Amy Harris | Genealogical Consciousness and What It Means

Stories in Our Roots
Amy Harris | Genealogical Consciousness and What It Means

Episode 8 • 32:08

SPEAKERS

Heather Murphy, Amy Harris

Stories in Our Roots  00:03

Welcome to the Stories in Our Roots podcast. I'm your host, Heather Murphy. In this podcast, we dive deep into how knowing the stories of our ancestors can make a difference in our lives today. Discovering our family history is more than a hobby. It is a way to connect deeply with ourselves, those we love and the world around us.

Heather Murphy  00:25

Hello, I'm really excited to be here today with Amy Harris. To start us off, Amy, could you introduce yourself?

Amy Harris  00:33

Sure. I'm a native of northern Utah, the youngest of nine kids, I was the bonus child at the end when my parents were in their late 40s. I tell people that I had two parents plus all of my older siblings who practiced parenting on me for their own entertainment, I think. So they say I'm spoiled, I say whose fault is that? Can't be the spoiled. It has to be the spoiler that's at fault. Anyway, so I went to college at Brigham Young University, I did the family history bachelor's degree there. And I always thought I was I mean, in the late 90s, your options were to be client research, or maybe work for a library or an archive and I kind of thought I'd work at the Family History Library if I could get a job. And then I had an opportunity to teach a class and fell in love with teaching. And so I thought what would allow me to teach, research and write? I think, I think that's professors. I don't know what... I think they have to have a PhD. I don't know. So I talked to my, one of my advisors, he said, yeah, you need a PhD. And if you can hurry up fast, you could probably get my job. Because there wasn't much of a hiring pool. So I didn't go fast. But I have his spot anyway, so, here at BYU. It's been a pretty straightforward career path for me that's maybe not very typical in that way. So my graduate training is in European and British history, sociology and anthropology, family, history of family, relationships, siblings, and marital choices, cousins, that kind of thing.

Heather Murphy  02:03

Great. So how did you first become interested in family history?

Amy Harris  02:08

So I'm one of those people that was filling out pedigree charts as soon as I knew how to write.  In fact, there's one hanging in my office over here, that's a third-grade example. My family were all Latter-day Saint converts from England, Scotland, Norway, and New England. That's it. And they all came to Utah by, well, most of them by 1850s. A few in 1860s. And so there's there was just kind of one story that kind of fit a lot of them right to kind of come to America come to Utah story in the 19th century. But I would sit by my dad, I don't know why my dad versus my mom, and just have them tell me the names. And I'd fill out the pedigree charts and he'd tell me some of the stories.

Amy Harris  02:48

And then the other side of that is I been the youngest of the big family. My parents were the younger end of big families. My grandparents were born in 1870s, and 80s. So I didn't know them. Most of them were long since dead when I came along. My aunts and uncles... My two oldest uncles were born in 1907. Right. So I mean, just way... they just felt, the whole history just felt ancient. Even my siblings who did stuff in the 60s, long before I was born, that just felt like a history I was not a part of. And so I think family history is a way I kind of inserted myself into that history where if I could know those stories, then I could be part of that group even though I didn't live through those stories. I've always been interested in the past, but I think there was a little bit of, I'm going to insert myself into this family culture and the way to do that is to know the stories better than those who lived them do. So I, you know, I was identifying, I was labeling and, not an archival quality that I regret now. But anyway, identified and labeled photos, you know, 9th, 10th grade. And now I know those stories, because I know the pictures. That my brothers and sisters will tell a story and I'll say, Oh, yeah, that's right. That's something you know, blah, blah, blah. How do you know that? I've seen the picture 1000 times. There's a picture of that? Yes, that I digitized and put on a flash drive for you about 15 years ago. Yes, that picture.  So I think it it kind of did something for me in my lived relationships as well, because it made me feel like I'm part of with longer family story that they'd all experienced without me.

Heather Murphy  04:20

Okay. And when you started at BYU, did you start right into the family history program? Is that did you know that's what you wanted to do?

