The quest for roots has been an enduring American preoccupation. Over the centuries, generations have sketched coats of arms, embroidered family trees, established local genealogical societies, and carefully filled in the blanks in their bibles, all in pursuit of self-knowledge and status through kinship ties. This long and varied history of Americans’ search for identity illuminates the story of America itself, according to François Weil, as fixations with social standing, racial purity, and national belonging gave way in the twentieth century to an embrace of diverse ethnicity and heritage. Seeking out one’s ancestors was a genteel pursuit in the colonial era, when an aristocratic pedigree secured a place in the British Atlantic empire. Genealogy developed into a middle-class diversion in the young republic. But over the next century, knowledge of one’s family background came to represent a quasi-scientific defense of elite “Anglo-Saxons” in a nation transformed by immigration and the emancipation of slaves. By the mid-twentieth century, when a new enthusiasm for cultural diversity took hold, the practice of tracing one’s family tree had become thoroughly democratized and commercialized. Today, Ancestry.com attracts over two million members with census records and ship manifests, while popular television shows depict celebrities exploring archives and submitting to DNA testing to learn the stories of their forebears. Further advances in genetics promise new insights as Americans continue their restless pursuit of past and place in an ever-changing world.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE PORTICO PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE DIVERSE BOOK AWARDS LONGLISTED FOR THE AUTHORS’ CLUB BEST FIRST NOVEL AWARD SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARD WINNER OF CALIBRE AUDIO’S ‘HIDDEN GEM’ AWARD ________

This important book examines the motives that drive family historians and explores whether those who research their ancestral pedigrees have distinct personalities, demographics or family characteristics. It describes genealogists’ experiences as they chart their family trees including their insights, dilemmas and the fascinating, sometimes disturbing and often surprising, outcomes of their searches. Drawing on theory and research from psychology and other humanities disciplines, as well as from the authors’ extensive survey data collected from over 800 amateur genealogists, the authors present the experiences of family historians, including personal insights, relationship changes, mental health benefits and ethical dilemmas. The book emphasises the motivation behind this exploration, including the need to acknowledge and tell ancestral stories, the spiritual and health-related aspects of genealogical research, the addictiveness of the detective work, the lifelong learning opportunities and the passionate desire to find lost relatives. With its focus on the role of family history in shaping personal identity and contemporary culture, this is fascinating reading for anyone studying genealogy and family history, professional genealogists and those researching their own history.

Get Your Research in Order! Stop struggling to manage all your genealogy facts, files, and data--make a plan of attack to maximize your progress. Organize Your Genealogy will show you how to use tried-and-true methods and the latest tech tools and genealogy software to organize your research plan, workspace, and family-history finds. In this book, you'll learn how to organize your time and resources, including how to set goals and objectives, determine workable research questions, sort paper and digital documents, keep track of physical and online correspondence, prepare for a research trip, and follow a skill-building plan. With this comprehensive guide, you'll make the most of your research time and energy and put yourself on a road to genealogy success. Organize Your Genealogy features: • Secrets to developing organized habits that will maximize your research time and progress • Hints for setting up the right physical and online workspaces • Proven, useful systems for organizing paper and electronic documents • Tips for managing genealogy projects and goals • The best tools for organizing every aspect of your ancestry research • Easy-to-use checklists and worksheets to apply the book's strategies Whether you're a newbie seeking best practices to get started or a seasoned researcher looking for new and better ways of getting organized, this guide will help you manage every facet of your ancestry research.

Designed to inspire and encourage, this comprehensive guide offers a basic introduction to the primary methods and sources used in genealogy work. It shows how to organize and evaluate readily available information, such as documents and photographs, and explores fundamental research techniques such as keeping a research log, interviewing relatives, making charts, citing sources, and using the Internet. Find out how to utilize more advanced methods to obtain information from census reports to cemeteries and more. Suggestions are included for preserving, displaying, and using the findings, along with plenty of photographs, charts, and lists.

A beautiful gift and keepsake album to record the genealogy and family history.