well you gotta consider that we have different methods of documentation now. More lasting documentation lets say.
And actually contrary to my own post i gotta say there is quite alot of documentation for quite alot of people considering those times and the lack of longevity of their methods.. we might be more remembered than i thought
Yeah for sure we have more opportunity for lasting documentation than someone from 1000 years ago.
Along that line though something I'm always consistently reminded of when I read new history is just how many more people we've forgotten than remembered. Famous people even.
So right now I'm reading a new history book by Steve Inskeep, called Imperfect Union, it's really terrific set around 1840-1860 about a person in history that I may have known about in passing but ultimately knew nothing of -- John C. Fremont. Fremont was, as Inskeep describes, without a doubt the most famous person in America in those years and one of the most famous people in the world certainly the most famous American. And yet he's a person mostly forgotten from history popularly. He was an explorer primarily but also was the first candidate to run for the Republican party in 1856, and him and his wifeJessie Fremont were arguably the most famous couple in the euro-american world. Most people today probably wouldn't really know who he is, although you'd recognize things named after him, famously Fremont St in Las Vegas (the old strip), Fremont California, and virtually every town, city, mountain, and natural feature named "Fremont" west of the Mississippi. And yet he's a person who was ultimately inconsequential, and captures nine of the popular imagination compared to, say, Lincoln, Davis or even flashes in the historical pan like John Brown (a person who became more famous over time despite being far less famous than Fremont in his day).
I'm struck by how many people are so we'll known in their times and yet utterly forgotten in popular imagination, even in an age of documentation and moveable type. Another is William Jennings Bryan who was arguably the most well known politician in America in the last 1800s, and yet he's effectively forgotten from history. More people know him from Inherit the Wind, where he's the bad guy, than from his long history as one of America's first progressives and one of the inspirations of what would become socialism. Historians and those interested in history know Bryan but how many average people do?
Now this isn't a challenge of "do you know Fremont or Bryan?!" But more so, just recognizing how hard it is to guess who will be preserved in the historical popular imagination. It's a fun thought exercise.
