GEOGRAPHY AND GENEALOGY Heritage, Culture and Identity Series Editor: Brian Graham, School of Environmental Sciences, University of Ulster, UK Other titles in this series (Dis)Placing Empire Renegotiating British Colonial Geographies Edited by Lindsay J. Proudfoot and Michael M. Roche ISBN 978 0 7546 4213 8 Preservation, Tourism and Nationalism The Jewel of the German Past Joshua Hagen ISBN 978 0 7546 4324 1 Culture, Urbanism and Planning Edited by Javier Monclus and Manuel Guardia ISBN 978 0 7546 4623 5 Tradition, Culture and Development in Africa Historical Lessons for Modern Development Planning Ambe J. Njoh ISBN 978 0 7546 4884 0 Heritage, Memory and the Politics of Identity New Perspectives on the Cultural Landscape Edited by Niamh Moore and Yvonne Whelan ISBN 978 0 7546 4008 0 Geographies of Australian Heritages Loving a Sunburnt Country? Edited by Roy Jones and Brian J. Shaw ISBN 978 0 7546 4858 1 Living Ruins, Value Conflicts Argyro Loukaki ISBN 978 0 7546 7228 X 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 This page intentionally left blank 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 This page intentionally left blank 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
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