Shaking the Family Tree by Jackson, Buzzy;

Short description:

Documents how routine prenatal screening prompted the author's entry into the world of genealogy, a hobby that compelled her to investigate family myths, embark on a genealogy cruise and pursue DNA testing, in an account complemented by her ancestral discoveries. By the author of the award-winning A Bad Woman Feeling Good. Original.

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Long description:

“WHO ARE YOU AND WHERE DO YOU COME FROM? ”

As a historian, Buzzy Jackson thought she knew the answers to these simple questions—that is, until she took a look at her scrawny family tree. With a name like Jackson (the twentieth most common American surname), she knew she must have more relatives and more family history out there, somewhere. Her first visit to the Boulder Genealogy Society brought her more questions than answers . . . but it also gave her a tantalizing peek into the fascinating (and enormous) community of family-tree huggers and after-hours Alex Haleys.

In Shaking the Family Tree, Jackson dives headfirst into her family gene pool: flying cross-country to locate an ancient family graveyard, embarking on a weeklong genealogy Caribbean cruise, and even submitting her DNA for testing to try to find her Jacksons. And in the process of researching her own family lore (Who was Bullwhip Jackson?) she meets legions of other genealogy buffs who are as interesting as they are driven—from the boy who saved his allowance so he could order his great-grandfather’s death certificate to the woman who spends her free time documenting the cemeteries of Colorado ghost towns.

Through Jackson’s research she connects with distant relatives, traces her roots back more than 250 years and in the process comes to discover—genetically, historically, and emotionally—the true meaning of “family” for herself.

37: In New Mexico, people use the name “Juan Baca” instead of Kevin Bacon. No one really knows why.) Common sense and the math of genealogy say no. Once one reaches back past, say, one’s grandparents’ generation, there are just too many ancestors for anyone to feel a seriously intimate connection. Consider the generation before your grandfather—there are sixteen people involved there. And the rules of exponents reveal that this number just keeps getting bigger and bigger—yes, exponentially—with each generation, eventually resulting in thousands, then millions of ancestors. When you go way back, say, five thousand to fifteen thousand years ago, you hit what genetic researchers call the “identical ancestors point,” which basically means this: if you look back far enough, we’re all cousins. If nothing else, this provides some long-sought scientific backup for the conceptual framework of The Patty Duke Show.

If this is narcissism, then it’s a form of self-love that extends to the whole human race. Genealogy math is full of strange facts. A recent New York Times article provoked hundreds of angry reader responses when the author asserted that less than 50 percent of any one person’s ancestors are men. Reader, he proved it. (His calculations looked pretty convincing to me; but I should confess that I was an English major.) Then there’s evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins’s explanation of how our “250-greats grandparent” is not only a grandparent shared by you and me, but also the grandparent of all living chimpanzees. Even for hard-core Darwinians, this can be a little hard to digest.3 Personally, I was thrilled. Nerd alert.

Being nerds, genealogists love freaky details. Want to excite a genealogist? Just mention the 1890 Census … then hang on. The 1890 Census is the Rosebud of American genealogy. As the first machine-tabulated census, it reported the United States’ total population (exactly 62,622,250) in six short weeks, unlike the 1880 Census, which wasn’t completed until two years before the next census took place. Administered at a crucial time in America’s immigration history, the 1890 Census provided a quantifiable measure of a new, multiethnic population. The data gathered included information on country of origin, race, ability to read and write English, and much more (including whether anyone in the house was officially “idiotic.” Now that’s information you can use).

Stored in the basement of the U.S. Department of Commerce Building in Washington, D.C., this trove of (future) genealogical information caught fire one night in 1921 and a quarter of the 1890 Census data was incinerated, with another 50 percent damaged by smoke and water. The accident became a key factor in the formation of the National Archives, a presumably safer home for America’s in-box. But even that couldn’t save the apparently doomed 1890 Census. Sometime in 1934 or 1935, all those punch cards disappeared—forever—when the librarian of Congress (who shall remain unnamed here) tacitly authorized their destruction along with a lot of other “scrap” paper.

Many, probably most nations have their own sad story of archival loss. Ireland lost nearly its entire collection of public archives, including all its census information, when the public records building in the Four Courts blew up during the Battle of Dublin in 1922. Only the few materials that had been left in the reading room were saved. Stories like these make genealogists (and historians, I must add) physically ill. So much information, lost forever; it’s the Library of Alexandria all over again.

