AN INFINITE HISTORY
THE STORY OF A FAMILY IN FRANCE OVER THREE CENTURIES
AN INFINITE HISTORY
An Infinite History: The Story of a Family in France over Three Centuries, by Emma Rothschild, follows the lives of Marie Aymard and her family over five generations. It is a story, or a sequence of stories, about private and public events. This website provides other information -- a family tree; a map of the places where the family lived; a map of Angoulême, where Marie Aymard’s children were born, as it was in 1791 and today, with an indication of where the children lived; a visualization of the social network of the signatories of her daughter’s marriage contract in 1764; a visualization of the larger social connections of the town; and pictures of the only two of her great-great-grandchildren of whom there is any visual depiction that remains (or that it has been possible to find, so far.)
The website is most of all an invitation to further investigation. An Infinite History, like any inquiry into family history, or ancestry, or the social networks of the past, is potentially unlimited. This is an invitation to continue the story.
Warmest thanks to Amy Price, Ian Kumekawa and Oliver Riskin-Kutz, to the staff of the Archives municipales d'Angoulême and to the staff of the Archives départementales de la Charente.