Amy Harris  04:27

It kind of yes and no, I went down as an archaeology major. And my first year I went through, it was a horticulture major. It was an art history major. I thought about linguistics, I thought about Spanish, and a million other things. Family history... There's been a family history courses or a program of various sorts since the early 60s at BYU. But at that point, they were in transition from an older format in the 80s. And so it wasn't, it must have been on the books. But my memory of my freshman year was it didn't exist as a major. It must have been there in some fashion. But the sec... My sophomore year was when it started the new version started that is still with us. And so I found it on the list. And so once I found it, then declared, that wasn't...

Amy Harris  05:16

But the other part that was a freshman orientation, we're sitting, I think it was like a freshman honors orientation. So they had small groups with professors, you know, sitting at tables for dinner. And I said something about studying family history. So this was, was archaeology, but I wanted to find it. And I hadn't found the major, or its new version wasn't something I was aware of. And the professor at the table laughed, and basically said that's stupid. Like, that's the dumbest idea I've ever heard of, kind of thing. I so wish I could remember who that was. I could go find them right and say... No, I, you know, that's petty, I hope I'd be more noble than that. But, you know, in the early 90s, it's probably decent advice, if you thought about a massive career. But to tell a freshman that their majors, I mean, he just basically said, that's the worst idea I've ever heard of a thing. So I knew I had it in my mind, because I remember that conversation, but it wasn't accessible. Or maybe it wasn't something you could declare that year while they were transitioning to the new program. I don't, I don't really know the institutional history right at that spot. So but once it was on the list, and I declared it a couple years, then I went on a mission and came back and finished.

Heather Murphy  06:29

So via Instagram, I became aware of a speech that you gave in 2017. And kind of the theme behind this speech was genealogical consciousness. Can you explain what that term means to you? I think you were the person who coined that term.

Amy Harris  06:46

I'm going to claim that yeah. I mean, it's, it's not like those two words have never been put together before. But in this particular way, yeah. I would like it to be that way. Because it seems to have resonated with people in kind of ways that kind of amazed me. So I sort of, I feel like I'm a part of it, at the same time kind of observing, observing this happening separate from me, which is kind of delightful in some ways, right? But it has a life of its own. So I thought a lot about this, because I've been talking more in the last few months with people just via Instagram, or conversations, which is funny, because it was three years ago, right?

Amy Harris  07:25

But I really do think of it as, like, if you have genealogical knowledge, which I was recently googling to try to find a scholar that used the phrase, genealogical consciousness and this other context. And he meant genealogical knowledge, right? That in particular moments in time, a group of people, they have genealogical consciousness in the sense that they're conscious, they they have descent, and ancestors, right, but not all cultures, and all times have that. And so we use consciousness mean things like historical consciousness, or feminist consciousness or class consciousness, right? That you're where you belong to this group. And so yes, there's that kind of genealogical consciousness, I'm aware I belong, I'm a descendant and I, and I will have descendants. To me though, that's just genealogical sensibility, maybe or genealogical knowledge, right? That, you know, you had grandparents and they had names. And that, and actually, in most of that, it is just about who came before. And it's a little bit about the future, but it's about inheritance, right? And sort of, am I gonna leave my kids in a good position.

Amy Harris  08:31

And I mean something bigger than that, that I think is more about an ethic, or a moral stance than it is about, I have ancestors and descendants. Because to me, I have ancestors and descendants is very egocentric. And I don't mean that necessarily as a criticism, I just mean, it's centered on the ego, on the individual. And in our society, everything is on the ego, on the individual. But it has, it can have some really powerful good things for ego and for individual, I mean, for individual identity. I would like it, and what I talked about in that speech, and then what I've heard from other people is, is kind of catching on that idea about it's more about how do you behave in the world today that's inspired or informed by the awareness of your responsibility and connection to before and after you. And so it's not about linear descent, or it's not even about children, right? It's bigger than did you raise good children, which is noble effort and good, but genealogical consciousness is, how do I how do I take this knowledge that I'm connected to past and future and have it shaped how I behave in ethical, moral compassionate ways today? How does it transform me? And I think just doing your pedigree chart isn't enough. That doesn't... It's fun. I think it's great, great activity, but I think it it can stagnate and just become yet again more about the ego. Unless it's informed by a kind of, this is gonna sound very highfalutin, but kind of a transcendent consciousness, right something beyond the material, day to day, rough and tumble life, right? But there's some you're doing some day to day thing, but it connects with something bigger and better, transcendent and universal.

