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Summary
Summary
The quest for roots has been an enduring American preoccupation. Over the centuries, generations have sketched coats of arms, embroidered family trees, established local genealogical societies, and carefully filled in the blanks in their bibles, all in pursuit of self-knowledge and status through kinship ties. This long and varied history of Americans' search for identity illuminates the story of America itself, according to François Weil, as fixations with social standing, racial purity, and national belonging gave way in the twentieth century to an embrace of diverse ethnicity and heritage.
Seeking out one's ancestors was a genteel pursuit in the colonial era, when an aristocratic pedigree secured a place in the British Atlantic empire. Genealogy developed into a middle-class diversion in the young republic. But over the next century, knowledge of one's family background came to represent a quasi-scientific defense of elite "Anglo-Saxons" in a nation transformed by immigration and the emancipation of slaves. By the mid-twentieth century, when a new enthusiasm for cultural diversity took hold, the practice of tracing one's family tree had become thoroughly democratized and commercialized.
Today, Ancestry.com attracts over two million members with census records and ship manifests, while popular television shows depict celebrities exploring archives and submitting to DNA testing to learn the stories of their forebears. Further advances in genetics promise new insights as Americans continue their restless pursuit of past and place in an ever-changing world.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Tracing one's lineage has never been easier-Web sites like Ancestry.com have reduced a once-laborious and time-consuming process to a series of clicks. But that doesn't mean it's simple. As the chancellor of the Universities of Paris points out in this fascinating but plodding survey of genealogy in America, the practice of assembling a family tree is grounded not only in the uniquely American fixation with one's origins, but also in the effort to distinguish families and align them with previous generations. The author enumerates four growth stages in the endeavor: in colonial America, genealogy was the province of aristocrats seeking to elevate themselves by tracing roots to the British imperial establishment, but by the late 18th century, the search came to reflect efforts to establish the family as a "moral, social, and political unit in the new republic." After the Civil War, a recovering country sought "to define identity in racial and nationalist terms." Now, Weil (Empires of the Imagination, coauthor) explains how the proliferation of genealogy-focused Web sites and DNA testing has transformed the pursuit into a lucrative commercial venture. Like the families it's meant to chronicle, genealogy itself has changed quite a bit over time, but it remains, as ever, a dynamic and captivating quest. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A genealogy of American genealogy. L'Acadmie de Paris chancellor of universities displays both thoroughness and grounding as he stakes out the contours of his American genealogical culture into four distinct periods, with successive dominant meanings and touchstones. The pre-revolutionary experience was caught up with social status, with a "desire to become part of a transatlantic imperial establishment," a moral and religious exemplarity that manifested itself in ancestral portraits, gravestones and family silver. But this old-regime mindset was radically eclipsed after the revolution; it was too much at odds with "postrevolutionary America's future-oriented egalitarianism." Antebellum America democratized the practice of genealogy, taking its cues from the growing significance of the family, the nascent shaping of a national tradition, and the urge for self-knowledge and stability, as seen particularly in the African-American community. Weil then shifts to the years following the Civil War, when blacks sought to reunite their families and whites sought to heal the country's wounds via nationalism and ancestry, but "at the expense of racial equality." During the middle of the 20th century, the interest in genealogy was fueled by the Atomic Age and its attendant anxiety and fears for our collective memory, underscored later by the publication of Roots, and "black America's demands about identity, the past, Africa, and slavery." America's obsession with racial categories was tailor-made for interest in heredity, which has led to eugenics. The last few decades have also witnessed a flowering of genealogical societies and an explosion of profitable genealogical businesses, with both legitimate practitioners and hucksters cashing in. Weil convincingly delineates the fact that origins matter; they fill many needs, from the noble to the nasty.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Choice Review
Well-known French scholar of US social history and now chancellor of the Universities of Paris, Weil herein explains the rise, growth, and successive transformations of genealogy in the US over three centuries. While the quest to discover, prove, and honor ancestry has always reflected mixed motivations and meanings related to personal and communal identity, Weil identifies four distinctive phases, each characterized by a predominant set of concerns. The colonial aristocracy sought validation of social status in the British imperial order, whereas "egalitarian, moral, and familial concerns" preoccupied the young American republic. Racial and nationalist claims dominated the post-Civil War era until superseded in the 20th century by popularized, democratized, and commercialized variations. This broad-brush approach and its inherent selectivity have limitations, but the narrative is easy to read, insightful, and well documented. In fact, Weil's engaging study of the place and changing functions of genealogy in US history is unique. It will be of considerable interest not only to genealogists and social and cultural historians, but to the wider reading public. Summing Up: Highly recommended. College, university, and public libraries, and collections specializing in family history and American studies. J. P. Smaldone Georgetown University
Library Journal Review
Weil (chancellor, Universities of Paris; A History of New York) considers why America's present- and future-oriented society with blended cultural values so treasures knowledge of group identities. Asserting that few academic historians until recently have addressed genealogy, he emphasizes historical trends in this often amateur- or volunteer-led exploration: the Colonial quest to establish status; the postrevolutionary hope to connect with morally grounded forebears; post-Civil War searches for so-called racial purity; and a post-World War II, and especially Roots-energized, embrace of diversity. Weil recognizes that many of the earlier reasons for kinship investigations persist. While he states that he is studying the research of mainstream European descendants in America, he also demonstrates how African Americans, Native Americans, and Mormons have contributed to techniques of general genealogical inquiry. Knowledge about one's local and family history, often attained with the assistance of professional librarians and archivists, has become more esteemed and more rigorously pursued. The social, economic, moral, and religious reasons people undertake genealogy indicate much about those practitioners. VERDICT Recommended. Clear, fully annotated, subtly analyzed, timely, and nuanced, this book offers both general and academic readers a new view of genealogical research in America in a "why they did it" rather than a "how to do it" presentation.-Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Lib. of Congress, Washington DC (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Prologue | p. 1 |
| 1 Lineage and Family in Colonial America | p. 8 |
| 2 The Rise of American Genealogy | p. 42 |
| 3 Antebellum Blood and Vanity | p. 78 |
| 4 "Upon the Love of Country and Pride of Race" | p. 112 |
| 5 Pedigrees and the Market | p. 143 |
| 6 Everybody's Search for Roots | p. 180 |
| Abbreviations | p. 219 |
| Notes | p. 223 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 285 |
| Index | p. 291 |
