genealogy, The Newberry Library, General Fund, 1926 (A Britannica Publishing Partner)the study of family origins and history. Genealogists compile lists of ancestors, which they arrange in pedigree charts or other written forms. The word genealogy comes from two Greek words—one meaning “race” or “family” and the other “theory” or “science.” Thus is derived “to trace ancestry,” the science of studying family history. The term pedigree comes from the Latin pes (“foot”) and grus (“crane”) and is derived from a sign resembling a crane’s foot, used to indicate lines of descent in early west European genealogies. Chart pedigrees, familiar to most people from school history books, include arrow shapes, parallel lines, a crinkled line denoting birth to unmarried parents, and the sign = denoting marriage.
Genealogy is a universal phenomenon and, in forms varying from the rudimentary to the comparatively complex, is found in all nations and periods. In this article the history of genealogy is outlined, followed by an account of the work of modern genealogists, professional and amateur, and as organized in associations.
The history of genealogy can be divided most easily into three stages. The first is that of oral tradition; the second, that in which certain pedigrees were committed to writing. The third stage comprises the period from approximately 1500 in western Europe and later in the English-speaking world, during which the whole basis of genealogy widened to such an extent that it is now possible for the majority of people in western Europe to trace their ancestry.
In the early days of civilization, before written records were made, oral traditions were necessarily important. Without the art of writing, reliance must be placed on memory, aided possibly by mnemonic systems like that of knot arrangements used by the pre-Hispanic Peruvians, or beads employed by the Maori of New Zealand. The ancient Scottish sennachy, or royal bard, could recite the pedigree of the old Scots kings at the latter’s inauguration, and the nobles of Peru, who boasted a common descent with the sovereign, were able to preserve their pedigrees despite the complexity resulting from the practice of polygamy. Oral transmission of genealogical information is almost always as a list of names—the lineages of the ancient Irish kings, for example. Events of outstanding importance are occasionally incorporated in such lists.
Numerous Asian genealogies appear in the Bible. A cursory examination of these will reveal that they belong to the first and second stages in the history of genealogy, as described above. The systematic keeping of genealogical records, as in Europe since 1500, did not occur until very recently in Asia and Africa.
In southern India the ruling house of the maharajas of Travancore claimed to trace its descent, direct and unbroken, from the old Cera kings of southern India (referred to as independent sovereigns in one of the edicts of Ashoka, the great Mauryan emperor of the 3rd century bce). A claim that inscriptions of the rulers of Travancore have been found from the 9th century ce comes from a statement issued by the secretariat of the maharaja of Travancore. Its reliability may be judged along with the genealogies of princes in northern India shown in Lieut. Col. James Tod’s monumental work, Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan (1829, republished 1950). Referring to the lineages of Indian princes as being known since the early centuries bce, Tod wrote, “If, after all, these are fabricated genealogies of the ancient families of India, the fabrication is of ancient date, and they are all they know themselves upon the subject.” The very long Asian genealogies begin as oral pedigrees and were later written down, but they concern only princes or great persons.
In Africa the one instance of a claim to very long descent, that of the emperor of Ethiopia, bears a similarity to Tod’s Rajput genealogies. The emperor is said to descend from the marriage of King Solomon with the Queen of Sheba. The tradition was written down more than 15 centuries ago; it is therefore older than the history of most European monarchies, but it cannot, of course, be substantiated by documentary proof.
Under European influence, some Asian countries have adopted the practice of keeping systematic records for all citizens. In China, with its ancient system of ancestor worship, long, drawn-out pedigrees, including claims to descent from Confucius, are not unknown. The establishment of the Chinese Republic in 1911 brought with it registration of vital statistics.
In modern Japan, the registration of vital statistics is regulated by law. The Family Registration Law of 1947, and later enactments, require a comprehensive registration of a Japanese national from his birth to his death. Such information, however, is kept in local registration offices, and there is no system in Japan for gathering together, recording, and preserving the information in one central place (although of course the results of statistics, such as the number of births, is known to the central authority). Such an exact system of registration covers only the era of modern Japan. The present-day pedigree of the Japanese emperors has a divine origin; it is mainly a string of names, easily recited and memorized, mixed with semifabulous legends and first written down in the early centuries of the Common Era. It is concerned only with exalted persons, royal or noble.
