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In defence of family history In defence of family history
(6 months later)
Solipsistic, myopic, "comfort-zone" history – genealogy has taken a lot of flak. Academic historians usually give it short shrift, treating it as history's poor relation, a doddery old aunt or uncle who witters on about the past. Its practitioners are dubbed sentimental amateurs unable to see further than their family trees. But family history is big business, packaging and commercialising the past. About 40% of Britons have become armchair time-travellers, researching from their computers at home. It is reckoned to be the third most popular activity on the internet after shopping and porn – and can be equally addictive. But can family history ever tell us anything new about the past or change the ways we write about it?Solipsistic, myopic, "comfort-zone" history – genealogy has taken a lot of flak. Academic historians usually give it short shrift, treating it as history's poor relation, a doddery old aunt or uncle who witters on about the past. Its practitioners are dubbed sentimental amateurs unable to see further than their family trees. But family history is big business, packaging and commercialising the past. About 40% of Britons have become armchair time-travellers, researching from their computers at home. It is reckoned to be the third most popular activity on the internet after shopping and porn – and can be equally addictive. But can family history ever tell us anything new about the past or change the ways we write about it?
I didn't begin my book, Common People, with these questions in mind. Like most family historians I simply wanted to know who my ancestors were. I had almost nothing to go on: no names beyond those of my grandparents, no letters or diaries; few photographs, no portraits, heirlooms or "biographical objects", as historians now call them; and no ancestral place, not even a gravestone. I assumed my forebears had been poor, but poverty homogenises – the labouring poor, the working class, the lumpenproletariat – as if it were an identity and not a condition. Family history humanises. At the very least, the person who has been a mere statistic takes on flesh, gets a name and a set of relations. I hoped that writing a family history would bridge the gap between the official records and the felt loss of the person who had really lived, a man or woman who had once been known and cared for.I didn't begin my book, Common People, with these questions in mind. Like most family historians I simply wanted to know who my ancestors were. I had almost nothing to go on: no names beyond those of my grandparents, no letters or diaries; few photographs, no portraits, heirlooms or "biographical objects", as historians now call them; and no ancestral place, not even a gravestone. I assumed my forebears had been poor, but poverty homogenises – the labouring poor, the working class, the lumpenproletariat – as if it were an identity and not a condition. Family history humanises. At the very least, the person who has been a mere statistic takes on flesh, gets a name and a set of relations. I hoped that writing a family history would bridge the gap between the official records and the felt loss of the person who had really lived, a man or woman who had once been known and cared for.
Crazily, perhaps, I tracked back over every branch of my parents' families that I could find. I soon saw that they had one thing in common. They were people on the move, migrants in search of work or betterment, or because they had no choice. Servants, sailors, watermen, farm carters, artisans in the building trade, labourers and road menders, forest workers. Their lives rarely matched the neat categories of the census returns, which tell us so much about the values of its Victorian tabulators and their wishful picture of the nation. Giving a "fixed abode" and a single "occupation" made little sense to people whose employment was often seasonal, temporary or made up of several jobs. My mother's ancestors, the Heffrens and Murphys, were men who "followed the sea" and who sometimes disappeared from the census altogether. Until the 1860s, seafaring was irregular work; mariners were taken on only for the duration of a voyage and served as readily on merchant ships as in the Royal Navy. Between times they worked in the dockyard or as casual labourers. Naval history's concentration on "the wooden world" at sea rarely ventures into Britain's sailor towns, but family history can span both ship and shore.Crazily, perhaps, I tracked back over every branch of my parents' families that I could find. I soon saw that they had one thing in common. They were people on the move, migrants in search of work or betterment, or because they had no choice. Servants, sailors, watermen, farm carters, artisans in the building trade, labourers and road menders, forest workers. Their lives rarely matched the neat categories of the census returns, which tell us so much about the values of its Victorian tabulators and their wishful picture of the nation. Giving a "fixed abode" and a single "occupation" made little sense to people whose employment was often seasonal, temporary or made up of several jobs. My mother's ancestors, the Heffrens and Murphys, were men who "followed the sea" and who sometimes disappeared from the census altogether. Until the 1860s, seafaring was irregular work; mariners were taken on only for the duration of a voyage and served as readily on merchant ships as in the Royal Navy. Between times they worked in the dockyard or as casual labourers. Naval history's concentration on "the wooden world" at sea rarely ventures into Britain's sailor towns, but family history can span both ship and shore.
The armchair was soon left behind. As I made my way to the regional history centres where the older records are kept, I was mimicking the journeys my ancestors had made.The armchair was soon left behind. As I made my way to the regional history centres where the older records are kept, I was mimicking the journeys my ancestors had made.
