Counterfactual Family History
Counterfactuals are the study of “what-ifs” in history. Though there is some debate to the real value of counterfactual history, one acknowledged purpose is to evaluate the real significance of people or events in history.
We are interested in knowing the significance of historical events in your family history, and so are offering this counterfactual poll. The results will be included in an upcoming issue of Ancestry Magazine.
Read some of the considerations below and then take the poll here.
Loading ...1. Though popular history claims Sir Alexander Fleming was the first to discover the Penicillium mold from which penicillin is made (in 1928), in fact it was discovered more than 50 years earlier by British scientist, John Tyndall. Nothing much came of Tyndall’s discovery and so the world would have to wait until 1942 for a drug to be developed into a form that could effectively treat bacterial infection. If work to convert Penicillium into a usable anti-bacterial treatment had begun with Tyndall in 1875, penicillin may have been saving lives in the last years of the 19th century. That means it would have been available for wounded soldiers in World War I, to treat diseases such as pneumonia, and for a variety of other life-saving tasks.
2. When talks began about a transcontinental railroad in America, two main routes were suggested: the central route, which is what was ultimately built, and a southern route, which ran through Texas, avoiding the Rocky Mountains. The main benefit of this route is that it would avoid the snow and inclement weather of its central counterpart. The United States even purchased land in what is now Arizona and New Mexico to facilitate the route. A variety of political issues, many involving the Civil War and the benefit this railroad would be to the South, influenced the decision to build along the central route.
3. Though President Wilson vetoed this immigration act multiple times (as did several presidents before him), Congress overrode him and it went into effect in May of 1917. Among a variety of things, this act prevented many Asians and Pacific Islanders from entering the country, as well as anyone over the age of 16 who was illiterate. The exclusion list also included idiots, alcoholics, prostitutes, polygamists, and others.
4. The bill, which was passed in 1944, helped thousands of veterans of World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam go to college, buy houses, and get jobs For a variety of reasons, mostly disagreements about how exactly it should function, it almost did not pass.
We’d love to read your comments and see what events in history had the greatest impact on your family.
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I’m nobody, just an ordinary joe. I claim no fame for myself because of what my ancesters did… and have little respect for those that do.
I’m one of the relatives who is seeking for a long lost cousin in such a big universe. We don’t know each other. The history of our family parted us before we were born in defferent countries. The World War 2 is to be blamed in separating our ancestry. My uncle, (V)Biktor Sakheishvili, went to that war as a volanteer and was lost as there wasn’t his name in the death records and besides, family heard a story about his captivation in Europe. They said he was able to escape from his captivity and ran to Greece, where he married a rich Greek woman and had a daughter from his wife . As if then they moved to the United Stases and before his death he asked his daughter to give his surname-Sakheishvili - to her 2 sons and find his family in Georgia. What we know is that she tried to find us 10 years ago, publishing her letter in a Russian magazine, telling her and her father’s story coinciding to ours. Our family friend told us about that letter and that she was living in Brazil. Actually, I possess very scanty information about her existance, I don’t even know her name. All this aggravates the real situation -to find each other. Having read your letter, I had been inspired with a little hope-maybe some day I would be given chance to meet her…
I’m an ordinary joe as well, and while I don’t want to claim fame for something that I had no hand in, I am proud of the things that my family accomplished. Because of my family, I have a history that is steeped in American tradition; some fought in the revolution, some fought for the Confederacy, and even though the South lost the war, my ancestors stood up and fought for what they believed was right, and I am proud to say that, as far as I, and other members of my family have dug back, I am an 11th generation American.
The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV in 1685 changed the course of my family history and that of the United States and the world. Several of my Protestant [Huguenot] ancestors fled France and settled in South Carolina because of the religious terrorism by the French government. According to the family history written by one of their descendants in 1828, my second great grandfather was the first one in the family to marry “out of the blood” in 1804. Religious persecution in France and England was one of the contributing factors to the Freedom of Religion clause in the U. S. Constitution.
