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Forgetting Fathers: Untold Stories from an Orphaned Past

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How do our family histories shape who we are, and what can they reveal about our past and ourselves? David Marshall delves into a personal detective story that uncovers the mysterious histories of his ancestors through a richly detailed exploration of archival records and family lore.

Image courtesy of interviewee. November 22, 2024

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This video is a talk by a scholar who specializes in 18th-century fiction, aesthetics, and moral philosophy, with a focus on autobiography and the early novel. The speaker discusses their personal project related to their family's history, particularly the search for their ancestral origins and the complexities surrounding their family name, Marshall, which was believed to have been Americanized from an immigrant name.

The narrative intertwines themes from 18th-century literature, particularly the motifs of orphans and the quest for identity, with the speaker's exploration of their grandfather's past. They reflect on the impact of familial loss, heritage, and the act of uncovering personal and historical narratives through archival research.

The speaker undertakes a detective-like approach to their genealogical search, emphasizing how personal histories can be inscribed in public records. They share insights about using archives, the challenges of immigrant identity, and how personal stories connect to larger social histories.

The book they discuss, titled "Forgetting Fathers," emerges as a blend of literary nonfiction, detective story, and memoir, illustrating the author's journey through grief and the quest for understanding lost heritage. The narrative portrays a complex interplay of memory, historical context, and the process of writing as an act of mourning, culminating in a reflection on the legacies of forgotten fathers and the stories that shape personal identity.

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Am a scholar of 18th century fiction and aesthetics

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and moral philosophy.

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And I've been particularly interested in my work,

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in the kind of genre of autobiography in the 18th century

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novel and in the 19th century novel as well.

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And so I've been very interested in

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what I sometimes describe as the fictions of autobiography

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and the way that the early novel was always written in the

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first person, as a memoir,

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and often presented as an actual memoir as opposed

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to a, a novel.

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But I ended up getting involved in this particular,

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book, which had to do with a search

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for my own origin, so to speak.

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Um, I was very much sort of informed by

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that whole, history of the 18th century novel,

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which itself is often about orphans.

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It often talks about, problems

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of genealogy.

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Um, often, you know, 18th century French or,

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or British novel will begin with an,

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a child found in a carriage and with the parents killed.

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And, there's, you know, there's sort of this mystery

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of whether the child is of noble blood or, or, or not.

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Um, and very often the novels are about the search

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for origins or about the kind of invention of the self.

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And in the 18th century, that invention

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of the self was also related to the kind of rise

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of the middle class and a kind of new sense of, of,

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of class mobility.

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Um, interestingly, the genealogy of the novel itself is kind

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of inscribed in some of these personal stories

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because the novel was seen as a kind

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of illegitimate genre.

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It was not seen as, literature per se.

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Um, so all of those questions were very much kind of,

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in my mind and in my history as I started to think about

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another story of origins

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and of, kind of construction of, of the self

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and trying to solve some of the, the mysteries of,

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of my own, past my father, my grandfather,

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my grand great-grandfather.

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I thought a lot about the question of genre.

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I think that broadly construed, you could say

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that this was a work of literary nonfiction.

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Um, it is autobiographical,

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but it's not really so much about my life.

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It's really,

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in some ways it's autobiographical in the sense

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that it's about this particular search.

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Um, so I,

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don't give a lot of details about my own life,

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but I'm very much as I am,

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Undertaking what is kind of a detective story,

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which I guess is another relevant genre to,

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to what the book is.

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It's part history, part detective story.

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It's also about my own quest, my own search.

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And it has a lot of reflections on, that process.

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And I, in many ways try to dramatize,

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not just the facts of what I've, what I'm uncovering,

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but the search itself and what it means to go in archives

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and to try to reconstruct a past from documents.

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I guess I should say that the book has its origins

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in a mystery about our family name.

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So I grew up, you know, with the name David Marshall,

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and I knew, my, my father's father,

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my grandfather had died before I was born, shortly

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before I was born.

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And so I was named after him, which is part of the,

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the Jewish tradition.

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Um, and, I was told that

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Marshall was not really the, the family name,

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because, it was very common

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for immigrant names, foreign names to be Americanized.

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Sometimes that would happen at Ellis Island,

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even if the people didn't know it

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or wanted it to be happening,

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because some, you know,

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immigration agent would just change

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the spelling of their name.