In the Bible there are many genealogies, the object of which is to show descent from Adam, Noah, and Abraham. By the time these genealogies had become part of the Jewish scriptures, the concept of racial purity had reinforced the keeping of family records. Genealogies of Jesus Christ in the New Testament aim at showing his descent from David, the one in St. Luke’s Gospel going as far back as Adam, “who was the son of God.” The idea of divine origin was reflected everywhere in a wildly polytheistic form among the Gentiles. Almost without exception, the heroes whose genealogies were recited by the bards had their paternity ascribed to the gods, or to persons such as Romulus who were regarded as having become divine. Greek fables abound in stories of great men begotten by gods and mortals.
In Roman genealogies heroes were always descended from gods. Julius Caesar, for example, was supposed to have sprung from the line of Aeneas, and thus from that of Venus. Among the Romans, traditions of descent remained vague even when written. Caesar’s murderer, Brutus, was popularly supposed to be of the same family as an ancient Brutus, who had expelled the Tarquins, but no pedigree appears to have existed to substantiate the belief.
Among the northern nations that overwhelmed the western Roman Empire, belief in divine sonship was general. For Saxon rulers of the English kingdoms it was necessary to be descended from the god Woden.
With the invention of writing, the oral became the written tradition. This occurred in Greece and Rome, where genealogies were recorded in poems and in histories. But genealogy did not at this stage become a science, because when writers dealt with it, they did so either incidentally in their narrative or because they were concerned with the family relationships of their gods.
The historian Edward Gibbon’s observation that “the proudest families are content to lose in the darkness of the middle ages, the tree of their pedigree” may be challenged in the light of recorded genealogies. The male line of Charlemagne has been traced to St. Arnulf, bishop of Metz, who died about 635. Several royal line descents are traceable to the 6th century, as, in England, is the tree of Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten. The ancestry of Queen Elizabeth II goes to Egbert of Wessex (about 825), beyond him to Cerdic (c. 500), and, if another series of names is accepted, to Woden (an actual man later divinized by the Germans), in the 3rd century ce.
With the conversion of the peoples of Ireland, Wales, and England to Christianity, the recording of their regal traditions began. It was natural for the first chroniclers, who were mostly monks, to write down the oral pedigrees of the kings in whose realms they lived. Students of the Irish regal pedigrees are prepared to accept two or three generations before the time of St. Patrick (flourished 5th century ce) as genuine, and it is quite probable that name lists of the Irish kings are valid back to the 3rd century ce. Similarly, in Wales, the ancestry of the greatest Welsh families can be traced for a millennium. Among the Anglo-Saxons there were similar bardic pedigrees recorded by monastic scribes, and many of these might have survived but for the destruction of the Old English ruling class during the Norman Conquest. A regular feature of such old pedigrees recorded by monks was an attempt to link them with the genealogies of the Scriptures. In an Anglo-Saxon pedigree of great length—that of the kings of Wessex (the ancestors of Elizabeth II)—the line is thus traced to Sceaf, “a son of Noah born in the Ark.” In the process of working out the connection between scriptural and regal genealogies, the monks adopted a reverse technique to that of the 4th-century-bce Greek mythographer Euhemerus; i.e., they downgraded the old gods to human status.
From roughly 1100 to 1500, the emphasis of genealogists was on pedigrees of royal and noble lines. Claims to a throne, as with the dozen or so claimants to the Scottish crown after the death of Alexander III in 1286 and of his direct heir, Margaret the Maid of Norway in 1290, frequently involved genealogical trees. The truth was sometimes bent to suit some political end, but, on the whole, medieval European records are genealogically valid. This is because they were not primarily intended to supply genealogical information but to record land transactions, taxation, and lawsuits. The facts of family history are incidental and are therefore generally reliable. Exact dates of birth, marriage, and death are rarely given. A man is said to be of age “by Michaelmas 1330.”
