Happening Today--The Resurrection of Great Aunt Becky's Infallible Charting of Kinship and Connections

Now, maybe nobody noticed that the elderly family member who used to know all the kinships and connections has been dead, gone from almost every Southern family, and none of the young people were capable of reproducing her encyclopedic knowledge. That was a great cultural loss, and few families has an imperfect substitute like my triple cousin Lois, who knows what we have lost when she says that in the South if you are not kin you are connected. Now, the Internet steps up wearing Great Aunt Becky's Mother Hubbard and tells me that Hank Williams is my first cousin four times removed's wife's fifth great nephew's wife's third cousin twice removed. Great Aunt Becky's would have known all that but would have taken all afternoon to tell it because she would have had to explain connections along the way and lament the loss of babies and the misbehavior of young men, but yes, she would have known. You may think the Internet now is impersonal, but real cousins are managing (as they say) real ancestors and going about it in a scholarly way. It's a great time to be interested in Southern history, especially if you did not have a Granny Doyle the way Jim Webb did.