family history essay

family history essay

Exploring the Significance of Family History: An In-Depth Essay

1. Introduction to Family History and Its Importance

Knowing the basics about one’s ancestors, connecting the past with the present, truly provides the sense of personal history that can be called the “shock absorber,” being the buffer that helps to have the strength to endure the worst and take on life’s challenges with confidence. A first step is for children to immerse themselves in the history of all members of the family, dead or alive, even though no photos or documents may exist anymore. Some knowledge can be acquired from looking at the picture and expressions on the faces of the parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and extended family. This will lead to an understanding that ready-made answers may not be available but provide an opportunity to question and find solutions which would equip the child to stand up and face the present and future events with courage and determination.

The saying “what comes around goes around” is something which can be so easily proved by family history. This is mainly because only the good deeds a person has performed so far are remembered and not the bad ones. Good deeds brought up by a person in the younger generation will be counted as a result of family history. Why should one care about what happened a long time ago? Sheila Beatty, a genealogist, observed in her own family that “visualizing and exploring a tangible piece of the past created generations who are stronger with wonderful qualities of character.” At first glance, this statement may sound like wishful thinking, but now the scientific proof is increasing all the time about the significance and impact of family ties.

2. Methods of Researching and Documenting Family History

After carefully documenting written wills, estate inventories, land records, and other documents housed in the circuit court clerk’s office in Louisa, Virginia, I turned my attention to other sources in my search for information. Concord United Methodist Church was the church that had its beginnings in the Old Hicks. Most family historians will be able to turn up at least a few of these documents. The most likely types to be discovered are wills, birth certificates, obituaries, military and pension papers, land records, photographs, scrapbooks, letters, and other personal papers. These types of material are often to be found in attics, basements, trunks, and other places of storage in the homes of the elderly. Various public records, such as wills and deeds, are often found among numerous pieces of inherited papers of related families.

Family research, though engaging, can sometimes be difficult. However, the careful researcher can find a surprising amount of information if time and effort are expended wisely. The following are most of the primary categories of sources available to the Hicks researcher. These sources are mentioned elsewhere. A more recent publication of the National Archives will provide a condensed list of sources. Among the sources listed there are land records that contain vast amounts of genealogical material. Estate papers and wills are useful but not always available. Census records are valuable as far back as 1850 for determining relationships between members of a family, among other things. Church records are also useful.

3. Analyzing the Impact of Family History on Identity and Values

In relating personal stories, people identify themselves – who they are in the present, how they got to be there, what they think of their families now, and what they want the world to know about their families in the future. In effect, they pass down their genealogical perceptions not just to their peer group, but to younger, impressionable generations. The construction and reinterpretation of family history allows people to illustrate society’s unwritten values; it teaches the ethics society prizes and the property it defines. Family history validates our roots. By looking at the family in a historical context, our own personal upbringings and what we consider family values also come to light. Therefore, we reflect upon our own beliefs and come to an understanding of our heritage.

At first glance, words like history, origin, and culture seem more suitable for an academic or anthropological discourse than one of everyday conversation. But in reality, everyone participates in their own form of oral history. Simple questions like “Where is your family from?” or “Why do you wear this pin?” serve as launching points for stories about units of time, events, and people. Narrow the focus to family history, and the only difference between the stories people tell and those told in a college lecture is the presence of a theme or moral. In short, it is often in regard to the personal level that the public explores the universal. Because family histories are all operative, they all test or verify human generalizations. Personal stories can reveal universal truths. In that, family history educates.

Conclusion

Analyzing the impact of family history on identity and values

Analyzing the impact of family history on identity and values

Introduction

Exploring the significance of family history: An in-depth essay

4. Interpreting Historical Events Through the Lens of Family History

The lens of family history has helped me to interpret several historical events. Take, for example, the Second World War. I had, of course, read a lot about this pivotal event – its beginning, its major fronts, its conclusion – but I did not really process these events as family experiences. As I interviewed my relatives and then attended family gatherings, I started to appreciate how the transitions to war and the transition back had had such a broad impact, and how WWII had so potently shined (or darkened) such diverse lights on the same set of values. The responses of different family branches to the same set of circumstances were necessarily bounded by the same culture, the same nation, the same decade.

While understanding the historical context of a person’s life is always significant, I have started to appreciate a different level of significance in understanding the historical context of someone’s family life. I used to be one of the many people who considered large tracts of personal history – especially, personal history appearing before one’s own birth – to be irrelevant. Family lore was distantly interesting, like stories of events happening in faraway countries, but not very significant. However, over the years, I have, from a couple of different approaches, been convinced how important family history is to truly understanding history. The first convincing representation of this was Albert Schlieder, who formulated the telling insight that the correlation of historical relationship (among people) with falsifiable data (for people) results in the only true test of the hypothesis that a family tree is a representation of actual human history.

5. Preserving and Sharing Family History for Future Generations

Clearly, the lives of our ancestors are long past done. Our work to discover and build their stories only elevates our future generations’ respect and appreciation through the reality of these people who are the tool for directly engaging with their history. There are many sources for collecting and building family history. Each source a given chosen, however, provides plus additional contact valuations that remind the future what the present perceives as financially certainly suggests a deep and extended desire for creating family history materials for future generations.

The final levels of significance to your family history, the descendants of your tellers and those around them, is generally these people’s own motivations to family history itself. We all contribute to what these researchers are today whether we exist or not. So too do we contribute or fail to do so to what our generations to come and indeed those who come after us are in the future. When your family is no longer here to tell their stories for your descendants to enjoy, actually, family history enables everyone to identify and catalog who and what their people were, discern their existence, to ponder what motivation purpose brought them to life, and to capture the significance of their lives in the most meaningful and enduring way existing outside of the history of faith. Your work to identify and order what were the moments of existence of your ancestors in this world enables you to be an important contributor to your future family place in human reality.