Finding Your Place in History
Wondering where we came from has always been a part of the human condition. Who am I? Where did I come from? These questions are among the first we ask when we learn to speak, yet remain compelling throughout our lives. Ancient myths attempted deal with the origin of humanity on a grand scale, only to be displaced by the sciences of evolution and genetics. With genealogy, even non-scientists can trace their ancestry.
Genealogy is the tracing of family history and lineage. While most people know who their parents and grandparents are, the family line often starts to get a little fuzzy after that. When we go back two or three more generations even the names become lost in time. While we might know vaguely that we have ancestors from this country or that, but that is often the extent of our knowledge.
Yet, our curiosity remains. The practice of genealogy can fill in these details, and help us to develop detailed family records often extending back many hundreds of years. Not only can we fill in names and family linkages, but many times there is even more detailed information available about properties owned, professions, and even connections to important historical events.
Another aspect of genealogy allows us to trace other descendents of our ancestors to reveal long distant cousins. When we look at the records and follow the family lines, nearly all of us will discover that we have many hundreds or thousands of distant relatives living in the world today. Often these familial relations are quite distant, having diverged many generations before. Even so, the knowledge that we are somehow related to important world figures is comforting.
The complexity and high number of the family links we have to other people, both throughout history and still living today, give us a greater sense of connectedness to humanity. By finding that we had a distant relative who fought in the Battle of Agincourt, for example, we feel as though we are a part of history. What’s more, these connections may drive us to learn more about the historical events and societal influences that surrounded them. Knowing that our family members were there, leads us to ask not only basic questions like who won, but more in depth questions like what motivated the battle or how could an active war last as long as the one that led to that particular battle.
In a sense, genealogy answers not so much the question of who we are, but perhaps the more important question of how we fit in with the people around us. In these days of social media networking, the study of genealogy allows us to develop our network throughout modern history and even to expand and strengthen our current family connections.
while genealogy deals with the same question at the individual level.
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