!["Family History" by Robert Kehlmann. Sandblasted hand-blown glass, mixed media. By Rkehlmann (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://andykubrin.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Robert_Kehlmann_Family_History_2008_Kehlmann_Studio_Archive.jpg)
Every Story Is Apocryphal
Tag: family politics (Page 1 of 3)
![By Bernard Trębacz (1869-1941) (http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/21388/lot/8/) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://www.andykubrin.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Bernard_Trebacz_Argument_of_the_scholars.jpeg)
![Argument of the Scholars by Bernard Trębacz (1869-1941) (http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/21388/lot/8/) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://andykubrin.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Bernard_Trebacz_Argument_of_the_scholars.jpeg "Argument of the Scholars by Bernard Trębacz (1869-1941) (http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/21388/lot/8/) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons")
When I began writing family history, I knew that I might come into conflict one day with relatives objecting to my account of our shared past. That day has apparently arrived.
When my great-grandmother Taube Kurdabrin disembarked from the S.S. Finland on June 25, 1905, she carried her first-born son Schmuel in her arms. He was one year and six months old. Because small children lack agency, they generally make poor subjects for portraiture. I prefer instead to pick up my grandfather’s story in his middle years. We see him above with his third child, my Uncle Jay, who has just caught a fish. The photo is cracked and stained. The world it portrays has vanished. People work miracles now with Photoshop, but I don’t believe in retouching old pictures. Flaws appear in every image and every life, and they are worth noting. The patina tells a story all its own. Continue reading
I went to Los Angeles last month to research a few things in my family history. My primary goal was to learn more about a business dispute involving my father and grandfather in the mid-1950s. This goal led me to the Archives and Records Center of the Los Angeles Superior Court. Continue reading
I went to Los Angeles recently on a family visit, and while I was there, I decided to do some research on an old family controversy. Around the time I was born, some of my forebears’ business affairs led them into a courtroom. I wanted to know more about this incident, so I requested the case file from the court system. Continue reading
Putting Stones on Our Graves
I had a breakthrough recently in my genealogical research. I had been searching for information on my great-grandmother, Edith Letwin, and her children. Edith was my paternal grandmother’s mother. I’ve written previously about her and my great-grandfather, Joseph. My uncle, Jay Kubrin, vividly recalls her death and funeral, which happened when he was a child and touched off a bitter fight with his sister, my late Aunt Phyllis. Jay couldn’t remember exactly when Edith died. And nothing piques the mind so much as a mystery. So I became determined to uncover this one fact. Continue reading
One of the pleasures of reading family history is the way it skips across boundaries. Instead of one thing, you get two: family and history. Read this way, the story of your clan can be thrilling. All at once, you find your ancestors hobnobbing with French Impressionists, corresponding with poets, or dodging the Gestapo. It’s hard to believe that you and Uncle Fred could share such gallant forebears. Continue reading
The Legacy of the Briar Patch
Into the Briar Patch: A Family Memoir by Mariann S. Regan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Long before family historians begin formal research, they pass through an informal stage of inquiry. This casual phase, in which an outwardly passive child or adolescent absorbs lore handed down through the generations, is nearly universal. Most of us do it at one time or another. In some cases, that child or adolescent ponders those stories and formulates, over the years, a surprisingly pointed series of questions and tentative answers. Then comes the formal research and, if we’re lucky, an astute and graceful account of one family’s origins.
In Mariann Regan’s case, we’ve been lucky. Her memoir Into the Briar Patch explores the legacy of slaveholding as it plays out in one American family. Mariann–we’ve become friendly through our blogs and on Twitter, so I’ll use her first name here–opens her story with an account of a catastrophic fire that tore through the family home in 1915. Her mother, then an infant, was thrust into the arms of her seven-year-old sister Ansie, who ran from the flames, carrying the infant to safety. Save the baby, the adults cried, save the baby, and Saving the Baby becomes thereafter a recurring metaphor in Mariann’s chronicle.
Mariann pursues this theme through the labyrinth of her family history. The metaphorical baby being saved varies with each episode. We witness strenuous, even heroic, efforts to save the family farm, wayward children, individual reputations, and the family’s collective self-concept. Baby-saving becomes an endless task for this family, which seems fundamentally compromised by its slaveholding past.
In Mariann’s view, America’s odious trade in human beings had far-reaching effects, not only on its practitioners and victims, but also on their descendants. Among the practitioners, guilt and fear were the chief burdens–guilt arising from an awareness of slavery’s intrinsic immorality, fear from a realization that numerically superior blacks could, if aroused, easily wipe out their white overseers. These two primal emotions lead to an endless and contradictory search for expiation and justification, as well as a need to display courage and cultivate physical strength.
Mariann’s research is impressive. Drawing on historical accounts, courthouse records, family papers, interviews, and correspondence, she traces the lives of her forebears as they wrestle with their complex family legacy. We meet strong-willed landowners and sharecroppers, an intrepid sheriff’s deputy, a missionary, teachers, and doctors. Augmenting her research with insightful analysis, Mariann draws on the writings of Montaigne, Alice Miller, Langston Hughes, Henry Louis Gates, and others to sketch an insightful and compelling theory of white racism and black resistance.
These last two qualities are in the end the most gratifying. While some writers and readers may see the memoir as a vehicle for catharsis, there is something overrated about blowing your stack, or having it blown for you. With her mix of deep research and keen analysis, scrupulous honesty and emotional restraint, my friend Mariann has created a moving account of one family’s experience with America’s peculiar institution.
Several people have read my family history in manuscript and asked for some sort of device to help them keep track of the characters and relationships. This request is understandable. The manuscript is crowded with characters. The narrative jumps between branches of the family and between generations. If you don’t already know our lineage, it can be hard to keep it all in mind. Continue reading
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