Hobbies and Pastimes
Genealogy
jee-nee-AL-uh-jee
Also Known As Family history
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Tracing family lines through records, memory and now DNA. Once the business of heralds and dynasties, it became a mass home pursuit as censuses, parish registers and passenger lists went online, and consumer DNA testing has both answered old questions and opened new ones about what the paper record left out.
Facts
OriginHistorically, genealogy in Western societies focused on the kinship and descent of rulers and nobles, often to demonstrate the legitimacy of claims to wealth and power. It systematized into an organized pursuit earlier than most home hobbies: John Farmer's work in the United States led to the founding of the New England Historic Genealogical Society in 1845. It reached a mass hobbyist audience only much later, after the 1977 television broadcast of Alex Haley's Roots, whose account of his own family's descent inspired many viewers to trace their own lines. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Sources
1. Genealogy (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundationen.wikipedia.org/wiki/GenealogyQuote, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealogy
Genealogy received a boost in the late 1970s with the television broadcast of Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley.
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