Past is present in genealogy

Following solid genealogical methodology, Jackson begins by researching herself and her parents. She finds obstacles all along the way: “I never found anything that proved I was married, a sad fact demonstrating that it doesn’t necessarily take decades or centuries for records to become lost.’’ While interviewing her chatty, highly religious Aunt Mary, Jackson brings a long list of questions only to find that “you can ask your relatives to talk to you, and they might talk, but not necessarily about the things you had in mind.’’ Her Alabama relatives, she learns, loathe her liberal, pro-Obama politics.

Jackson’s narrative moves back and forth from her own search to a “big picture’’ focus on the subculture of genealogy, with its legions of societies, websites, and archival resources. She jumps feet first into this subculture during an ocean cruise whose main attraction is access to world-renowned genealogists, including David Lambert of the New England Historic Genealogical Society. During his talk, Lambert asks the cruising genealogists how far back they can trace their family tree. While the author goes back to the 19th century, many of her shipmates proudly trace their families back to the 17th century: “This was the first time I witnessed the game of genealogical one-upmanship.’’

Talking to her divorced mother and father, Jackson traces her maternal line back to Russia, a country her Jewish grandparents fled due to czarist-era anti-Semitism. On her father’s side, she traces the family back to the deep South and the Alabama of her grandfather’s youth. She’ll find Confederate soldiers in her family, and slave-owners, too. Throughout, Jackson just keeps digging, following leads wherever they take her.