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But this was a time when people were not necessarily proud

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of their past and their background,

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but very much wanted to kind of become Americanized.

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But when I asked my, father

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and my grandfather, well, what was the name

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before it was Marshall, they said they didn't know.

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And I found that very strange in a way.

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I said, you mean you never asked your father

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or your husband what the name had been?

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And they said, well,

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he had been in an orphanage when he was young,

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and he didn't like to talk about the past

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and know they had never asked.

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So periodically I would begin,

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to, to look.

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Um, this was even before kind of ancestry.com

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and family history and genealogy became really popular,

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and I always hit dead ends.

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I never could, could find it, but then I would go back

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and look again.

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And after my father died,

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I think I became particularly, invested in this

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quest for some reason.

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But I also became very interested, perhaps in my own kind

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of acts of mourning in thinking about what it meant

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for my grandfather to have

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lost his father when he was, you know, 10 or 11

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and be sent to an orphanage.

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Um, so that's really what kind of led me.

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And eventually it was intellectually interesting to me.

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It was personally interesting to me,

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but it also became a kind of obsession in a way

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that I was compelled

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To pursue.

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I mean, often in my scholarship,

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I sometimes get involved in these detective stories

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of trying to understand what author, read another author

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and, you know, to uncover some

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of the historical context of, of something.

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But in this case, I think I did get very kind of intrigued

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by, these questions and,

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and the kind of, historical

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detective work in trying to uncover them.

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But I do think that, you know, it, you know,

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the book is called Forgetting Fathers,

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and I did become very interested in the loss of fathers

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in remembering fathers.

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And then more and more kind of intrigued in the question

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of why this family history was actually repressed,

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not just forgotten,

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but, repressed in in some ways that this was a past

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that they didn't want to remember.

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I did a fair amount of, of archival work when I could.

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Um, I live in California.

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A lot of these records were, in New York

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and the New York Public Library,

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but also in the, center for, for Jewish history.

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And my grandfather

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and his brothers had been

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in a very well-known orphanage called the Hebrew Orphan

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Asylum of New York.

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And I discovered that all

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of their archives were in the center for,

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for Jewish history, collection.

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So when I could, I did travel there,

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and eventually I did uncover some important, documents.

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But I started this in the years

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after, the kind of Google Books project began

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to digitize a lot of material.

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And, there's kind of an interesting history in

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that project too, because when they began that

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and they began to partner with a lot of,

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university libraries and,

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and public libraries, they had to have books

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that were in the public domain, not under copyright,

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but also of a certain size and shape

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because of the scanning machines that they had at that time.

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And it turns out that a lot of the books

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that were digitized from university libraries

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and New York Public Librarian

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and other places around the country were, kind

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of public documents.

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And in the early years of, the,

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the 20th century, around the turn of, of,

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of the last century,

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there was a huge social reform movement,

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particularly in New York,

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but elsewhere, where the state really tried to

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regulate, sweatshops, factories,

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orphan asylums, sanitariums.

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Um, and part of that was an almost kind

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of French bureaucratic effort to document

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and inventory everything.

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And I discovered that there were all of these reports,

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annual reports, the report of the factory inspector

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of the State of New York, reports on,

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what were called, lunacy,

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a Asylums.

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Um, and all of those books had been digitized

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because they just happened to be convenient.

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So since I couldn't,

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because of my work, my, as a professor

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and an administrator, I didn't have time

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to just spend a year

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or two traveling around looking at archives.

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I would often late at night find these, reports.

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Um, and then of course, ancestry

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and the, also the, family search,

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archives of the, latter Day Saints,

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and newspapers more

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and more became, became digitized as well.

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So a combination of old fashioned archival work,

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but also a huge amount of material just then beginning

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to show up on the internet.

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But it took a lot of detective work also

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because you couldn't, it wasn't obvious how

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to find these things or even what the search terms would be,

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and they often weren't searchable.

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You often had to kind of look through thousands of pages

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of A PDF and try to figure out where something might be.

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I became very interested in how the personal

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was inscribed in the public and in the historical.

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So, you know, I've done research on

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what we would now describe as famous authors, you know,

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George Elliot or Adam Smith,

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or, you know, others like that.

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And so there are papers, there are archives,

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but here I was searching for forgotten people

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who were ordinary people.

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They were, they have no archives per se.

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They were not historical figures.

