Every now and then I'm asked to do a bit of family history research for another person. Help me with my family tree, they plead. "I have the details of my grandparents and also my great-grandparents and now I would like to get some more added into my tree." Now this way, of simply collecting names to enter into the branches of a family tree, brings out the difference between doing your family history and pure and simple genealogy. Quite often you'll see the two terms used as if they are interchangeable. Sometimes, however, you will be told that they are not the same thing and then the writer or speaker doesn't continue what they have started by going on to explain the difference. I don't know about you, but I find that frustrating in the extreme?
In order that I could make this more clear to people, I wanted to jot down a line or two 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. Consider that it is the story of the events that happened in the life of your ancestor. Family history can be described as 'genealogy come alive' as it tells your family's story from generation to generation.
If you want to make more sense of this then just, think of one of your ancestors in your family tree for whom you have only obtained a few dull and dry facts. Perhaps it is just their birth date, a home town, or their marriage details, names of children and possibly a burial location. From here you may decide that you want to try to find out the circumstances of your ancestors life. 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?
You may then start to wonder about the cost of living in effect at the 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? Could you look into the sort of clothing 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. Narrate the tales of your living family, bring to life the lives of your forbears and this will enliven your family history. When I started to do my family history, this was the most fitting bit of advice that an expert gave me when I asked them to help me with my family tree.
Nick Thorne, AKA The Nosey Genealogist, has been successfully researching his own family tree for six years now. Nick's family history tips and tricks as used by him to to break down brick walls in family tree research are available from his website as well as a free weekly email, audio CDs, pod-casts and more: http:www.NoseyGenealogist.com/blog
