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Author: Kat

• Monday, July 06th, 2009

Genealogy Vs Family History – Giving Your Ancestors Life – Friends, Neighbors, Towns

Part 2 of a Series

by Katrina Haney

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In the first article of this series, we discussed how you can explore the siblings of your ancestors to gain a better understanding of their lives on a more personal level than merely knowing their names can give you. In this article we will explore another avenue for enriching your experiences with your ancestors, exploring friends, neighbors and town histories.

It is often quite easy to discover the names of people who were involved with your ancestors in some way. Sometimes your ancestors were witnesses to legal documents of other people, such as a will or property sale, or other people were witnesses for your ancestors. On census records, the names of immediate neighbors and other people on the same street are listed in proximity to your ancestors. Passenger records from ships can uncover people travelling from the same locations and arriving at the same destinations. These people were often friends or family of a different name. Early colony records are a rich source for finding other people who knew your ancestors. Obituaries often mention friends and family that were not known to you. Reading histories of the towns where your ancestors lived can uncover vast nuggets of information to be used for further research.

Take down these names and study them just as you would your own ancestor. I have had several instances where my ancestor was mentioned in town books and family histories, giving me nice family anecdotes concerning them, that was not uncovered from a search of my ancestors themselves. For example, one of my ancestors was such a good friend of another family that a man, on his deathbed, asked my ancestor, who was present along with member’s of the man’s family, to please look after his wife and see that her needs were taken care of.

My Haines line began in New Jersey with the immigration of Quaker families that settled in the area of Burlington N.J. Quaker records are rich sources of vital information, such as births, deaths, marriages, and the recording of families leaving one area and settling in another. Through these records I was able to track one of my families as they moved from New Jersey to Virginia, and then in the next generation to Ohio. I happened to notice that in the New Jersey records, two other families were listed who also turned up in the Virginia records. Some of the children of all three families then made the trek to Ohio. Sure enough, further delving into this discovery uncovered the fact that they were all family, related through wives, and that they were closely knit enough to relocate together over great distances. Looking into all the family members subsequently uncovered many large and small facts I would not have known by studying only my own direct ancestors. In this same family, studying the records of the settling of the Burlington area and adjacent surrounds filled in a lot of the story of this family’s experience. Don’t just settle for one town account either. Read all you can. The internet is a rich source for information these days. and the inter library loan department of your local library can supply what is not available to read online. As you do your family studies, keep a running list of references, and note what families they would pertain to. Then make a trip to the library. The effort will be richly rewarding to you, and the history of your family will become much more meaningful.

Katrina Haney is a Family Historian, Freelance Writer and a Digital Scrapbook Artist who pursues all her passions at GenScraps, where you can find scraps of genealogical wisdom, and information on scrapping your family history, as well as digital products to be used to make your own Family History and Genealogical Scrapbooks. These digital designs can also be used in Ancestry’s book printing section.

Reprint Information: This article is available for reprint through Ezine Articles. Go directly to this article, or go to my archives and choose the articles you would like to use in your Ezine or website. On the article page, choose the Ezine Publisher option among the links on the top right of the page. As long as you agree to the Publisher terms of service, you are welcome to use my article. If you do so, I’d love to hear from you.

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Author: Kat

• Monday, July 06th, 2009

Genealogy Vs Family History – Giving Your Ancestors Life – Researching Siblings

Part 1 of a Series

by Katrina Haney

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In all the years I have been doing research into the history of my family, I have been constantly amazed by the lack of interest I see in most genealogies for providing contextual materials that show anything about how their ancestors lived. From time to time I see stories about individuals, when people have been lucky enough to find a personal anecdote that has managed to make its way into historical records. I see wills, and deeds and land grants. Once in a while, I see a personal letter or journal entry, or a page from the family bible. But these instances are really relatively rare in the plethora of genealogies posted on the internet. Mostly I just see names, lists and lists of names.

To make matters worse, at least in my own humble opinion, the lists of names are often displayed in such a way as to make them effectively meaningless. You click on a name and you can get a person’s parents names, or a child’s name, but often they are so jumbled in a list on the page that you can’t even begin to follow a line of descent in any comprehensible way.

This type of recording may be genealogy, but it is not family history. I personally can see no sense, and get no pleasure, out of knowing a list of names. I don’t really care what my ancestors were called, I want to know what they did. I want to know how they lived, what they experienced, who their friends were, what they did for a living, what they cared about and what they disliked. I want to know how they were raised, whether they were happy, and what was going on in the world around them. Knowing as much about these things as you possibly can is the only way to really know who it is you came from. Only then, can you say what you have is family history, and only then can you truly understand your ancestors, and get a real sense of knowing what kind of blood is flowing in your veins.