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So I became very interested in how much one could find,

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and some of the reports

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and documents that I was mentioning, you know, as well

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as birth certificates, marriage certificates,

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death certificates and things like that, how much the,

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you could find the, the,

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these personal stories inscribed in the public record.

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And every record I found, like a birth certificate

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or a death certificate turned out to be a document

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that one could read almost like a literary text,

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not in the sense of, you know, trying

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to make up interpretations,

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but I became very interested in every name that was there,

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the name of a witness on a marriage certificate, the name

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of the doctor on the death certificate

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of my great-grandfather.

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And, that turned out to be a key,

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which opened up multiple other stories.

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So the, the other thing that I,

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then got involved with was trying to understand

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what historical context was needed

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to understand the personal story.

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So I did a lot of research on the Taylor Strike

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of 1894 on the Lower East Side in New York,

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and, you know, labor history, history of psychiatry.

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Um, so those personal stories then opened up into larger

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social, stories that I needed to unpack in order

240
00:12:09.805 --> 00:12:14.245
to understand, what the experience

241
00:12:14.245 --> 00:12:16.645
of my great-grandfather and his family would've been.

242
00:12:16.705 --> 00:12:19.925
You're dealing with, public records

243
00:12:20.435 --> 00:12:23.405
that are scattered about, you have to find clues.

244
00:12:23.865 --> 00:12:25.805
And then one of the challenges in particular

245
00:12:25.835 --> 00:12:27.485
with immigrants is that

246
00:12:29.285 --> 00:12:31.025
not only did people change their names,

247
00:12:31.645 --> 00:12:33.825
but there was no standardized spelling,

248
00:12:34.325 --> 00:12:37.065
no standardized trans transliteration.

249
00:12:37.765 --> 00:12:40.505
Um, so part of the challenge of my trying

250
00:12:40.505 --> 00:12:42.785
to find the original family name was

251
00:12:42.785 --> 00:12:45.905
that it was spelled about 12 different ways,

252
00:12:46.295 --> 00:12:48.305
even under the best of of circumstances,

253
00:12:48.645 --> 00:12:53.145
and often misspelled with the wrong first, initial.

254
00:12:53.505 --> 00:12:56.265
I had to develop sort of ways of searching

255
00:12:56.565 --> 00:12:58.065
for those things as well.

256
00:12:58.685 --> 00:13:01.985
Um, so it was a particular, kind

257
00:13:01.985 --> 00:13:05.225
of unstable category when you're, you know,

258
00:13:05.225 --> 00:13:08.105
when you're looking at that experience of immigrant at

259
00:13:08.105 --> 00:13:11.825
that time, when again, the state is just beginning to try

260
00:13:11.825 --> 00:13:15.025
to document, all of this, whereas, you know,

261
00:13:15.045 --> 00:13:17.665
in the 18th century, it was a lot easier for people

262
00:13:17.725 --> 00:13:20.665
to change their names and make up new identities

263
00:13:20.725 --> 00:13:21.865
and reinvent themselves.

264
00:13:22.445 --> 00:13:23.865
Um, but at, but,

265
00:13:23.965 --> 00:13:26.025
but here, so I became interested in, you know,

266
00:13:26.225 --> 00:13:28.185
when were the first driver's licenses

267
00:13:28.235 --> 00:13:29.345
instituted in New York?

268
00:13:29.375 --> 00:13:31.545
Well, it was actually right around this time,

269
00:13:32.205 --> 00:13:35.825
and you know, today we have photocopy machines, not

270
00:13:35.825 --> 00:13:39.785
to mention, you know, scanning and, and documents.

271
00:13:40.005 --> 00:13:42.625
And at that time, you know, people didn't have a copy

272
00:13:42.645 --> 00:13:43.985
of their birth certificate.

273
00:13:43.985 --> 00:13:47.465
They didn't have a copy of, of, of any

274
00:13:47.465 --> 00:13:48.505
of those documents.

275
00:13:48.965 --> 00:13:53.505
So you, it was just a, a, a moment when the state,

276
00:13:53.765 --> 00:13:57.905
was really trying to, to sort

277
00:13:57.905 --> 00:13:59.185
of keep track of things.

278
00:13:59.185 --> 00:14:03.825
Whereas today, of course, you know, everything is, is,

279
00:14:03.925 --> 00:14:06.185
is documented with identity checks

280
00:14:06.245 --> 00:14:09.345
and social security numbers and passwords and all of that.

