in its origin. It's original popularity in America in the early 1800s was a Nativist reaction to immigrants.

But that's an interesting thing -- medieval scholarship originally glorified the origins of the nobility, until a small group of Marxist scholars at the Sorbonne transformed the field into the people's history.

You really can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Or maybe that saying should be reversed in this case ;)

Meh - I'm just generally nosy. :-)

I spent about three hours on the phone this week with a genealogist who went into a genealogical polemic. He hated everything about his ancestors. Among serious genealogists I usually find self-loathing to be more common than elitism. “Find-A-Noble” is more common among non-genealogists who occasionally wade into the field to abuse their family tree. Very rarely do I find nostril-flaring airs from “real” genealogists. I learned genealogy from two New England grandmothers and an aunt. I never saw a single nostril-flare from them honestly. To them it was taking me to that special “place” just to be there, to stand still and breathe it in while we relived a past they knew so well but had never personally experienced. It was about a spiritual connection and deep respect for a vision larger than one’s own personal time and space and beyond the limitations of our human senses. It was also an exercise to pass on a temporal context to their young and a sense of civic duty. I really don’t see it as being much different than great literature, art or science.

One of the dimensions I find perpetually interesting is the difference between people who grew up in cultures that value genealogy and people who came to it as a modern fashion.

I grew up in rural Utah. Lots of people do genealogy. That's just a fact of life. They've been doing genealogy for generations. You might not do genealogy yourself but if you're paying attention you know who your pioneer ancestors were, and you probably know some stories about them.

I imagine it's much the same in parts of New England and the South.

I've often thought people who don't come from a genealogical culture have a greater tendency to get "worked up" about it. They're more likely to be drawn to amazing discoveries about their royal and noble ancestry. And they're more likely to get agitated and judgmental about what their ancestors did.

One of my favorites quotes comes from a cousin who said, "If I can't be arrested for what they did, it doesn't make any difference to me." ;)

I myself am always struck by how different a view of the world must be if one has not grown up hearing stories. The families on both sides, my Long Island mother and my East Texas father, told stories. Indeed, my East Texas grandfather entertained us children by walking around the graveyards with us and telling stories. (I was surprised, when I grew up, to find that Brannens do not ALL die by being shot down in the streets of Trinity, Texas. I thought it was pretty much my fate.)

So I naturally see the world in terms not only of historical connections-- a giant web spun though times and space -- but in terms of my personal connection to it, through millennia.

And of course this is not true for all the humans.

I didn't grow up around much extended family, or extended history; in fact I was "grandparent deprived." So I have a lot of "gee whiz" about discovering family history. Probably though because I'm a product of time and place, my "wow, that's amazing" is not so much about nobility as about pioneer and immigrant grit.

I think what made me fall in love with genealogy was finding I had Overmountain Boys in my ancestry:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overmountain_Men

That changed my worldview. I took back the Scotch Irish, stubborn and reactionary as they can be ....

Where's the Geni project for the Overmountain Men? Seems like it ought to be in here somewhere. We already have several related projects. It would be as perfect fit.

https://www.geni.com/projects/American-Revolution-Battle-of-King-s-...

Joseph Porter & his brothers in law, the Reynolds, are my guys.

And this one .... https://www.geni.com/projects/Overmountain-Men/40807

I created that one last night ;)

"So we come to the first fallacy of genealogy - pruning the family tree: EVERY self-appointed "genealogist" prunes their family tree to exclude members they find uninteresting. Often people trace paternal links, while ignoring maternal ones. So you might trace back the Smith name 10 generations, but ignore the families of all the Smith wives."

(I'VE CAPITALIZED 'every') - My reply: Really? 'Every'??? Not me...

Why did the author write this then, as, scientifically, he cannot know this?... My own grandmother would grin and say (with a cute wry smile) "Oh, he just wants to be CON-Tro-Verse-cee-al..."read..... 'an ass'..

Another reason for tree "pruning" is that immense volumes of records in olden days could not be maintained as transcription was tedious and you could not use tools we now have with EDP (electronic data processing). Secondly, naming patterns... "Put that in your Welsh "Verch-Ap" pipe and smoke it" ;)

The author has a point... Many people do exclude those they don't care for parts of their genealogical pasts... But primarily it's a matter of available disposable time that so often leads to practical dead ends. The main reason I've been making advances in my own tree is that I have the time to spend on it; that and an obsessive/compulsive disorder. ("That's a joke, Son!")

I got quite a laugh out of that one. It wouldn't hurt me a bit to do some mental pruning. It's called focus. I've got so much information already I could never live long enough to deal with it but every day I'm off looking for cousins of cousins and in-laws of in-laws so I can better see in ancestors in context.

I told a friend I was working on my genealogy and he looked at me weird and asked "Can't you just pay someone to do that for you?" Valid question I didn't know how to answer him. I guess there is something obsessive/compulsive about hunting down every document available for each ancestor as Michael puts it. Then there is Justin's cousin hunting (that hits home - ha! :O Or maybe we are just noisy as Mavin says :) LOL

Hi there - yes there there are actually reliable sources you can find going back in time, but the biggest source we have available is the knowledge 'inherited' by our parents etc. who are still living. I wish I picked up genealogy when my grandfathers were still alive (when I was 10 years old), because they knew who their parents were, and that is important information... from 'Mr Serious' ^^

Please take the effort to 'source' 3rd line+ relatives from ancestors while they are still living.

A very good point Jan makes! The memories of the living are a "first stop," and then we can find the documentation to prove / disprove / correct / adjust. But without that info, we are dead in the water.