Ancestry Magazine

I was asked about family history on a radio show. The first question was, “How many people are actually interested in family history, and more importantly, why?”

Not long ago, I was asked to answer some questions about family history on a radio show. As expected, the first question was, “How many people are actually interested in family history, and more importantly, why?” Previous interviews had taught me that media people want hard numbers, so I had come prepared.

My first response was taken from the American Demographics study a few years ago that cited 113 million Americans as having some interest in genealogy, and 19 million as having a strong working interest in the field. More recent studies suggest that searching for and connecting with family is one of the largest uses of the Internet. In fact, according to a TNS Intersearch survey, twenty-nine percent of Internet users worldwide have engaged in family history research or searched for lost family members in the past five years.

The 2003 numbers are even more impressive. More than 13 million people visited family history-related websites in January 2003 and more than 10 million of those people visited the MyFamily.com network of sites, which includes Ancestry.com, Genealogy.com, MyFamily.com, and RootsWeb.com (according to Jupiter Media Metrix). Throughout 2003, MyFamily.com sites continued to see more than 10 million visitors each month.

According to one source, the pre-conditions for the rising interest in genealogy was the post-1945 migrations. After World War II, Americans moved from one part of the country to another in unprecedented numbers. In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Patrick M. Quinn wrote that this “contributed to the breakdown of our relatively stable, homogenous, family-centered, culture.” In earlier times, families did a better job of staying in touch, and the family lore passed down naturally from old to young; “one didn’t have to do research to learn about one’s ancestors; they were usually close by, dead and alive.” (”The Surge of Interest in Genealogy Reflects a Populist Stand with Important Implications for our Culture,” May 22, 1991). Quinn also points out that as distances between family members increased, family traditions ceased to be transmitted.

An experience I had with a class of seventh graders last year validates the s taggering statistics and brings the reason for why people are interested in family history close to home. Given the assignment of compiling a “family book” by year’s end, each student was to interview parents and grandparents and include as many photos and illustrations as possible, as well as an interview transcription of at least one older person. Some students turned in simple scrapbooks, others had made sophisticated computer-generated books. Each one included touching dedication pages in which parents and grandparents were thanked for their help. I won’t soon forget the brief highlights three students related about their year-long projects.

One boy from a broken family said that he had never before been allowed to speak with his grandfather who lived in another state. Because of the project, however, his father had allowed him to make a long-distance phone call. The boy beamed as he told of his new-found bond with a relative he had never known. A girl with tears in her eyes described her grandmother’s experience in a labor camp during World War II—a story the girl hadn’t known before. Another young boy reminded me of the urgency of our work. It was hard for me to keep the tears back when he admitted that he didn’t really want to interview anyone and hadn’t liked the project at first, but that he was glad he had participated after all. His beloved grandfather had unexpectedly died the day following the interview. Because of the assignment, he and the rest of the family had learned things they would not have otherwise known.

So how many people are actually interested in family history these days, and more importantly, why? It may take hard numbers to prove the interest level, but it only takes moments like these to see that family connectedness, family bonds, family unity are the fundamental answers to why so many people are becoming interested in the search for their roots.