Why Genealogy?By Chester Jacob Teller Human lineage knows no limits, either future or past; but the genealogist deals necessarily with a definite segment of time. Of the record that follows, the boundaries are the beginning of a century and its end. The century is the period 1842 to 1942. It is not arbitrarily chosen. It is the first hundred years of the Teller family in America. As compiler of this record, I am aware of the brevity of its span; but the restricted task that I assumed satisfies me. One need not swim the length of a stream to know the temperature of its water or the force of its flow. It is sufficient to immerse one’s self in it and remain immersed a while. Throughout the past two years during which the making of this genealogy engaged me, I gleaned experiences enough to discover the recompense of research of this kind. I begin to understand how much of our life is involved in its three most crucial moments – birth, marriage and death. I feel how swift is our turbulent course, how even the longest lifetime unrolls like a film of a photoplay. But I see also that, though men and women pass, a family remains, embodied in every generation by a few contemporaries, its name and game upheld by these – cousins – brothers and sisters of the blood, hearing (as I do now) its imperious, mysterious call. A chronicle of this character is essentially a cousin chronicle. Of the six hundred and eighty names [as of 1944] herein, a fraction only are other than cousins. Thus, of these names, two only are the names of my great grandparents; another two are of my grandparents; still another two of my parents. Five names are the names of my children and children-in-law and five of my grandchildren. Two names are those of my brother and me, two others, the names of my wife and his. Thirty names will account for uncles, aunts, nephews and nieces. The remaining six hundred-odd are cousins – cousins to me and to one another. Here are facts too little confronted and too little valued. A man has but one father and but one mother. He has, shall we say, a dozen brothers and sisters, perhaps a maximum of fifty uncles and aunts and another fifty nephews and nieces. But cousins he can count by scores. Yet what does he make of them? Surely no waste of natural resources compares with this mutual indifference among people whose ancestries somewhere converge on a grandfather and a grandmother. Presumably of one brood, they straightway proceed to disintegrate, often for reasons the most trivial or for no reason at all. Kinship they do not lack. What fails them is the cohesiveness that kinship presupposes. Teller Family in America is in no sense a biographical catalog of Tellers. Such a purpose (and indeed all similar) is alien to the spirit of this inquiry. In this roster not even occupations are noted. For the way by which a man earns his livelihood, no matter how admirably, is but one aspect of what is often a many-sided person. To label this one a lawyer and that one a merchant or mechanic serves no necessary end. Moreover it would be invidious toward our women, since, until recently, many of our most solid and best, went through life, like most females of their class, without vocations other than those of mother and wife. Therefore this investigation has been confined almost entirely to genealogical data and their major implication – the fact and function of kin. The function of kin is often neglected and sometimes overlooked. Yet what is so puissant for personality and the abundant life? When we speak of family and family background, that which, above all, we ought to have in mind is the kind and degree of mutual affection that the family generates. A family blue-book with a celebrity on every other page has indeed much to commend it. But the true worth of a family is not to be reckoned so, The secret of family character is expressed in the word “community”. As families approach high standards of kinship, they develop – in the best sense of the term. Here we strike the hardpan of the matter; here we discover the use of genealogic research. Genealogy may aid history, vex philosophy or support religion, but its high purpose and goal, put simply, is fellowship. What the genealogist seeks is full expression of community in society’s most enduring institution – the family; an institution more humane than the state and more divine than the church. In the family all good things are naturally at work – unselfish love, reverence for the past, concern for the future, devotion to tradition, beneficent indoctrination, the sharing of food, shelter and other material things, in-bred sense of community. No agency or institution ever devised is half so potent as the family for the custody and transmission of mankind’s ideals. The genealogist knows that. He responds to it. The tables that follow will be scanned doubtless as the genealogical documents that they are. Let historians extract and philosophers expatiate as they will. But let no man disregard these evidences of family community. For they will be rightly understood only in terms of family sentiment and solidarity. Only family feeling gave the impetus and only the sense of family motivated the needed collaboration. Nevertheless, despite painstaking work on the part of many, these lists are still incomplete. Some data could not be gotten because men and women who once could have supplied them are gone, leaving no record behind them. Other data are lacking primarily because of apathy; in some instances, even mild opposition. In this respect, the Teller clan is like many another. Almost every genealogist tells a similar story. Possibly there were good reasons for the indifference that sometimes slowed the work, but they were not allowed permanently to obstruct it. The business was far too challenging. At any rate, it was on this premise that I began and continued with results that are now pleasantly revealing. If it be a matter for regret that some statistics are missing (possibly a few names as well) it is not a major regret. For even were this story definitive, it would still be of but a century in the long succession of the family life. Let us remember that we of today are not the Teller family entire. Its foreground of fathers and mothers extending to the dawn of things is another section, while our children, including those we shall beget and those we shall take for begetting, constitute still another. As has been said, these preliminaries bring us to date. Possibly in a generation or two, some son or daughter will bring it to date again. To him or her let me now say this word, by way both of conclusion and salute: “As my work has rewarded me, so yours will reward you. And, if, between my day and yours, aided, it may be, by this gentle start, the fellow-feeling latent in our family should grandly assert itself, your work will be as blossom to the seed which I have sown.”
“Kadimah”
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