On Feb. 3, the New York Times published a story entitled Why You Should Dig Up Your Family’s History — and How to Do It.” Written by Jaya Saxena, the article is a good plug for doing good old-fashioned genealogy. The author seems skeptical about DNA testing, but that’s her right… I think it’s great that our hobby is getting such a good plug in the “paper-of-record.” She lays out how to get started very well, and I encourage folks to read what she has to say.
The following is a short teaser from the article. Note that the New York Times limits the number of free article reads you can get, so I wouldn’t click in and out of it…
Learning your history is forced reckoning, asking you to consider whose stories you carry with you and which ones you want to carry forward….
My middle name is the name of a Confederate soldier.
Before that it was Scottish, the name of an indentured servant who came here when America wasn’t a country, when he was just one of many who were brought over. The name stayed on the Atlantic coast, passing through my Confederate ancestors, onto my loving grandmother who taught me how to birdwatch, finally landing on me, a mixed-race woman with a Jewish partner living in New York City. Somehow I don’t think that soldier would be too happy about that.
In America, the question of “Where am I from?” usually means, “Where did my family live before they arrived/were forcibly shipped to America?”…