So, you may be wondering, how are you supposed to get all this enriching contextual material, when all you have is, for example, a name on a census?

Start with the family! More often than not, people only concern themselves with the name of the child in a family that is their direct ancestor. Siblings are too often totally ignored.

When doing my own family history, the place I start is with the other members of the family. From my experience, most people never look for information regarding siblings. Many never even list their names. However, this can be a very rewarding line of research. In my own family I have many times discovered fascinating and extremely helpful information by doing this. For example, in my Haines line, I have a Carlisle Haines married to a Sarah Matlack. I’m sure these names mean nothing to you, as they didn’t to me either. However, while researching Sarah’s family, which included seven siblings, I discovered an extremely important piece of information.

Sarah had a brother named Timothy Matlack, It turns out that Timothy is the person who actually scribed the Declaration of Independence we all know and love. Yes, the words were written by Thomas Jefferson, but the handwriting on the final copy was that of Timothy Matlack. What an interesting discovery! So what does this mean for my family history? Well, there is quite a bit of material written about Timothy. By studying that, I can deduce that his family, including Sarah and her family, probably knew many of the people whose names we read of in the history books.

Perhaps they even attended social events together. Most likely they had political sympathies in line with Timothy’s. It tells something also of the level of society in which they lived. So now, instead of having simply the names of some generation of great grandparents, I have the beginnings of understanding much more about who they were and how they lived. Further delvings into the family uncovered a lot more, information I would never have known if I had not begun looking at the siblings of my ancestor in the first place.

Katrina Haney is a Family Historian and a Digital Scrapbook Artist who pursues both her passions at GenScraps, where you can find scraps of genealogical wisdom, and information on scrapping your family history, as well as digital products to be used to make your own Family History and Genealogical Scrapbooks. These digital designs can also be used in Ancestry’s book printing section.

Katrina Haney is a Family Historian, Freelance Writer and a Digital Scrapbook Artist who pursues all her passions at GenScraps, where you can find scraps of genealogical wisdom, and information on scrapping your family history, as well as digital products to be used to make your own Family History and Genealogical Scrapbooks. These digital designs can also be used in Ancestry’s book printing section.

Reprint Information: This article is available for reprint through Ezine Articles. Go directly to this article, or go to my archives and choose the articles you would like to use in your Ezine or website. On the article page, choose the Ezine Publisher option among the links on the top right of the page. As long as you agree to the Publisher terms of service, you are welcome to use my article. If you do so, I’d love to hear from you.

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Author: Kat

• Sunday, July 05th, 2009

Genealogy and Family History Research

Verifying Your Information

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While you are out there trying to do research on your family genealogy, you need to keep in mind one very important thing. There is a LOT of misinformation out there, especially in this time of the internet where information flows faster than we can possibly keep up with it.

Most people begin their search by starting a family tree online at places like Ancestry or One Great Family. These are wonderful sources of information, and the larger they get the more likely it is that you can hook onto someone else’s tree and all of a sudden discover dozens of ancestors you didn’t know of before. But, and this is a big but, you cannot accept all of this as absolute truth. Any family tree that goes back far enough is going to have errors, some of them quite serious ones, and sites like Ancestry are not responsible for making sure the information that is shared is accurate. That is your responsibility.

A lot of people get their information from old manuscripts and books that are now out of copyright and being made available on the internet. These people did their research at a time when it was extremely hard to do. They had to go to the source records, or spend months and even years corresponding with someone who had access to them. They did not have the advantage of the mountains of information we do today. So we can forgive them if they got some things wrong, which they did. But it still presents a problem for us today, because their erroneous conclusions are now available to thousands of people through the magic of the internet. People reading this material think they are reading accurate information, and they add that to their trees, and the bad information gets spread around. This is why it is always necessary to go to the source records and verify things for yourself.

Let me give you a recent example I just went through myself. I had traced my ancestry back to a Jedediah Allen, who was born in Sandwich, Massachusetts in 1646. All of the information I was finding indicated he was the son of a Ralph Allen, born in 1615 in England, and the grandson of a George Allen, born in 1568, and who emigrated from England to the colonies in 1635. I had copies of a number of manuscripts and family histories written so long ago as to be out of copyright, plus all the trees on Ancestry had it that way.

