Chap­ter 19 of “The Ways of Men” titled “The Genealog­i­cal Craze” explores Amer­i­ca’s extreme fas­ci­na­tion with geneal­o­gy and social orders. The chap­ter opens with an obser­va­tion on the Amer­i­can pen­chant for not doing things in mod­er­a­tion, attribut­ing it to the lack of estab­lished social stan­dards. This has led to a surge in genealog­i­cal inter­ests, with peo­ple vying for mem­ber­ship in exclu­sive soci­eties based on ances­tral con­nec­tions to his­tor­i­cal events or fig­ures.

The nar­ra­tive then moves to dis­cuss how this craze began with the for­ma­tion of the “Daugh­ters of the Rev­o­lu­tion,” for descen­dants of offi­cers in Wash­ing­ton’s army, and expand­ed rapid­ly as oth­er sim­i­lar soci­eties emerged. These include the “Colo­nial Dames,” the “Aztec” soci­ety for descen­dants of Mex­i­can War offi­cers, the “Social Order of For­eign Wars,” and the “Chil­dren of 1812.” This esca­la­tion in cre­at­ing exclu­sive soci­eties is seen as a man­i­fes­ta­tion of Amer­i­cans’ desire to not feel left out and to assert a social stand­ing based on ances­try.

Men joined in with the “Sons of the Rev­o­lu­tion,” and women respond­ed by cre­at­ing the “Grand­daugh­ters of the Rev­o­lu­tion” and “The Mayflower Order,” sig­nal­ing a descent from pas­sen­gers of the Mayflower. The chap­ter por­trays these devel­op­ments as part of the Amer­i­can obses­sion with geneal­o­gy, lead­ing to the for­ma­tion of even more exclu­sive soci­eties like the “Roy­al Order of the Crown,” requir­ing proof of descent from roy­al­ty, and the “Cir­cle of Hol­land Dames of the New Nether­lands,” focused on Dutch sov­er­eign descent.

The author humor­ous­ly com­pares this soci­etal phe­nom­e­non to his school days when he and his class­mates formed a soci­ety to feel impor­tant, under­scor­ing the absur­di­ty and van­i­ty under­ly­ing these genealog­i­cal soci­eties. The chap­ter con­cludes by crit­i­cis­ing how these soci­eties exploit indi­vid­u­als’ desires for social recog­ni­tion, with many exploit­ing the craze for per­son­al gain. It sug­gests that this genealog­i­cal fren­zy reflects a broad­er soci­etal issue of pri­or­i­tiz­ing super­fi­cial dis­tinc­tions over gen­uine con­nec­tions and con­tri­bu­tions.