The Importance of Family Stories: The Fable of Jack and Jill

This is a "lost" post, originally intended for publication on Wednesday, 28 November 2007. It was discovered in the "Draft" file on Wednesday, 31 May 2017 (a mere nine and half years late!).

I know two young persons who are about to get married. For the sake of this story, let's call them Jack and Jill [certain other personal identifying information has also been changed to protect the privacy of individuals. Dates and places of genealogically significant events have not been changed.] They live somewhere in the United States of America. Jack, 32 years old, is an assistant professor at a well-known university. Jill, also 32, is a chemist for a small private company.

Jack identifies himself as an African-American. Most people would call Jill "Caucasian" or "white."
But if you know her, you get the impression she doesn't spend a lot of time concerned about "what" she is in these terms. And therein lies the root of Jack and Jill's "problem" as they approach their wedding day. Jill, it seems, has some relatives who are glad she's getting married; but that her fiance is a black man, well, not so much. Some of the objections have been so intemperate that Jill after much angst, has decided not to invite certain relatives to the wedding.

Jill had thought that if only her relatives got to know Jack as a person, they might see things differently. That hasn't worked because they aren't interested in getting to know him. But suppose her relatives knew what I know about their family history . . . .

Jill knew of my interest in genealogy and awhile ago, she asked me to help her learn something about a relative, now deceased, that her mother had mentioned. Here's what I discovered as I pursued that mission:

Jill's mother's maiden name is German. Jill's great-great-grandfather, Johannes R., came to New York from Bavaria in 1847. Johannes settled in Queens and married another German immigrant. Their son, also named Johannes, also married another German immigrant. A third Johannes was born of this marriage.

Johannes III left New York when he entered the service during WWII. After the war, Johannes III ended up in Texas where he met and married Conseulo G. Conseulo was the daughter of Cristiano G., who was born in Mexico but crossed the border at will and maintained a residence in Texas and in Mexico. Jill's mother, Barbara, is the fourth child of Johannes and Conseulo.

Jill's paternal great-great-grandfather was Pedro M., born in Cuba in 1866, the descendant of African slaves. He married Maria, whose paternity is unknown, in Puerto Rico in 1890. In 1905, Pedro and Maria moved to Hawaii. In Hawaii, Pedro and Maria raised their sons, including Ricardo M., who was to become Jill's great-grandfather. Ricardo married Victoria S., whose family had immigrated to Hawaii from the Philippines. Victoria's family was of the Ibanag people. In 1920, Ricardo and Victoria had a son, Estaban. Soon thereafter, Ricardo moved his family to California. In California, Estaban grew up and met Anna T., whose family had come from Mexico. Anna had been born in Mexico. Estaban and Anna married and in 1945, had a son which they named Stephen. In 1966, Stephen met Barbara R. and they were soon married. Jill is their only child.

Suppose Jill's recalcitrant relatives knew their own family history. Would they behave differently toward Jack? I suggest that it really takes something more than just the facts. That is a knowledge of family stories that makes the names come alive for them. If they knew Grandpa Pedro through family stories, they might feel as if they really knew him.

Jack and Jill were married in 2007 and today are the happily married parents of two children.

U.S. Surgeon General's Family History Initiative

Perhaps three or four years ago, the U.S. Surgeon General launched a "Family History Initiative." I first came across it a few weeks ago. The Surgeon General's Website says this:

Health care professionals have known for a long time that common diseases - heart disease, cancer, and diabetes - and even rare diseases - like hemophilia, cystic fibrosis, and sickle cell anemia - can run in families. If one generation of a family has high blood pressure, it is not unusual for the next generation to have similarly high blood pressure. Tracing the illnesses suffered by your parents, grandparents, and other blood relatives can help your doctor predict the disorders to which you may be at risk and take action to keep you and your family healthy.

To help focus attention on the importance of family history, the U.S. Surgeon General in cooperation with other agencies with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has launched a national public health campaign, called the U.S. Surgeon General's Family History Initiative, to encourage all American families to learn more about their family health history.

It goes on to say:

Americans know that family history is important to health. A recent survey found that 96 percent of Americans believe that knowing their family history is important. Yet, the same survey found that only one-third of Americans have ever tried to gather and write down their family's health history.

So, of course, to capitalize on the rising popularity of family history research and "[b]ecause family health history is such a powerful screening tool," the government came up with its own
family [health] history software, "to help make it fun and easy for anyone to create a sophisticated portrait of their family's health."

The software, which is also available in a web-based version, is called My Family Health Portrait. As genealogical software, it ain't great. It appears to allow you print two reports, the ones displayed here:

Above: Text-only Report
Below: Graphic Report
(Click on images to enlarge)

(Note: the family depicted above is entirely fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons is coincidental and unintentional.)

