Over the last few months I've had a lot to contemplate about the role of genealogy research when dealing with family, in particular family problems. Genealogy can sometimes be an instrument of healing if understanding results from documents and can sometimes bust through mythologies that family believes as truth.
In one situation that was and is very difficult I finally came up with the solution: a time line.
I don't always use time lines and when I do I often find them to be most helpful as a reminder of what time-sensitive documents I may want to look for or perhaps overlooked as valuable. In this case it was developing the time line of a person's grandmother and mother than created the beginnings of a healing, for it is what the person does with the information for themselves that is most important.
The situation was that the mother had due to illness and poverty had to give up the child to the care of others, which included her parents, fostering programs, and eventually an orphanage while the mother was in long term care. The child had also been taken in by one particular aunt and uncle who had a few children to support and raise of their own, and one of these children, now an adult, had reported to me that the situation was never comfortable.
Before the person who needs the healing was an adult, his mother had died and his father was remarried, fathering several children, but not available to him as a father.
He and his wife were bitter that his grandparents had "thrown him out."
Did they really throw him out when his mother, though ill, was alive?
First by developing a time line for the grandmother, we were able to reveal her childhood poverty, her lack of formal education (which must have been frustrating, for she was an intelligent woman, and the poverty of the family she and her husband had established in America.
During the 1940 census era, one adult child was supporting his parents and all remaining children in the household.
Using maps, we situated their row house not far from a river and using history of the area we were able to establish that this row house was across the street from a factory spewing fumes at all hours.
We were able to show that the family had not been in the city directories (which charged a fee for listing) or had a telephone until well past the point where most neighbor's did.
Using census we were able to establish that the older children left home by 14 to work as servants, other's joined the military to begin self supporting adult life.
Using church records we were able to establish that the family found religion important to them and had sacrificed to send their children to at least three first years of school in an ethnic church where they were able to begin to learn to read and write in English.
Using Social Security applications, we were able to establish the family expectation that all children begin to work for pay by 16 even when in high school.
But the time line was what made the difference because we progressed Grandma's life year by year. Giving birth, having so many children in the household already.
Very simply, by the time she had a grandchild to raise, this woman was worn out, exhausted, and by today's standards old enough to enjoy senior discounts. Her husband, the grandfather was even older.
So if you find yourself or someone else in need of healing through understanding, I recommend doing a time line.
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