Geography and Genealogy (Heritage, Culture and Identity)

199 Pages·2008·1.28 MB·English

by  Dallen J. Timothy and Jeanne Kay Guelke

GEOGRAPHY AND GENEALOGY
Heritage, Culture and Identity
Series Editor: Brian Graham,
School of Environmental Sciences, University of Ulster, UK
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Geography and Genealogy
Locating Personal Pasts
DALLEN J. TIMOTHY
Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA
JEANNE KAY GUELKE
University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
© Dallen J. Timothy and Jeanne Kay Guelke 2008
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Dallen J. Timothy and Jeanne Kay Guelke have asserted their right under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.
Published by
Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company
Gower House Suite 420
Croft Road 101 Cherry Street
Aldershot Burlington, VT 05401-4405
Hampshire GU11 3HR USA
England
Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Geography and genealogy : locating personal pasts. -
(Heritage, culture and identity)
I. Timothy, Dallen J. II. Guelke, Jeanne Kay
929.1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Geography and genealogy : locating personal pasts / edited by Dallen J. Timothy and
Jeanne Kay Guelke.
p. cm. -- (Heritage, culture, and identity)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7546-7012-4
ISBN-10: 0-7546-7012-0
1. Genealogy. 2. Geography--Research--Methodology. 3. Historical geography
--Methodology. 4. Geographic information systems. 5. Genealogy--Computer network
resources. 6. Genealogy--Social aspects. 7. Information technology--Social aspects.
I. Timothy, Dallen J. II. Guelke, Jeanne Kay.
CS14.G5 2007
929'.1072--dc22
2007025296
ISBN 978 0 7546 7012 4
Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall.
Contents
List of Figures and Tables vii
1 Locating Personal Pasts: An Introduction 1
Jeanne Kay Guelke and Dallen J. Timothy
PART I: TOOLS, SOURCES, AND IMPLICATIONS FOR
GEOGRAPHY AND FAMILY HISTORY
2 The Unfolding Tale of Using Maps in Genealogical Research 23
Melinda Kashuba
3 Genealogy, Historical Geography, and GIS: Parcel Mapping,
Information Synergies, and Collaborative Opportunities 43
Mary B. Ruvane and G. Rebecca Dobbs
4 A Genealogy of Environmental Impact Assessment 63
William Hunter
5 Knitting the Transatlantic Bond: One Woman’s Letters to
America, 1860-1910 83
Penny L. Richards
6 Remaking Time and Space: The Internet, Digital Archives
and Genealogy 99
Kevin Meethan
PART II: GENEALOGY AS A CULTURAL PRACTICE
7 Genealogical Mobility: Tourism and the Search for a Personal Past 115
Dallen J. Timothy
8 Genealogy as Religious Ritual: The Doctrine and Practice of
Family History in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 137
Samuel M. Otterstrom
9 Genetics, Genealogy, and Geography 153
David C. Mountain and Jeanne Kay Guelke
10 Conclusion: Personal Perspectives 175
Dallen J. Timothy and Jeanne Kay Guelke
Index 185
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List of Figures and Tables
Figures
Figure 2.1 Mean center of population in the United States, 1790-2000 24
Figure 2.2 Results from a place-name query of the GNIS database 33
Figure 3.1 Changes to “the old neighbourhood” in Louisville, Kentucky 44
Figure 3.2 GIS output in the form of spatial pattern analysis of land parcels 50
Figure 3.3 Large-scale GIS land parcel mapping based on archival sources 51
Figure 3.4 A typical 18th century survey from North Carolina’s
Granville District 53
Figure 3.5 18th century land records—links LAND to key relationships 55
Figure 3.6 Genealogical/historical material—links PEOPLE to
key relationships 56
Figure 4.1 The Brothers Valley 71
Figure 4.2 Genealogy in place: The Walker Farmstead 72
Figure 4.3 The Swamp Creek Valley facing south 74
Figure 4.4 The Swamp Creek Valley historic district 76
Tables
Table 2.1 A survey of the number of lectures presented at U.S.
genealogical conferences specifically related to maps
and geographic sources 26
Table 2.2 The number of articles published in genealogical periodicals
related to maps and geography between 1950-September 2006
(based upon PERSI version 8.2) 27
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Chapter 1
Locating Personal Pasts:
An Introduction
Jeanne Kay Guelke and Dallen J. Timothy
Probably most people, most of the time, view the past not as a foreign but a deeply
domestic realm. . . . History explores and explains pasts grown ever more opaque over
time; heritage clarifies pasts so as to infuse them with present purposes. . . . Its many
faults are inseparable from heritage’s essential role in husbanding community, identity,
continuity, indeed history itself. (David Lowenthal, Possessed by the Past, 1996: xi)
This book is about genealogy and its near-relation, family history, as cultural
practices. If Lowenthal is correct, people’s closest, most continuous domestic past is
autobiographical. By extension, a personal heritage normally includes one’s family
and sense of continuity through ancestry, via one’s birthright as a member of a kinship
network, ethnic group, socio-economic class, and citizenry. Ancestral pasts thus
live very much in the present for individuals. The exceptions almost prove the rule,
because many adoptees today search for their natural parents; and people deprived of
their sense of an ancestral history that has become “opaque over time” can become
passionate about recovering it, as demonstrated in Alex Haley’s (1976) bestseller,
Roots. As a group of authors with social science backgrounds, predominantly in the
discipline of geography, our twofold objective in this volume is to discuss how the
geographer’s research skills can inform the pursuit of family history, and also how
understanding family history as a cultural practice can in turn generate new insights
about society amongst geographers today.
This introductory chapter acquaints the reader with the outlines of family history as
a leisure activity, and then situates family history within the context of contemporary
human geography plus allied aspects of history and cognate social sciences. We
argue that scholars in these disciplines who explore family history will find that
family history in practice both illuminates and subverts key areas of interest, such as
identity, landscapes of memory, and gate-keeping of knowledge. Because both the
academy and popular family history should benefit from their mutual engagement,
we conclude with recommendations for applied geographers, notably in the fields of
geomatics, heritage resources, and tourism, to assist the conduct of family history
through community outreach.
Genealogy for purposes of this paper is defined as the construction of family
pedigrees: lists of ancestors and descendants. Family history includes genealogy,
but also supplementary information about ancestors’ lives and contexts. Both fit
within Lowenthal’s (1996: xi) above definition of heritage, but with the caveats that