Genealogy and Potatoes Redux: In Praise of American Ancestors’ New Family Heritage Experience

The facade of American Ancestors'
about-to-open 
Center for Family History,
Heritage & Culture 

I had the opportunity last week to visit Ryan Woods, the President of American Ancestors, at the organization's home office, the New England Historic Genealogical Society, on Newbury Street in Boston. Ryan and his team are scheduled to cut the ribbon on the new, very cool American Ancestors National Center for Family History, Heritage & Culture at 97 Newbury Street on April 24th. 

This spectacular new center is part of a multi-structure building complex named after American philanthropist and preservationist Thomas Bailey Hagen and Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The center will house the Brim-DeForest Library, R. Stanton Avery Special Collections, the Wyner Family Jewish Heritage Center, the Brue Family Learning Center, museum store, staff offices, and the Family Heritage Experience—an interactive museum experience that will introduce visitors to the joys and possibilities of family history. 

Acquiring the building next door to NEHGS’s long-time library was an opportunity that first presented itself in 2012, the final year of my term as Chair of the organization. The owner of John Lewis Jewelers paid a visit and led us on a tour. Now, after much planning, fundraising, and hard work, the center has been conceived and is (nearly) completed.

The new entrance to the Center is top left followed clockwise by the facade in 2011, showing the old John Lewis
Jewelers; below, our friends the Kyles admiring the design in 2011, and (bottom right) Ken Burns speaking at the first fundraiser
for the Center that same event and year, 2011.

Ryan was kind enough to take me for a tour and even allowed me to snap a few pictures. I don’t want to (and can’t possibly) give everything away, but the Family Heritage Experience is destined to be a top 10 Trip Advisor recommendation in Boston, something full of fun and interactive activities.

Arrive at the Center and place yourself on the map--where you belong!

Pick a disc, scan the barcode on the back, and get started on your genealogical journey.

The famous, or infamous Shattuck family painting. Like our current administration, if you don't like history, you just make
it disappear. That bush in the middle used to be, well...

As we were talking, Ryan reminded me of a brief talk I gave in 2008 when I was elected Chair. The talk, which I had forgotten, compared genealogy and the potato. Fortunately, I found it buried on this blog. So, I dusted it off and present it here.

I hope it will help you imagine the new Family Heritage Experience as an Idaho Russet potato fired at 117 feet per second through a hose into a finely sharpened grate, coming out the other side in a perfect French fry cut.

Genealogy, the Idaho Russet, and Innovation (July 2008)

In April, I was elected Chairman of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, one of my favorite organizations. Not only does the Society have a world-class staff, but its Trustees and Councilors are a group of extraordinarily talented individuals who dedicate their time, talent, and treasure to collecting, preserving, and interpreting- so our mission goes- the stories of families in America.

Founded in 1845, the locus of the Society has moved rapidly in the last decade from its beautiful library on Newbury Street in Boston (still active and vibrant) to a global online presence.

With that in mind, these are remarks I made shortly after becoming Chairman. The subject appears to be about the Idaho Russet potato, one of which I pulled from my pocket during the speech.

Several Trustees/Councilors asked that I post my remarks online. As I only had the speech three-quarters complete the morning it was delivered, I am taking the liberty of completing it in writing here.

And, for the record, I like French fries. Though, as the Roman Terence advised, moderation in all things.

Here are my remarks:

I want to take you back to, say, 1920, for a minute and posit the following: There are several industries where a reasonable person could have reasonably predicted how they might evolve over the next 80 years.

I'll give you an example: Automobiles.

You could have looked at the automobile industry in 1920 and forecast a reasonably correct future for the automobile: faster, sleeker, more powerful, and safer. You wouldn't have gotten the electronics right- things like antilock brakes- but you might have assumed that the auto could fly or drive underwater; in other words, it's not clear the industry has evolved as quickly as you might have predicted in 1920.

The same is true of aircraft: faster, sleeker, higher. We may have had them landing on the moon or hovering like helicopters. But we wouldn't have been too far from reality.

Now, let me give you a contrary example. Some of you will recognize this as an Idaho Russet potato. Is there anything more low-tech than a potato? But, here's the irony: Take a relatively complex technology like the automobile and predict the future- not so hard. But take a low-tech commodity like a potato and, well, I don't think there is any way that you could have stood on a potato farm with (the recently departed) J. R. Simplot in 1920 and predicted what would happen to the Idaho Russet in the next eighty years.

