Jacob's Well: A Case for Rethinking Family History (review)

Professional historians have tended to leave the field of family history to genealogists and amateur family historians, and so it was with considerable curiosity that I opened Joseph Amato's most recent book. This was particularly so, given his penchant for tackling offbeat subjects with a freshness and ingenuity that gives them special significance, as he did in Dust: A History of the Small and Invisible (2002) and On Foot: A History of Walking (2004). In his pioneering book on the potentials of local and regional history, Rethinking Home; A Case for Writing Local History (2002), Amato demonstrates the utility of studying the intersection of local and regional narratives with larger historical forces. Now, he makes a case for the serious study of family history. His exhaustive research into the many twists and turns, ups and (mostly) downs, of seven generations of his own family's experience in America has produced a compelling social history that should be of interest to scholars concerned about the intersection of major historical forces with the lives of ordinary citizens.

The reader comes away from this family history with an enhanced appreciation of the powerful impact of pervasive poverty in which generation after generation often lived after arriving in America. It is truly a compelling study of the lives of ordinary citizens from the colonial era to the present. It makes a strong argument for history written "from the bottom up." The familiar Horatio Alger theme is largely absent in this narrative, however, it was not for lack of will or effort that poverty and an unrelenting struggle for survival remained a constant for many of his ancestors. Try hard they did, but economic and social conditions prevented them from obtaining productive farmland or making the jump from day laborer to the middle class.

Drawing upon the interdisciplinary research tools he developed as the founding director of the Center for Rural and Regional Studies at Southwest Minnesota State University, Amato provides a complex narrative that has rescued scores of heretofore nondescript persons from the dusty files of state archives, county deed offices, raw census data, court house records, factory pay records, cemetery records, and local newspapers. He supplements these sources with oral histories and the small number of letters, diaries, and legal documents that somehow survived the multiple migrations of his family.

Amato's diligent research effort led him back into the early 1600s when the Boudrot family immigrated to French Acadia. After establishing themselves as successful wetland farmers, the family of Pierre Boudrot, along with 7,000 other Acadians, suffered the indignities and total impoverishment of being prisoners of war and wards of state in hostile colonial Massachusetts in 1755. There they were treated shamefully as "French Neutrals," hated for being both Catholic and friends and allies of the Indians. Similar tales of difficult struggles against prejudice and poverty abound in Amato's heritage. The O'Briens arrived from Ireland about 1815, and became part of the Irish work crews that helped construct the Erie Canal, subsequently moving westward to work on canals in Ohio, Indiana, and eventually Wisconsin. It is there, in the emerging industrial centers that transformed Wisconsin in mid-nineteenth century that Mary Jane O'Brien married a neighbor, Jacob Lindsau in 1871. Jacob's father had arrived from West Prussia to work in the mills in Appleton. The couple relocated to the booming industrial center of Menasha, where Jacob strived to move into the middle class. Jacob was elected city alderman, played in the German band, opened a bicycle shop, and ran a small tavern (hence Jacob's Well) that provided a popular meeting place for ethnic mill workers and the epicenter of Jacob's brief political career. But Jacob's life ended in great disappointment. His business was the target of tossed rocks and a customer boycott as he fell victim to reckless charges of sedition by the Wisconsin Loyalty League. As Amato writes, "Jacob, like other...