281
00:14:09.565 --> 00:14:14.535
My grandfather, was, from

282
00:14:15.415 --> 00:14:17.815
a family with five children.

283
00:14:18.315 --> 00:14:22.625
And, well, he had, right,

284
00:14:22.625 --> 00:14:24.465
there were three boys and, and two girls.

285
00:14:25.005 --> 00:14:28.265
And the youngest was born after his father died.

286
00:14:29.005 --> 00:14:32.185
And, his mother couldn't take care

287
00:14:32.325 --> 00:14:34.625
of the children when the father died.

288
00:14:35.205 --> 00:14:37.465
So they were sent to this Hebrew orphan asylum.

289
00:14:38.045 --> 00:14:42.585
Um, and in fact, at that orphan asylum, about 70%

290
00:14:42.585 --> 00:14:45.185
of the children there had a living parent,

291
00:14:45.485 --> 00:14:47.385
but they were there because they were indigent,

292
00:14:47.385 --> 00:14:49.825
and they couldn't, the, the families couldn't,

293
00:14:49.935 --> 00:14:51.025
take, take care of them.

294
00:14:51.745 --> 00:14:55.325
But I also then uncovered that it wasn't simply

295
00:14:55.915 --> 00:15:00.085
that the father died and they were destitute,

296
00:15:00.145 --> 00:15:04.365
but it appeared that the father died in a sanitarium

297
00:15:04.785 --> 00:15:06.525
for nervous disorders.

298
00:15:07.065 --> 00:15:10.845
Um, and that's where my kind of research on, you know,

299
00:15:10.875 --> 00:15:14.365
what was called lunacy, you know, began

300
00:15:14.785 --> 00:15:18.525
and I began to reconstruct a kind of tumultuous past

301
00:15:19.065 --> 00:15:20.485
of the father,

302
00:15:20.945 --> 00:15:24.445
and, to imagine that there had been a,

303
00:15:24.805 --> 00:15:29.405
a very difficult family history where, the,

304
00:15:29.625 --> 00:15:34.205
the history of the father was perhaps scandalous,

305
00:15:34.355 --> 00:15:35.485
disgraceful, but,

306
00:15:35.625 --> 00:15:39.885
or at least traumatic enough, that no one really wanted

307
00:15:39.985 --> 00:15:43.645
to, to remember it had been working on this, project

308
00:15:44.185 --> 00:15:47.805
on and off, you know, for some years, just as a kind

309
00:15:47.805 --> 00:15:49.165
of occasional hobby.

310
00:15:49.775 --> 00:15:51.205
After my father died,

311
00:15:51.805 --> 00:15:54.925
I did find myself drawn towards it more.

312
00:15:55.465 --> 00:15:58.845
And I mean, I think that probably when I really

313
00:15:59.405 --> 00:16:01.285
discovered I was writing a book,

314
00:16:01.315 --> 00:16:03.565
because at some point I was doing the research

315
00:16:03.905 --> 00:16:05.325
and I just started writing.

316
00:16:05.705 --> 00:16:08.245
And the book begins by picturing the scene

317
00:16:08.545 --> 00:16:12.925
of my grandfather, in the orphanage receiving a Bible,

318
00:16:13.335 --> 00:16:17.245
which I inherited that has that name on it,

319
00:16:17.665 --> 00:16:20.485
and trying to reconstruct that scene,

320
00:16:21.065 --> 00:16:24.245
and, trying to imagine his experience.

321
00:16:25.025 --> 00:16:29.165
And so when I really realized I was writing a book

322
00:16:29.185 --> 00:16:30.965
and then started doing it in earnest

323
00:16:30.965 --> 00:16:35.005
and really trying to, to work on it, as much as I could,

324
00:16:35.605 --> 00:16:37.365
I began to realize that it also

325
00:16:37.385 --> 00:16:38.725
was a kind of act of mourning.

326
00:16:38.985 --> 00:16:42.885
And then in some ways, the book was about lost fathers

327
00:16:42.885 --> 00:16:44.925
and forgotten fathers,

328
00:16:45.335 --> 00:16:47.805
forgetting fathers, remembering fathers.

