Reunion Episode 001: Genealogy and Power with Karin Wulf

Описание: In a Virginia courtroom in the mid-seventeenth century, a woman named Mary Aggie stood before a judge not to defend herself with a lawyer, but with lineage. She traced her ancestry back to a free woman, arguing that her own enslavement was unlawful. Her case rested not on testimony or character, but on genealogy. In early America, family history could mean the difference between bondage and freedom. A marriage was not alone. Across the colonies, people used family trees to claim land, assert status, and protect privilege. Genealogy wasn’t just a record of who begat whom. It was a form of power. It shaped who belonged, who ruled, and who was remembered.

In her book Lineage: Genealogy and the Power of Connection in Early America, historian Karin Wulf uncovers how family history was used to build nations and force hierarchies, and sometimes challenge those same hierarchies. Today, we talk with her about how the past was organized through kinship, and why understanding those structures still matters in the present.

SHOW NOTES

https://reunion-a-podcast-about-family-his...

Catherine La Courreye Blecki and Karin A. Wulf, Milcah Martha Moore's Book: A Commonplace Book from Revolutionary America (Penn State University Press, 1997).

Ronald Chernow, Washington: A Life (Penguin, 2010).

Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge (Simon and Schuster, 2017).

Herman Melville, Moby Dick (Penguin Classics, 2009).

Milcah Martha Moore, Miscellanies, Moral and Instructive, in Prose and Verse (Philadelphia: Joseph James, 1787).

Jennifer Reeder (Guest), on Latter-day Saint Art Episode 2, Wayfare Magazine, PODCAST LINK.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth (Alfred A. Knopf, 2001).

Karin Wulf, "In Pursuit"

Karin Wulf, "This Long-Ignored Document, Written by George Washington, Lays Bare the Legal Power of Genealogy," The Smithsonian, published June 18, 2019.