{"id":4606,"date":"2014-02-19T21:44:39","date_gmt":"2014-02-19T10:44:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stumblingpast.wordpress.com\/?p=4606"},"modified":"2022-08-04T00:24:24","modified_gmt":"2022-08-04T00:24:24","slug":"family-history-the-kernel-of-all-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/2014\/02\/19\/family-history-the-kernel-of-all-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Family History – the Kernel of All History"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"My<\/a>
My mother as a child with her family in the boat her father made – country Victoria at the end of WWII.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe kernel of all history is family history.\u201d I wrote that comment this morning in response to a thought-provoking post by Emeritus Professor David Carment<\/a> about the importance of historians exploring and writing about their own family histories. The post picks up on a theme from a conference held in honour of highly regarded historian, Alan Atkinson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Every one of us is part of a family. Hence all history in its essence is family history. Stumbling Through the Past<\/i> is a history blog. It is also a family history blog. The blog header<\/a> which I created when I started this blog back in August 2010 includes pictures of members of my family from the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It reflects the fact that it was the way my family retold and researched our own history which attracted me to further study of history.<\/p>\n

When I was a child I enjoyed visits from older relations who retold family stories. I enjoyed the knowledge that I was part of a big family even though we had no relations in the state in which we lived. My mother wrote to a researcher in England when I was young and we received a fascinating letter from him. In my late teenage years I spent some time in archives at the behest of relations who wanted to know more. It was this experience, first with my mother and then by myself which gave me a good foundation in archival research. I owe family history a lot.<\/p>\n

It was the wonderful book made freely available online by ANU Press, Connected Worlds: History in Transnational Perspective<\/a>,<\/i> which convinced me that it was the time to do the history degree I had always hoped to do. When I read it, probably shortly after it was published in 2006, I felt that historians had developed the tools to properly explore the histories of thousands of families like mine \u2013 global wanderers created by the era of empires.<\/p>\n

Family history is not an indulgence. It is important that everyone understands how they fit in. We know this from the profound distress experienced by the Stolen Generations<\/a> and the Forgotten Australians and Child Migrants<\/a>. It is the fact that these children were excised from their family histories and culture that has caused trauma that has crippled\u00a0 communities and reverberated through the following generations.<\/p>\n

My last post<\/a> explores another aspect of our family histories, one which is very difficult for us to acknowledge. It is easy to celebrate the successes of our ancestors. We need to also approach family history with humility and recognise that our ancestors were like us \u2013 flawed. Sometimes they did not behave well, but it may be a step worse than that. They may have contributed to appalling abuses and crimes or failed to prevent or report them. My last post refers to crimes made in the name of empire. I\u2019m still pondering this difficult issue. I leave it to you to read and reflect on it.<\/p>\n

Kitty\u2019s War<\/i><\/a> and the recently published history, Forgotten Rebels of Eureka<\/i><\/a> by Clare Wright, demonstrate the importance of family history to historians. In both books the historians have worked with the descendants of the people who featured in their books whether through interviews of family members or drawing on documents and artefacts held by the families. Family archives held in private homes throughout Australia are an important historical source, the family members can hold interesting insights into the lives of their forebears. Likewise the work of the professional or academic historian can give families a deeper understanding of where their family story fits into the bigger picture. The partnership can be mutually beneficial.<\/p>\n

I have been re-reading Kitty\u2019s War<\/i> by Janet Butler in preparation for a panel discussion<\/a> of this book in which I am participating at the State Library of NSW tomorrow night. I\u2019m reading it for the third time and am still enjoying the read and learning from it. Last night the issues raised by David Carment in his post kept popping up when I was reading the book. As my mother\u2019s side of the family has been so competent and assiduous with their work on our family history I have left them to work on it. Carment has made me realise that I have a contribution to make and I need to do more in this area.<\/p>\n

David Carment\u2019s post<\/a> demonstrates that historians recognise that they are part of the history they research and they value what family histories have to offer. Take the time to read the post and the response to it from historians in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Historians are becoming more interested in the benefits of family history. In this post I reflect on the work historians have recently done with family history and how my own family’s interest in family history sparked my interest in history which eventually led me to pursue a history degree.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[43,100,106],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Yvonne Perkins","author_link":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/author\/yvonne\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4606"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4606"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7104,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4606\/revisions\/7104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}