Why Trace Time?

In 2020 America, we are suffering from a great lack of historical knowledge. Perhaps you’ve seen the videos of journalists stopping people on the street to ask them questions about the history of the country in which they were born and raised. They find people who think the Civil War was fought in the 1950s, who can’t recognize or even name the first president, who think that Abraham Lincoln was a Democrat, who don’t know how many states there are, the list goes on and on…

Some might think that’s no big deal, that there’s no point in knowing useless facts like names and dates, and that names and dates is all history is about anyway. But an ignorance regarding names and dates is a sign of a greater ignorance. Admittedly, it’s not that important to know the exact date of a given historical event, but if someone can’t even assign the Declaration of Independence or World War II to the right century, then they have no understanding of the larger trajectory of the past that has led us to where we are today. And when it comes to names, we must remember that names are not just names; they are attached to people—people who lived as surely as you and I are living, who influenced the world around them, and whose legacy is still affecting today, whether we see it or not. 

History is not just names and dates. Studying history is essentially studying the story of humanity—what people have done, where they have gone, how they have lived and interacted with one another. It is the means by which we are able to make sense of our current context. A person with no knowledge of history is akin to an alien dropping into our world with absolutely no idea of how things work or how things got to be the way they are. If you’ve ever been to a different country (or in some cases to a different part of the United States), you might have noticed how different customs are based on the historical backgrounds of those places. Without an understanding of the historical background, the customs might seem odd, but with such an understanding, they become clearer.

We understand this on an individual level. We can look back at our own personal histories and see how our past has led to our present, how former experiences have shaped current perspectives, emotions, and actions. If you woke up tomorrow with complete amnesia, you’d struggle to know how to move forward because you would have no context for your life. In extrapolating that idea to a family or society, we can see how a knowledge of collective past experiences provides a grounding from which to approach current realities and step into the future. As we begin to understand the why behind certain customs or situations, we find ourselves becoming more empathetic because our perspective is an informed one. We are closer to knowing the whole story.

And that’s why having a knowledge of history is important and why the current historical ignorance is concerning. Some say the problem is that history is not being taught at all in schools any longer. Perhaps this is true in some cases. In other cases, what is called “history” is actually politicized, agenda-driven indoctrination. The powers-that-be decide what version of the story should be told, and that is the only picture the students receive unless they take the initiative to ask questions and find the answers themselves. In either case, we end up with a woefully ill-equipped citizenry. In the first case, we are left with sheer ignorance; in the latter, we are left with citizens who are only given half of the foundation they need to move forward (if that).    

One of the best antidotes to this lack of education, I believe, is to go to the source. In other words, if you want to know about George Washington or Booker T. Washington, read their own writings. If you want to know about a battle, read the official military accounts as well as diaries of soldiers who fought in it. And when reading what we call “secondary sources,” i.e. sources that are not written by eyewitnesses of an event, be mindful of any biases that the authors might have and see whether they cite their sources, and if so, what sources they cite.

Before we can even get to this point, though, there has to be an interest, a motivation to learn, an understanding that history is important and that—more than that—it’s often fun! And that’s one of the reasons I’ve begun the page Time Tracing: How to Engage with History on Facebook and Instagram. If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you might have picked up on the fact that I love history—like a lot—and have for as long as I can remember. This love of history turned into a more formal pursuit as I majored in history in college and decided to pursue work in the archival field. And it was in these settings that I gained an even greater appreciation of the importance of knowing about the past.

Now that I’m no longer working outside the home, I’ve decided to take my passion for history and my educational and professional training and turn it into something that will hopefully help inspire and equip others to learn more about their family’s and country’s history and motivate those in their circles of influence to do the same. There’s just something about learning about how people lived in different times and places from our own that inspires the imagination and stirs the intellect, especially when we can trace their time directly to our own.

If you’d like to learn more about history and genealogy, including how to learn more on your own, I invite you to like/follow Time Tracing on Facebook and Instagram: @time.tracing. I look forward to continuing to learn alongside you all!

PC: Keri-Lynn Paulson. Used with permission.