The difference between genealogy and family history is subtle. Many people tend to use these terms interchangeably. I know I do, and in most situations that is not a problem. Even so, they are different. Genealogy is the study of your family lineage and is usually very precise. It documents birth, marriage, and death records. It also links people to the preceding generation. Family history, on the other hand, while it does include genealogy, is (or should be) a lot more than that.
To put it another way, family history includes anything that helps to preserve a family legacy such as video and audio recordings, family stories, pictures, and so forth. Collecting all this information is what builds a family history. Anything else is just facts and figures. Here are a few questions you ought to ask:
- What did your ancestor do? What was his job?
- How did she live?
- Where did they move to?
- What historical events did he witness?
- What events occurred in her community that influenced the decisions she made?
- Why did they migrate?
Collecting all of this information – and turning it into a story – is what builds a family history.
One of the best ways to get other members of the family to show an interest and share your love of family history is to bring alive your ancestral family. Nobody is really enthralled by knowing that your great grandfather was born on this date and place and died on that date and place. That can be boring, especially to the rising generation. Your ancestors were people who lived lives in much the same way that you do with your family, so make sure you tell their story in an entertaining way.
Bring them back to life by adding historical events that took place during their life. It is easier to motivate family members if they know that great-great grandfather was born just after the (American) Civil War, or that your great grandmother was a suffragette. Their birth and their death information is only part of telling their stories. What were their lives like when these events were occurring?
Ancestry has done a pretty good job in this regard. For example, consider these screenshots from my grandmother’s Ancestry page. It starts off with an editable synopsis
of her life and also shows how I am related to her. Next, there is a map showing where events that occurred in her life. And the life events are interspersed with other events, such as this one of the Women’s Social and Political Union. And the gallery shows all of the pictures and documents I have gathered.
There are other websites that can also give you events relevant to the period in history you are looking at. OnThisDay.com, for example offers a listing of many major events, although it does not cover every single day. It does not cover anything on my date of birth, for example, but it is still pretty comprehensive. Newspaper archives are also excellent for gleaning information, especially events local to your family.
Family History research in England 