Genealogy facts for kids
Genealogy is the study of family history. It involves tracing back through generations to discover where you come from, who your ancestors were, and what their lives were like. This journey can be incredibly rewarding, allowing you to connect with your heritage and learn about the people who shaped your family's story over time.
The record of genealogical work may be presented as a "genealogy", a "family history", or a "family tree". In the narrow sense, a "genealogy" or a "family tree" traces the descendants of one person, whereas a "family history" traces the ancestors of one person, but the terms are often used interchangeably. A family history may include additional biographical information, family traditions, and the like.
Contents
Why explore genealogy?
Exploring genealogy can be a fun and educational activity for kids. It helps them understand their roots, appreciate cultural diversity, and develop important research skills. By learning about their ancestors' experiences, children can gain a deeper understanding of historical events and how they impacted families.
Research process
Genealogists begin their research by collecting family documents and stories. This creates a foundation for documentary research, which involves examining and evaluating historical records for evidence about ancestors and other relatives, their kinship ties, and the events that occurred in their lives. As a rule, genealogists begin with the present and work backwards in time. To keep track of collected material, family group sheets and pedigree charts are used. Formerly handwritten, these can now be generated by genealogical software.
Collaboration
Most genealogy software programs can export information about persons and their relationships in a standardized format called a GEDCOM. In that format, it can be shared with other genealogists, added to databases, or converted into family web sites. Social networking service (SNS) websites allow genealogists to share data and build their family trees online. Members can upload their family trees and contact other family historians to fill in gaps in their research. In addition to the (SNS) websites, there are other resources that encourage genealogists to connect and share information, such as rootsweb.ancestry.com and rsl.rootsweb.ancestry.com.
Volunteerism
Volunteer efforts figure prominently in genealogy. These range from the extremely informal to the highly organized.
On the informal side are the many popular and useful message boards such as Rootschat and mailing lists on particular surnames, regions, and other topics. These forums can be used to try to find relatives, request record lookups, obtain research advice, and much more. Many genealogists participate in loosely organized projects, both online and off. These collaborations take numerous forms. Some projects prepare name indexes for records, such as probate cases, and publish the indexes, either online or off. These indexes can be used as finding aids to locate original records. Other projects transcribe or abstract records. Offering record lookups for particular geographic areas is another common service. Volunteers do record lookups or take photos in their home areas for researchers who are unable to travel.
Those looking for a structured volunteer environment can join one of thousands of genealogical societies worldwide. Most societies have a unique area of focus, such as a particular surname, ethnicity, geographic area, or descendancy from participants in a given historical event. Genealogical societies are almost exclusively staffed by volunteers and may offer a broad range of services, including maintaining libraries for members' use, publishing newsletters, providing research assistance to the public, offering classes or seminars, and organizing record preservation or transcription projects.
Software
Genealogy software is used to collect, store, sort, and display genealogical data. At a minimum, genealogy software accommodates basic information about individuals, including births, marriages, and deaths. Many programs allow for additional biographical information, including occupation, residence, and notes, and most also offer a method for keeping track of the sources for each piece of evidence. Most programs can generate basic kinship charts and reports, allow for the import of digital photographs and the export of data in the GEDCOM format (short for GEnealogical Data COMmunication) so that data can be shared with those using other genealogy software. More advanced features include the ability to restrict the information that is shared, usually by removing information about living people out of privacy concerns; the import of sound files; the generation of family history books, web pages and other publications; the ability to handle same-sex marriages and children born out of wedlock; searching the Internet for data; and the provision of research guidance. Programs may be geared toward a specific religion, with fields relevant to that religion, or to specific nationalities or ethnic groups, with source types relevant for those groups. Online resources involve complex programming and large data bases, such as censuses.
Records and documentation
Genealogists use a wide variety of records in their research. To effectively conduct genealogical research, it is important to understand how the records were created, what information is included in them, and how and where to access them.
List of record types
Records that are used in genealogy research include:
- Vital records
- Birth records
- Death records
- Marriage and divorce records
- Adoption records
- Biographies and biographical profiles (e.g. Who's Who)
- Cemetery lists
- Census records
- Church and Religious records
- Baptism or christening
- Brit milah or Baby naming certificates
- Confirmation
- Bar or bat mitzvah
- Marriage
- Funeral or death
- Membership
- City directories and telephone directories
- Coroner's reports
- Court records
- Criminal records
- Civil records
- Diaries, personal letters and family Bibles
- DNA tests
- Emigration, immigration and naturalization records
- Hereditary & lineage organization records, e.g. Daughters of the American Revolution records
- Land and property records, deeds
- Medical records
- Military and conscription records
- Newspaper articles
- Obituaries
- Occupational records
- Oral histories
- Passports
- Photographs
- Poorhouse, workhouse, almshouse, and asylum records
- School and alumni association records
- Ship passenger lists
- Social Security (within the US) and pension records
- Tax records
- Tombstones, cemetery records, and funeral home records
- Voter registration records
- Wills and probate records
To keep track of their citizens, governments began keeping records of persons who were neither royalty nor nobility. In England and Germany, for example, such record keeping started with parish registers in the 16th century. As more of the population was recorded, there were sufficient records to follow a family. Major life events, such as births, marriages, and deaths, were often documented with a license, permit, or report. Genealogists locate these records in local, regional or national offices or archives and extract information about family relationships and recreate timelines of persons' lives.
In China, India and other Asian countries, genealogy books are used to record the names, occupations, and other information about family members, with some books dating back hundreds or even thousands of years. In the eastern Indian state of Bihar, there is a written tradition of genealogical records among Maithil Brahmins and Karna Kayasthas called "Panjis", dating to the 12th century CE. Even today these records are consulted prior to marriages.
In Ireland, genealogical records were recorded by professional families of senchaidh (historians) until as late as the mid-17th century. Perhaps the most outstanding example of this genre is Leabhar na nGenealach/The Great Book of Irish Genealogies, by Dubhaltach MacFhirbhisigh (d. 1671), published in 2004.
Images for kids
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The family tree of "the Landas", a 17th-century family
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12 generations patrilineage of a Hindu Lingayat male from central Karnataka spanning over 275 years, depicted in descending order
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A Medieval genealogy traced from Adam and Eve
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Gramps is an example of genealogy software.
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The Family History Library, operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is the world's largest library dedicated to genealogical research.
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Lineage of a family, c. 1809
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See also
In Spanish: Genealogía para niños
 | Shirley Ann Jackson |
 | Garett Morgan |
 | J. Ernest Wilkins Jr. |
 | Elijah McCoy |