Genealogists are a dogged and frankly obsessive bunch. Human beings are record keepers. The first human records were stories, oral histories of tribal origins told to one another around the African cooking fire. Then came art and writing. Many of the oldest cave paintings depict what may be family groupings, perhaps the earliest expressions of the family tree. And virtually every ancient religion begins and ends with a story of lineage: So-and-So begat So-and-So, and so on. Historians argue that one of the hallmarks of the modern age was the emergence of bureaucracy.

Wherever you find bureaucracy, you will also find genealogists, because genealogists live for records. They may (and constantly do) scorn the carelessness and poor handwriting of the scribes and clerks who noted names and addresses in decades and centuries past, but they also deeply appreciate the fact that such documents exist. Genealogists will go to nearly any length to find a key record. And genealogists are all around us.

I had no idea.

They walk among us unnoticed; they look just like everyone else. But secretly, internally, they are plotting and planning their next research step: a trip to that remote county courthouse in Iowa; a friendly visit with the widow of the man who used to take roll at the Odd Fellows Lodge; a mental list of microfilm to be requested from the Family History Library. They’re always up to something. One unproven statistic you hear a lot in the genealogy world is the “fact” that genealogy is the second most popular use for the Internet. Guess what the first one is.

Genealogists are everywhere. With their history of immigration, I assumed that Americans’ interest in genealogy was probably unique, but no. It seems that anywhere people have parents you’ll find an interest in genealogy. Take the United Kingdom, for example, where six million viewers tune in every week to watch the celebrity genealogy show, Who Do You Think You Are?

In the United States, the record-shattering TV premiere of Alex Haley’s Roots in 1977 is credited by most genealogists for the huge upsurge in genealogical interest among all Americans, especially among those with African heritage. The African-American theme has been a strong one in American genealogy ever since, with the DNA-aided discovery in the late 1990s of the African-American descendants of Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings. Roots got an update in the 2006 PBS series African-American Lives, in which historian Henry Louis Gates guided Oprah Winfrey, Chris Rock, and several other prominent African-Americans back to their African ancestors with the help of genealogists and geneticists.

Now I was hooked. African-Americans like Henry Louis Gates found white ancestry where they didn’t expect it. With a name like Jackson, it seemed possible that I might have African-American relatives I’d never met; the offspring of a relationship between one of my southern, slave-owning (or so I assumed) Jackson ancestors and, perhaps, a slave, just as the white descendants of Thomas Jefferson discovered African-American cousins they’d never known existed. I wasn’t harboring conspiracy theories; everything I’d learned about American history supported this possibility. It was certainly worth looking into.

Pat’s plan

It was all this that brought me to the library that morning. As I looked around at my fellow Beginning Genealogists I did feel a certain kinship, despite the reservations I shared with my fellow skeptics. The biggest turnoff for me was the notion of racial or lineal purity: a tacky sort of bloodline-based quest for status that kept registries like Burke’s Peerage, the ultimate Who’s Who of the royal set, in business. As I’d explored it, though, I recognized a different, simpler impulse: the desire to understand oneself, through a better understanding of one’s own family.

“Decide where you’re going,” Pat instructed us, “and then you can figure out how you’ll get there.”

I was looking for Jacksons. Check.

“You may find a family line that speaks to you,” Pat said, “and other ancestors who don’t want to be found. That’s all right; all genealogists hit a brick wall at some point.” We all nodded, confident it would never happen to a single one of us. “For instance, you might end up looking for Johnsons.” She rolled her eyes. “Johnsons are almost as bad as Smiths!” Nineteen people in the room laughed. I did not laugh. If Johnsons were almost as bad as Smiths, Jacksons must be worse. Even a beginner genealogist knows that Smiths are the laughingstocks of Anglo-European genealogy, the dynastic equivalent of a common housefly. Smiths are everywhere and there are too many of them. Apparently Jacksons were nearly as bad—the moths of genealogy, perhaps. Maybe we could be the cute ubiquitous surname family, like ladybugs. It was a stretch, I knew.

“Don’t get discouraged,” Pat said, oblivious to the black cloud of demoralization hovering over my head. “There are ways of getting through those brick walls … though it might take years to do it.” She then began to list the research strategies available to us, we lucky genealogists of the Internet age. She handed out a sheet listing over one hundred Web sites related to genealogy, from state-sponsored archives to Ellis Island passenger lists. TGFI, baby.