Of course, in 1920, potatoes were already a staple of the American diet, but they were harvested by hand and usually eaten in one of three ways: baked, boiled, or roasted. Today, of course, we still do that, but of the 79 lbs. we each eat on average annually, 40 lbs. are baked, boiled, or roasted, and 39 lbs. come in the form of French fries, which are, you guessed it, the most widely sold food item in the United States.

Today, the lowly Idaho Russet potato is picked and sent to a processing plant that will process several million pounds of 'taters daily. Rarely touched by human hands, it'll have its jacket blown off by hot steam and then be fired at 117 feet per second through a hose into a finely sharpened grate, coming out the other side in a perfect French fry cut. Blanched. Frozen. Almost ready.

Next, we'll have to visit a fragrance and flavor company along the New Jersey Turnpike to come up with the flavoring to add back to the fries to make them taste like French fries since the processing tends to take much of the flavor away (and we're no longer allowed to fry them in beef tallow).

The real irony, of course, is that when you buy that bag of French fries and eat all 534 calories, 54% of those calories will come not from potatoes but from corn. (Those who have read Omnivore's Dilemma will know that corn has taken an even stranger journey than the potato.)

What did we miss? A potato is, after all, a potato. If we had predicted its future in 1920, we might have anticipated better pesticides or better fertilizer and higher yields. But how could we anticipate, for example, the culture of the automobile that grew up in the 1930s and 40s in places like southern California and that led to things like drive-in movies and restaurants? How about the proliferation of franchising in the 20th century? Or applying high-speed industrial processing to food products so that potatoes are treated as "production units"? Or the ability to ship cold products cross-country?

Hopefully, you understand my point: a potato is still a potato, whether it's 1920 or 2008, but nothing else around it is much the same.

Now, let's talk about genealogy for a moment. I believe you could have stood in this Society in 1920--or 1850 for that matter--and reasonably predicted what the genealogy world would look like in 1985. More books. Better access to archives. Better scholarship. More integration of national or global records. Maybe even, given the advent of photography, microfiche, and microfilm.

But here's the irony, where the potato gets shot at 117 feet per second out of the hose, so to speak:

You could not have stood in this Society in 1980, or perhaps even 1990, and reasonably predicted what the genealogical world would have looked like today. That's less than a generation of fortune-telling, and we would have likely guessed wildly wrong.

Why? Because the art and scholarship of telling our families' stories didn't change, but everything around it did: the web, email, podcasts, and blogs, the digitization of data, social networking and online sharing, and a computer for every person.

So, let me "talk genealogy" to you for a second [and these are terribly dated examples, looking back from 2025!]:

·       MyGenerations Network, the parent of Ancestry.com, boasts 2.5M active users and 8.7M unique visitors per month

·       In Dec 2007, Findmypast.com was acquired by Scotland Online, which defines itself not as a genealogy company but as an ISP and IT solutions provider that also owns ScotlandsPeople.

·       Familybuilder of New York, which searches for relatives via social networks, has over 2 million registered users and over 7 million profiles since launching in June 2007

I've just told you three critical things about the competitive genealogy world, and I have yet to mention books, libraries, or Idaho Russet potatoes.

That's not to say that books and libraries aren't critical to great genealogy. But it does say the following, and this is the real reason I accepted the position of Chairman of the Society: What makes this place so exciting, so dynamic, and so full of opportunity is that we are a 150-year-old organization that focuses on history, embraces tradition and treasures scholarship--oh, and that just happens to be part of a technology-driven, high growth, rapidly evolving industry.

That speaks to being a new kind of organization, and we have been watching that transformation over the last ten years.

Having our nineteenth-century Society thrive in the twenty-first century means nurturing all of the things that have made us a one-of-a-kind institution since our inception and, at the same time, taking smart risks, accepting ambiguity, addressing complexity, connecting old dots in brand new ways, and embracing technological change. It speaks to being well capitalized to address opportunities and weather setbacks. It means partnering in ways that advance the non-profit genealogy agenda. It means having the kind of Councilors and Trustees who love tradition and technology, and, on any given day of the week, cannot decide which they love more.

At this point, I placed the Idaho Russet potato back in my pocket and sat down.