329
00:16:48.265 --> 00:16:49.885
Um, so I began to realize,

330
00:16:50.885 --> 00:16:55.485
I suppose one could say perhaps it's an over simplification,

331
00:16:55.795 --> 00:16:59.605
that there was some therapeutic aspect for me in writing it.

332
00:16:59.985 --> 00:17:01.325
But I do think,

333
00:17:01.345 --> 00:17:03.405
but it was something that I became interested in

334
00:17:03.825 --> 00:17:07.405
as I was writing how the book itself was an act of,

335
00:17:07.505 --> 00:17:11.285
of mourning, and it begins in the orphanage, at

336
00:17:11.285 --> 00:17:14.325
what today we, we would call a bar mitzvah, where,

337
00:17:14.415 --> 00:17:18.045
where my grandfather is presented, a bible

338
00:17:18.075 --> 00:17:20.045
that has his name on it.

339
00:17:20.065 --> 00:17:22.005
And that itself was a kind of mystery,

340
00:17:22.345 --> 00:17:25.885
and the book ends in a cemetery where I was trying

341
00:17:25.885 --> 00:17:29.005
to find the grave of my great-grandfather.

342
00:17:29.585 --> 00:17:34.565
Um, and, so it, really all of that, you know, kind

343
00:17:34.565 --> 00:17:37.965
of, experience of death and,

344
00:17:38.065 --> 00:17:41.085
and mourning is inscribed in the,

345
00:17:41.265 --> 00:17:42.725
the writing of the book itself.

346
00:17:43.245 --> 00:17:45.965
I do hope that the story itself is interesting

347
00:17:46.665 --> 00:17:48.525
and, I,

348
00:17:49.385 --> 00:17:52.155
When I published the book, I was invited

349
00:17:52.335 --> 00:17:55.675
by various genealogical societies to talk.

350
00:17:55.775 --> 00:17:59.515
And so I do think that people are interested in that type

351
00:17:59.515 --> 00:18:00.835
of research and in that,

352
00:18:01.375 --> 00:18:04.995
but I also, took

353
00:18:05.735 --> 00:18:10.145
seriously the notion that this is a work of literary

354
00:18:10.675 --> 00:18:13.185
nonfiction that is, excuse me,

355
00:18:13.375 --> 00:18:15.745
inscribed in the history of the novel.

356
00:18:16.055 --> 00:18:19.585
I've also been invited at times to speak on panels

357
00:18:20.275 --> 00:18:23.425
about writing about the self, the history of memoir,

358
00:18:23.425 --> 00:18:25.425
the history of, of autobiography.

359
00:18:25.925 --> 00:18:29.705
So I'm hoping that the book is compelling itself,

360
00:18:29.885 --> 00:18:34.105
and I did purposely write it as a kind

361
00:18:34.105 --> 00:18:37.745
of detective story that dramatizes the search.

362
00:18:38.265 --> 00:18:41.265
I don't simply tell it in a linear narrative

363
00:18:41.405 --> 00:18:44.065
and begin by saying, here's everything I found out,

364
00:18:44.205 --> 00:18:47.185
and now I'm gonna reconstruct the, the history of,

365
00:18:47.205 --> 00:18:48.385
of these characters,

366
00:18:48.925 --> 00:18:53.625
but rather, I sort of try to talk about what it means

367
00:18:53.765 --> 00:18:54.985
to have this kind of quest

368
00:18:55.485 --> 00:18:59.105
and how one reconstructs from these kind of documents.

369
00:18:59.485 --> 00:19:04.425
And I tried to be very scrupulous about where I was

370
00:19:04.935 --> 00:19:08.265
speculating and where I was interpreting

371
00:19:08.565 --> 00:19:11.625
and where I was simply reporting, the record.

372
00:19:11.735 --> 00:19:13.905
This is not a work of historical fiction.

373
00:19:14.405 --> 00:19:17.985
Um, so I really tried to, there is speculation in it

374
00:19:17.985 --> 00:19:19.825
that I kind of label as such,

375
00:19:19.825 --> 00:19:23.825
or I'm trying to imagine the character, so to speak, of my,

376
00:19:24.045 --> 00:19:26.945
my, my family.

377
00:19:27.525 --> 00:19:31.745
Uh, but I, am always interested in that,

378
00:19:32.055 --> 00:19:35.345
that process of, that, that act of historical research,

379
00:19:35.365 --> 00:19:37.225
but also that act of imagination.

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