While the Internet is a genealogist’s best friend, it cannot do the research for you. As Pat explained, although the Internet had revolutionized access to genealogical information, the basic steps of genealogical research had not changed very much since the era of the rotary phone. She outlined them for us over the next couple of hours, but I provide them here, in their distilled form:

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  Start with yourself. Write down everything you already know and can verify about your family history. Interview yourself and your siblings (who may know different family stories—or different versions of them—than you do) then work back.
  
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  Interview as many living relatives as possible. Whether by phone or in person, talk to your relatives, especially the oldest ones, about the family history. Ask to see family mementos such as family Bibles, old photographs, and journals, even quilts that might contain data on your ancestors.
  
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  Collect as many relevant records as possible. Vital records are key; these are records of birth, death, and marriage. Other useful records include those concerning military service, employment, census information, city directory information, etc. Depending on the record, you’ll find these online, in local courthouses or libraries, and in archives such as the Family History Library and the National Archives.
  
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  Ask for help. You don’t have to hire a professional genealogist, though it’s an option. You can also get great advice from librarians and members of the historical organizations where your family lived. But if you ask any genealogist, they will tell you the single best resource you have is other genealogists. By simply joining a local genealogical society (believe me, there’s one near you), you’ll end up meeting a lot of other people with similar interests and helpful strategies. One of the hallmarks of genealogy is the sense of mutual support. Genealogists live to share information, and that’s true whether you’re dealing with someone in your own genealogical society or simply the name and e-mail address of a genealogist across the world that you met in a virtual genealogy chat room.
  
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  Go deeper. Once you really get rolling, you can consider other research methods, including DNA testing and visiting the actual locations where your ancestors lived. Many hard-core genealogists plan all their vacations around family history research. Depending on how far back you get, this might mean a trip overseas.
  
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  And, the most important step of all: stay organized. Be methodical in your research; write everything down to avoid doing the same searches twice. Keep notes about what you’ve looked at and what’s left to do. Find an organizational system that works for you and stick to it. These days, most genealogists use computer programs to help them keep track of their family tree and their research trail. Invest in one.
  

We’ve all read the enigmatic phrase on the shampoo bottle: Lather, rinse, repeat. It’s the same with genealogy. The basic steps—interviews, archival research, expert consultation, travel—will repeat themselves, over and over, for as long as you stay involved. That’s both the beauty and the curse of genealogy: it never ends. On the plus side, your research skills improve every time you go at it, making future work a little more smooth. And for addicted genealogists, there really is no downside.

The daylong course at the library continued, and my disappointment at having a common surname dissipated. We looked at Web sites. We discussed common mistakes. We learned.

In the year that followed, I learned much, much more. That day at the library was the beginning of a journey that would lead me to an abandoned Alabama cemetery and a beach in the Caribbean. I would be politely spurned by one relative and rib-crushingly embraced by another. It was a path that would lead me through four time zones and at least three regional dialects and ultimately reward me with the genealogical equivalent of a million-dollar lottery ticket. It would also force me to think more deeply about the cycles of birth, life, and death than I ever had before. My research would make me mourn the loss of my grandparents and appreciate the health of the family still with me.

What I learned on this journey changed my perspective on some of the biggest life issues any of us contemplate: my relationship to my family and my sense of my own life path. It also changed my life in smaller, concrete ways. I learned things about American history I’d never heard about in graduate school; I tried new foods; I forced myself to study the basic tenets of genetics in order to understand my DNA results; I changed the medications I take on a daily basis as a result of learning new information about my family’s medical history, and much, much more (let us not dwell on the number of extra pounds I gained while “researching” the gastronomic heritage of my southern forebears).

Just as I began this journey I happened to hear an interview with the actress Tilda Swinton, who belongs to one of only three families able to trace its lineage back to the ninth century (they are known as Clan Swinton, in Burke’s Peerage terminology). When asked about what it must be like to belong to such an old family, the beautifully spoken Tilda Swinton sighed, betraying just the tiniest speck of irritation. “Everyone’s from an old family,” she said. “Mine just wrote everything down.”4

There you have it. Every single one of us alive today is by definition a member of an “old family.” We don’t hear about “young families” because … they died out. In genealogy, you’re either old or you’re dead. Whether last year or eight hundred years ago, when you’re gone, you’re gone. It’s the chronicling of a family that links it to history. I wanted to know mine.

So, nerd that I am, I started at the beginning, just as Pat Roberts advised: start with yourself, then work backward. Lather, rinse, repeat.

© 2010 BUZZY JACKSON

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