Skeletons of the family history kind
Family Searcher
Irish author and Nobel Prize winner George Bernard Shaw once said: “If you can’t get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you’d best teach it to dance”. I thought it a perfect expression for handling all those items we wish we hadn’t uncovered in our family history research.
I started my own family research believing without a doubt that we were descended from a famous man. I quickly learned two things about him. First, I learned that we were distant cousins, not descendants. Second, I learned that he was as much infamous as famous (and perhaps a little crazy) and I was glad we were not his descendants.
You just never know what you might find once you start digging at the roots of your family tree. However, if you uncover some skeletons in your own tree it may not be as bad as you think.
I have now uncovered so many skeletons that there is a regular masquerade ball every month. Most of those dancing skeletons get smaller every year. As the saying goes, time heals all wounds.
It is important to remember that, no matter what you learn about an ancestor, it is not the whole of their story. Everyone has something positive about him or her. For example, a marriage date would indicate that there was something loveable about them even if, today, we don’t know what it was.
Time has a way of lessening the sting of things. Children born before the wedding were once scorned and unable to inherit, yet today this is commonplace. I am quite certain that if I had been alive in 1692 when Fred’s ancestress was tried and hung as a witch, I would have either moved away or tried to make my family and myself invisible. Today, although I am sorry that the woman and her family had to endure the tragedy, it is distant enough for me to appreciate the history of it, and the family’s place in one of the formative events of our country. Poor Margaret Stephenson is cemented into our family tree as proudly as any of our other ancestors are.
Mr. Shaw isn’t here to ask, but that’s what I mean about teaching my skeletons to dance. Do not let shame impact your family history more than necessary. Yes, sometimes we would be wiser not to print every piece of information we have learned, but the past is past and there is nothing we can do to change it.
Sometimes just stating the facts without explanation is best. Other times we can help our skeletons to dance by explaining what we can in light of today’s knowledge. Now it is generally accepted that Margaret was persecuted as a witch because of the rigorous religious standards of the day, which fueled a belief in witches and the rampant hysteria in Salem. Apparently, her personal style as she aged and widowhood left her wretchedly poor increased the likelihood of persecution.
We must remember that this victim of her times had also been a wife and apparently loving mother who left many respected descendants. I am grateful for that!
Dance on skeletons; dance on!
Columnist Nina Brawn of Dover-Foxcroft is a longtime genealogy researcher, speaker and teacher. Reader emails are welcome at ninabrawn@gmail.com. Her semimonthly column is sponsored by the Aroostook County Genealogical Society which meets the fourth Monday of the month except in July and December at Cary Medical Center’s Chan Education Center at 6:30 p.m. Guests are always welcome. FMI contact Edwin “J” Bullard at 492-5501.
