And so in a way that was very good for me, because I got to see Michael and Steve working together and could just start to plug myself into that process. The Genealogical Society in DC says that 65% of Caucasian Americans have significant black blood.
But it turns out the story of Victorian inventors and patentees is far from the kind of dry and dull account relegated to the dusty corners of archives. Combined with genealogical research, the race to patent ideas at the turn of the last century is full of drama and excitement. And successful inventors were-- as Ruth Schwartz-Cowan talks about-- they were celebrated in print, and from the pulpit, household names either in their own right
so the two best head coaches in a particular year. And I did a genealogical study of them. And by that, I mean, not their parents, but who they worked for.
She couldn't find anything written, absolutely nothing. So she started the Tarrant County Black Historical and Genealogical Society. I'm one of its members.
Instead of thinking about what's good or bad, let's look at where our sense of good or bad came from, the genealogy of it all in evolution or in culture or in religion. And people think a genealogical approach to God, instead of thinking about does God exist or not, let's look at where our belief in God came from. Maybe there's some evolutionary reason for why people believe in God.
So you can choose where water wants to go. This was the last picture they let me take before going into the Mormon Genealogical Archives outside of Salt Lake City. I did find some pictures from inside there amazingly.
It was a plague that involved 100 witches, a number that grew to 307 or later to 500. The Massachusetts Historical Society has terrific stuff, so does is it the New England Historic Genealogical or Genealogical Historic-- whatever it's called--
And in my case, of course, Waterbury, Connecticut, as luck has it there's also a Lynch family, a Patrick Lynch family in Waterbury, Vermont. There's this neat thing that we do as genealogists and it's called random acts of genealogical kindness.
for their eyes only, where they would keep bits and pieces of what we would call content from many different sources to understand the world, to record quotes, or Bible verses, or recipes, or genealogical records. They would keep excerpts from their reading, bits of poems, and in later years, drawings and photographs as well.
And today, I'm just going to kind of lay out the research program and talk about some ways in which it might potentially shed some light. This is interesting to a philosopher because it looks like an instance of what people sometimes call genealogical analysis. It goes back to Friedrich Nietzsche on the genealogy of morals.
shed some light. This is interesting to a philosopher because it looks like an instance of what people sometimes call genealogical analysis. It goes back to Friedrich Nietzsche on the genealogy of morals. Instead of thinking about what's good or bad, let's look at where our sense of good or bad came from, the genealogy of it all in evolution or in culture
It goes back to Friedrich Nietzsche on the genealogy of morals. Instead of thinking about what's good or bad, let's look at where our sense of good or bad came from, the genealogy of it all in evolution or in culture or in religion. And people think a genealogical approach to God, instead of thinking about does God exist or not, let's look at where our belief in God came from.