The Ocean of Things Past

I've been delving into the family genealogy again, which is always a huge time sucker.  People seem to be either fascinated by their family history or largely indifferent.  It's one way or the other. Depending upon how you perceive the past and family, our heritage can either be inconsequential or profoundly significant.

The view from my 2nd great-grandparent's home looking toward the massive grain elevators that line the Buffalo waterfront.

The indifferent line of reasoning goes something like this: Why bother so deeply with the details of those who lived before us?  What's past is past. Their particulars don't impact my life and who I am today. Plus, it's kind of morbid. Ultimately, I am related to everyone if we go far back enough.  If I am descended from person A or B, so what?  Why does it matter?

Then I think about our present culture---how masses of us make a pastime of following the minutest details of celebrity lives or the various waves of pop culture that wash over us.  Is that fascination more relevant? Is the trajectory of our ancestor's lives less? If you are a person of the Christian faith, the first chapter of Matthew would argue no, as Matthew carefully traces generation after generation after generation unto Christ.

 But, that's just one voice in a larger historical choir. One of my favorite quotes hangs from our kitchen cabinets:

“Whoso neglects learning in his youth, loses his past and is dead for the future."     -Euripides 480-406BC

Like Euripides, I believe there is a critical bond between the past, the present and the future. To neglect or forsake the individual links is to lose the story and scope of the whole.  And, in sharp contrast to celebrity voyeurism, genealogical voyeurism helps us gain perspective on our present lives.

Norris family immigration: NY Passenger Lists, 20 September 1851, Empire Queen, Liverpool to New York

Admittedly, I sometimes question the relevance of the work too--especially when my children swirl around me doing this or that, wondering how I can sustain such intense interest in obscure details--so many dates and graves--1865 not 1867, Leathy or Letha Geer, Spiers/Spires/Spyres, who cares? It can be tedious and seemingly insignificant work--kind of like pursuing my writing--ha!

David asked me yesterday casually, "So is this your hobby?"  I told him "I suppose so," though to categorize it as a hobby makes it seem light.  I find it anything but light.

For me, the process is emotionally heavy--at least if you are sensitive to the details of so many lives that pass before you.  I feel the heft of the real people I'm sifting through.   They are not abstract details, but flesh and blood people, just like you and me-people that lived, breathed, loved, and ultimately passed from this earth.  Repeatedly, it strikes me that there are so many many people, many more of them than us.  It's easy to minimize them because they wait silently beneath the ground, but make no mistake, we are vastly outnumbered.

Once you push into the generations, it's amazing how fast the names move--once past the surf of the first and second generations, it becomes less about one specific name or line, less about particular people you remember from childhood and more about the sweeping passage of times and lives.  The ocean of family history opens wide at times and calls.  The farther out you sail, the more thrilling the adventure, but the more necessary it becomes to document the journey and chart a stable course back to the shore.  Otherwise you are just lost at sea.

The research becomes a study in people, in lives, in choices and consequences, in unexpected twists, the tale of bad genes or of good ones, of loose commitments and failed ventures, of difficult roads and hard labor.  The lessons? Some acquiesce, others endure.  The choice is sometimes theirs and sometimes not.