It’s sometimes complicated to write about my personal interest in researching my family’s history.  To clarify my thoughts, I think it’s important to establish how I differentiate between various common terms:

• Genealogy: According to FamilySearch.org, Genealogy is “The study of an individual’s ancestry.  Also called family history.”  That definition does a decent job, but that end is an issue for me.  The OED defines genealogy as “An account of one’s descent from an ancestor or ancestors, by enumeration of the intermediate persons; a pedigree.”  The earlier known usage is from 1384 in an English translation of The Bible.  In common usage,  I think that is a far more accurate definition.    It’s the pedigree part that makes clear the way to think about one’s genealogy. ** To me, genealogy is generally benign, but often slightly more fraught that other related terms due to it’s ties to pedigree.  I often use this term, but usually I will refer to “genealogy & family history research.”  I rarely use it by itself, as my focus is rarely on genealogy by itself. 

• Pedigree: Wiktionary defines pedigree as “from the Anglo-Norman pé de grue, meaning “foot of a crane,” … a chart, list, or record of ancestors, to show breeding, especially distinguished breeding. … A person’s ancestral history; ancestry, lineage. … Good breeding or ancestry. …”  Commonly, a pedigree is a chart showing one’s ancestors with a particular focus on breeding.  Pedigree charts are often used to genetically connect one individual to another or to a specific group to prove a certain point.  They can also be used for animals.  There are many reasons I find pedigree to be problematic, but chiefly is the implication of some sort of superiority based on the lineage of a person.  While pedigree charts can be benign, they are so often used to prove purity that I find them overly toxified.  If you need to prove your genetic connection to a specific person, I would ask yourself why that is.  If you struggle to find a reason not rooted in bigotry, then just don’t worry about pedigree charts. ** To me, pedigree calls to mind organizations like United Daughters of the Confederacy or The Ahnerebe, groups who have historically focused heavily on proving genetic lineages in an effort to prove purity and racial superiority.  While the word still shows up in a lot of study of ancestry or genealogy, and while most of those using it don’t actually subscribe to these hateful ideologies, I find it too difficult to use it without skirting a line that feels uncomfortable.  It’s one of the most problematic terms in this kind of study.

• Lineage: Wiktionary defines lineage as “descent in a line from a common progenitor; progeny; descending line of offspring or ascending line of parentage.  Lineage doesn’t have the toxic connotations that plague some of the other terms, but it very much related to them.  Lineage is an interesting part of one’s story, while not being the who story.  ** For me, a discussion of lineage is fine, as long as that discussion isn’t in service of the glorification of a group deemed superior to others for arbitrary reasons.

• Ancestry: The OED defines ancestry as “Ancestral lineage or descent, now frequently in relation to ethnic or national origins; (sometimes spec.) noble, aristocratic, or ancient descent.”  According to Wiktionary, an ancestor is “One from whom a person is descended, whether on the father’s or mother’s side, at any distance of time; a progenitor; a forefather [or forebear].” While similar to genealogy, I find ancestry a much loss dogmatic term, one that leaves open ways of including non-traditional views of a family tree.  ** I think of ancestry as the study of one’s direct ancestors and those ancestors’ families.  It’s the extended families, not simply a direct line.

• Family Tree: Ultimately, a family tree is just another word for pedigree. However, family tree isn’t as fraught with negativity as pedigree is.  A family tree is also a chart, or diagram, showing one’s lineage.  But in common usage, family trees have increasingly become places where non-traditional families can be featured and recognized.  

• DNA Testing: Offered by a variety of websites, DNA testing (or genetic testing) is used to show your relationship to others based on DNA.  It can be used to find distant relatives or to show where people with your similar DNA are currently living.  I find those things very interesting and helpful.  Knowing the settlement and movement patterns of people who have similar DNA to yourself shows you a lot about your family as part of a larger community.  DNA testing has limitations, and cannot really be used in the same way as a pedigree can.  But it also doesn’t rely on perfect records. 

• Heredity: According to the OED, heredity is “the transmission of genetic characters from parents to offspring; it is dependent upon the segregation and recombination of genes during meiosis and fertilization and results in the genesis of a new individual similar to others of its kind and exhibiting certain variations resulting from the particular mix of genes and their interaction with the environment.”  Where the term heredity shows up, proceed with caution.  I find it unnecessary is most cases to discuss heredity.  This term was most used in reference to royalty or nobility, but it seems to creep into mainstream ancestry and genealogy on occasion.  While I assume this is well-meaning, it’s a step in a direction that isn’t necessary or relevant in the telling of one’s family history.  ** For me, there is basically never a need to talk about heredity.  I’m open to the possibility of a discussion of specific disorders that have been passed down, but outside of that I don’t think we need to bring it into research.

