A Mixed Bag of Roots

It’s finally happened: I’ve been bitten by the “roots” bug! It all started when my historian brother (the really serious genealogist in the family) heard we would be spending this year in Manitoba. He asked me to help him trace the descendants of a great-great-aunt and uncle who moved from Ontario to the prairies at the turn of the century. Since my brother is the kind of fellow who doesn’t get visibly excited about much, I readily agreed—even though I’d never personally been turned on by this sort of thing. Little did I realize how absorbing it would become.

Armed with bits of information, including the fact that the ancestors in question had been staunch Anglicans, I was pleased to discover that the relevant old registers of baptisms, marriages, and deaths were lodged in the Anglican district office not half a mile from our temporary home in the city of Brandon.

I soon found that you can experience strange and powerful feelings immersing yourself in those leather-bound, yellowed, hand-inscribed volumes. Turning over page after page, you suddenly come face to face with your own past: “Robert Tweedy, farmer; husband of Mary Stewart [she was the great-great-aunt mentioned earlier]; born, Templetown, Ireland, 1819; died, Boissevain, Manitoba, March 23, 1903. Cause of death: senile weakness.”

Or: “Hubert Fenwick Morris, born December 6, 1896; baptized May 9, 1899; son of William Morris, carriage builder, and Deborah Tweedy.” (Deborah was a daughter of Robert and Mary, and thus my cousin a few times removed.)

What is the source of these strong feelings that keep amateur genealogists compulsively combing through records and tramping around rural church cemeteries? Part of it is just the excitement of sleuthing; it is the same compulsion that keeps scientists tracking an elusive virus, mystery readers vicariously solving cases with Lord Peter Wimsey, and crossword puzzle fans sitting up past midnight to fill in every last square.

But genealogical sleuthing may also mask a subtle arrogance. As biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling writes, genes have enormous appeal, because “although my body will someday pass from this earth, part of me will remain, passing itself on to generations yet unborn. And should my children turn out to be brilliant or successful, so much the better. I can claim half the credit, since half their genes came from me.”

Is it possible for ancestor hunting to turn into ancestor worship? For us to start seeing our immortality in our genes rather than in the confidence we have in Christ is certainly one real danger. And to start seeing blood ties as more primary than the ties that bind us as Christians—whether we are “Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female” (Gal. 3:28)—is certainly another.

Still, the family is one of God’s creational structures, and the fifth commandment enjoins us to honor our father and mother. Rooting among one’s roots can become idolatrous, but it can also be a legitimate way to preserve community and continuity in an increasingly mobile and mechanized society. It can be quite moving to see elderly people, long neglected or lost track of by younger relatives, come alive with enthusiasm when shown an old photo, or asked what it was like to grow up next door to eccentric cousin so-and-so.

Fortunately, my brother is a careful enough historian to have catalogued our ancestors, “warts and all.” This prevents me from losing a realistic sense of human depravity. Genes can work both ways: If I am going to see them as bearers of my own virtues, I also have to admit that they can be mirrors of my own sin, actual or potential. When I read my brother’s extensive notes, I find stories of courageous immigrants clearing land and parenting large families in rural Canada; but I also find accounts of drifters, drunkards, and sharp-tongued shrews. Like all of us, my Scots-Irish ancestors were made in the image of God; like all of us, they showed the effects of the Fall even when they were redeemed in Christ. And I see myself in not a few of their foibles.

MARY STEWART VAN LEEUWEN

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