raison d'être

Family History as Collective Biography :

Fact, Fiction, and Interpreting the Past

History is collective biography, (Profilography*),

Whether it be of Family, Friends, Neighbors or Nation.

Papenfuse Family, Wilson Road, Macedon, NY, 1953

*profilography, n, "the writing of biographical sketches or profiles;" collective biography. (for example see: Papenfuse, et. al., A Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland Legislature, 1635-1789, Volume I (1979), p. 3.

You can reach me at: sarapearlruth@gmail.com

Papenfuse, Wilson, Briggs, Lovett family montage

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Pearl Wilson and Students in a one-room schoolhouse,

District 4, Macedon, New York, ca. 1953, Wilson/Papenfuse Family Archive

Lewis Mitchell Wilson in from mowing, ca. 1911, Wilson/Papenfuse family archive.

Mowing(detail), 1907, by N.C. Wyeth, courtesy of the Brandywine Museum

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These images were used in a seminar at Johns Hopkins University in 2000 entitled:

American History as Fact & Fiction.