My great-grandmother, Sarah Hill, a housemaid, travelled 300 miles from Wales to Surrey. But her grandmother, Maria Hosier, was born in Newfoundland. The Hosiers were "citizens of the North Atlantic", at home on both coasts, crossing from St John's to Poole in Dorset during the "cod rush" of the 18th century, part of a lucrative trade with the Mediterranean, the American colonies and the West Indies. When the British cod trade collapsed, Maria followed the money, landing up in Regency Cheltenham, one of the new spa towns. She worked in the fashion trades servicing the rich. As the fad for "taking the waters" moved abroad, and the cash dried up, her family went downhill. Her son, aged 16, was transported to "Van Diemen's Land"(Tasmania) for "stealing a bag of beef and bread from a young woman's arm", according to the justices; her unmarried daughter joined the "lewd women" in Cheltenham workhouse where she gave birth to Sarah. Mapping their lives took me from local history to the global economy. My great-grandmother, Sarah Hill, a housemaid, travelled 300 miles from Wales to Surrey. But her grandmother, Maria Hosier, was born in Newfoundland. The Hosiers were "citizens of the North Atlantic", at home on both coasts, crossing from St John's to Poole in Dorset during the "cod rush" of the 18th century, part of a lucrative trade with the Mediterranean, the American colonies and the West Indies. When the British cod trade collapsed, Maria followed the money, landing up in Regency Cheltenham, one of the new spa towns. She worked in the fashion trades servicing the rich. As the fad for "taking the waters" moved abroad, and the cash dried up, her family went downhill. Her son, aged 16, was transported to "Van Diemen's Land"(Tasmania) for "stealing a bag of beef and bread from a young woman's arm", according to the justices; her unmarried daughter joined the "lewd women" in Cheltenham workhouse where she gave birth to Sarah. Mapping their lives took me from local history to the global economy.
Instead of inching forward from a point in the past, slowly accumulating a chronology like moss, family historians are speed freaks, accelerating wildly across the generations, cutting a swath through time. In the course of an hour's research they watch individuals die, marry and be born in dizzying sequence, eras go and come, wars flare up and fizzle out, markets boom and bust, towns turn back into fields. Places are more staging posts than containers; no settlement is stable. I needed a split screen in my mind as multiple narratives emerged, moving at a different pace through time. "Periodisation", that shorthand of all historians, became blurred. A family embraced both tradition and modernity. On my father's side, the Whitlocks were Worcestershire farm labourers, smock-wearing men with broken teeth and old clay pipes, but among the brothers were those who had "gone over the fence" to become railway men in smart new uniforms, peaked caps and shining boots. The respectable and the penurious were often the same people. Paupers were never a species apart, however much they were deemed to be so.Instead of inching forward from a point in the past, slowly accumulating a chronology like moss, family historians are speed freaks, accelerating wildly across the generations, cutting a swath through time. In the course of an hour's research they watch individuals die, marry and be born in dizzying sequence, eras go and come, wars flare up and fizzle out, markets boom and bust, towns turn back into fields. Places are more staging posts than containers; no settlement is stable. I needed a split screen in my mind as multiple narratives emerged, moving at a different pace through time. "Periodisation", that shorthand of all historians, became blurred. A family embraced both tradition and modernity. On my father's side, the Whitlocks were Worcestershire farm labourers, smock-wearing men with broken teeth and old clay pipes, but among the brothers were those who had "gone over the fence" to become railway men in smart new uniforms, peaked caps and shining boots. The respectable and the penurious were often the same people. Paupers were never a species apart, however much they were deemed to be so.
My idea of "Englishness" was unsettled too. My ancestors came from at least 12 different counties, from Ireland and Wales; they emigrated to Canada, the US and Australia (or were transported there). They ignored settlement laws to take risks in the growing cities; they waved goodbye to their home country when faced with starvation or no work. I found no roots. There had been Lights – masons and bricklayers – in the tiny village of Shrewton in Wiltshire since the 1660s, but they rejected the Church of England to form a staunch Baptist community. They would have heard in the sound of the local church bells the hectoring voice of the "state church", as they called it, not the echo of a shared Englishness. When the Lights migrated elsewhere, their religion was more important than their parish, their neighbours and their family ties.My idea of "Englishness" was unsettled too. My ancestors came from at least 12 different counties, from Ireland and Wales; they emigrated to Canada, the US and Australia (or were transported there). They ignored settlement laws to take risks in the growing cities; they waved goodbye to their home country when faced with starvation or no work. I found no roots. There had been Lights – masons and bricklayers – in the tiny village of Shrewton in Wiltshire since the 1660s, but they rejected the Church of England to form a staunch Baptist community. They would have heard in the sound of the local church bells the hectoring voice of the "state church", as they called it, not the echo of a shared Englishness. When the Lights migrated elsewhere, their religion was more important than their parish, their neighbours and their family ties.
And, yes, it has been personal. Unearthing the past beyond my four grandparents, I used my memories of them or the stories I had heard as a platform from which to venture back. I took seriously the family legends I had heard since childhood. These fabrications offer truths, as does the documentary evidence. People often tell tall stories to make themselves feel big in a society that belittles them. Secrets and lies about the past are an emotional and psychological inheritance, passed on across the generations, and can be as just as influential as money or land, or the lack of it. Whether what I have written is "proper" history, I don't know. Family history is a natural trespasser, barging through the hedges that mark the fields of academic study. It travels through so many dimensions. But it always took me back to that other history, the history of inside ourselves.And, yes, it has been personal. Unearthing the past beyond my four grandparents, I used my memories of them or the stories I had heard as a platform from which to venture back. I took seriously the family legends I had heard since childhood. These fabrications offer truths, as does the documentary evidence. People often tell tall stories to make themselves feel big in a society that belittles them. Secrets and lies about the past are an emotional and psychological inheritance, passed on across the generations, and can be as just as influential as money or land, or the lack of it. Whether what I have written is "proper" history, I don't know. Family history is a natural trespasser, barging through the hedges that mark the fields of academic study. It travels through so many dimensions. But it always took me back to that other history, the history of inside ourselves.