These four events would have had litte or no effect on my ancestral line. Mostly wars have avoided my ancestors when the males were of age. We are of a very healthy line so we live long and very few have died young. Those that immigrated were all literate, at least enough to get by easily. I would have to say I can think of only one major event affected my ancestors from any line and that would be the American Revolution and all that came from that event.
I guess we are all ordinary people but our ancestors did some very amazing things and lived through some amazing times. Many fought in the American revolution, Civil War and World War I and II. The events at the time may have seemed routine but to us it is absolutely amazing. They also traveled this country in covered wagons and helped to build the railroads. My only wish is talk with all of them to and find out thier perspective of the events and also to let them see the wonderful country they helped to build.
I am more interested in what was than what might have been. In my own life the choices I made took me along the path I chose freely and I doubt that I would change anything if I had it to do over. My ancestors obviously had choices as well, albeit more limited than mine, I can only hope they too were satisfied in the direction their lives took. Articles such as the one about George Washington and what would have happened had he been king are at best poor fiction and have no place in an otherwise good magazine.
Penicillin in 1890 would have had an amazing affect on my family, altho not affecting my ultimate descent. Within 9 mos. in 1892-93 my 2ggrandparents both died along with 3 children from the ravages of TB. My ggrandmother had married and left home just prior to this and was the only member of this family to survive the early ’90s.
I chose Penicillin because my grandmother was born in 1906 in Indian Territory, OK. number 6 of 8 children. Her father died in 1911. I don’t know how. Her mother remarried (a circuit-riding Preacher?), then died in 1919 from a “chest cold” she caught while riding the circuit, I’ve heard. No clue what happened to the Preacher. She left 5 minor children orphaned, to be farmed out among whichever relatives or neighbors willing and able to raise them. My grandmother went to live with her oldest sister who was already married and had kids of her own. They had a close relationship but “What if” penicillin could have saved her father’s life? “What if” it could have saved her mother? How much different her life would have been. When I was little, I noticed my grandmother only had 9 fingernails, so I asked her, “What happened to your other thumb?” and she said, “When I was young, I stuck my thumb and got blood poisoning. It swelled up so bad they had to cut part of it off to save my life.” They sure could have used some penicillin there!
My mother had an older brother who got choked on a peanut hull when he was about 2 years old, around 1910. Although someone came in from the field and scraped it out of his throat, he developed gangrene and died. Had penicillin been available to him, he might have lived.
My father’s younger brother, Carl, died in about 1920 from pneumonia. Dad always felt guilty that there wasn’t something he could have done to save Carl. Penicillin might have made the difference.
Penicillin would have made a big difference in my family tree. My paternal ggrandmother was 28 years old when she developed pneumonia. She died in 1888 leaving four children the youngest just months old. While the woman my ggrandfather married by all accounts was a good woman, I’m sure life would have been much nicer for the family had she lived.
My paternal ggrandmother was also a young woman when she died around 1900. She and a neighbor lady were going visiting one day, she had a pimple on her upper lip so she popped it with a hat pin (who knows how dirty that thing was). Family stories says that by evening she had red streaks all over her face and was dead within a couple of days leaving a year old baby. My grandfather was raised by his maternal grandparents while his father worked. His father remarried but my grandfather was never reunited with his father. They visited each other over the years but the bond that should have been there never developed.
Another ancestor (though not direct) my grandmother’s sister died of Typhoid around the age of 10. When my ggrandmother was dying of pneumonia in 1948 the doctor’s came out to my grandmother saying that they had a new drug that they would like to use on Ma. They said that it wouldn’t hurt her but it could help her. That drug was penicillin.
And the last person that penicillin has had a huge effect on is me. I was 18 months old in 1951 when my appendix burst. The battle for my life was a long, hard one considering my age and the amount of infection affecting my body. After I recovered my parents were told that I would have never survived if it hadn’t been for the drugs developed during the war. (WWII).