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Family history is the study of multiple generations of people who appear to be related. The objective is to exhaustively document the effects of kinship. The audience comprises as many present or future family members as may be curious about this.
Introduction
While genealogy is the convenient label for the field, family history is the over-arching term, since genealogy in the strict sense is only concerned with tracing unified lineages. Other sectors of family history, such as one-name studies, may pay only rudimentary attention to lineages, or may emphasize biography rather than vital data. Most genealogical societies in Britain are united in the Federation of Family History Societies. Genealogy is the study and tracing of family pedigrees. ...
Forms of family-history research include:
- genealogy (tracing a living person's pedigree back into time from the present, or an historic person's descendancy to the present, using archival records)
- genetic genealogy (discovering relationships by comparing the DNA of living individuals);
- one-name studies (an investigation of all persons with a common surname)
- one-place studies (population histories including the German de:Ortsfamilienbuch)
- heraldic and peerage studies (inquiries into the legal right of persons to bear arms or claim noble status)
- clan studies (inquiries into groups with a shared patrilineal or matrilineal connection to a tribal chieftain and his servants, although they may not be related by blood and may not share the same surname)
- family social and economic history (telling the story of a family's place in society or economic achievements using oral and written records, or inferring information about lives from wider historical sources; this subject is treated below)
Unlike related forms of micro-history, such as corporate histories or local studies, family history research begins with only an approximate notion of the extent of the entity - the extended family - and never fully defines it, since the early origins of all families become invisible in prehistorical times. DNA genealogy offers some hope of moving this boundary further back into time. Genealogy is the study and tracing of family pedigrees. ...
Genetic genealogy is the application of genetics to traditional genealogy. ...
A one-name study is a study of all instances of a surname, generally in an attempt to establish, with the greatest precision possible, the origins and ramifications of a surname and its bearers, in an attempt to uncover the history and genealogy of the family or families who bear...
One-place studies are a branch of family history with a focus on the entire population of a single European village, not just a single, geographically dispersed family line. ...
A clan is a group of people united by kinship and descent, which is defined by perceived descent from a common ancestor. ...
Genetic genealogy is the application of genetics to traditional genealogy. ...
Motivation Family history needs little justification in communitarian societies, where a person's identity is defined as much by their kin network as by individual achievement, and the question "Who are you?" would be answered by a description of father, mother and tribe. New Zealand Māori, for example, learn whakapapa (genealogies) in order to discover who they are. The term collective identity is a sense of belonging to a group (the collective) that is so strong that a person who identifies with the group will dedicate his or her life to the group over individual identity: he or she will defend the views of the group and assume...
The word MÄori refers to the indigenous people of New Zealand and to their language. ...
Whakapapa or genealogy is a fundamental principle that permeates the whole of Maori culture. ...
In individualist societies, especially the English-speaking world, the need for family history is not self-evident and a reductionist view of it prevails: the family historian's chief motivation is to improve self-esteem.
Until the late 19th century, family histories were almost exclusively of interest to persons who had obtained their wealth or rank by inheritance. Other people, who had inherited nothing, might, in extreme cases, suppress their family history as a matter of shame.
In immigrant societies such as the United States or Australia, there was by the 20th century growing pride in the pioneers and nation-builders. Establishing descent from these was a concern in groups such as the Daughters of the American Revolution, and helped differentiate those descendants from later immigrants with lower status. The Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) is a sororal association dedicated to historic preservation, education, and patriotic endeavor. ...
In racist societies, such as Nazi Germany, family histories were compiled to affirm individuals' affiliation with the "master race".
Modern family history explores new sources of status, such as celebrating the resilience of families that survived generations of poverty or slavery, or the success of families in integrating across racial or national boundaries. Some family histories even emphasize links to celebrity criminals, such as the bushranger Ned Kelly in Australia. Ned Kelly the day before his execution Edward Ned Kelly (c. ...
