Summary: <p>Early Americans like George Washington obsessed over genealogy. Much was at stake. One's place on the family tree could mean the difference between inheriting a plantation like Mount Vernon and its enslaved community, or working a patch of hardscrabble. Genealogy was very much a matter of custom, culture, and law, which explains in part why Washington composed a <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/mgw441968/">long-ignored document</a> tracing his own lineage. It was as much a <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-george-washingtons-efforts-genealogist-reveal-about-power-family-early-america-180972433/">reflection</a> of his family's past as it was a road map to his future power, wealth, and authority.</p> <p>On today's episode, <a href="https://www.wm.edu/as/history/faculty/wulf_k.php">Dr. Karin Wulf</a> helps us understand the powerful force that genealogy played in early American life. Wulf is a Professor of History at the College of William & Mary where she is also the director of the<a href="https://oieahc.wm.edu/"> </a><a href="https://oieahc.wm.edu/">Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture</a> (OI). A recent Washington Library research fellow, Wulf is writing a history of genealogy's essential role in British American society. She also discusses the OI's leadership in the <a href="https://georgianpapers.com/">Georgian Papers Programme</a>, and the OI's work to explore <a href="http://karinwulf.com/vast-early-america-for-2019/">#vastearlyamerica</a>. </p> <p><strong>About Our Guest:</strong></p> <p>Karin Wulf is the director of the <a href="http://oieahc.wm.edu/" target="_blank">Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture</a>, which has been publishing the <a href="http://oieahc.wm.edu/wmq/" target="_blank"><em>William and Mary Quarterly</em></a>, the leading journal in early American scholarship, and books with the University of North Carolina Press, since 1943. She is also <a href="http://www.wm.edu/as/history/faculty/faculty-list/wulf_k.php" target="_blank">Professor of History at the College of William & Mary</a>, and co-chair the College’s Neurodiversity Working Group. Her scholarship focuses on women, gender and family in the early modern British Atlantic.</p> <p><strong>About Our Host:</strong></p> <p>Jim Ambuske, Ph.D. leads the <a href="https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/">Center for Digital History</a> at the Washington Library. A historian of the American Revolution, Scotland, and the British Atlantic World, Ambuske graduated from the University of Virginia in 2016. He is a former Farmer Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Humanities at the University of Virginia Law Library. At UVA Law, Ambuske co-directed the<a href="http://archives.law.virginia.edu/catalogue/"> 1828 Catalogue Project</a> and the <a href="http://scos.law.virginia.edu/">Scottish Court of Session Project</a>. He is currently at work on a book about emigration from Scotland in the era of the American Revolution as well as a chapter on Scottish loyalism during the American Revolution for a volume to be published by the University of Edinburgh Press.</p>
