So, I’ve been researching my genealogy and discovering all sorts of cool and crazy things, some credible (distant grandparents among the first settlers on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, others arriving on the Ark & the Dove, and even a book about one family member that was fascinating, Robert Cole’s World) and some other grandparents that are quite possible, but hardly believable, at least to me, including connection to William Cecil, Queen Elizabeth’s advisor, as well as to the Plantagenet family. But, that is another story, about genealogy in the digital age.
Anyway, as I traced another line in the family–the French-born Thibaults–I discovered my peeps were likely among the earliest settlers of Quebec, including Louis Hebert who is seen in Canada as the nation’s first settler “to support himself from the soil” according to the Canadian Dictionary of Biography. Even more fascinating, perhaps, Hebert’s son Guillaume married Helene Desportes, who was reputed to be the “first white child” born in New France.
The term “first white child” struck me as odd and interesting. So, I spent way too much time over an afternoon exploring the curious practice of memorializing, in monument or other material cultural expression, the “first white child” born on a colonial frontier. Turns out there is a tradition of this, according to Wikipedia. Seems crazy to me, so I did some internet research (spending much too much time on this.) Firstly, I checked the corpus of print and did a phrase search, to figure out when it emerged. See the NGram below. Smooth it to 10, and some trends emerge even more clearly.
(By the way, this–and the image search below–are perfect examples of how digital humanities research techniques can be incorporated into the basic work and questions of scholarship.)
Clearly, the revolutionary era, the 1850s, 1880s, and 1920s emerge as strong peaks. I have been speculating all day what this might mean, even as I did an image search on “first white child memorials.” And, wow, did it yield an extraordinary number of images, leading me to conclude that these monuments are everywhere.
In today’s postmodern era it is easy to view this only through the lens of colonial theory. Indeed, it is hard not to acknowledge that first white children are an expression of colonial ambition, empire, and the racialized frontier of “civilization.” Looking closer we see these dynamics at play as well as a distinctly human social historical narratives. At the most visceral, environmental level, European procreation on the frontier was an aggressive act of survival, like tilling the soil, erecting the walls of a house or fort, or laying political claim to land. This is also a distinctly gendered expression, capturing women’s vital roles in building colonial empires. Indeed, historically, giving birth has been dangerous labor, often unacknowledged as work (i.e. its reproductive verse “productive”) that reflects the complex roles that women play on the borders, the frontiers between Europeans and natives peoples.
Historiographically, I asked my self about the peaks in the Revolution, the 1850s, 1880s and again in the 1920s and 1930s. Memorializing the first white child in places in the US would seem to correspond to a period of national formation of inventing traditions, marking those births signaled the first step in a process. The second would seem to correspond to movement westward, including early efforts to stamp whiteness and civilization on a place. The 1880s corresponds with early professionalization efforts among historians and the upsurge of national memorialization that occurred after the Civil War. The 1920s and 1930s reflect a similar period of interest in the folk history of communities, as well as efforts to document such narratives. I need to go back and review Mystic Chords of Memory and see if I can tease this into Kammen’s broad periodization.
Even so, I would love to hear what you think about this phenomenon, either theoretically or historiographically. Where might I look to make some sense of this phenomenon.