Ancestry Magazine

Teachers, adoptees, medical professionals, even prison inmates are using genealogical research methods to fulfill their ambitions and dreams.

When my son was seven years old, he noticed for the first time the scars on his grandfather’s shoulder. When he inquired about them, he learned that his grandpa had been wounded in World War II. Then he was shown his grandfather’s firearm and helmet with a hole shot completely through it. The helmet had actually been struck by a bullet after it was knocked to the ground!

Not only was my seven-year-old’s interest in World War II forever heightened and an interest in reading about World War II kindled, a special bond was established between grandson and grandfather that united two very different generations.

Family history is often the tie that binds generations together; it also gives people a sense of purpose and meaning. Today, millions of individuals around the world are engaged in family history research to satisfy their personal interests. They enjoy discovering not only who their ancestors were but also what their ancestors did, how they impacted their neighbors and communities, and how the effects of both their work and family traits might still be in evidence today.

While we often see genealogy as a personal quest, genealogy is also a multi-faceted field whose branches reach not only from the past into the future, but extend laterally as well. Evidence of people engaging in genealogy can be found in many professions and pursuits.

Education
Educators are discovering the value of family history as a means of helping students relate to historical events and people.

For example, two third-grade teachers in northeast Indiana have woven genealogy throughout an entire quarter’s curriculum. The veteran educators understand that teaching children with something tangible that touches their lives and creates natural communication conduits with their parents is a near-perfect learning environment.

Genealogy terms find their way onto spelling lists and vocabulary worksheets; interviewing, letter writing, e-mail etiquette, note-taking, and writing skills are taught in an exciting context; family traits and occupations are artistically represented on family shields; punnett squares and other basic genetic education are introduced and explained; and poster-sized ancestor charts, imaginatively illustrated, are among the projects that mark the end of the term.

The closing days of each term find the class of young students accompanied by parents, grandparents, and siblings who spend nearly two hours together in a large research library taking the students’ initial investigative findings and working to identify more genealogical data in primary and secondary sources.

Similarly, the Millville Elementary School in Millville, New Brunswick, Canada, engaged in its own “Adventures in Time” after reading a publication of the same title produced by the Canadian government. On their website, the students indicate that their knowledge of social studies, history, language arts, math, and computer technology equipped them to find the genealogical answers they sought. The project provided real-world applications for learning done in grades 4 and 5.

Other examples of genealogy in education include the millennium project of the National Endowment for the Humanities, “My History Is America’s History,” where children across the country were encouraged to share their genealogy stories online. The state of Maryland also conducted a year-long project in 2000 that culminated in hundreds of children gathering their family stories.

A Sense of Belonging
Inside the Utah State Prison near Salt Lake City, a family history center gives inmates new purpose and focus for their lives. These inmates participate in record extraction programs, making tremendous quantities of data available on the Internet to others exploring their heritage. As a result of their work, many inmates are now actively engaged in their own genealogical research. Their experiences leave them humbled as they see what generations before them were able to accomplish.

One professional involved in the program commented, “These men are not the same individuals who were convicted and incarcerated here.”

Outside prisons, troubled youth have proven to benefit from fam ily history research as well. For years, sociologists have written about the appeal of gangs to young people. Woven throughout their communiqués are explanations of troubled youth desperate for a sense of family. In fact, gang members today refer to each other as “family.”

One young man who had been in trouble with the law since his early teens (he had been arrested fourteen times by the age of sixteen) found himself once again in front of a judge. Although the boy was bitter and angry, the judge took a chance on him and sent him away from the intensity of his surroundings to one of the teen’s relatives in the rural south. The time spent with his relatives introduced him to his family history, and seeing and hearing about the lives of his ancestors changed his life.

Years later his time is spent making presentations to high school students around the country about the importance of reading and learning history, particularly as it relates to one’s own heritage.

Family and Friends
For many generations, families have welcomed less fortunate children into their homes. With the adoption process, the adopted individual now has two families—their biological families and their adopted families.

Adoptees often engage in contemporary genealogical research to find their biological family—birth parents, birth children, siblings, and half-siblings as well as other biological and adopted family members. With the use of modern technology, these searches are often successful and many families and friends have been reunited.

Similarly, coordinators of class reunions, planners of family association meetings, and organizers of anniversary
gatherings for military units employ genealogical research techniques to locate and contact potential attendees.

Health and Medicine
The use of genealogy in the field of medicine can hav e profound and life saving consequences. Almost without exception, medical doctors devote a portion of their new patient admittance forms to sections about family health history. Knowledge of predecessors’ health as well as causes of death are increasingly important for doctors to properly diagnose individuals.

For example, one family used death certificates of a deceased mother and sister to help doctors find and remove a tumor on another sister before it became life threatening. Because the family knew of the cancer on both paternal and maternal sides of their family, the lives of three of the four sisters were saved, and the life of another was prolonged. Without the role of genealogy in their medical treatment, these sisters’ stories would likely have been very different.

Legal Inheritance
Though all genealogical research employs skills similar to that of experienced detectives, heir searching is most frequently associated with the work of private investigators. Typically, individuals involved in finding lost heirs receive a percentage of the estate as a finder’s fee. Often rather contemporary data files of birth, marriage, and death records along with records from bureaus of motor vehicles will assist researchers looking for missing heirs.

