We often think of genealogy as a deeply personal religious pursuit or a modern hobby driven by DNA tests and online databases, but in the founding era of the United States, tracing your lineage was a matter of survival, property, and freedom. While the American Revolution publicly rejected the British system of inherited political power, the Founding Fathers and everyday colonists still relied on family trees as a vital legal and economic infrastructure. A fascinating new interview over at the Latter-day Saint history blog, From the Desk, features historian Karin Wulf (author of Lineage: Genealogy and the Power of Connection in Early America), who explores how genealogy dictated the laws of coverture and slavery, functioned as a colonial credit check, and was “baked” into the very structures of the new nation.
The Founders’ Paradox
One of the most compelling contradictions Wulf explores is how Revolutionary leaders championed merit and independence while remaining obsessed with their own bloodlines. They actively dismantled hereditary monarchy, yet “every single ‘founder’ was interested in family history in one way or another.”
I’m not sure the Adamses thought they had to “reconcile” the language of the revolution with the deeper structures of lineage. … Benjamin Franklin’s extraordinary Autobiography of the quintessential striving American starts with his family history research trip to England with his son!
They rejected heredity as a prerequisite for political authority, but they absolutely relied on it for wealth. Ironically, Wulf notes that George Washington’s lack of biological children was one of his greatest political assets, as it eased public anxiety about “legacy politicians” and the threat of an American king.
Genealogy as a Credit Check
In early America, genealogy wasn’t just a list of names; it was a “cultural currency.” In an economy that functioned primarily on informal “book debt” rather than banking institutions, knowing who someone was related to was the 18th-century equivalent of running a credit check.
Discussing family connections was a way that people could assess someone’s background and situation. It wasn’t a perfect way of doing a credit check, but in an economy that mostly ran on book debt… it was an important one. It’s also why people sometimes tried to suggest they had a family connection, even if they didn’t!
Wulf points to a fascinating artifact created by George Washington to illustrate this legal reality. Washington drew a multi-generational family tree on one side of a piece of paper, and on the reverse side, he explicitly listed the people who inherited the family property.
The Ultimate Stakes: Slavery and Freedom
The most sobering aspect of the interview deals with how genealogy functioned as a weapon of systemic power. Under British American law, slavery was tied to maternal descent—a child’s status was dependent entirely upon the status of their mother.
Because a child’s status was dependent on their mother’s, it meant that there was a little bit of opportunity for freedom—to be clear, it was rare—for people who could trace their lineage to a free woman.
This is the most common place where we see accounts of enslaved people’s family histories in court records. It’s so moving to read people recounting their family’s story, knowing that those stories were shaped in the context of such violence.
For these individuals, genealogy wasn’t a hobby; it was the only legal mechanism available to escape bondage.
Vernacular Genealogy
Finally, Wulf pushes back against the idea that family history was reserved exclusively for wealthy white men with access to pen, parchment, and formal education. She highlights the rich tradition of “vernacular genealogy.” Everyday Americans recorded their lineages in the margins of almanacs, tucked scraps of paper into account books, and wove their family trees into beautiful stitch samplers and German fraktur baptismal certificates.
(As a side note, I wasn’t aware of what a frakture birth certificate was before reading this interview, but when I saw the picture, I realized that I had one for me on display in my room when I was a child!)
For more on Wulf’s archival discoveries (including the complex Devan-Simpson family record) and why she believes looking honestly at the systemic infrastructures of early America is a deeply patriotic act, head on over to the Latter-day Saint history blog, From the Desk, to read the full interview with Karin Wulf.
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