Family History
Family history is the systematic narrative and research of past events relating to a specific family, or specific families.
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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.
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.
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.
Family history plays a part in the practice of some religious belief systems. For example, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints have a doctrine of Baptism for the dead, which necessitates that members of that faith engage in family history research.
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 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.
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.
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.
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 traveler.
Conducting a Project
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:
- Apprenticeship records
- Baptism or Christening records
- Birth certificates
- Cemetery records and tombstones
- Census records
- Coroner's reports
- Death records
- Diaries, personal letters, family Bibles, scrapbooks and ephemera
- Directories - trade directories, street directories, telephone directories
- Earlier family histories
- Marriage certificates
- Military records
- Newspapers - both news items and advertisements
- Property records and contemporary maps
- Public records - social security records, Poor Law records (in Britain), registers of electors
- Tax records
- Wills and probate records
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.
Family History websites and indexes are also useful, and for modern researchers they are often the main source of information. Some offer resources (eg censuses or civil registration records) that have previously only been available in microform or as hard copies; some are designed for individual researchers to share their information with others; some exist primarily to link people who share the same ancestors, or the same research interests.
Scottish Family History
If you were born in Scotland or you are of Scottish descent, then researching your ancestors should be simple.
Ask all your elderly relatives for their details and what they know about their deceased forebears before they too become a statistic!
It is recommended that you use a Family Group Record to enter the information (these can be obtained from Family History Centres), or enter it into a computer Family History program – you can download Personal Ancestral File 5.2 free from [1] On the 1st Family Group Record, enter your parents at the top and add the children in order of birth. Write down the date of birth (dd/mmm/yyyy) and where they were born. The standard method for this is - the parish, town, county and country, for example: St Machar, Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland.
A Scottish birth certificate shows when and where someone was born, it also shows the name of the father and his occupation and the maiden name of the mother and the date and place of their marriage and the informant (sometimes a person other than the parent).
The marriage certificate shows when, where and how the couple married, the names and signatures of the bride and groom and their ages, and their usual residence. It also gives the father, and his occupation, and the name of the mother of the bride and groom, and also the signatures of the witnesses to the marriage, and when and where registered and the signature of registrar.
Together the Birth and Marriage certicates names three generations.
If either parent is still alive, they can provide their dates and places of birth and the same information of their parents, and perhaps even their grandparents, but the researcher may need to check these details from their birth certificate any way.
Should both parents be deceased and their dates of birth are not known and you do not have their birth certificates, but you have their marriage certificate, just subtract the age shown on the marriage certificate from their year of marriage to calculate the approximate year of birth of both.
Other siblings may be able to provide missing details or you may have to purchase a copy of their birth certificates.
A death certificate shows the name of the person, their occupation and whether single, married or widowed and the name of their spouse, also when and where died and age when died, the name of the father and occupation and maiden name of the mother, and the cause of death and medical attendant certifying death, the signature and relationship of the informant, and when and where registered and the signature of registrar.
So, you can get the individual’s birth year and the names of their parents from all three certificates.
On the 2nd Family Group Sheet enter your father’s parents on the top and their children in order of birth and on the 3rd Family Group Record enter you mother’s parents and their children in order of birth.
Use the 4th and 5th Family Group Records for your father’s grandparents and the 6th and 7th for your mother’s grandparents. Your great great grandparents will require 8 Family Group Records and your research will become more involved the further back you go.
If you find people who were born, married and died in the same area, then the Registrar will allow you to get their details from the local registry office without having to buy a certificate, but there will be a search fee for this. This is cheaper than purchasing many certificates.
You may consider visiting the General Records Office in Edinburgh where for £17 (2007) you can spend 7½ hours searching for any certificate, the old parish registers and also the census records.
You can register with [2] to search for your ancestors. There is a charge for this service, but it allows you to view and download images of entries of births to 1906, marriages to 1931 and deaths to 1956, old parish records and the census records to 1901
When you get back to the fourth generation, you should search for them on [3] as the IGI (International Genealogical Index) has Scottish birth and marriage records from 1855 – 1875. More recent information has been submitted by many researchers.
You may visit any LDS Family History Centre where advice and assistance is provided free of charge.
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.
See also
- Family
- Family tree
- Genealogy
- Preservation
- Historical documents
- Genealogy Software
- List of general genealogy databases
- Abbreviations used in Family History
- O'Byrne Family
License
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Family History".
