‘Ancestoring: Understanding Records, Family & Ourselves’ Breaks New Ground!
Henry Z (“Hank”) Jones, FASG is the author of Psychic Roots; Serendipity & Intuition In Genealogy (view here) and several highly regarded books about the Palatine immigration to colonial America. Here’s what he had to say about Darcie Hind Posz’ new book, Ancestoring: Understanding Records, Family & Ourselves:
“Ancestoring is a genealogical groundbreaker: the first Quantum “How To” book ever written for those of us addicted to climbing the family tree. It’s a remarkable step-by-step tutorial that will guide us when we are called by our ancestors to discover more about them: a beautiful roadmap of how to engineer our searches at a much more layered and deeper level. It dazzled my mind and warmed my heart.”
Ancestoring asks us to “Dig deeper by asking, “Why?” To appreciate records as the starting point—not the conclusion—of studying prior generations. To engage in abstract thinking that helps us understand concepts that are real and solve problems by analyzing situations.
Ancestoring is divided into three parts: Understanding Records, Understanding Family, and Understanding Ourselves. Author Darcie Posz designed these sections to be read sequentially, or at random, like a genealogy mixtape.
In Part One, Understanding Records, the author affirms the importance of source analysis and record analysis as the foundational principles of genealogy. From here she discusses the importance of placing a record—a photograph, an obituary, a magazine article, etc.—in its historical setting. Learning to observe records carefully and with detachment is another critical faculty genealogists must develop.
Ms. Posz tells stories throughout her book, including those of her own family, to reveal the layers of past lives. Her examples vary from accounts of the JFK assassination to the murder trial of silent film star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle (and whom he was accused of murdering, Virginia Rappe), to scenes from cinematic masterpieces like Picnic and Five Easy Pieces. Her choice of case studies ranges from Old Hollywood to Chinese, German, Hawaiian, and Japanese lineages.
Understanding Families, Part Two of Ancestoring, underscores bringing an open mind to our forebears’ behavior, especially behavior that was frowned upon by their contemporaries. As Darcie Posz puts it, “Recognizing where our own prejudices, biases, and presentism affect our evaluation of their evidence can counterbalance our worst impulses.”
Part Three, Understanding Ourselves, asks readers to examine how our memories can obscure our understanding of the past. The author also asks us to consider, “If this had been you, what records would you have generated? What records would you have destroyed or hidden?” And we might add, “Why?”
Ancestoring lets us discover how our ancestors’ everyday holding patterns, those spaces between events worthy of generating a document for us to find later, offer lessons about their decisions. It allows us to connect with the people that we research by asking ‘why’ to better understand them. It encourages us to purposefully apply abstract thinking through exercises that highlight unconscious biases. These methods can help us form and test theories, to understand and solve problems, and to mentally structure our research. By peeling back layers of evidence created over multiple lifetimes and analyzing our findings, we see that at the core of our work is never just the story of our ancestors, but steps toward understanding ourselves as well.
