Am I a Family Historian?
There are occasions when someone will ask me to carry out family history research.
"Can you help me with my family tree?" they ask.
"I've found one or two names of ancestors and plugged them into my tree" The problem that I have with this way of looking at the subject is that it underscores the difference between Genealogy and Family history.
You may well have seen both written or spoken about as if they were the same.
Every now and then you will find that someone tells you that they are different, but then doesn't go on to tell you why.
Don't you find that frustrating? So, just to get this straight, I thought that I would try and write a few words of explanation.
If you think of Genealogy as the study of ancestry and descent, then you begin to realise that it refers more especially to the actual search for ancestors.
Family history, on the other hand, is all about the story of your forbears.
Think of it as the account, or the tale of the various events in your ancestors' lives.
Family history can be described as 'genealogy come alive' as it tells your family's story from generation to generation.
Should you need to understand this more fully, then just think about one of your forbears in your family tree for whom you have only collected one or two bits of dull and dry information.
Perhaps it is just their birth date, a home town, or their marriage details, names of children and possibly a burial location.
At this point you may want to look further into the context of the life of your ancestor.
Do you see that now you are starting to do Family history? You are fleshing out the story as you want to know how they kept the wolf from the door and how they spent their leisure time.
More details that you may try to collect could be what, if any, was their position in their town or community? Leading on from here you might want to consider the cost of living in your ancestor's time.
How much was their pay worth in today's money, or what was their estate worth when they died and what is the current spending power of that figure? How about questioning what types of food were available for them to eat? Can you find out about the types of clothes that they wore? What illness were common in the time period that they lived and also what was child mortality like? You may go on to explore the religious traditions that your ancestors followed and so on and so on...
Doing the detective work to dig up answers to questions such as these, you should make as much use as you can of the myriad of of historical resources that are on-line and off in libraries and archives.
If you look on the web and also in other publications, you can track down time-lines, social histories, community histories, newspaper accounts, biographies, and more.
The records from where you have collected the names and dates of your ancestors may also be a potential source for clues to their stories.
Census records, for example, may be able to tell you about your ancestor's neighbourhood, occupations, educational background, and financial situation.
Wills and testaments could give you an insight into the mind of your ancestors and their feelings towards their family or wider community and friends, not to mention, of course, their possessions.
Any immigration and naturalization records that you come across may offer you an insight into your ancestor's motivations for moving from one country to another.
So, in your mission to find out as much as you can about where you came from, try not to restrict yourself to the straight 'genealogy' search.
Tell the stories of your living family members, richly flesh out the lives of your ancestors and so bring to life your family history.
This was the best advice that I myself was given when I set out and asked a professional to help me with my family tree.
"Can you help me with my family tree?" they ask.
"I've found one or two names of ancestors and plugged them into my tree" The problem that I have with this way of looking at the subject is that it underscores the difference between Genealogy and Family history.
You may well have seen both written or spoken about as if they were the same.
Every now and then you will find that someone tells you that they are different, but then doesn't go on to tell you why.
Don't you find that frustrating? So, just to get this straight, I thought that I would try and write a few words of explanation.
If you think of Genealogy as the study of ancestry and descent, then you begin to realise that it refers more especially to the actual search for ancestors.
Family history, on the other hand, is all about the story of your forbears.
Think of it as the account, or the tale of the various events in your ancestors' lives.
Family history can be described as 'genealogy come alive' as it tells your family's story from generation to generation.
Should you need to understand this more fully, then just think about one of your forbears in your family tree for whom you have only collected one or two bits of dull and dry information.
Perhaps it is just their birth date, a home town, or their marriage details, names of children and possibly a burial location.
At this point you may want to look further into the context of the life of your ancestor.
Do you see that now you are starting to do Family history? You are fleshing out the story as you want to know how they kept the wolf from the door and how they spent their leisure time.
More details that you may try to collect could be what, if any, was their position in their town or community? Leading on from here you might want to consider the cost of living in your ancestor's time.
How much was their pay worth in today's money, or what was their estate worth when they died and what is the current spending power of that figure? How about questioning what types of food were available for them to eat? Can you find out about the types of clothes that they wore? What illness were common in the time period that they lived and also what was child mortality like? You may go on to explore the religious traditions that your ancestors followed and so on and so on...
Doing the detective work to dig up answers to questions such as these, you should make as much use as you can of the myriad of of historical resources that are on-line and off in libraries and archives.
If you look on the web and also in other publications, you can track down time-lines, social histories, community histories, newspaper accounts, biographies, and more.
The records from where you have collected the names and dates of your ancestors may also be a potential source for clues to their stories.
Census records, for example, may be able to tell you about your ancestor's neighbourhood, occupations, educational background, and financial situation.
Wills and testaments could give you an insight into the mind of your ancestors and their feelings towards their family or wider community and friends, not to mention, of course, their possessions.
Any immigration and naturalization records that you come across may offer you an insight into your ancestor's motivations for moving from one country to another.
So, in your mission to find out as much as you can about where you came from, try not to restrict yourself to the straight 'genealogy' search.
Tell the stories of your living family members, richly flesh out the lives of your ancestors and so bring to life your family history.
This was the best advice that I myself was given when I set out and asked a professional to help me with my family tree.
