Family History Research

As anyone surely knows by now, family history research has become big business. Knowing your family's background, where they came from, what they did, "who" they were has immense appeal for millions of people - at least in the first world. In part that is because so many families emigrated from Eurasia to North America and the Antipodes leaving behind forebears and their stock of familial knowledge. In part it derives from some sort of popularized belief that culture is genetically and usually paternally determined; and this sense that we are what our male forebears were no matter where we were born and raised has been well nurtured by the pluralism of the multicultural movement. In part it flows from the desire to understand the intersection between personal histories and public history: what were our ancestors doing at this or that time in history; how were they affected by this or that historical event?

Once upon a time only the rich and titled were able to chart their families' pasts. Now it is within the compass of most us in the first world to learn something about the peoples who made up and made our families. The internet and the ever-growing digitization of public and private records have made possible what today what would have been all but unthinkable ten to fifteen years ago (I'm guessing here!). A treasure trove of archives can be searched with a few clicks of the mouse - and, of course, usually a credit card! The click of the mouse allows everyone to be a historian and a genealogist; and, as tellingly, able to determine their own past.

It is this last reason behind much of family history research - structuring one's own past - with which this blog is concerned. Unfortunately, genealogy does not have too high a reputation among academic historians - and, equally unfortunately, all too frequently for good reason. Reputable genealogists, like other historians, recognize the need to read the records with care and in the knowledge that little in the archives can be taken at face value; that the further back you go the more tenuous the evidential links and so the unreliability of making claims; and that the vast majority of ordinary people left behind little or no evidence of their existence, certainly prior to the late sixteenth century in England. Now that everyone and anyone can be their own genealogist - which is as it should be - the restraints are off!! Everybody seems to claim a Family Crest for at least one line in their background; every other family appears to have a connection to royalty, or the nobility, or even petty aristocracy! There are those who have staked their claim to a genetic link to Charlemagne (not a few) and to sundry Anglo-Saxons, Danes and whatnots. How and where they have been able to find the records that make these connections and how they have been assured of their reliability is, well, beyond me! I suspect that much of the chronologically distant research for these "family trees" was the work of paid researchers who understood what their clients wanted: a claim to their family's historical significance. An understandable wish, but not one that makes for reliable history or genealogy. And a desire that misunderstands the social historical significance of ordinary people's lives in the making of public history.

Let me make my disclosure here: I am by training a historian; I am researching my own family history; and I should like to work as both a historical and genealogical researcher for others. Historical research and writing about the past in the light of what the available evidence does and does not say are my passions. Since leaving university, not having found any other outlet for these twinned passions, I have indulged them through looking into my own family's past. As for so many another, the internet and its ever-growing digitized store of personal historical records have proved a wondrous boon. Best of course would be to do the digging in the repositories themselves; but when you live thousands of miles away from the pertinent ones, the internet's incomplete but burgeoning crop are almost as good. So long as you have the money to pay for viewing the digitized manuscripts.

It is absolutely necessary to check the indexed and transcribed information against the manuscript. You should not trust other people's transcription of documents. However, many appear to do so - perhaps because of the extra cost involved in viewing the ms. Many of the transcribers of, for example, British census records for some of the best known genealogical subscription websites are volunteers. Some of them do not appear to be familiar with 18th and 19th century handwriting styles; nor do many appear have much if any knowledge of British place names. Other transcription or manuscript errors abound. The manuscripts of the British census records as we see them on our computer screens are themselves transcribed copies of the original forms that either the enumerator or the literate householder filled out on the night of the census (more likely the latter filled out the form at some point in time before the night of the census). The original forms were destroyed after their information had been copied down into the census return books, so there is no possibility of double-checking the census books, as we have them, against the original forms.

If all that the family history researcher had to worry about were transcription errors, it would be a simple matter of being willing and able to pay to view the manuscripts either in virtual or tangible formats. If that were all there were to researching the records, it would far far less fascinating than historical research intrinsically is. It is to those other absorbing problems that I shall turn in the next blog - and what they tell us about how we understand our families' pasts and their place in our public histories. And I shall touch on the problems that beset the family historian once the 19th century is left behind for earlier periods.