Heather Murphy  10:13

So can you explain a little bit to kind of contrast with that, say 200 years ago, what's what was the purpose of genealogy, then why did people even start doing it?

Amy Harris  10:25

So I should be clear that my historical training is British, American, Western European. So genealogies perform different functions in different cultures over time. And many cultures, of course, have an element of ancestor worship. So genealogy and those kind of cultures is religious. And we use mythological meaning an anthropological sense, right, it's how you understand how the world came to be and how the universe works. So that's different than kind of the Western tradition of genealogy. For the British, I don't want to speak for all of Western Europe, but on the British and the Anglo vision of the world, it's kind of a late medieval, and it has everything to do with connecting yourself to power and prestige, and land. You're connecting yourself back hoping you can connect power and prestige or descent from noble ancestor. And you're connecting forward to just make sure your land and your power moves into your descendants. So yeah, kings have cared about that forever. But the idea that you can keep a record for somebody who's not the king, to prove descent from a noble ancestor, and access to the elite cache that would bring so that's the kind of late medieval, early modern. And sometimes in the Tudor period, people made it pedigrees out of whole cloth, so that they could claim certain titles or lands, or leverage that for title and land.

Amy Harris  11:48

 They then in the early modern period in Britain you get the development of what you would kind of see as the first inklings of professional genealogy, in the English speaking world anyway, and that's heraldry or the right to bear armorial bearings, right? That sort of family crests. And so people would try to prove who their lineage was. And the College of Arms is developed in London to monitor that and record that. And so that strand persists a long time. The American version of it is, everybody in colonial America is trying to prove that they're descendants of some wealthy British landowner, right. And a whole bunch of spurious and forged family histories have been produced since, right, proving connection to some British noble. And so I would say it's really, for the American experience, it's really a 19th century before you see people beyond that class engaging and wanting to know about the record, you know. People kept family Bibles, they kept family mementos, right, people care about their family. But the idea of doing research to find out about family, you don't know, that the memento, or the Bible doesn't already tell you about the mystery, and sort of looking for the mystery. That's a 19th century 19th century thing. And there would be those who argue it's more democratic, and then in the American America, because of the kind of open aristocracy approach that we like to think we have about some of the dream, but whatever, so that there's a more democratic impulse. But the New England Historical Genealogical Society's founded in 1845, the British Society of Genealogists was founded in 1911, maybe slightly later. So its a kind of mid 19th, early 20th century, you see it kind of reach a little further down the social scale, we can go into the modern history if you want because it doesn't sink to all the way the lowest in social scale. That's a more recent development. But I would say that the way we think about genealogy is a kind of halfway through the 19th century kind of trend.

Stories in Our Roots  13:47

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Heather Murphy  14:29

Yeah. And so as we look back at that history, and we see that a lot of times, family history was to exclude people or to only include people. And one of the quotes from your speech said that "genealogical consciousness demands that we act more compassionate and Christ like." Can you talk more about how genealogical consciousness causes us to be more inclusive?

Amy Harris  14:54

Yeah, and I think I don't think this comes automatically I think it has to be a conscious decision. I don't know if you've seen Ancestry ads, and those sorts of things. The commodification of genealogical identity is repeating all the same problems from the 19th century. It's essentialist, right. So it makes race sound like... Race is just made up, right? We just made it up. I mean, there's different skin tones, but we don't think orange cats and brown cats are distinct, different experiences, right. And so we drive so much... I'm not trying to say that race doesn't actually shape our lived realities, I just mean that it's not an eternal kind of, all race, race will be this important social marker. We're the ones who made it a social marker. And that makes a real impact on people's lives, of course, I'm not trying to say that.

