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Matthew Robare's avatar

I disagree that future generations won't have any genealogical challenges. A big part of genealogy is compiling biographies and stories about one's ancestors, not simply tallying up names and dates. No one ever learned history because they wanted to memorize a long string of dates, but because they weres fascinated by *people*. I am fascinated by my ancestors' lives and I have questions that may not be answerable: I have several lines from Colonial Maryland that trace back to Royalist and even Catholic Recusant families in England -- and then became Quaker within 50 years of being in America. I find myself wondering to what extent their political and religious views played in their immigration (and it's not simply Maryland was started to be a safe haven for English Catholics because one of the lines was Anglican and assisted in the Puritan attempt to take over Maryland, not converting to Catholicism until later) and why they eventually joined the Society of Friends.

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Lori Olson White's avatar

Having just read a book which is basically the genealogy of American genealogy (Family Trees: A History of Genealogy in America by François Weil), I think we're in the same boat as were genealogists in the past when cash-for-pedigree work was popular and profitable. People were so eager to "prove' their family heritage, and thus their status as rightful heirs of America's history/noble ancestry/colonial mythology/yaddyada that they didn't really care if their family tree was well-rooted or not. They just wanted the paper and stamp of approval.

Later, of course, serious genealogists had to step in to rewrite and correct all those documents and artificial trees, and I think we will see that in the the years ahead. The convenience of online research means people add all sorts of nonsense to their trees, collecting ancestors like it's a competitive sport, and replacing quality with quantity. It's a holy mess!

That's where we come in, and where, I think, genealogists will continue to thrive - in coaxing truth and order from the chaos, and then telling the stories, not as someone might want them to be told, but as the facts and historical context dictate.

Seriously, read Weil's book. It has changed how I see genealogy.

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