Every family has its stories.
We share them at the dinner table and relive them at family gatherings, but, according to our faculty, there is something much more to be gained from quality time that spans generations.
“We’re all connected to our past,” said history Prof. Michael Birkner ’72, P’10. “Who we are depends as much on who our parents were and who their parents were before them.”
Ian Isherwood ’00
Connections to family history gives people a sense of who they are and where they have come from. But even beyond this, learning about one’s family history through dinner conversations or diligent genealogical research can be an entry point to engaging with larger historical narratives—a launch to understanding the historical periods from which those family stories derive.
The reason why is simple, according to Prof. Ian Isherwood ’00. We are wired for stories.
“We all like stories about people,” he said. “Family history, in particular, is such a gateway to the story of all history because when you engage in family history, you engage in the same types of questions that historians ask, but just in a more intimate way.”
Asking questions
Perhaps the most direct manner of asking questions is through the collection of oral histories—interviews with people who have personal, first-hand knowledge of past events. It’s a method that Birkner and any of his students know well.
Michael Birkner ’72 P’10
He uses oral history both to teach students about the tools available to historians and to document personal stories from the World War II era before they are lost. What he and his students have built is one of the largest collections of WWII oral histories in the country.
“Everyone has a story to tell, and we want to get those stories before they are lost forever,” Birkner said.
The trick, more often than not, is asking the right kinds of questions.
Birkner, the Franklin Professor of the Liberal Arts, doesn’t like telling students in the historical methods course specific questions to ask.
“They’ll usually figure that out while doing background research and from listening to the conversation,” Birkner said. “The only thing I tell my students is that they must start from the beginning. They must ask their subject something about their parents, their childhood, their siblings if they had any—those kinds of questions. As William Wordsworth said, ‘The child is the father of the man.’ You need to start there.”
Digging through documents
Of course, oral histories are only useful for recording stories that have not yet been lost. Likewise, not everyone has old family letters or mementos to kick start their genealogical research. That being said, there are still some tools that can aide the process—relatives, family stories, and, of course, the Internet, with various ancestry tools and the databases it can access.
And while not everything is online, cautions College Archivist Amy Lucadamo ’00, there are still other outlets for a family historian if one wants to get started.
“For people just starting out, patience is key,” Lucadamo stated. “While there are a lot of resources online, not everything is on the Internet. Sometimes, you need to go to historical societies, check out local churches, or pick up the phone and make a few calls.”
For the particularly adventurous family historians, learning about the time period that shaped their ancestors and the places that played a pivotal role in their stories is another avenue of research, too.
Isherwood’s project with the letters of World War I Major Hugh J.C. Piers offers a good example. The letters were loaned to the College by Marco Dracopoli ’14 and his parents, Nic Dracopoli P’14 and Diane Zorich P’14, who asked that they be put to good use. Piers was a Dracopoli family forebear.
In conjunction with the WWI centennial, Isherwood, Lucadamo, and a team of students have been sharing the letters on a website and on social media platforms—100 years to the day that they were written. The historians add commentary and historical context to enrich the interpretation of the letters.
“You need to look at not only what they are saying, but who they are saying it to, when they are saying it, and even what words they are choosing to say it,” Isherwood stated. “Nobody has to write a letter, but they do it because they want to convey something.”
Piers would write interesting bits of gossip and everyday life to his sisters, discuss family business and finances with his father, and reassurances to his mother to downplay the violence and difficulties of trench life to her.
“Don’t worry about Snipers,” he wrote. “No one is more anxious to avoid them than me, & they can’t do much where we are going.”
Putting it all together
While letters may not make up the bulk of historical documents that are available to family historians, they can often provide the most lively accounts. There are other records which can provide glimpses of people and past events—including census records, wedding announcements in local newspapers, paystubs, passenger manifests, and maybe even a signature in an immigration record.
Understanding those records is the job of the historian—amateur and professional alike.
“You won’t ever get a full picture of what happened in the past, but you’ll get little snippets and glimpses of it,” Isherwood said. “History, at its core, is the act of trying to make meaning out of those snippets”
This story is an abridged version of an article that appeared in the fall edition of the Gettysburg Magazine.
Read more about what our alums—like author of The Green Box Jim Kurtz ’71—have uncovered from their own family histories or how our faculty experts advise working on family genealogies by keeping an eye out for the magazine or by viewing the online edition.
