"The Grandmother’s Story": Oral Tradition, Family Memory, and a Mysterious Manuscript

  • Robert C. Fisher

Résumé

The author's discovery of a manuscript with no known provenance but seemingly unique historical content compelled him to apply the tools of the archivist to assess its authenticity and reliability. Without an understanding of its context of creation and transmission, he could not trust the written recollections of an oral tradition told by a grandmother to her grandchildren of the coming of the loyalists to New Brunswick in 1783. Further investigation yielded variant versions of the grandmother's story in print format, archival repositories, and private hands, all connected in some unexplained way. Unravelling this mystery not only proved the accuracy and authenticity of the original manuscript, but revealed the identity of the hitherto anonymous author and insights into the relationship of oral tradition versus the written word, collective remembering, the making and transmission of memory, and the role of research in archival practice.

RÉSUMÉ
La découverte par l'auteur d'un manuscrit sans provenance mais dont le contenu historique semblait unique l'a contraint à appliquer les outils archivistiques afin d'évaluer son authenticité et sa fiabilité. En l'absence du contexte de création et de transmission, il ne pouvait se fier à la transcription d'une tradition orale racontée par une grand-mère à ses petits-enfants concernant l'arrivée des loyalistes au Nouveau-Brunswick en 1783. Une enquête plus poussée a révélé des versions différentes de l'histoire de la grand-mère en format imprimé, dans des dépôts d'archives et chez des particuliers, toutes reliées de façon inexpliquée. Dénouer ce mystère a permis de prouver l'authenticité du manuscrit original et également de révéler l'identité de son auteur jusqu'ici anonyme. De plus, il a été possible pour l'auteur d'éclairer les relations entre la tradition orale et l'écrit, le souvenir collectif et la transmission de la mémoire et, enfin, de démontrer le rôle de la recherche dans la pratique archivistique.

Biographie de l'auteur-e

Robert C. Fisher
Robert C. Fisher graduated from the University of Toronto with a B.A. in history and economics in 1988, and from the University of Waterloo with an M.A. in public history in 1990. He was a historian with the Directorate of History at the Department of National Defence from 1990 to 1996, where he was part of a team writing the official history of the Royal Canadian Navy in the Second World War. Since 1996, he has worked as an archivist in the Social and Cultural Archives section of Library and Archives Canada, responsible for the fonds of individuals and organizations in the area of intellectual life, scholarship, education, and religion. His work has appeared in scholarly journals, including The Mariner's Mirror, The American Neptune, Canadian Military History, The Northern Mariner, and in popular magazines, including The Beaver, Family Chronicle, and Legion Magazine.
Archivaria 57 front cover
Publié-e
2004-05-01
Comment citer
Fisher, Robert C. 2004. « "The Grandmother’s Story": Oral Tradition, Family Memory, and a Mysterious Manuscript ». Archivaria 57 (mai), 107-30. https://archivaria.ca/index.php/archivaria/article/view/12455.
Numéro
Archivaria 57 (Spring 2004)
Rubrique
Studies in Documents

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