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Published on 11/10/1999 All articles from this issue

Searching for your roots? Get a life

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By David MacKenzie

Commentary

A popular pastime these days seems to be grubbing around old records searching for long-dead relatives. What ever happened to more jolly time-wasting venues like gold fish swallowing, pole sitting and marathon dancing? Well, the media loves it. Front page of Time just weeks ago. Then Tom Brokaw on TV blubbering about his humble beginnings and hard-working, honest ancestors. Nary a serial killer or accordion player in the bunch. So. what's the harm in a bit of root searching?

Plenty, I say. Remembering too much of who we are and why we are only causes trouble. It's a fact that is hard to refute: the major causes of death, destruction,wars, and hatred against man have been either race or religion and sometimes both. How else to account for the recent ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, where centuries have not erased memories of past bloodbaths and a need for revenge. Even more depressing is the almost daily killing of men, women and children in Ireland whose slaughter is based partly on religious differences. Between two Christian faiths? You must be kidding.

I feel somewhat smug in the fact that my relatives gave up killing each other some time ago. (Thrifty Scots discovered that wars cost money and better use could be found for a hard earned ha'penny bit.) But the scars of clan against clan linger. Take the incident at Glencoe in the year 1692. There, 38 members of Clan MacDonald were slaughtered in their beds by a Captain Robert Campbell. A friend of mine was recently the guest of a man named MacDonald. Making small talk, she mentioned her Scottish blood from an ancestor named Campbell. Hearing this, the host rose and said no relative of a Campbell was welcome in his house. He was not serious but she said the response made her feel somewhat uncomfortable.

Closer to home, think what root digging can cause. Say your wife, after a day of digging, says "Dear, did you know a relative of mine was murdered at Glencoe by a Campbell?" "Hey," says you, " Wait 'til I tell neighbor Angus Campbell about this." He does, at a neighborhood garage sale. Campbell resents being called a murderer. He picks up a baseball bat and bops his neighbor on the head, a blow requiring stitches and a blow ending a long friendship.

Want a couple of more "supposes"?

The kindly parson of a small Midwestern church began a root search. It turned up a large number of relatives who staged clever bank heists and evaded the law but no men of the cloth. With his church poorer than its mice, the good man turned his genes into bank robbing. His heists were amazingly clever and financially rewarding. He made the FBI's most wanted list, but by that time he'd fled to a South American country with no extradition laws and lived happily ever after.

Then there was the lady who joined a group of root-seeking peers who met each week to discuss kin-findings. Fascinating stuff: a relative who trimmed Rasputin's beard; a man who shoed King George's ponies; a page-turner for Chopin.

And what about our subject's kin? Disaster: a ship captain who saved his own life while passengers drowned, leading to a court martial; a soldier whose rifle accidentally discharged during battle killing his commanding officer; a great-uncle whose fantasy diamond mines left many a widow penniless.

Too ashamed to report her kin to others, she became a recluse, refusing to answer the door bell and ordering her groceries through the Web. Are you touched by these tales? Me, too.

Then we must also have to deal with folk who want to return to their roots. Like the Northwest Indians who recently went on a whale hunt because that is what their ancestors did. Aided by high-powered rifles, not available to the ancestors, they got the poor beast.

Using this same reasoning, are kin of the Donner party entitled to go back to their roots where cannibalism was a need? Root-searching might help here.

Make sure no Donner descendant invites you to dinner. Or for dinner. That's food for thought.

Dave MacKenzie, a Los Altos Hills resident, co-founded the Town Crier in 1947. He continually looks to author Alex Haley for inspiration.