City of Remembering

About this book

"City of Remembering represents a rich testament to the persistence of a passionate form of public history. In exploring one particular community of family historians in New Orleans, Susan Tucker reveals how genealogists elevate a sort of subterranean foundation to the city--sepia photographs of the Vieux Carré, sturdy pages of birth registrations from St. Louis Cathedral, small scraps of the earliest French Superior Council records, elegant and weighty leaves of papers used by notaries, and ledgers from the judicial deliberations of the Illustrious Spanish Cabildo. They also explore coded letters left by mistake, accounts carried over oceans, and gentle prods of dying children to be counted and thus to be remembered. Most of all, the family historians speak of continual beginnings, both in the genesis of their own research processes, but also of American dreams that value the worth of every individual life"--Jacket.