So I spent about three weeks happily gathering all the information I could on the Allen family, and there were a lot of them. George had at least 10 children, and it seemed like Ralph had even more. However, as I went along it became apparent that there were actually two Ralph Allens in Sandwich for a number of years, and it was also apparent that both of them were in some way a part of this family. In the Plymouth Colony records there is mention of a Ralph Jr. and a Ralph Sr. But there was no indication that Ralph had named any of his children after himself.

But if this was the case, then which Ralph Allen was my direct ancestor, the father of Jedediah? And which was the son of the George I had spent so much time researching? After another two weeks of intensive research I finally had to come to the conclusion that MY Ralph was the one called Ralph Jr. and that he was NOT the son of George. How disappointing! And the sad thing is, there is no way to quickly spread this information to other people who have the Allens in their trees. People will still find the old sources that are wrong. I know my Ralph is connected to this family somehow, I just don’t know how, and I don’t think I’m ever going to.

Other mistakes are quite prevalent as well. If you use sites that allow you to add other family trees to your own, you really should at least skim over the people who come into your tree. I constantly find people who had children well after their own deaths, or when they were eight years old. I found one account on a website, written up as a story, so you know the person had to have done at least SOME research. In this account they mentioned the year of death, But two sentences later they stated that the person was imprisoned two years later for having “Quaker leanings.” In working with the Pilgrim era like I do I find that many people list birthplaces as being the same place as somewhere they know their ancestor lived. But people were not born in Massachusettes in 1598. The Pilgrims didn’t arrive until 1620.

All of this illustrates how very important it is to verify all your information however you can from primary sources. Town and church records are excellent for this. If your ancestors were Quakers, they were probably in meeting records somewhere. Much of this source material is now available on the internet, and especially sites like Ancestry, where you can search through literally tens of thousands of records for a nominal monthly fee. Sorting out the Ralph Allens could only be done by comparing numerous records, and making logical deductions from them. Without doing this, I would have accepted a false family history. What’s the point of doing your genealogy if you don’t care be sure of its accuracy?

Katrina Haney is a Family Historian and a Digital Scrapbook Artist who pursues both her passions at GenScraps, where you can find scraps of genealogical wisdom, and information on scrapping your family history, as well as digital products to be used to make your own Family History and Genealogical Scrapbooks. These digital designs can also be used in Ancestry’s book printing section.

Katrina Haney is a Family Historian, Freelance Writer and a Digital Scrapbook Artist who pursues all her passions at GenScraps, where you can find scraps of genealogical wisdom, and information on scrapping your family history, as well as digital products to be used to make your own Family History and Genealogical Scrapbooks. These digital designs can also be used in Ancestry’s book printing section.

Reprint Information:
This article is available for reprint through Ezine Articles. Go directly to
this article, or go to my archives and choose the articles you would like to use in your Ezine or website. On the article page, choose the Ezine Publisher option among the links on the top right of the page. As long as you agree to the Publisher terms of service, you are welcome to use my article. If you do so, I’d love to hear from you.

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Category: Uncategorized | Tags: ancestors, family history, family tree, genealogy research | Leave a Comment

Author: Kat

• Sunday, July 05th, 2009

Genealogy and Family History -
The Meaning of Relationships Or
What’s a ‘Once Removed’ Anyway?

by Katrina Haney

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In everyday life, we rarely (if ever) refer to someone as “my second cousin once removed.” It suffices to simply refer to them as a “cousin.” But, when doing genealogy, we usually want to be more precise about relationships, although it can be confusing to understand what these relationships mean once we know them.

Cousins

A “cousin” in general is someone who has the same ancestors as you do (or two other people who have common ancestors.) We are all familiar with terms like “second cousin,” “third cousin” etc. We have also heard cousins described as once, twice or three times removed. At that point we usually just scratch our heads and go on to the next topic.

But it really isn’t that hard to get a working understanding of the relationships surrounding cousins, if you learn just 2 simple concepts:

1. Cousins with no removal designations are in the same generation, or to put it another way, they are the same distance away from the common ancestor.

2. The term ‘removed’ is applied when the two people in question are in different generations, or in other words, they are of differing distances from the common ancestor.

So let’s examine what that means.

Cousins with no removal designations are in the same generation.

This means that in relation to a common ancestor, they would both be 3rd great grandchildren, or 5th great grandchildren etc.

Going the other way around, if you have two individuals who are both 4th great grandchildren, then you know that they will simply be cousins of some level with no removal designation.