Is this as the government claims, a useful tool? Probably. And you could probably get the same info by customizing a report from your usual genealogical software. But for those not into genealogy, this tool may have two uses: first, it will help them trace family health issues and second, it may interest them further in genealogy.

Link:
The Surgeon General's Family History Initiative

Publishing with Help from Ancestry.com

I studied Ancestry.com's AncestryPress for quite awhile without trying it. There didn't seem to be a lot written about it. Eventually, I decided to take the plunge and give it a try.

Ancestry Press lets one create family history books and charts. I decided to try a family history book. You must have a family tree uploaded with Ancestry.com to use the Ancestry Press processes. When you upload a family tree, you have the option public or not. If you make it public, other persons can view it individually and as part of Ancestry's OneWorldTree. If you keep it "private," then, according to Ancestry, "other members can still learn if a specific deceased individual is in your tree, in addition to the birth year and birthplace of the person and your username (but no personal information about you)."

The book process allows the uploading of additional material such as photographs. Additional material "is always protected. Only people you authorize to view your project will be able to see your uploaded content," says Ancestry. You must also agree to Ancestry's content submission policy, which states, among other things, that you agree not violate copyright law. The policy also contains this statement:

Although we retain our rights in and to the content that is present on the website or that may be created and/or supplied by or for us, we take no ownership in any material uploaded or submitted to the website. We have no control over, and no knowledge concerning, material you submit to the website. Accordingly, you bear the legal responsibility of ensuring that none of the material that you upload or submit infringes copyrights or any other legal rights of others.

Note that when they say "the website," they mean the AncestryPress website, which doe not include the location where you upload your family tree. But I had no problem with any of that for what I wanted to do, so I agreed.

The book is basically a coffee table book. The process of creating pages in the book is fairly simple. There are various templates to follow, including a blank one. Images that have been uploaded are in a sidebar from which they may be dragged and dropped onto the page. Records attached to persons on your family tree also may be accessed and placed on the page.

The book process has a four generation family group sheets created automatically from your family tree.

The book process has gradually gotten better over the time it's taken me to do my project. The process has a virtual copy of your book with pages that turn in a pretty cool way. I almost wish that there was a way save and e-mail this virtual book!


To print the book, you have two choices. You can print and bind the pages on your own, for which you pay Ancestry nothing. Or you can have AncestryPress print and bind the book for you. The cost is $34.95 for up to 24 pages and 49 cents a page for each additional page. The book is printed in 11-1/2" X 8" landscape style.

I opted to print the thing myself for several reasons. First, in this experimental project for me, I'd like to be able to change or expand it if I want to. So I printed it on my home printer. I went to the Ancestry store and found a scrapbook of the right size and sufficient quality. It cost $24.99 plus shipping; it got here in about two days.

As to the content of my book, I chose my Gines family. I used photographs, family group sheets, records, and original material that I wrote. I'm pleased with the book. (Note: don't tell anybody, but the experimental book came out so well I decided to give it as a surprise gift to a family member. I mailed it yesterday, so they should have it by Tuesday!).
Click on photos to enlarge.

An Historian Comments On Historians and Genealogy

Professional historians, like all skilled tradespeople, have their own status rules. One of the most basic of these--so basic that our postgraduate students do not even need to be told, so clearly do we silently communicate our snobbery-- is this: do not ever become involved with the practice of genealogy: it is a necropolis of the mind and anyone who enters there can only return as a zombie. This is absolute rubbish . . . .

Donald Harman Akenson, Douglas Professor of Canadian and Colonial History, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. Professor Akenson is the world's leading scholar on the Irish diaspora and the author of several major works on the history of Judaism and Christianity. The quote is from his latest book, Some Family -- The Mormons and How Humanity Keeps Track of Itself (McGill-Queen's University Press), copyright Donald Harman Akenson, 2007.

Southern California Fires: Genealogical Events

Our fellow genea-blogger, Randy Seaver, was as close to the recent California fires as anyone we know and he reported and "mused' about them last week. It was a reminder that "all history is personal." [An Air Force general I know told me that once--he doesn't claim to have originated it].

Randy and his family are safe, but as we know, many families lost everything. Talk about making family history! Natural disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes and wildfires (some of the latter, of course, not being completely "natural") are always genealogical events. They change the course of family history for those who experience them--victims and responders alike.

Some will lose their homes and have to move somewhere else; others, unfortunately, will lose their lives. The effects may be felt for generations yet to come: lives that will change; lives that will move; lives that will never be the same; some lives that simply never will be. May they all find the peace they need in this moment.