Family History
Family history and genealogy are both fascinating subjects but they are not the same. Family history is embedded in social history and the way our antecedents lived and died. Genealogy has links with heraldry and tends to lead towards how our ancestors interacted with the law and the legal systems of their times.
Genealogy is the perhaps the simpler of the two. It is the relationship between individuals and families, who was the son of whom, and who was married to whom. It is what inheritance is based upon and its importance was, and still can be, immense when large estates and especially titles are in question.
Family history takes a broader view than genealogy. It is more interested in the social history of the past. It takes into account the lives of those who have gone before, not just their parents and offspring.
Whereas the study of genealogy is likely to lead to the study of legal documents, family history also embraces such things as newspaper cuttings, diaries, even the history of buildings and places.
GENETICS AND GENEALOGY
The study of both family history and genealogy is usually thought of in terms of documents and written records but the understanding of genetics is providing a new avenue of research. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is passed down from a mother to her children, but as only mother’s pass on mtDNA is it a way of tracking matrilineal lines. Its use lies in tracking population migrations and ethnicity rather than at a family level.
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Download a family history chart