To determine what level of cousins they are, simply add 1 to the generation. If they are 3rd great grandchildren, then they are 4th cousins. If they are 5th great grandchildren, then they are 6th cousins, etc. Great grandchildren are not usually called 1st great grandchildren, but the number is understood, and so cousins in this generation, by adding 1, would be 2nd cousins.

By the same token, if you know that they are 4th cousins, then you also know that they share 3rd great grandparents in common.

The term ‘removed’ is applied when the two people in question are in different generations.

For example, if you have a 3rd great grandchild, and a 5th great grandchild, you will have a removal designation. It’s not really difficult to determine what their actual relationship is, including the removal designation. All you need to know is the relationship of both individuals to the common ancestor.

To determine the actual relationship, you start with the one that is closest to the ancestor in question. Cousinship begins with grandchildren, as that is the first generation in which cousins are found. Anyone in this generation in relation to the common ancestor is a first cousin to all other descendants of that ancestor at the grandchild level and below. So if you are comparing a grandchild and a 5th great grandchild, they would still be first cousins. This is where the removal designation comes in.

Because grandchildren are the starting place for determining cousinship, they have the designator of 0. So a 5th Great Grandchild compared with a Grandchild would be five times removed. It does not matter which of the two is in the grandchild generation.

But what happens if you have descendants of generations lower than the first one? For example, lets take a 5th great grandchild and an 8th great grandchild of the same ancestor. In this case you would start with the closest one, the 5th great grandchild. If you assume for the moment that both of the individuals in question were in the same generation, we know that they would be sixth cousins, because we would add 1 to the generation. So we start with ’sixth cousins.’ Then we need to determine what the removal designation is.

Put simply, the removal designation represents the difference between the two generations. So in our example of a 5th great grandchild and an 8th great grandchild, they would be 3 times removed from each other. A 6th Great Grandchild and a 2nd Great Grandchild would be 4 times removed, etc.

Putting these two concepts together then, we can determine the cousinship between any two descendents of a common ancestor. Let’s take a hypothetical example.

Let’s say that you have discovered that one set of your direct ancestors were also the grandparents of George Washington. How are you and George Washington related? Well first, George is the closest to the ancestors in question, so you start with him. Being their grandson, and being in the first generation in which cousins are found, your relationship to George would be that of first cousin. To determine the level of removal you now need to look at your own lineage. You discover that you are the 7th great grandchild of these ancestors. The difference between your generation and George’s generation is 7. This would make you and George Washington first cousins 7 times removed.

You may be wondering how this is different from seventh cousins once removed. Seventh cousins would BOTH have to be AT LEAST 7 generations from the common ancestor. The once removed part would put one of the two into the 8th generation.

So here are the steps to take when determining the cousinship between any two descendants of a common ancestor:

1. Determine the generation of each individual in relation to the common ancestor.

2. If they are in the same generation, then just add one to the generation and that is your cousin level.

3. If they are in different generations, take the closest one to the ancestor, add one, and that is your cousin level.

4. Determine the difference between the two generations and that is your removal level.

As a side note, people today often refer to the children of their cousins as their second cousins. This is technically inaccurate. The children of your cousins are your first cousins once removed. Your children would be their second cousins.

Aunts and Uncles

Figuring out relationships to Aunts and Uncles is a bit easier. If one person is a child of a common ancestor, and another person is a grandchild or lower of that same ancestor through another child, then an aunt or uncle / nephew or niece relationship exists. The level is determined by subtracting 1 from the generation of the grandchild.

For example, if you are the 6th great grandchild of the ancestor in question, then the siblings of the child who is in your direct line would be your 5th great grand uncles and aunts, and you would be their 5th great grand nephew or niece.

As with grandparents, the first generation after uncle and aunt (or niece and nephew) is grand uncle/aunt, and then great grand uncle/aunt. After that you start with 2nd great grands.

Katrina Haney is a Family Historian and a Digital Scrapbook Artist who pursues both her passions at GenScraps, where you can find scraps of genealogical wisdom, and information on scrapping your family history, as well as digital products to be used to make your own Family History and Genealogical Scrapbooks. These digital designs can also be used in Ancestry’s book printing section.

Katrina Haney is a Family Historian, Freelance Writer and a Digital Scrapbook Artist who pursues all her passions at GenScraps, where you can find scraps of genealogical wisdom, and information on scrapping your family history, as well as digital products to be used to make your own Family History and Genealogical Scrapbooks. These digital designs can also be used in Ancestry’s book printing section.