Amy Harris  15:39

Some of the conversation about genealogy today slips into those same patterns, it's essentialist. It's I'm Scottish.  Ancestry just sent out new updates right on their ethnic and it's like, you're this, this, this, this and this. Now, I benefit from having been in the test pool that has a lot of people and so it's very specific. It can tie me to not just the genetics, but the records. But it's essentializing that I'm Norwegian, and British, right, settlers of Maine. And, and those are great, those are part of who I am. But if it essentializes that is who you are and everybody else in that slot is like you, but somebody in a different slot isn't like you, someone with sub-Saharan African genealogy is not like you. And the commodification is so surfacey, right. It's well, I'm Scottish now so I better buy a kilt, right? Like, you can just jettison that you thought you were German for 40 years. And you can see in real people's lives when they get tests back that tell them they're not, they're not from where they thought they were genetically, and they struggle with that. There's various reasons for that. But part of the problem is that we're obsessed with genetics, and that so easily slips into it and other things, right, pure bloodlines, and, and who has the higher rank, genetics, more pure. Those are all scary slopes.

Amy Harris  17:03

So I think if we let it though, if we if we're just conscious that those things can happen, right, you can end up in racism and eugenics and weird sexism and biological essentialism about people's position socially, if you're just aware of those are possible pitfalls, then I think you can take the knowledge and the stories you've learned about family history and let them soften. I see this with my students over and over and over again, that they encounter that person in the past and suddenly becomes a real person. It's not a date, or place, there's a real person. And that real person may not be perfect. They aren't. And they have done something not so great. Or they may have been in a situation that wasn't so great. That's partially their own fault. And you can see the student view like, I know them well enough to know I don't know them well enough to judge them. This is a real person, and I know this much about them.

Amy Harris  17:09

And the real brilliance is when the student pivots, and they go, what are the chances if this person I'm tracking in 1830, who's my great, great, great uncle, is not stellar, but whom I can feel compassion for and feel like, well, maybe I don't understand the whole situation. Maybe I can be patient, maybe I can be understanding, maybe I can be forgiving. The student can pivot that and think, what are the chances that the neighbor who really irritates me is that same kind of person, that they're a person. And that's what I think the ability to see others, right, to care for others is divine. And to see them as real people. I mean, that's all of Christianity. Second great commandment is to treat others as you as you want to be treated. And I think if you can take the encounter with the past, and let it help you think about people that are alive with that same sense of patience, openness, willingness to know you just, you can't fully know another person, or their motivations, even when they behave badly. You can still hold them accountable, you can still be disappointed. You can still be angry. But you can also be that's a that's a complete person. That's not an abstraction. That's not an object that I just get to show. I did this work. I think that does transform I think that makes you more compassionate. I think that does make you more like Jesus right? He took people right where they were said this person or it's in all this person's would be my time and my attention.

Amy Harris  19:37

And so I really do think because genealogy so disciplined in some detail, right? And so yeah, I'll just throw it all in there together and and work out you know, how is this Mary Smith different from this other? There are two women, how do I make sure both of them get accounted for and somewhere in the digging in those details if you let it you become aware of just inestimable worth of both Mary Smiths and this sort of becomes a moral obligation to make sure both Mary Smiths gets identified. And to me that is... Christ talks about leaving the 99 and finding one sheep. Christ spends time with, you know, wealthy people, poor people, marginalized people, one on one, Christ in the Book of Mormon visits 2500 people, one at a time. And I just think genealogy can kind of create that kind of discipline. And then hopefully, it turns into the discipline user for living. And we don't think we have to save everybody. You just think, this person, this moment, I'm paying attention, I'm going to try to keep a space, even if I don't agree with their decision, their choice, I'm going to try to keep a space where I can be forgiving or understanding before you listen and change my mind. I think it has to be a conscious choice. I don't think it happens very easily without being conscious about this is a real person. But I think if you make that switch about this person in the past is a real person, it kind of automatically can bring some of these other good outcomes along with it. It's not like a slog, I have to remind myself all the time, but there's a kind of switch that happens.

