I first came upon the term “Present-ism” by reading Thomas MacEntee’s blog. Present-ism is the awareness of cautiously not applying today’s cultural norms to past societies. This applies to all genealogy subjects and applies especially to LGBTQ ancestors.
Our ancestors did not self-identify as “gay”, “lesbian”, “bisexual” or […]
When writing our ancestors stories, we want to tell the most truthful account of their lives that we can. Yet when it comes to LGBTQ ancestors I hear some family historians say they don’t want to “out” their ancestor. Or that their ancestor chose to keep this part of […]
As genealogists, we reconstruct our family history from genealogical records. We attempt to discover who our ancestors were and what types of lives they led. Marriage and Birth records confirm relationships and essentially tell us who our ancestors were having sex with. Until recently those marriage records only proved heterosexual relationships.
Lesbian, Gay, […]
