Genealogy: Why ...
This Wikipedia section covers many of the usual motivations for interest in family research, but I would expand on a few.
For billions of people in the world, knowing your tribal and family connections determines who you can marry and how high you can rise in life. Even without the advantage of literacy, societies track these relationships via elaborate oral traditions that go back many generations.
If you are like my grandaunt Winnie, religion is the driving factor. Per the Mormonism Research Ministry
: "Genealogy. Research of one’s family history. Names are gathered so that those already deceased can have temple rituals performed on their behalf." "The greatest responsibility in this world that God has laid upon us is to seek after our dead. Those saints who neglect it in behalf of their deceased relatives, do it at the peril of their own salvation." (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 193).
Maybe the most important family relationship issue for you is that you haven't turned 30 yet and are still living with or off of your parents. If you're afraid that you are seen as an embarrassment to the family you may be right. Good news! Your enormous gaming monitor is perfect for building and displaying family trees, and if you spend some time on it with your parents learning about your ancestors and family history, that could go a long way towards working yourself back into their wills!
Now then: Genealogy is learning -- about you and how you got here. It's about how the human race took a 300,000 year journey all around the world to get you where you are today. Your ancestors were part of a 30,000 generation trek that created 117,000,000,000 copies of themselves, of which over eight billion presently live.
Google "why learn genealogy" and you'll be presented with all sorts of fine reasons. Most will be pretty general. I much prefer the specific revelations of a Death Certificate.
In addition to dates and places for birth, death and usual residence, you can also learn a person's occupation and industry. You learn the immediate and contributing causes of death, whether an autopsy was performed, or if the body was embalmed or cremated and when the body was buried or removed for burial. It may be one of the few places to find the maiden name of the decedent's mother or wife (if married). And knowing whether a hereditary disease killed your relative could have important health implications for you!
Death certificates also tell the story of which of your ancestors died by accident, suicide, homicide or undetermined causes. And with genealogy, you will discover that it's often always a matter of time. We may no longer die by being thrown from horseback, but then perhaps you have a relative killed in an accident when early automobiles had neither seat belts nor air bags. Modern psychiatric drugs have only been around a few decades, and it would likely surprise you to learn just how many lives ended / were ended by poisons, hanging, shotguns, rifles, pistols, blunt force trauma, sharp weapons, farming accidents and the like.
Understanding how people lived is an important part of genealogy, as is understanding technologies of the time. Our ancestors didn't have modern lighters and fire starters, with white phosphorus "kitchen matches" not being invented and perfected until the early to mid 19th century. Factory workers making them were exposed to phosphorus fumes and developed "phossy jaw" or necrosis of the lower jaw which could then glow in the dark.
Understanding important dates extends both to scientific developments as well as human affairs, like wars. Inventions like the steam engine, the telegraph, the telephone, the wireless, photography and motion pictures, the electric light, electrification, the assembly line and the automobile, aviation, space flight -- all these and more help to make sense of genealogy records and events.
If you learn genealogy, you can't help but learn about the contagions and wars that pockmark human history. I learned that consumption and tuberculosis were the same thing, and that it claimed my great-grandfather, his wife, as well as their daughter that stayed home to care for them. Another great-grandfather died during the 1918-1920 flu pandemic, which likely originated in the US, but for WW I censorship and propaganda restrictions became known as the "Spanish Flu".
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Welcome! Before launching into an extended explanation about my favorite pastime, an introduction is in probably in order. My Facebook profile is public and fairly complete if you want all the details, but here are a few of the highlights.