Amy Harris  21:06

I mean, I remember sitting in the National Archives in London, in Kew, with a student. And she'd been in my class, and then found this record and knew it was in London. And then she was... She graduated, but she came along for this research project. And so we made sure to make time while we're there that she could look up this document because it's not available online, or microfilm. It's just there in hardcopy. And it's not a fun document. It's court records without a great great great uncle who got in some sort of barroom brawl, and was killed from the wound. So I'm helping her. She's reading it, but I'm just helping her when she stumbles on word because of the old handwriting. And she's just reading it through. And I can read faster, we can just add more time in those documents. So I can see what's coming, I can see what she's going to encounter. But I just, you know, kind of tried to, it's not pretty.  He was beat to death and it took him three days to die. This is not a fun story. And it doesn't make you think your uncle was making wise choices. But just to see her encounter him and kind of honor him as a person think about his story. Nobody probably read that document, since it was written in 1820s. Nobody thought about this guy, since the 1840s, maybe, right, when his living family passed on. But in that moment, she thought about him. And she took this one record about him and thought about, we don't know what his situation was, we don't know what led to this. And that's not a fun story to uncover. And still, there was still a moment of connection, even when the story wasn't fun, even when the story wasn't. And I don't know, we'd have to follow up with her now, but I hope, sort of, maybe the next time she hears about a criminal, she goes well, no, people go to jail, but I don't know if that tells the whole thing about them as a person. Because my great, great uncle, you know, sort of you get a more full story.

Heather Murphy  22:56

Do you have any examples of how you have felt kind of that way that you've been talking as you've researched any of your ancestors?

Amy Harris  23:08

Because so many of my ancestors, you know, the last person to be born and die without being in Utah, or somewhere on the Mormon Trail, was probably born in the 1780s. There's thousands and thousands of descendants of these people and, and. There's further backstories and I find little nooks and crannies in there that I find out about people. And in some ways, I think I need to reengage with my grandparents, my great grandparents, because I think I know the story, right? But I probably have some skills, I could go find some new stuff. I'm trying to do that with one of my grandfather's because he died, you know, 25 years before I was born, and just try to learn little snippets as I go. But a lot of what happens is I I kind of take a little side road.

Amy Harris  23:51

So one of the ones that stands out to me is researching one of my lines that the sister of my great great grandmother stayed in England. And so then I was coming down the line of children. And one of them, you know, marries probably a day laborer, so kind of on the bottom rung of the economic ladder, and then he dies, with three or four kids, and you just she her children slide into poverty, crime and prostitution. 1860s England, right. I mean, everything you've ever read in Dickens. And I just thought for a minute. I know exactly where their second cousin is because that's my great grandfather farming and he could not be further away from having to choose between prostitution and crime to feed himself and his family. Right. It just, they might as well have lived on different planets. I just thought I cannot judge these people. I can't I mean, no one chooses prostitution in 1860 Gloucestershire as a career move, right? That's desperation. That's just sheer desperation. For a moment I'm grateful that my ancestors, direct ancestors didn't have to do that. But they were in a different place. I mean, on one hand, you feel those problems are so big, how do you fix them and then on the other, and you think some of these things are just... There's limits to people's agency, they can't fix everything on their own. The best I can do is understand them and not think I'm not trying to condemn them, based on the fact that I've never considered prostitution as a way to make money, right, of course, I haven't, or crime, because I've never faced that level of desperation.

Amy Harris  25:21

So there's those kind of little nooks and crannies, but then there's the kind of fun ones like the great great aunt I grew up hearing about my whole life based on her husband's story. And it turns out, she has 50 years of a life that no one's ever talked about the family, right. It was like, oh, her husband died, she moved in with their brother, your sister in law, my great, great grandparents, you know, they took care of Aunt Browett. Whatever. She'd moved to four different states and all this other parts of her life going on. And so that was just kind of fun to discover. And she didn't have any descendants. And so that's why there wasn't anybody to preserve those stories in the way others would get them preserved. So that was, that was just fun to discover there was this whole person there. And she didn't leave... A couple letters that she wrote that survived, that we had to find an archive. But otherwise, there's no writings from her. But you can still read military pension files and burial records and tax records and those sort of things, and piece a story together. So that was, that was satisfying to be not my direct ancestor, but a family member, and kind of discover those little parts that nobody would know now before.

Heather Murphy  26:25

I think it's really easy for people with family trees that are filled out really, really well to just assume that, that means they don't even need to look into it, they just kind of skim over the top. But then they don't get any benefit out of coming to know those people. So even finding those just those little sidelines or getting into the family even a little bit is important.

