Immigration, Identity, and Genealogy: A Case Study

Thomas Daniel Knight

doi:10.3390/genealogy3010001

Abstract

This paper examines the life and experiences of a 19th-century immigrant from the British Isles to the United States and his family. It examines his reasons for immigrating, as well as his experiences after arrival. In this case, the immigrant chose to create a new identity for himself after immigration. Doing so both severed his ties with his birth family and left his American progeny without a clear sense of identity and heritage. The essay uses a variety of sources, including oral history and folklore, to investigate the immigrant’s origins and examine how this uncertainty shaped the family’s history in the 19th and 20th centuries. New methodologies centering on DNA analysis have recently offered insights into the family’s past. The essay ends by positing a birth identity for the family’s immigrant ancestor. Importantly, the family’s post-immigration experiences reveal that the immigrant and his descendants made a deliberate effort to retain aspects of their pre-immigration past across both time and distance. These actions underscore a growing body of literature on the limits of post-immigration assimilation by immigrants and their families, and indicate the value of genealogical study for analyzing the immigrant experience.

Highlights

This paper examines the life and experiences of a 19th-century immigrant from the British Isles to the United States
The intersection of genealogy, oral history, folklore, and identity studies helps to enrich our understanding of immigration, adaptation, and settlement
The remainder of this essay is positioned in terms of scholarship on genealogical methodology, oral history, folklore studies, and identity formation to determine what William Johnson’s birth identity was and whether the family legends that were communicated through oral history interviews about him more than a century after his death were correct

Summary

Introduction

This paper examines the life and experiences of a 19th-century immigrant from the British Isles to the United States. By showing that for nearly two centuries the American Johnson family maintained the family tradition of its past in Wales and England and transmitted those stories across time and across multiple branches of the family separated by significant geographical distances, this research supports new interpretations that stress the ways in which immigrants retain elements of their pre-immigration past and identity while they adapt into the receiving society in many other aspects of their lives (Waters 1990; Portes and Zhou 1993; Portes et al 2005; Lee and Bean 2004) In this sense, the intersection of genealogy, oral history, folklore, and identity studies helps to enrich our understanding of immigration, adaptation, and settlement

Background and Literature Review

Case Study

Origins and Identity

Conclusions