'Genealogy has a way of making abstract history real, and we want to know if the past has guidance for us—hapless denizens of a chaotic present whose future we can’t yet see.'
October is National Family History Month, a good time to consider why we’ve become a nation consumed by genealogy. A hobby that not so long ago was associated with Colonial Dames and retirees, with courthouse clerks and dusty microfilm reels, has become a cultural phenomenon — fueled by sophisticated technologies and driven by a relentless fascination with who we are.
So, why are Americans so into the past right now? How did the lives of the dead become our national obsession?, the American impulse toward genealogical inquiry has long been in tension with itself. Historian François Weil has written that in the early days of the new American republic, genealogy was linked with the British aristocracy’s obsession with social rank, rendering the endeavor suspicious to many citizens. But, in time, we warmed to it.
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