This period also saw the emergence of pedigrees of lesser folk. Land transactions involved claims in the local courts of the lords. Serfdom gave way to villenage; the latter involved so many days of labour on the lord’s demesne and also the inability to move from the estate without the lord’s consent. There was strong inducement for a man to prove that he was not a villein and for the bailiff to show that he was. In several parts of England, pedigrees of villeins or persons claimed as such have been worked out over periods of 100–150 years.
It was during the third period in European genealogical history that records that came to include everyone began. This period extends from 1500 to the present. As feudalism gradually gave way, new classes of citizens arose. In England the appearance of a powerful mercantile and business community was reflected in the growth of the middle classes, from which was continually recruited a new nobility and gentry. In turn, owing to the English rule of inheritance by primogeniture and the fact that unlike the continental nobility English nobility has never extended beyond the reigning peer and his wife, the middle classes themselves continually received the younger children of peers and gentry. Two other factors leading to the proliferation of records were the enormous changes caused by the Reformation and the great reemphasis on individual religion and the desire of Renaissance monarchs to have more exact information about all their subjects.
Amateurs in the subject of genealogy are almost always actuated by the desire to trace their own family history. In the course of so doing they discover and work with general principles which apply to pedigrees other than their own, though records other than those applicable to their own case do not interest them. The professional genealogist is concerned not with one family but with many, and with the principles of genealogical research which arise from a wide study. As there are few university courses in the subject and therefore few degrees or other certificates of professional proficiency, the professional must be largely self-taught.
The disciplines required of a professional genealogist include a deep knowledge of the history of the country with which he is concerned and of its neighbours. National history determines the form of national genealogy, and genealogy can illuminate many aspects of national history that might otherwise remain obscure. The Wars of the Roses, for example, are hard to grasp unless genealogical trees showing relationships of the contestants are studied, and the course of the American Revolution is easier to understand when the links between George Washington and his compeers with the old English landed families who overthrew the Stuarts are comprehended. An understanding of the principles of law, especially of land law, the ability to decipher court hand or medieval script, an understanding of heraldry, and an intimate knowledge of the study of surnames and place names are also essential to the genealogist. Variations in surname spelling can be bewildering. The key is in the sound of the name, for a medieval scribe could not ask the illiterate person before him to spell his name.
The main task undertaken by professional genealogists is the tracing of pedigrees for clients, this being the staple of their work. Clients often consult genealogists when they wish to establish their family background, or, when having tried to trace it, they have come to a stop.
The writing of private family histories by professionals is very common. The material has usually been worked out by others who wish it to be checked and written by a professional.
Amateur genealogists, as already mentioned, are usually concerned only with their own families. The standard of amateur work varies with the individual, from the truly bad to the excellent.
Amateur genealogical work has increased greatly since 1945. In the United States there has been a long interest in the subject. The New England Historic Genealogical Society, the Augustan Society (based in California) and many state societies are of note. The Mormons (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) have built up in Salt Lake City, Utah, a microfilm library of genealogical records from Britain and continental Europe, which is probably unequalled. In Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa the study of genealogy by private persons and by associations is growing rapidly. In England there is a Society of Genealogists, and there are corresponding bodies for Ireland and Scotland. In Denmark there is an International Confederation of Genealogy and Heraldry, which since 1954 has organized international congresses held in many European capitals at intervals of two years. In Czechoslovakia, by way of contrast, the national Genealogical Society was dissolved, and in general it has not been feasible to obtain genealogical details from communist countries, though it is probable that changes are now occurring in this respect. Jewish records are in a separate class. With the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, a very great effort has been made to centralize information about the Jews of continental Europe under the care and direction of The Central Archives for the Study of the Jewish Peoples, in Jerusalem.
