COUNTERCLOCKWISE

I don’t know whether “Circles” attracted so much comment because of people googling or whether these were readers all along. I’m thrilled to have found another cousin! Fascinating that what started out to be about the descendants of the volatile and opinionated Archibald Strachan has gradually moved over to being the story of the seven Scots Welsh sisters! The marriages of those “girls” turned out to determine the fortunes and locations of descendants for generations.

There are both celebrations and cautions when doing this sort of thing -- as any genealogist or biographer could tell you. Take, for instance, the first marriage of Bob Scriver (biography now listed on Amazon: “Bronze Inside and Out: A Biographical Memoir of Bob Scriver”). In the beginning, years ago, I sent known relatives copies of my rough drafts to figure out what their reactions would be. I found out in short order: a threatened lawsuit! The descendants of that first wife from a second marriage were convinced that their mother had been grievously wronged and any implication on my part of an alternative explanation was going to be contested. The facts were that she was 19, a junior in high school (which suggests she had lost some credits somewhere - she was not a scholar) and he was 23 when she became pregnant. They married 11-20-38 and their daughter was born 6-19-38. Whether Bob took advantage of a student (he WAS her teacher) or she entrapped him for the sake of escaping school, is open to interpretation. Likewise, most of what happened to that branch from there on is controversial. And troubled.

The sexual revolution, which no longer comes down so hard on babies out of wedlock or even multiple relationships, has meant that what was once shameful and life-changing is now handled in a much more casual way. If the ordinary scandals of long-ago are far enough in the past to have no living interested party, telling about them might be safe. But opinions and guesses become even more foggy and must be identified as uncertain unless there are legally recorded facts like divorce decrees, death certificates, and birth certificates. I think of about 1950 forward as a good place to stop unless I have proof.

One of my most important tools has been a time-line. Indeed, the photo albums plus a memoir by an uncle have been very helpful in figuring out what happened when and where among the Strachans, especially after they left the prairies and came to Oregon. As a previous genealogist of one family branch, the Finneys, was careful to record, the macro-history of the nation, the weather, and planetary politics also suggest how to interpret what happened. I try to record the history of the Blackeet tribe as well as some of their members and fellow-travelers and had never really thought about the impact of things like locust plagues or the dust bowl on the willingness of Congress to fulfill treaties -- but the unwillingness to funnel money to reservations when white homesteaders were starving was very clear.

Now, of course, one of the driving forces of researching one’s family is genetics. It’s clear that on both of my parents’ “sides” there are wandering threads of depression/alcoholism/hot temper and the like which trace back into the family origins in Britain. (Red hair!!) My cousins and I also think about the differences in the fortunes of the second generation couples (we’re the third) and how that will play out in our children. (Not mine. I was careful to have none, not being willing to pass on my own temperament to children or subject them to it, either, though Bob’s grandchildren had to put up with me for several summers.)

To use myself for a relatively safe example, my father -- thought to have a lot of brainpower and being the only grad school MA -- was a Scot. He was fairly steady and patient -- quite an entertainer in company -- until he was overloaded and then he was pretty scary en famille. He married a woman more English and Irish who had been forced to break off her college years because of the Depression. He made his living by traveling, which meant she was left alone like a political wife. She was fiery, competitive, a hard-worker, and made vulnerable by the cancer death of her mother when my mother was a young wife. In terms of achievement, I got contradictory patterns and capacities: on the one hand the introspection and literary aspirations of a Scot -- on the other hand confused ideas of conformity mixed with public status.

In general, the present cannot be grasped very well, not even the recent past. And the impact of misadventure and war are hard to assess. A great-uncle on each side of my family was badly damaged by service in the Philippines. Both wandered off into alcoholism and homelessness just like Vietnam and Iraq veterans. There is no surviving explanation of efforts to help either one of them. Evidently the strategy of choice was to seal them off so they wouldn’t contaminate or weigh-down the rest of the family.

My father’s uncle’s son completed a methodical and elaborate chart of all the people he knew of and he was careful to pass that on to younger people. I’m looking for younger family members who can happily receive all this stuff. The best thing about the timing is that now I can easily make duplicate copies and post versions online so that family members way out there on the edge can find them and join up with them, always a joyous thing to do.

But there is a dark side, too. Because Bob Scriver was famous, people have claimed relationship and privilege in his name when they were not at all entitled. Mighty pesky and sometimes verging on the criminal.

Another worrisome aspect is trying to understand the difference between modest discretion and self-serving secrecy. I’ve learned not to post some photos or some knowledge because people about whom I care become scalded and very angry, just because it is public -- nothing shameful or embarrassing. Often things that I think are funny and charming. There are common-knowledge and often-told stories here on the reservation or in the local small towns, some of them QUITE true, that could NOT be put in blogs without the blogger getting punched. But at the other end is the idea that knowing hidden genetic relationships, discovering lost information, admitting long-kept secrets, can have a healing effect.

Telling family stories is a matter for some serious reflection. Ask Strom Thurmond. Or, well, Thomas Jefferson!