The Family History Hobby

Why has family history or genealogy grown as a hobby?  Why do we want to know about our ancestors?

Family history can be both interesting and fascinating giving the researcher the opportunity to be a detective.

Ancestors feed into who we are both genetically and in other ways.    So Genealogy helps us know who we are.

Others choose family history to find lost family members or seek ancestral connections to a specific heritage, such as Native American.

With the introduction of computers the search has been made far easier.  Family records were often kept in Bibles which had pages for births, marriages and deaths.  In the 19^th century, information was likely transmitted by letter.  By the mid part of the 20^th century, travel became more available and the zealous and affluent were able to visit sites where their ancestors lived or died.  Visiting county courthouse archives invited the truly passionate to search ancient volumes. 

More recently many of those records were microfilmed and researchers were able to visit Family History Centers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and view microfilm from many areas at one center. 

Now many records are online with indexes making finding ancestry often quick and inexpensive.  Some great sites include Ancestry.com, Find-a-Grave, Familysearch, US GenWeb, and specific county historical society sites.  Many cemeteries have records online.  Some states have death certificates online or indexes to vital records.  Even with all this, every family has its brickwalls—those connections that seem to end with great, great grandmother Mary who died young.  Brickwalls are both great detective challenges and frustrations.

In short, family history and genealogy have become more accessible.  Perhaps as families now live farther apart are brought together by family history.