What is genealogy? The value of genealogy today

  • To identify one’s origins.
  • To identify or confirm bloodlines and family relationships.
  • To trace one’s descent from a specific group such, as the 1820 Settlers or The French Huguenots.
  • To pass on information about family origins to one’s children by compiling a comprehensive family history, with a pedigree chart or lineage, for possible publication or just for one’s own personal interest.
  • To meet other sections of the family and to make new friends.
  • To find relatives of adopted or separated children.
  • To search for hereditary diseases.
  • To discover the personal relevance of political and/or religious history, travel and wars, fashion and culture, forms of transport, business and lifestyles.
  • To provide an outlet for an enquiring mind, to satisfy one’s own curiosity and enjoy the thrill of building a complex puzzle representing the lives lived by real people over centuries.