I would like to thank you for my laugh of the day. I find it important to my
mental health to laugh each day.
I can remember my first day, my freshman year at the University of the
South, in my first college history class having to answer the question;
"What is history?"
My history professor that day was Dr. Anita Goodstein, and even after her
death, she is remembered as a well loved and respected historian. She taught
me much. Some of you may be aware of the Anita S. Goodstein Junior Scholar's
Prize in American Women's History.
That day she taught me; "History is the opinion of the historian."
That day I said to myself: "What do I care about opinions, I'm a
genealogist, where is the evidence?"
I remain a genealogist. You see culture, politics, economics and ideas
result because of individual people and their interactions with the people
around them. That makes me a micro-historian. I personally care about the
private soldiers, I leave the generals to others (unless his name is Mosby
Monroe Parsons, but that is a different issue). But always remember what a
general is without privates. There are several possibilities.
Last Saturday, I gave a talk to the Joint Maryland-Virginia Genealogical
Society Conference at Frederick County Community College, Frederick
Maryland. The topic was Quaker Migration and addressed the issue of reasons
for Quaker movement south and west between 1750 and 1825. The basis for my
research was Quaker records, Certificates of Removal, and the circumstances
of the family before and after their move or moves. A topic of interest to
historians, as reasons for migration deal with issues of culture, politics,
economics and ideas. They also deal with the issues of community and
kinship. I sadly have to report that I used twenty years of genealogical
research on the movement of a Quaker family of Bucks County, Pennsylvania
into Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Indiana and Iowa as the basis
for the discussion. But I am happy to relate that I did not use a single
pension record and there was no mention of belly buttons.
As I say, thanks for the laugh today. Personally I like being a publisher of
all those sad little books. And a few other not so sad, I might add. <G> My
experience with the historians I know, and they know me as a genealogist,
has always been one of respect for my contribution to the field of our
mutual endeavors. Where historians and genealogists have worked together, in
my opinion, there has always been a better understanding of the different
roles that each plays in the process. But then as I said, Dr. Goodstein
taught me, "History is the opinion of the historian".
Well on to gather more evidence. Evidence is what is required in order to
apply this tricky little concept known as "Genealogical Proof Standard". We
genealogists who focus people, because we deal with the micro-history, have
much stricter standards than opinion.
C.
Craig R. Scott, CGRS
President & CEO
Heritage Books, Inc.
65 East Main Street
Westminster, MD 21157
800 876-6103
410 876-6101
(fax) 410 871-2674
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Visit our websites www.HeritageBooks.com and www.WillowBendBooks.com
> Genealogists are not historians. Genealogy is self-contemplation. "My
> ancestor served at Saratoga," and such. So what? So did some ancestor of
> everyone's somewhere, and also often unmentioned. Any Scots in your
> family? History contemplates cultures, and politics, and economics, and,
> most importantly, ideas--so much, much more than belly buttons, pension
> applications, petitions for reparations, or race. It is discouraging
> that the list seems sometimes to confuse genealogy for history, and
> genealogists for historians--or their sad little books for things worth
> the time of reading.
>
> No question that genealogy is useful, or that it informs history, but
> lists of ancestors and notations of their doings aren't history. They
> are record keeping. Genealogy may be an anteroom of history, but history
> is not family trees, and the authors of family histories should not be
> taken seriously, even on that score--any more than me--when they take up
> a cause, no matter how righteous, to promote points of view. Advocacy is
> often commendable, sometimes calls attention to facts that we may think
> have been neglected by the people who went before us, but, by itself,
> can never be history.
>
> To my mind, history pursues no agenda but truth (whatever "truth"
> means). It is neutral, factual (whatever "factual" means), and
> dispassionate. Neither, to coin a phrase, black nor white. It sets out
> to make no point. To grind no axe. To right no wrong. Its adherents are
> rational, calm, and objective, and do not trash ad hoc for personal
> purposes the reputations or motives of individuals or institutions
> dedicated, in all their imperfections, to promoting the study of all our
> pasts, merely because we wish they would do more of what we think they
> should be doing.
>
> The poster's aims are laudable, for sure, but one wonders whether, in
> the pursuit of righting indisputable wrongs, the means are properly
> describable as promotive of the ends of history. The History News
> Network article seemed an embarrassment of the author, though she should
> be congratulated for calling attention to the subject. As I said, I was
> wrong once before, but not, I'm positive, this time.
>
> Less heat; more light. More reflection; fewer ascriptions of motives.
> More study; fewer indulgences in conspiracies. Get the facts straight
> before writing, as well as the spelling,
>
> And let us indulge again no one possessed of a truth.
>
> Best,
> Dennis Montgomery
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> W. Scott Smith wrote:
>
>>JLB says: "Give it up, Scott. You can't win against this
>>woman who is a master of self-promotion."
>>
>>Bill Bryant says: "Finally, a poster that I can agree with!"
>>
>>Anita Wills says: "Bill, Me To [sic] !!!"
>>
>>
>>
>>
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