Concerning Genealogies
()
About this ebook
Strong emphasis is laid upon the importance of employing the historical method, without which no genealogical work can become authoritative. If we may judge from most of the family histories in print, a vigorous protest against pernicious methods should be lodged with professional genealogists as well as with amateurs.
Special attention is also called to the radically different plans for genealogical works, one tracing the many descendants of a common ancestor, the other tracing the many ancestors of a common descendant. There is a general drift toward the latter, many having discovered the fascination of exploring their direct lines of descent who would not care to trace the collateral branches of a family "tribe." But a detailed plan of work devoted to the exhibit of the many lines of one's own ancestry is here formulated for the first time. This "Grafton Plan," as we have called it,—already carried into execution, and approved by experience,—will appeal to thousands for whom "tribal" genealogies have little interest.
Our little volume also offers something more than a mere theory of how to proceed in genealogical work. It tells of labor-saving notebooks devised for each kind of genealogy, and explains ways in which our own genealogical department is placed at the service of the reader.
Frank Allaben.
Related to Concerning Genealogies
Related ebooks
Scottish Genealogy (Fourth Edition) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Find Your English Ancestors: An Overview: Beginners' Guide to Family History Research, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow To Become A Genealogy Expert Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow to Locate Genealogy Resources for Nassau County, NY Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVermillion Co, IN - Vol I Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFind Your Roots Now!: A Step by Step Guide for Beginning Genealogists Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChronicles of the Scotch-Irish Settlement in Virginia: Extracted From the Original Court Records of Augusta County, 1745-1800 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Wills of Our Ancestors: A Guide for Family & Local Historians Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow to Handle an Ancestry Scandal: A Mags and Biddy Genealogy Mystery, #3 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn Their Footsteps: A 500 Year Genealogical Odyssey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsProducing a Quality Family History Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Meng (1630) and Shamhart (1147) Family History and Genealogy in Deutschland and America. Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTracing Your Naval Ancestors: A Guide for Family Historians Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Moody's and Coffin's and Everyone: One Family's Tales and Genealogy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUnearthing Family Tree Mysteries Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tracing Your Pauper Ancestors: A Guide for Family Historians Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Going to Ireland: A Genealogical Researcher's Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStorytelling on the Northern Irish Border: Characters and Community Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIt Runs in the Family: Understanding More About Your Ancestors Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Snyder County Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A–Z of Irish Names for Children and Their Meanings: Finding the Perfect Irish Name for Your New Baby Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBarbourville and Knox County Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Basic Genealogy: Saving Your Family History Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHistoric Tales of Bethel, Connecticut Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Guide to Tracing Your Family History Using the Census Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKentucky in American Letters, v. 2 of 2 1784-1912 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmerican Genealogy: How to Trace Your American Family Tree Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTracing Your East End Ancestors: A Guide for Family Historians Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTracing Your Ancestors' Childhood: A Guide for Family Historians Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
History For You
Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Grief Observed Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5100 Things You're Not Supposed to Know: Secrets, Conspiracies, Cover Ups, and Absurdities Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Secret History of the World Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Reset: And the War for the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Library Book Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Richest Man in Babylon: The most inspiring book on wealth ever written Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lessons of History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Awakening: Defeating the Globalists and Launching the Next Great Renaissance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Cliterate: Why Orgasm Equality Matters--And How to Get It Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5100 Amazing Facts About the Negro with Complete Proof Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Concerning Genealogies
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Concerning Genealogies - Frank Allaben
York
PREFACE
This little book puts the pleasure of tracing one's ancestry within reach of those who have had no previous practice. It covers every phase of the subject—the sources of information, the methods of research, the compiling, the printing, and the publishing of a genealogy.
Strong emphasis is laid upon the importance of employing the historical method, without which no genealogical work can become authoritative. If we may judge from most of the family histories in print, a vigorous protest against pernicious methods should be lodged with professional genealogists as well as with amateurs.
Special attention is also called to the radically different plans for genealogical works, one tracing the many descendants of a common ancestor, the other tracing the many ancestors of a common descendant. There is a general drift toward the latter, many having discovered the fascination of exploring their direct lines of descent who would not care to trace the collateral branches of a family tribe.
But a detailed plan of work devoted to the exhibit of the many lines of one's own ancestry is here formulated for the first time. This Grafton Plan,
as we have called it,—already carried into execution, and approved by experience,—will appeal to thousands for whom tribal
genealogies have little interest.
Our little volume also offers something more than a mere theory of how to proceed in genealogical work. It tells of labor-saving notebooks devised for each kind of genealogy, and explains ways in which our own genealogical department is placed at the service of the reader.
Frank Allaben.
CONCERNING GENEALOGIES
I ANCESTRY HUNTING
Everyone has leisure moments which are apt to hang heavy upon one's hands unless employed in some sort of recreation. One turns to golf and outdoors, another goes forth with gun or rod, a third arms himself with a camera. Many dabble a little in science. Some take to the telescope and star-gazing, while the microscope claims others, who haunt scummy ponds with jars and bottles in search of diatoms, and other denizens of a drop of stagnant water. One goes in for bugs, another for ferns or fungi. Others, of a bookish turn of mind, do their hunting in the dark corners of second-hand bookstores, hoping to stumble upon a first edition or some other treasure.
But it is doubtful if the whole range of hobbies can produce anything half so fascinating as the hunt for one's ancestry. This combines the charm and excitement of every other pastime. What sportsman ever bagged such royal game as a line of his own forebears? What triumph of the rod and reel ever gave the thrill of ecstasy with which we land an elusive ancestor in the genealogical net? If any proof be needed of the fascination of this pursuit, behold the thousands who are taking it up! The nooks and crannies of civilization are their hunting-grounds—any corner where man has left a documentary trace of himself. Behold them, eager enthusiasts, besieging the libraries, poring over tomes of deeds and wills and other documents in State and county archives, searching the quaint and musty volumes of town annals, thumbing dusty pages of baptismal registers, and frequenting churchyards to decipher the fast-fading names and dates on mossgrown tombstones, yellow and stained with age, or cracked and chipped by the frosts and rains of many seasons!
A tidal wave of ancestry-searching has indeed swept over the country. Genealogical and biographical societies have been organized. Periodicals have sprung up which confine themselves exclusively to this subject. Newspapers are devoting departments to it. The so-called patriotic societies and orders have become a host, with branches in nearly every State. They count their members by tens of thousands, their rolls are steadily increasing, and new societies are constantly being organized. There is scarcely an achievement in which our ancestors took part which has not been made the rallying-point of some flourishing society. All these draw life and nourishment from the mighty stream of genealogical research. We must prove that we have had ancestors, and that one or more of them had the distinction celebrated by the particular organization at whose door we knock for admission.
Librarians and the custodians of public records bear witness to this great movement. The libraries have become wonderfully popular, thronged by multitudes who have enrolled themselves in the army of amateur genealogists. So onerous has become the work of handing out historical and genealogical books that in some large libraries such works have been gathered into alcoves which are thrown open to the public, where the