What Does History Mean As This Empire Continues To Run Amok?
What Does History Mean As This Empire Continues To Run Amok?
On Growing Up Without A History - And On Finding - and Reclaiming - A History As An Adult
Forward:
My husband and I often marvel that we were able to survive at all - or reach the quite unexpected and unanticipated success we now have - when we consider the personal and cultural history our own parents and grandparents did not know to be able to teach us.
What happens when a people grow up without a history?
This is the question which will begin to be answered and explored here.
As often happens here on SubStack - where free speech is still possible - and where ideas may find fertile ground for both the gaining of new knowledge - and in understanding the application of said knowledge.
This is such an occasion - and happy serendipitous event - what many might - mistakenly - regard as an accident or coincidence:
As I wrote early this morning I thought that this James Wilson was a fifth great uncle - but after correcting an error in the family history - learned he was actually my fifth great grandfather.
Mistakes such as this are exceedingly common in such an art and science as family history.
In fact I am just beginning to discover that it is difficult for me to find - among those who attended the Constitutional Conventions - who do not happen to be either distant or direct ancestors.
Family history is not important to me as some exact and error free endeavor and - truth be told - I don’t put much faith at all in getting on some sort of trip because I have certain ancestors.
Life is far more about doing what we can in the present - but knowing who preceded us on on this earth - especially those who tried to make the world a better place than they entered it are worthy of note.
And so be it - as I discover more about James Landal Wilson (1742-1798) who signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and who became a Supreme Court Justice.
James Wilson was born in Scotland and is one of the many Scottish ancestors I have on both sides of my family tree.
I am no senator’s daughter - or even a child of that proverbial entity known as the middle class.
The sole grandfather I knew - a brilliant and kind man who left a great influence on my life - one my own parents largely failed to accomplish - had a unique background.
Although he descended from many influential families - such as the family of James Madison - the family of Daniel Boone - and many more - his life reflected none of this.
In fact he never imagined - and never knew - who these ancestors were.
The branch of these families which produced my grandfather had fallen on very hard times after the effects of the Revolutionary and Civil Wars in disintegrating the social fabric of America.
He was forced by circumstances into laboring as a child coal miner - and from age thirteen to age twenty four - worked the coal mines - contracting a life long case of Coal workers' pneumoconiosis - or "black lung disease".
His education ended in the 7th grade - and this brilliant man who had wanted to become a doctor - instead raised his family as a barber with a successful small business.
My grandfather managed to escape the coal mines in his twenties and traveled to San Francisco and - as fate would have it - met my grandmother.
The rest as they say is history - but as my entire family grew up largely ignorant of true history - and certainly had no idea who they descended from - I was no different.
I can say that growing up without a firm sense of history causes one to wonder - and to question - far more than is healthy.
It was not until well into adult hood that I ran across some time and space - and the digital records and technology - to put the facts together.
Slowly as I began to comprehend the pageant of our family - and our national - and our international - true history as human beings - this knowledge began to reshape the lives of myself and my family.
We must endeavor to know our true history - as never was a statement so true as that made so eloquently by my many Lakota Sioux ancestors.
“A People without History Is Like Wind on the Buffalo Grass”1
I write this in the spirit of the Great Corp of Discovery - of Lewis and Clark - initiated by distant family - and participated in by a few more direct ancestors.2
May our spirit - as these Americans - and as these human beings -serve to spur us onward to many more expeditions of discovery.
And may our creator lead us to understand that we are the universe’s way of knowing itself - destined to bring peace to the world - and to create a civilization - at true civilization - one in which we can all survive and thrive within.
We are wild spirits caught in this material world for a reason - and we are set forth on a trail of discovery which propels us forward to know - to seek - to understand - and to discover.
And the final corp of discovery will be to arrive back where we began and to know and to understand the place for the very first time.
You are very lucky to know your ancestry at such length. I can not go back two generations. On my maternal side because of the donmeh in Turkey, on my paternal side, the Italian facists coming down through Albania. Both situations my great grandparents could not go back and pick up the pieces. And both are the product of the same 'people'. Sometimes I sit in a public place and hear so many people with accents and think "Most of us have been severed from our roots". Then I wonder how far back any of those people can go on their family tree and if they understand the hurt they may have in the future generations.
Thank you so much for restacking - and thanks again for your essay which inspired this.