History and genealogy cannot be divorced from one another – they are two sides of the study of human beings. As a very general rule, genealogy is the study of families, and history the study of people in larger societies. In reality, the two must be combined in order to make sense of the past.
Seeing Ancestors in Historical Context
Jacobson’s book begins with an introduction called “Seeing Ancestors in Historical Context,” a discussion that helps us think about the long-range implications of specific actions and the individual and family occurrences that could lead to major historical events.
Introduction to Timelines in Genealogy
Much of the book consists of timelines, and chapter two explains how to create a timeline and why they are useful in genealogy. The author provides several case studies (both in this chapter and others) describing how the study of major public events can be used to understand actions in the life of a particular family, and how this understanding can us find genealogists records.
Other sections of the book have to do with immigration and migration, methods of transportation, and a variety of issues such as myths, the difficulties of finding specific people, and community genealogy.
State and Regional Timelines
The second half of the book consists of state and regional timelines that include the obvious (1819--Alabama admitted to the Union) to the less well-known events (1917—tornado in Jefferson County, Kentucky; 1794—yellow fever epidemic in Maryland). These documented events are essential for understanding what motivated our ancestors to migrate, or which led to their deaths, or which factors were critical to the decisions they made.
Many of us know the years when vital records began to be kept in the states where our ancestors lived, but there is so much more to know about local history. We could read countless history books and still never know (or remember) that a group of Pennsylvania Quakers arrived to settle in Wrightsboro, Georgia, in 1767, or that a fire in 1904 destroyed 70 blocks of Baltimore’s business district. Yet these are the sorts of things that just might have affected our Georgia or Maryland ancestors. History for Genealogists provides all these tidbits of information, and much more. The book ends with a timeline bibliography and an index of people, places, wars, and battles.
The study of history can make you a better genealogist, and this book will help you on your way. History for Genealogists belongs on the bookshelf of every U.S. genealogical researcher.
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History for Genealogists: Using Chronological Time Lines to Find and Understand Your Ancestors, by Judy Jacobson. Baltimore, MD: Clearfield Company, 2009.
Katharine Garstka - Katharine Garstka specializes in genealogical research and in historical and genealogical writing.
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