One of the great things about family history is getting to know the people who came before you. Even if you can't meet them in person, you can learn so much about their lives and personalities through stories, photos, documents, and other material.
Sometimes what you learn isn't what you expect. What do you do when you find out your ancestor was kind of a shitty person?
Of course, I've known for a long time at least one of my ancestors was kind of a dick. I've written numerous times about my hunt for Loren Finch and the eventual discovery that he changed his name and started a new life (and family) just one state over. That's old news, but his character was never really the question. Loren left in 1909, so there was a solid century of people knowing and understanding that he was a deadbeat dad - even if his second family has a different opinion.
In recent years, I've come to learn that a more recent ancestor, one whose time on this Earth overlapped with mine by more than a decade, was probably not the best mother or grandmother, and certainly not the best wife.
My great-grandmother had six children and lived to be 96. I was very close to her daughter (my grandmother), and was always fascinated by the fact her mother lived such a long life. She was actually the last of my great-grandparents to pass away when I was 10 1/2, and though I was old enough to remember it clearly, we never met. She lived in Arizona and being in Iowa I never traveled her way - not until she had long since passed.
I think this missed connection is what made me want to know so much about her. I kept thinking about what we could have talked about and how much I could have learned from someone born in 1898. Of course, I thought of these things in my 30s, not thinking about the fact a 10-year-old wouldn't know what to even ask.
Because of this mild obsession (a sub-obsession of my greater genealogy mania), I have pushed hard to find photos, to meet cousins, the uncover documents that tell me more about her life. Through that process I've learned a lot about her and the relationships she had with people around her. The general consensus has been this: She wasn't a great lady.
That's over-simplifying it. She was complicated. She was a product of circumstance. She probably wasn't someone who should have been a mother, though I'm glad she was for obvious reasons. Her own children and grandchildren have told me stories and called her names that would make most people blush - especially talking about your grandmother. How often do you hear that your great aunt called her mother a slut?
Anyone who is interested in family history has to understand that this is part of the deal. You can't go digging around in ancient history without expecting some dirt. You can't expect your ancestors to be Mary Poppins and Santa Claus every time.
This is why I always say I'm a family historian and not a genealogist. I am working to find the whole picture of the person. The stories alone about my great-grandmother tell me she was a bristly woman who shipped her kids off the relatives while she went bed hopping, then pitted them against each other in later years. The facts tell me she was the daughter of German immigrants who got pregnant at 17, married the baby's father when 8 months pregnant, and worked many jobs while her husband was in and out of work as a blacksmith.
Usually the stories are what bring context to the facts, but in this case I feel it's the opposite. The facts of her life help explain some of the stories. She was a young girl thrown into marriage and motherhood too soon. This complicated her relationship with her husband and children. Who knows what might have happened if she had married for love? Maybe she would have been the same person whose grandchildren describe her as "gruff" and someone they didn't really like. Or maybe not.
I could ponder the question forever, but there's no way to find an answer. The best I can do is keep learning, keep asking, and keep striving to understand the woman who was, not the woman who could have been.
