It is only through an unfolding of the people’s histories that a nation’s culture can be studied in its full meaning. Each discovered United States family history becomes a newly revealed small piece of American History. The history of a country is only the selected histories of all of its people. Alex Haley
In the opening paragraph of Vladamir Nobakov’s memoir, he states, “There is a common sense that tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. In the context of cosmic and human history, each life is but the briefest flash of an eternal strobe light -- so brief that it may be little noted nor long remembered.” However, when each crack of human light is linked with other little cracks of human light, they illuminate the history of the world, the history of America and the histories of our families. Our own little crack of light is the sum of all those little cracks of light that have flashed before.
A new century and a new millennium begins. The end of a century signifies the closing of a volume of ongoing history, each word written by the thousands of people who lived it, each year forming a paragraph, each decade forming a chapter, ten chapters in all, each with a title, and then bound together as The History of the Century. For whatever reason, the turning of the calendar at the end of a century always seems to serve as an eternal beacon for the history of the world -- a turning point. At the end of the eighteenth century, America was a feisty child reaching out to find itself. The country’s geography and institutions were still incomplete and unexplored. The end of the nineteenth century found America rapidly migrating from an agricultural economy to an industrial economy brought about by technical innovation and invention. America had survived the brutal war with itself and had begun to think that it had a “Manifest Destiny” to spread its great experiment to others in the world that needed our salvation. With the backdrop of our piece of the twentieth century firmly embedded in our memories, we can only wonder what the next hundred years might bring. It is a positive act to look to the future, but it is a mistake to not look to the past, for it is on those bricks of history that America and its citizens will build the future.
The study of history is too often seen as a boring recitation of events, dates and bigger than life people that must be committed to memory in order to pass a test. This approach leaves history in a fading light, too weak to illuminate the richness of its human stories. The lives of ordinary people are often seen as statistical data on genealogy charts, government records or weathered tombstones in ancient graveyards -- born, married, died, buried. The cold facts of our life’s journey are linear, but we don’t live our lives that way. At best, life is a jagged journey filled with turning points. Turning points can be viewed as fate, destiny or simply part of God’s plan for us. Their true meaning can only be assessed after time has passed. These points in our lives can be good or bad, fulfilling or disappointing, lucky or unlucky, and sometimes hidden in a closet. It is the human stories behind the statistics that are the living history of America, our families and us. Our ancestors, both living and dead, are or were real people and elements of their blood rush through us. Our ancestors, just as we are, were good and bad, tragic and triumphant, adventurous and mundane, warriors and pacifists, leaders and followers, dads and moms, brothers and sisters and grandpas and grandmas. The history of America is forever interwoven with individual stories of its people.
Not the end. The beginning.
Sam
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