Looking for Heirs to a Family Inheritance — This is more commonly done by professional genealogists who get paid, but some private individuals do it, too, particularly if there are rumors of a rich relative with an unclaimed fortune. Determining Who Owns Land — After a few generations, the legal ownership of land, especially large tracts of land, can sometimes get murky. Researching genealogy gives you the opportunity to trace the legal ownership of the land through time to find out who has the rightful title to it today.
Locating Birth Parents — This is a common reason for researching genealogy. Whenever someone is adopted , they have a natural curiosity to know where their origins are, and the family from which they originally came. There is a huge community of adoptees who are researching their genealogy for this very reason. Determining Paternity — While DNA testing can be done in modern times to determine this, if there is a question about paternity in generations past, doing records research in genealogy can sometimes point to a paternal candidate, or even pinpoint the exact one.
Proving Lineage to Join a Lineage Society — If you want to join a lineage society, like Daughters of the American Revolution or the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, then doing genealogy to prove each fact for each generation from you back to your qualifying ancestor is a must.
Your connection in a direct line to that ancestor is required to join those groups. Preserving Family Traditions — Occasionally, doing genealogy means having a mission to preserve the traditions of your family for posterity.
If the unique things that are meaningful to you and your family mean a lot to you, then recording them for future generations in the form of a written genealogy is a strong and noble mission that will mean so much to future generations of your family.
Knowing our cultural background and where we came from can help us develop a strong sense of who we really are. The way we relate to our family stories and create our own narratives about ourselves helps establish our unique, authentic core identity.
Human beings desire attachment, belonging, and connection. The relationships we form with other people can be incredibly durable, not only with people in our present, but also with people in our past and future. The more we discover about our past, the greater a connection we feel to our ancestors. As we record our own history , we open the opportunity for future generations to connect with us when we are gone. Connecting with members of our family past and present by learning their history fills an innate need in each one of us.
Learning the history of our ancestors helps us gain a greater understanding of the challenges they faced, and it often inspires greater love and compassion for their flaws and mistakes. This compassion can easily translate to our relationships with the living, within our families and outside them. You will be surprised how easy this will become when you have a basic knowledge of your current family members and their stories.
Your family genealogy will expose you to many different types of personal records. What you will find in these records may amaze you. For example, death records will provide you with a clue to any prominent illnesses that may occur within your family tree. Older death records also often have very unusual causes of death, giving you interesting information for family stories. Birth and baptism records will tell you a lot about a person, including people that were present at their birth.
These clues can help you find obscure people in your family tree that may not appear in any other records. Land records and Wills often contain vital information about who your family members associated with when they were alive. The prospect is quite exciting. Discover Your Inner Artist! Smart Planner Blog Ideas to help you plan today for your tomorrow. And it offers many other social and emotional benefits: Sense of Purpose Many older people find themselves at a bit of a loss for what to do with their days.
Mental Stimulation In addition to staving off boredom and ennui, researching genealogy encourages the development of new skills such as working with computers and provides valuable opportunities to improve cognition and self esteem. Family Connections Researching genealogy can make a great family activity, involving siblings, children, and grandchildren. Social Benefits Finally, because researching family history is such a popular hobby, it offers the chance to meet other people who are likewise engaged in learning about their own families.
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