Reprint Information: This article is available for reprint through Ezine Articles. Go directly to this article, or go to my archives and choose the articles you would like to use in your Ezine or website. On the article page, choose the Ezine Publisher option among the links on the top right of the page. As long as you agree to the Publisher terms of service, you are welcome to use my article. If you do so, I’d love to hear from you.

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Author: Kat

• Sunday, July 05th, 2009

Sorting Out the Ralph Allens

by Katrina Haney

This is a Prime example of why genealogical data needs to be verified.

I am in the process of sorting out the two Ralph Allens who coexisted in Sandwich during the Pilgrim period. Much of the information written even in esteemed genealogical journals has mixed up information for the two of them. Therefore the information below is most likely not totally accurate. I am leaving it for now until I get it sorted out.

In general, here is what is now known:

During a short span of time, two Ralph Allens resided in sandwich, and both of them became involved, with the Quaker movement, along with other members of the Allen family.

The Ralph who was the son of George was the one designated at Ralph Sr. in the records, and was the second one to come to Sandwich.

The Ralph who was NOT the son of George was residing in Sandwich first, and had children born there named Jedediah, Experience and Ephraim. Before the arrival of Ralph Sr. to Sandwich, he was just named Ralph Allen in the records, and became Ralph Jr. after the arrival of the other Ralph to the town.

Justification for assigning Ralph Sr. as the son of George:

Prior to their both living there, one Ralph was residing at Sandwich and the other was residing at Rehoboth. Before moving to Rehoboth, however, one Ralph sold thirty acres of land at Weymouth, 22 acres of which originally belonged to George Allen.

The Ralph Allen who was at Sandwich first had a son named Jedediah born there in January 1646/47. The other Ralph was still at Rehoboth where he received a division of the New Meadow in February 1646/47. So based on this alone, the Ralph who sold a piece of land at Weymouth that belonged to George originally, and was living at Rehoboth in 1646/47, was not the Ralph who was the father of Jedediah.

The Ralph who was the father of Jedediah was also found to have had children born at Sandwich named Experience and Ephraim in 1651 and 1656, respectively. This Ralph is also listed as being a mason by trade. This Ralph Allen died in about 1662/1663 as abstracted from Jedediah’s bible. He was married to Esther Swift.

The other Ralph Allen, who moved from Rehoboth to Sandwich, died in 1698 and left a will naming all of his children. No Jedediah, no Experience, and no Ephraim were named. This Ralph did have a daughter named Mary, however, who died young in 1675. This Ralph was referred to as Ralph, Sr. in the burial record. He was also referred to in other records as being a planter and wheelwright by trade. In his will he also mentions his brother William, who is a known son of George Allen.

Although the suffix Sr. and Jr. were found in a number of cases in the records involving the two Ralphs, the definitive use of the suffix Sr. was with the Ralph Allen, who was a planter, and who died in 1698.

The other Ralph, who was a mason by trade, was married to Esther Swift, and was the father of your Jedediah, may very well be related to George Allen somehow, but not his son. He could easily be a nephew or cousin, however.

Information on the two John Allens

There is also some confusion regarding which John Allen was the son of George, as there was a John at Sandwich, and another at Rehoboth. Circumstantial points more reasonably to the one at Rehoboth being the son of George.

Prior to George and his wife and young sons arriving in the colony, there was both a Ralph Allen and a John Allen. After George went to Sandwich, 22 acres of land sold by Ralph Allen were part of 30 acres of land originally owned by George just before he moved from Weymouth. The other 8 acres were held by John Allen. Ralph and John’s lands were both owned by George before his moving to Sandwich and were located at Westerneck. When Ralph moved to Rehoboth, John moved there with him.

At the time the name John Allen began to show up in the records for Sandwich, Ralph’s son John was old enough to be a young adult, and this was most likely the one in the Sandwich records.

Robert Allen as the son of George:

The Plymouth Colony records indicate that Robert Allen committed suicide in the home of his brother John at Rehoboth, and Robert still owned cattle in Sandwich at the time of his death. If the John in Rehoboth is the son of George, then so is Robert. The Ralph, John, and Robert who were at Rehoboth at the time were then most likely the sons of George.

I will write this information up in a story format as soon as I feel I have all the information there is to get. If you have anything to add, please contact or leave a comment.

(My unending gratitude is extended to Jack MacDonald for having already performed all this research, and helping me sort out my Ralphs. His excellent web page on the Allen Genealogy can be found here.)

