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Subject: [DNA-R1B1C7] DNA-R1B1C7] R1b1c7 in Scotland
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2007 13:37:49 +0000
Hi Jeff ,
>> Nonetheless many American histories recount the stories of Lord Baltimore and
>>William Penn, etc, but totally neglect the stories of the thousands of people
>>who came to their colonies. >
>Ahh but that would be the job of the family genealogist/historian.
>General histories are by nature general, so only high profiled individuals even
>get a mention.
Not really. A general history should be the history of generally, ALL, not a cameo of a few priveleged individuals. In addition to recounting events in the lives of kings and their kindred, good history (from the twenty-first century point of view) recounts the major social and economic events that colored the lives of the everyone else -- as well as the kings and other decision makers -- so that the dynamics of the society can be understood.
Even the historians themselves are now aware of this. Have you perhaps read "The Catholics of Ulster" by Marianne Elliott? No matter what religon your ancestors were, you will learn a lot about their lives in this book. It focuses on how events impacted the common man including such things as the flight of the earls. They split ....what did that do to the average guy trying to stay alive in Ulster? What else happened to impact his life and his sense of identity? You -- and all of use -- might be surprised to learn the situation was a bit different than you may think. This particular book, well documented, debunks a lot of myths.
Also Bernard Bailyn's works "Voyagers to the West" (won a Pulitzer) and "The Peopling of British North America". Have you read these? He discusses the lack of interest in social history of historians of the past that has not only left us with few records but also which failed to document key factors in their society that caused people to migrate.
People researching family often wonder 'Why did they leave?" and rarely get a satisfactory answer. In "Voyagers to the West" he analyzes data collected in the early 1770s in response to the British government asking "Who is leaving and why?". It is a unquie set of data, the on ly one we really have. In his 600 page study he does not name names, like a genealogist would. His "Peopling" is a more general work that certainly does devote much space to explaining how come we don't know. My clients often ask about forces that drove their ancestors to migrate.
You don't learn that in a genealogy book. You learn it by reading the right kind of history. Those same books contain extensive bibliographies that identify the sources used by the author to write the book. Many of those sources will name the names of individuals, but they are identified in these historical works because, as you said, they are 'general'.
How about Charlotte Erickson's "Invisible Immigrants" that analyzes English and Scots immigrants into 19th century America? These are all 'common people' but the forces that shaped their lives are the ones that shaped all our ancestors at that time.
How about "Going to America" by Terry Coleman that recounts the story "of Emigrants -- who they were, and why they left, and how, and what happened to them." (Forward). This is not a genealogy work either.
There's Dobson "Scottish Emigration to Colonial America, 1607-1785". Few names, lots of social history. And Sean O'Callaghan "To Hell or Barbados" that recounts the untold and largely forgotten story of 50,000 Irish people transported to Barbados and Virginia against their will from 1652 to 1659.
Perhaps due to the influence of Christopher Hill (have you read his works??) we are finally getting some scholars who have the training to analyze what our forefathers have left us to detail social and economic forces in a way that the rest of us can understand.
>The history I learned in high school was so general I slept through it. There
>was nothing in it remotely personal in it.
Well of course. However if you do intend to do family history then you need to go a bit beyond the high school. Due to the low average quality of the student, you are never going to get much there, though I suspect if they spent some time learning how to teach it better, more would find it more interesting than you or I.
As the college professors --professional historians who win Pulitzer prizes for books so many of us haven't even heard of --- themselves have discussed these issues, please do not think it's something I made up. I'm simply repeating what they have said. Of course these are people who have gone far beyond high school and even undergraduate history.
What will be read in the future are, as in the past, historical works by professionals.
Linda Merle
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