• Heritage: The OED defines heritage as “That which has been or may be inherited; any property, and esp. land, which devolves by right of inheritance.”  Dictionary.com states similarly “something that comes or belongs to one by reason of birth; an inherited lot or portion.”  Here we get back into the same territory as pedigree, and especially in the United States, with the same crowd.  Heritage as a term has been greatly corrupted to indicate a person’s right to continued bigotry, and more recently to indicate one’s purity as a descendant primarily of Germanic ancestors, both from Nordic countries and from Germany.  I think it can still be used more benignly, but I tend to avoid it for its toxic connotations. ** I think of heritage as the sense one gets from being descended from their ancestors.

• Family History: The term I prefer to use when researching my family. The OED defines it as “The history of a family; a narrative about this.  In later use also: the study of the history of a family or families; genealogy as an area of study.”  Unlike the definition of genealogy provided by FamilySearch.org, family history is not necessarily synonymous with genealogy; it’s different enough to make more sense to me.

The reason I prefer family history is that it lacks the problems of the other related terms.  It isn’t even necessary that genetics be a component,  and often in a family they are not.  Family history as is a fuller way of researching ancestors.  So often in ancestry research, a person exists only as a short list of dates, and if you get lucky, places.  We tend to know when someone died, when they were born, and when they were married, in that order.  Those tell nothing about who a person was.  I will often use the term ancestry or genealogy with referring to my own research, but what I am most interested is the interconnection that fills in the full story of a person.  I don’t ever like to use pedigree or heritage.  There exist too many negative implications of those terms at this point, and until we can divorce these studies from notions of racial superiority and Eugenics, I think it best we don’t heavily use them.  I’m sure there are plenty who would disagree, arguing that you cannot allow certain ideologies to dissuade use of terms that are at their core benign.  But language is ruined by bigots all the time.  

One thing I see a lot in discussions of family history is a tendency to compress time and to see the highlights as the whole story.  One example from my own family is from my sixth great grandfather Christopher Stark.  The generations before him had lived a long time in Groton, Connecticut; several generations after him lived in Vigo County, Kentucky.  But he was born while the family was on the move, in New York.  He married his wife in Virginia in 1772.  He died in Kentucky in 1807, after spending most of his life in Pennsylvania.  Pennsylvania doesn’t even make the list of his vital facts, but was more a part of his life than any of the other states.  He probably thought of himself as a Pennsylvanian, but the compression of time makes his time there feel like more of a blip than a long storied life, filled with experiences and friends, annoyances and joys, homes and churches, winters and summers and celebrated holidays.  His life was more than the facts that took him away from his home, but it requires expanding out that life.

Similarly, I was reading about some extended family members who took a similar migration path, starting in Virginia and ultimately ending up in Indiana.  One member of the family was born and lived her eighty years in Eastern Ohio.  Ohio barely receives a mention, and with its sidelining, her entire eighty years become a footnote in her family’s history.

I want to understand it all.  I want to understand the daily lives of each of my ancestors.  I want to understand how they spent their working lives, who they spoke with daily, where they attended church, and who they were as children.  I want to know what they dreamed about and what they loved to eat.  I want to know if they loved music, what their favorite color was, and if they suffered from mental illnesses that went unaddressed.  I want to read the books they read, step on the places they stepped, visit the ground where their bodies lie.

I do not care if someone is genetically related.  I want to know about the next door neighbors who help raise the children; I want to know about family friends who were so close that they were considered family; I want to know about the slaves who kept the house and farms running.  There are a lot of people who aren’t related literally, but who are still a part of the fabric of a family.

What I find weird is an insistence on the importance of genetics in researching a family.  This comes up surprisingly often.  Adopted children are omitted from family trees, stepparents left unacknowledged.  That ignores the realities of how a family existed.  When a mother dies in childbirth, it’s an unimaginable tragedy; but if the father remarries and the stepmother raises that child, it is just as important to acknowledge that relationship as it is to remember the mother who died.  Both are part of the family history of the child.  And the other peripheral relationships are also part of the story; they should not be ignored.

Unless a person is trying to prove their claim to a crown, and I won’t get into how weird that is itself, trying to prove pedigree is a very strange thing to worry about.  It’s focusing on something that ultimately does not matter.  Try to stay focused on who the family was in life and not just by birth.  And don’t rely heavily on DNA tests to prove anything.  A DNA test doesn’t tell you who you are.  What it tells you is where other people with similar DNA are currently living.  It’s not a citizenship test, a purity test, an ethnicity test.  It’s a tool one can use in understanding their family’s history, but it isn’t the whole story.