ABSTRACT
Tracing one’s family history has become an extraordinarily popular pastime in recent years. Amateur genealogists in their millions are collecting birth, death and marriage certificates, subscribing to commercial family history sites, having their DNA tested and exploring copious online records. In this introductory chapter, we examine the history of family history and discuss reasons for its current popularity. We give a brief overview of the processes and methods involved in family history and genealogical research, noting the importance that serious amateurs place on genealogical proof standards and reliability checks. We present the debate about whether family history is ‘real’ history, and argue for its positive role in describing the lives of ‘ordinary’ people as a way of enriching our understanding of broader global events. Finally, we introduce our own study of approximately 800 family historians in which we examined their characteristics, motives, challenges, dilemmas and the psychosocial outcomes of their research – topics discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book.