Amy Harris  26:49

Well, I think I thought about this this summer, where you know, some of that's the low hanging fruit in my family. And if I go on Ancestry, or Family Tree, and FamilySearch has dozens of memories and dozens of sources. But a lot of times it's the same sources, right? It's the three entries for Billion Graves. But even if the source is there... One Christmas, I made my some of my siblings the day after Christmas, we just took the census and went... So I'm from Ogden originally. But the Odgen side of our family is the one we don't, you know, you can only hold on to so many family traditions, right? So we've sort of got a couple of lines going, but those just happen to be the odd ones. And so we just kind of got out the census and looked at the address to where our great grandparents were Norwegians lived in Ogden and where a great grandpa, one of our great grandparents from England. And we just, I mean, those houses, aren't there anymore but none of us had ever just gone to that part of Odgen and thought about our ancestors that was close to the railroad. Or went over here. And yeah, I mean, just dug around in a couple stories for just an afternoon, just with the census. And I... So now I feel like I have a slightly better sense of those Norwegian ancestors lives because we went and looked at where they lived on the census. Yeah, it doesn't have to be, when it's a, when you have a documented tree that goes back four or five generations pretty easily. There's always something you personally can learn from them, even if you don't do research per se. Right?

Heather Murphy  28:12

So for someone who is just beginning to research their family to explore those relationships, what one piece of advice would you give them,

Amy Harris  28:22

Start small.  I think people get overwhelmed, thinking they need to have some grand story, or they need to do some grand thing. Think, start close to home, start with your oldest relative that's at all interesting to talk to. You should eventually go through all your older relatives, but start with the easy thing you know, the aunt or uncle or grandparent that you just don't know much about? I mean, in an ideal world, I think you would take a few moments and just be quiet to yourself and think, what do I want to know about my family? Or what do I want to know about a particular family member? and just start there. And you can just record them with your phone. You don't have to share it if you don't want to if they're not comfortable. But you've preserved some part of that family history, probably that's the only time it's going to be preserved. There's something satisfying about knowing that especially once that person's gone, that you did something, preserved something. And then I have a friend that got into family history, not from the research side, trying to learn the stories of some fractured part of her family. And once she knew some stories, then she's like, oh, I need some documents to help me fill in the gaps. That... I love when she tells that story because it's such a natural progression.

Amy Harris  29:33

Now, if you love documents, you're probably already doing it. But if you're trying to get interested in family history, or you just want to dip your toe in, you can wait for citation and documents and you can start with a story you can talk to somebody, like ask your mom about her first date. And if you don't have a good relationship with your family, there are ways you can maybe use family history to improve that a little. Is there some innocuous conversation you could have with a family member, you know if there's lots of tension and lots of landmines, is asking them about their first day of school or their first date maybe, or their favorite job, you know, something that you would know when your family is not a landmine, and you record that. And maybe you also pay for the software to transcribe it. And you give that back to that person. I think there's a way, I'm not trying to say that doing a little family history is going to heal all of your relationship problems in your family. But there is a way you can use it to maybe lessen the tension a little. And maybe over time, it can help you heal those relations. I believe it can. But I just think that takes time and it takes participation from both, from all sides.

Amy Harris  30:36

Get out pictures and get older family members to record or have them tell you a short story. I would start with pictures or short story with older living family members, or even just your older siblings or parents. My mom passed away earlier this year. And my sister and I and writing part of her obituary realized we didn't know the name of the business school she went to how did we not know that? Right? I mean, we googled and figured it out. And it just struck me at that time. Why didn't I never clarify the name of this school? Because there's a million questions like that you just never do. I think if you start with the living, your interest will grow and you'll figure out what you want to do. If you want to do pictures. Do you want to do stories? Do you want to do research? Do you want to do gravestones? I don't think you need to decide at beginning.  You can just pick an easy thing.

Heather Murphy  31:20

Okay, well, thank you so much for your time. And in the show notes I'll link all of your information to get in touch with you as well as a link to this speech that we're talking about from 2017. So thank you very much.

Amy Harris  31:34

Thanks for letting me blather on.  It was great.

Heather Murphy  31:38

Thanks.

Stories in Our Roots  31:40

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