In Germany, family history was misused by the Nazis and today is still often perceived as a threat to privacy rather than as a source of self-esteem. Most 20th-century sources remain unavailable to the public on privacy grounds. Funding of support for family history at archives is limited. German family historians thus tend to emphasize instead how family history can contribute to learning and science. A typical classified document. ...
The single family history In the narrower sense of the term, a family history is a biography of a single family over several generations, based on a tested genealogy and fleshed out with the fuller story of the family's place in society, the dramas of its achievements or failures and its acquisition or loss of wealth and rank.
Such a study mainly draws on oral history for the recent period and archival records for the period beyond living memory. Where an individual's own story is unknown, much can be inferred from other literature. For example, a single soldier's experiences can be inferred from the history of his military unit, or a migrant's journey can be described from the shipboard diary of a fellow traveller.
Conducting a Project Family history can either be in the form of a printed document, electronic document or sound or video recording that preserves this history for future generations. The readers will expect it to describe where the family originated from, name the members of the family and state who they married.
Family Histories are often created as a memorial for the deceased and are written to be passed down to future generations.
Some records that are used to create family histories are:
Today many people are using these old records to recover their family history. But most of these records include only technical details of a person's life, such as their birth date, whom they married, the jobs they did, and so forth, but they contain very little about the person themselves such as their likes, dislikes, hobbies, hopes and dreams. Baptism in early Christian art. ...
Infant baptism (also called paedobaptism and pedobaptism), the baptism of the infant children of believers, is an ancient custom of much of Christianity, including the Roman Catholic church, the Orthodox churches, Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Methodists, to name a few. ...
Mary Elizabeth Winblad (1895-1987) birth certificate In most countries, a birth certificate is an official legal document usually containing most of the following information: Name at birth Date and time of birth Sex Place of birth Birth registration number (NHS number in UK) Legal parent(s) (including in UK...
Graves at Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York A cemetery is a place in which dead bodies and cremated remains are buried. ...
Tombstone most commonly means a headstone marking the grave of a deceased person. ...
1870 US Census for New York City A census is the process of obtaining information about every member of a population (not necessarily a human population). ...
For other uses, see Death (disambiguation). ...
See Diary (novel) for the novel by Chuck Palahniuk. ...
This article is about letter, a written message from one party to another. ...
The Bible (From Greek βιβλια—biblia, meaning books, which in turn is derived from βυβλος—byblos meaning papyrus, from the ancient Phoenician city of Byblos which exported papyrus) is the sacred scripture of Christianity. ...
In the common law, a will or testament is a document by which a person (the testator) regulates the rights of others over his property or family after death. ...
Family History websites and indexes are also useful. These are made available so people can search for their ancestors and share their information with others. Some examples of these can be found at FamilySearch.org, Ancestry.com, RootsChat.com, RootsWeb.com, Findmypast.com (formerly 1837online.com), GENUKI, and LostCousins.
Benefits The benefits of Family history projects may vary according to the people who pursue the hobby. Some schools engage students in such projects as a means to reinforce lessons regarding immigration and the history of the nation.[1]
See also Matrimony redirects here. ...
A family of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso in 1997 A family consists of a domestic group of people (or a number of domestic groups), typically affiliated by birth or marriage, or by analogous or comparable relationships — including domestic partnership, cohabitation, adoption, surname and (in some cases) ownership (as occurred in the...
Example of family tree A family tree is generally the totality of ones ancestors, or more specifically, a chart used in genealogy to show the family connections between individuals, consisting of the individuals names (usually accompanied by dates, and often also places and occupations) connected by various types of...
Genealogy is the study and tracing of family pedigrees. ...
Preservation issues Preservation of Documents and Pictures. ...
Historical documents are document that contain important information about a person, place, or event. ...
This article or section seems not to be written in the formal tone expected of an encyclopedia entry. ...
This is a list of genealogy databases and online resources that are not specifically restricted to a particular place, family set, or time period in their content. ...
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