In tracing family history, the worker follows certain rules. He works backward from the present. This is an elementary caution constantly put on one side by amateurs, who tend to trace forward from a person of the same name who may well be unrelated. As there cannot in the nature of things be a gap in a pedigree, no assumptions as to relationship can be allowed without very strong reason to accept them. Good and bad features in the ancestry have to be accepted. An ancestor’s wrongdoing must also be allowed for, though with passage of time this is usually taken in a romantic sense. Registration of birth, marriage, and death first became compulsory in England in 1837. Public records in most other Western countries began at varying dates in the 19th century. Census records are of great importance. They began in the United States as early as 1791; in Britain in 1801 (papers kept only from 1841); and even earlier in French Canada, in 1655–66. Parish registers began in England in 1538, though they are rarely preserved from that date. In most countries they begin later, but in Spain the oldest extant is dated 1394, and there are 1,636 parishes having records prior to 1570. In England, Nonconformist records have been kept by various bodies, and many are now held officially at Somerset House, London, or the Public Record Office. In America the settlers were generally trying to get away from established church and controlling state. They were vigorous individualists who kept careful records of their lives and of the organization of their new communities. Examples of detail in New England records can be seen in many of the 1,600 pedigrees contained in American Families with British Ancestry (500 page supplement to Burke’s Landed Gentry, 1939), in A.M. Burke’s Prominent Families of the United States of America, and in the many volumes of family history produced in the United States.
Wills are of the utmost importance as a source of genealogical information. Ships’ lists of passengers are useful in supplying dates for immigrant ancestors’ departure for the New World, but since they do not indicate place of origin, but only the port of departure, the original habitat must be sought elsewhere. Without knowledge of the ancestor’s place of origin in the homeland it is useless in almost all cases to attempt a search.
With the aid of the type of record mentioned above, and with help from family Bibles, tombstones, and plaques and brasses in churches, it is as a rule possible for a person of English antecedents to trace some 250–300 years of ancestry. Before the 17th century, everything depends on the social position of the ancestors. Tax records, lawsuits, and purchases and sales of land are the chief sources for tracing a family before 1600. The Pipe Rolls extend from the reign of Henry II (1154–89) to that of Queen Victoria (1837–1901), with an interrupted beginning also in the time of Henry I (1100–35). Monastic records are of great importance as showing grants or ownership of land. The pleas of the crown deal with suits at law and contain much detail about families. There are many Rolls besides those of the Pipe that give a great deal of incidental genealogical information. Inquisitiones post mortem show the position of an heir—i.e., his age and other details. As the centuries are passed, the numbers of those who can prove a descent by the male line dwindle, until by the time of the Norman Conquest scarcely half a dozen pedigrees can be traced in the male line for either Saxon or Norman.
Regarding deposition of public records, two principles have been followed by archivists: that of centralization and that of diffused local holdings. The former has many obvious advantages and was adopted in Scotland and in Ireland. It has one disadvantage—destruction of the records at one stroke. This happened in Dublin on April 13, 1922, when Irish factions fighting with each other burned most of the Irish records. The second system, by which records are stored in a number of depositories, prevails to a considerable extent in England. Although the Public Record Office, Somerset House, and the British Museum library are places of centralized record, the parish registers remain outside them, scattered in numerous parishes or county offices. County records contain masses of material not to be found in London.
From the 16th century there has been an increasing accumulation of written material, which deals either exclusively or incidentally with genealogy. William Camden (1551–1623), a learned English antiquary and historian, did much to raise the standards of genealogical research. He was the first English writer on surnames, and his work was not resumed for nearly 200 years. Sir William Dugdale, a younger contemporary of Camden, made a beginning with his Antiquities of Warwickshire to the great output of county histories written between the 17th and 19th centuries. The revolution in modern genealogy was the application to its study of canons of historical and literary criticism formulated in Europe from 1800. Their application to genealogy was fairly late, as is illustrated by the fact that the 19th-century English historian Thomas Macaulay, critically perceptive in most other spheres, accepted what amounted to family myths as true genealogy. Later writers, including J.H. Round, W. Farrer, C. Lewis Loyd, C.T. Clay, and the editors of the Complete Peerage, are of the greatest importance.