If you were a historian, what details would you like to know about a person's life?

Question

I am reading a book by Wallace Stegner in which a historian constructs a story based on the letters of his grandparents. He says that he has no use for letters on children's illnesses, women's troubles (well, I suppose he IS simply trying to chronicle their marriage). If you stumbled upon a journal, what would interest you most? Personal revelation, a list of household items, something else? After all, we are soon to become history's discards ourselves, and the only hope we have of being remembered is by our records.

Answer 1

As a historian/archaeologist this is something I have to think about frequently.

It really depends on what aspect of their life you want to examine - it's very difficult to write a TOTAL biography.
When you do have documents, interviews, etc. you have to make a choice. Are you examining this person from the perspective of their professional life or their personal life? Obviously, the two coincide and influence one another in many ways, but the focus is probably going to be on one or the other.
For example, if I were going to write a biography of a scholar in my own field (I'll make it a male just to make the pronouns easier), I'd probably focus more on his educational background (where he'd studied, when, and with whom, both instructors and fellow students), his cultural background (where he was born, where he grew up, what ethnic, religious affiliations he may have had), how widely travelled he was and when. And a bit about his historical context. I'd want to know what influenced the way he wrote HIS histories. Was there a war going on during his life time that might have influenced how he wrote, how he interpreted evidence, what he chose to work on (from the extremes of censorship down to ignoring the work of "enemy" scholars to just the fact of conflict and possible hopelessness or other war-time feelings affecting interpretation). And I'd also want to know about his personal family life as well - was he married, in a relationship, were their children, what did his parents do, how did he get along with them, but I think that in a lot of cases that probably wouldn't matter as much to me. But again, that's part of the choices historians make when they present history.

There's been a lot of back and forth in the recent past in the broader fields of history, sociology, and anthropology about what makes a valid focus of inquiry. The individual - which some people associate with the older form of history-as-biography of primarily "Great Men"? Or whole cultures and great sweeps of time? Or can you illuminate a culture with a few well-chosen case studies of individuals. Some of the more extreme scholars and theorists in the fields insist only one of the above (or something else entirely) is a valid approach. But my feeling, and I think the feeling of most scholars is that so long as you're using your sources properly and behaving ethically, all those approaches are valid and possible.

It's a fun intellectual exercise if nothing else and it's why I love what I do, because I can choose to focus on a person. In theory I could write a decent-sized book on a single, ordinary grave of an ancient Egyptian, even without necessarily knowing the person's name, based on what was found with the person, what analysis of the remains tell us, and then try to relate that person to the broader social context of his or her time. Or I could take the lists of household items and personal letters and laundry lists from a place like a workmen's village and construct a story based on the lives of all those people in that single village and barely touch on anything going on around them. (Well, really I couldn't because it's been done to death...)
That's the beauty of historical records, though, a little creativity and you can tell any number of stories with the same records. Stories that don't necessarily conflict, but complement each other and the broader human story.

Answer 2

There are a whole host of documents that are valuable to historians. If you have an interest in a particular area you would have a good backround knowledge already. A personal journal could provide evidence of many things. A historian isn't simply looking for what's obviously written (witting testimony), he or she is looking to find implied meanings or hastily passed over remarks from the text (unwitting testimony). Some primary sources are better than others as far as some can contain more reliable evidence, but most are useful when placed in context with other different sources. As far as Wallace Stegner's letters are concerned, they would be a decent primary source and used for the main. It would be wise though not to discard the letters on children's illnesses and women's troubles as evidence contained in them could possibly illuminate his main source. Other sources of interest in family history include wills, census records and visual sources such as photographs and paintings etc. All play a part in creating the bigger picture of life in antiquity.

Answer 3

Every body has WEAK points in life. I think specially of people who died long time ago. We should just respect. Otherwise coming generation will FOLLOW US to give bad name to dead people.