In addition to estate settlements, companies, private detectives, and government employees have long used genealogical research methods to help determine property and mineral rights. In a nation where land ownership has played a significant role historically, and individual wealth assets are conveyed in numerous ways, being able to identify all members of a family and all direct descendants of those family members is critical. In a related way, genealogy is frequently used for identifying antiques, establishing both their authenticity and their value.

Similarly, since the earliest times of Euro-American interaction with First Nations peoples or native tribes, individuals have engaged in genealogical research to prove an ancestral connection to these earliest inhabitants.

Interest in establishing blood connections with these native peoples is often centered on interest in the federal government’s treaties with these nations—and subsequent payments, financial settlements, and other monetary arrangements. Access to special federal funds for college education, receiving a portion of annuity payments or other distributed resources, and being able to participate in the division of profits from business ventures also motivates individuals to search for a First Nations’ connection.

Quality of Life
Elder care specialists from the medical and social work fields continue to find overwhelming evidence that when the elderly have activities in which they can participate, they stay mentally sharper and physically healthier.

Among the oft-cited activities that help mature adults enhance their quality of life and contribute to their overall health are activities related to genealogy and family history research.

As an example of the incorporation of genealogy into elder care, the Lutheran churches in northeastern Indiana are conducting a special seminar in the fall of 2004 entitled “Our Second Fifty Years: God’s Gift.”

The emphasis of this seminar is to expose the more mature segments of the population, particularly those who are retired, to all the things they can engage in that will give meaning and purpose to their lives. Among the many programs offered will be three family history-related programs: a genealogy scrapbooking demonstration, a session of tips and techniques for writing one’s story, and a presentation on how to successfully begin genealogical research.

Honor and Prestige
Many people conduct genealogical research to qualify for membership in a military, patriotic, or s imilar society. The Colonial Dames, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Sons of Union Veterans are among the more well-known of these societies. But there are many others.

Individuals who work to qualify for membership in one of these organizations typically have a love of history and a desire to learn how their ancestors contributed to the particular historical event.

Other individuals engage in genealogical research to document as many royal, noble, and otherwise prestigious ancestral connections as possible. Though some view this as vanity research, proving a connection to a royal, presidential, or famous family requires genealogical savvy.

Historical Context
Genealogical research is used both to add context and content to historical writings and often to assist in the reconstruction of historical events. A recent example appeared on the ABC Nightly News with Peter Jennings in mid-April 2004.

During a story on the restoration of the H. L. Hunley, a Confederate submarine whose lost crew were finally properly laid to rest this year, a genealogist was interviewed regarding her strategies for identifying the men who were a part of the fateful mission that sank the vessel. Through genealogical research, a more complete and accurate story of the Hunley was told, and all her crew were properly identified before burial.

Genealogy is being used increasingly as a historical device. It contributes to migration and settlement studies as well as religious and congregational studies. The history of both a particular church and a denomination requires looking at families over several generations.

Family history also plays a significant role in the processing of manuscript collections, as such work requires an understanding of the individuals and families involved to assess the documents and their relevance to each other. Proper ly interpreting historic buildings and dwellings also requires a study of the families and businesses that resided in them, and often requires a study of more than just one generation.

Genetic Research
Repatriation projects rely heavily on genealogical research. When DNA has been harvested from a soldier’s remains with some indication of his identity, a contract researcher for the armed forces begins to explore the individual’s family history in the hopes of finding living relatives who can supply a DNA sample to verify the identity of the soldier.

There can hardly be a more worthy endeavor than to at last lay to rest a soldier who has been lost—and there can hardly be a more moving ceremony. Genealogy and genetics combine to make this happen.

While there are many misconceptions about the benefits of DNA in genealogical research, genetic research certainly benefits from genealogical studies. Indeed, Dr. Scott Woodward, a professor and genetics researcher at Brigham Young University, writes widely about his studies linking genealogy and biology.

In a 2002 BYU NewsNet newsletter, Woodward articulates how individual strains of DNA leave a trail through each generation that link particular persons back to places and times. Other people with the same “trail” share a common ancestry. Similarly, popular genealogist, author, and researcher, Megan Smolenyak, in a recent talk on DNA and genealogy, indicated that while genetics might not yet indicate one’s specific ancestors, genetic data can help people narrow the possibilities and avoid researching lines that are clearly not related.

New genetic studies projects are directly incorporating documented genealogical data. Dr. Woodward and Bryan Sykes of the University of Oxford in England are two of the leading experts in the field. Woodward is involved with the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, a nonprofit organization established to build a “correlated genetic and genealogical database.”

As the data files increase to include more generations of genealogical and genetic data, these resources will be of great assistance in helping genealogists get past brick walls of the nineteenth century and earlier; to cluster people and ancestral groups according to their genetic makeup; and to assist in demonstrating historical migration patterns. All this informational linkage is possible because of the marriage of genealogy and genetics.

Some people, like my son, are introduced to family history research at an early age and as they mature, their interest matures as well. But as evidenced here, the traditional reasons people become involved in genealogy are only a fragment of the possible ways people conduct family research. Regardless of how it all begins, though, one common thread ties researchers together. Family history research changes lives.

Curt B. Witcher, MLS, FUGA, is the Historical Genealogy Department Manager at the Allen County Public Library, and a former president of the Federation of Genealogical Societies and the National Genealogical Society.