Saturday Serendipity (October 30, 2021)

Here are a few suggested reads while you are waiting near the door for those trick-or-treaters to arrive tomorrow night . . . 

1.    As DNA becomes an increasingly important and useful tool in genealogical research, it is interesting to discover that for the first time DNA from a dead person has been used to confirm the descent of a living person.  Read about how this was accomplished and who the two people are by going here. 

2.    Heather Rojo, of Nutfield Gneealogy blog, provides a little scary Halloween genealogy bits for your amusement.  See her post here. 

3.    This past week Nancy Messier, of My Ancestors and Me blog, examined a separately filed marriage license and a marriage certificate for an ancestor couple.  She discusses the difference and reminds us why one is actually a more important document than the other.  Read her post here.

4.    Janine Adams, of Organize Your Family History blog,  posted another of her "bite-size Quick tips" for advancing your research -- and she provides a helpful link.  Have a quick look at "Read the instructions to enumerators" here.

5.    With all the pumpkins and Jack-o-lanterns appearing this week and especilly tonight and tommorrow night, this would be a good time to visit (or revisit) Peter Muise's post of October 17th titled "Jack-O-Lanterns: Demons, Gemstones, and New England Origins" at his blog, New England Folklore. You can read his post here.

6.    For those from Rhode Island -- or with Rhode Island roots.  If you have not already seen Diane Boumenot's free video of her presentation on Rhode Island probate (with case examples), you can read about it an get the link by going here on her blog, One Rhode Island Family.  Her presentation is from a recent meeting of RIGS (Rhode Island Genealogical Society).

7.    If you use Family Tree Maker for your family history database and you are not yet aware of Russ "Cousin Russ" Worthington's blog, Family Tree Maker User, you  should take the time to look at his blog here.  It has been described as "hands down the best user guide to Family Tree Maker." 

8.    Move over and out of the way Mr. Columbus, Jamestown, Plymouth Colony, and even 1565 St. Augustine, Florida.  The evidence is in that the Vikings arrived wayyy before all of those others.  Read the scientific evidence here for Viking occupation in Newfoundland 1,000 years ago this year. 

9.    BUT then you might want to read "6 Misconceptions About the Vikings" here at Mental Floss by Jake  Rossen. 

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Copyright, John D. Tew

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Genealogical Amnesia (October 29, 2021)

 

CNN recently showcased a commentary from The Conversation, a collaboration between academics and journalists.  The August 13, 2021 commentary by Jeanne Shinskey, of the Royal Holloway Univeristy of London, focused on a phenomenon known as "childhood or infant amnesia." 

Childhhod amnesia is a puzzling occurence with which we are probably all familiar, but did not realize it had a scholarly name.  It is the little understood situation where most of us do not remember much about our lives from before age 7.  And even when we try to recall early childhood memories, we are often faced with wondering if they are actual personal memories or mere recollections based on stories from parents, older siblings or others, photos, etc.

Research into the phenomenon of childhood amnesia has looked at the obvious possibility that a simple explanation could be that young children just do not yet have the capacity for forming fully developed memories.  But experiments have demonstrated that babies as young as six months have the ability to create short-term memories lasting minutes and even long-term memories that can last weeks and perhaps as long as months.  So the thought is that maybe the issue is not the ability to form memories, but rather the capabilty of maintaining them.  Studies have shown, for instance, that children and teenagers have earlier memories than do adults.

Language also appears to be an important factor in the process of remembering.  The hippocampus in the brain is considered essential to the ability to form memories and it is not fully developed until about age seven.  Language develops during roughly the same time period when an infant goes from one word utterences to complete fluency in a native languge between the ages of roughly one and six.  And during that time the child learns to use words and concepts important to having and maintaning memories.  Personal pronouns like I, me, you, they, us and concepts like "to remember" and "to forget" are learned and used properly. So the physiological structural ability to create and maintain memories overlaps the development of the language necessary to communicate those memories.  The ability to verbalize an experience or event relates to the preditability concerning how well the experience or event will be recalled months or even years later.  One study found that children a little older than two years who had been to an emergency room due to common childhood injuries could remember the event up to five years later whereas children who were younger than 26 months old, and who could not talk about and describe the event, remembered little if anything about it. 

Much of the research on childhood amnesia concentrates on the function of language in helping to create and maintain memories.  And to do this, the role of what is called "narrative expression" is examined.  As Jeanne Shinskey, of the Royal Holloway University in London, describes narrative expression and its social function, "When parents reminisce with very young children about past events, they implicitly teach them narrative skills, what kinds of events are important to remember and how to structure talking about them in a way that others can understand."   To further elaboate she explains. . . 

Unlike simply recounting information for factual purposes, reminiscing revolves around the social      function of sharing experiences with others.  In this way, family stories maintain the memory's accessibility over time, and also increase the coherence of the narrative, including the chronology of events, their theme, and their degree of emotion.  More coherent stories are remembered better.  Maori adults have the earliest childhood memories (age 2.5) of any society studied so far thanks to Maori parents' highly elaborative style of telling family stories.

All of this, of course, got me thinking about what, by analogy, I could call "genealogical amnesia."  Like lost childhood memories, how many people (who are non-genealogists) do we know who cannot even name their eight great grandparents, who apparently have lost the family "memory" of almost anyone beyond the parents of their parents?  I have met people who sometimes struggle to recall the names of even all four of their grandparents and are clueless as to the maiden names of their grandmothers, let alone the maiden names of great grandmothers and earlier female ancestors.   Genealogical amnesia!

It seems to me that the rise in popularity of genealogy as a hobby gives hope that through research and  narrative sharing of research results, there can be more fact-based stories to pass on about ancestors and generational chains of reminiscence can be created that will help reverse the cases of "genealogical amnesia" so common in our culture.

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Copyright 2021, John D. Tew

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Saturday Serendipity (October 23, 2021)

 

As I ease back into more regular blogging, here are a few suggested reads for this weekend.

1.    James Tanner of Genealogy's Star blog posted this week about the incredible number of documents and other material being digitized online.  He suggests the need to consider expanding "genealogical research" beyond what is most often categorized as a gnealogical record.  You can read his post here.

2.    The Legal Genealogist, Judy Russell, discusses the important question regarding who owns the copyright of the creator after his/her original copyright expires.  You can read the short explanation here.

3.    Having just devoted months to transferring my blog posts to hardback book form, I found a piece by Prudence at creativefamilyhistorian.com to be particularly interesting when it comes to design considerations for creation of a family history book.  Three basic design considerations are discussed with illustarted examples of before and after.  Have a look here.

4.    The COVID pandemic has been epochal in terms of lost life (728,000 and counting in the U.S. alone), but it has also taken a terrible toll in lost businesses -- particularly small businesses that were part of the very fabric of their communities.  This week Barbara Poole of the photo blog Life From the Roots, posted some of those losses in Lowell, Massachusetts that she captured and preserved with her camera.  You can see some of those lost, but not soon to be forgotten businesses here.

5.    Janine Adams of Organize Your Family History blog posted some useful keyboard short cuts (mostly for Mac) that are always worth being reminded about.  See her list here. 

6.    It's that time of year to be reminded again about the "Honor Roll Project" started by Heather Rojo of Nutfield Genealogy blog.  What, you may ask, is the Honor Roll Project?  It is a good way to honor our veterans this coming Veterans Day and you can learn all about how by going here and reading Heather's recent post. 

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Copyright 2021,  John D. Tew

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