Katrina Haney is a Family Historian, Freelance Writer and a Digital Scrapbook Artist who pursues all her passions at GenScraps, where you can find scraps of genealogical wisdom, and information on scrapping your family history, as well as digital products to be used to make your own Family History and Genealogical Scrapbooks. These digital designs can also be used in Ancestry’s book printing section.

If you would like to use this article on your Allen family pages, permission is granted. A link back would be appreciated.

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History

Author: Kat

• Thursday, July 02nd, 2009

History

The history section of GenScraps will provide historical context dealing with specific areas in my own personal genealogical research. Currently my focus in on New England in the sixteenth century, particularly areas of what now constitutes the states of Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

I have been studying this period for quite some time now. I have some very interesting ancestors from this period, and I will be including stories abotu them as time permits. Please enjoy your stay.

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Digitals

Author: Kat

• Thursday, July 02nd, 2009

Family History Scrapping

Digital Designs for Scrapping Your Family’s Story

I have created this page by request of people who have seen me use my original designs on my own family history pages at Ancestry and here on my own site, and wished to have a way to purchase them. This kit is named in honor of my grandfather, Edgar Hart.

You can use the files in these kits in two ways:

1. On Ancestry.com, through their “Print Posters and Books” Section. If you have used this tool, you know that you can upload your own images to use. What a lot of people don’t realize is that you can upload more than just your photos to put on the pages. You can include images to be backgrounds, embellishments, tags etc.

Using this tool does not require you to have any graphics program, such as Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, nor to know how to use one.

If you have never used this tool, you should give it a try. it’s free to use, you can print your own pages if you want. Another misconception is that it’s only for having Ancestry print a bound book for you. While you can do this at a very reasonable price, you can also print the pages on your own computer.

2. Within a graphics program, such as Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, to make your own printable scrapbook and genealogy pages to print out (Digital Scrapbooking.)
Over the course of time, I will be adding to the existing kits and will be focusing even more on things that will give you even more flexibility when using Ancestry’s Printing feature.

Click on images for larger previews

	The base kit contains 2 background papers, and some basic tags and elements. It is meant to be used as additional material for any or all of the other themed kits.	$2.00
	The family charts kit includes two versions each of a Family Group Sheet, Family Tree Sheet, Pictorial Pedigree Sheet, and an Individual Data Sheet. NOTE: These files will probably not work with Ancestry’s automated information system. I’m working on new versions for that. To print these charts through Ancestry, you will need to complete them first in a graphics program, and upload the completed files.	$5.00
	The Census Pack includes several variations of census record backgrounds, premade dates from 1620 to 2010, plus associated word and title art.	$4.00
	The Narratives Pack includes two background pages plus word and title are to help you tell the stories of your family in a way that coordinates with the rest of the package.	$4.00
	The Personal Documents kit includes specialty pages plus word and title art for things like Diaries, Wills, Letters and Family Bible records.	$5.00
	The Photographs kit includes specialty pages plus word and title art for you to use for Portraits and Photos. It includes title art and word art of family relationships (Mother, Father, Aunt, etc.)	$5.00
	The memories pack includes eight specialty pages plus word and title art to help you document your own personal memories of various family members.	$5.00
Recommended Product <br />	Save $5.00 by buying the bundle, which includes all current packs in this series.	$25.00

	Still to come in this series: Death and Cemetery Records, Immigration, Old Homestead, Heraldry, Military, Public Documents and more. If you have a topic you would like to see included in this series, please let me know.

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Genealogy

Author: Kat

• Thursday, July 02nd, 2009

Genealogy

Many people use the terms genealogy and family history interchangeably. But in the strict sense of the words, they do not have the same meaning. One can be a family historian without being, per se, a genealogist, and one certainly can be a genealogist without being a family historian. Many, many people fall into this latter category.

Genealogy is the study of family relationships, who begat whom. It usually includes names, dates, places of birth and death, residences, etc, but basically, just the facts.

Family History, on the other hand, attempts to present a larger picture, by including additional information, such as biographical sketches, anecdotes, historical context, and any other information that may be found about the lives of your ancestors.

I consider myself to be more a family historian than a pure genealogist, though the two go hand in hand for me. I do like to trace my roots as far back as possible, and I am constantly striving to fill in the gaps where they occur. But it doesn’t do a lot for me to just know the names of my ancestors. I want to know who they were. I want to know as much about them as I can possibly find out. This is what gives you the connection to your heritage and helps define (or explain) who you are.

If you are as passionate about this I am, I encourage you to subscribe to this website, so you are always up to date on the latest additions.

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