Genealogy, n. An account of one's descent from a man who did not particularly care to trace his own.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I know my father and my mother, but beyond that I cannot go. My ancestry is blurred.
I haven't done any genealogical exploring myself, though members of my family and also of my husband's family have traced things back. I have a great grandfather on my mother's side who was a musician, and I'd like to know more about his life.
I love many places to which I have no connection, but identifying an ancestor, or someone I think is an ancestor, has taken me to places I'd never have gone to otherwise.
Some people are your relatives but others are your ancestors, and you choose the ones you want to have as ancestors. You create yourself out of those values.
When you start about family, about lineage and ancestry, you are talking about every person on earth.
My dad has done a bit of research on our family tree, and we can trace it quite far back. My dad believes he has traced us back to being a great-great-great-great-great-great cousin of Wellington.
I am very aware of my family name. I'm very aware of the legacy that that kind of carries with it. And I think that I didn't want to lose any kind of hold of that. And I think once you're born into something that you're proud of and that you're aware of, you don't take it lightly.
It turns out that every person alive today can trace his or her ancestry back to Africa. Everyone's DNA tells a story of a journey from an African homeland to wherever you live.
There's a boom in genealogy now. With ancestry.com and other sites digitizing so many of the records, you can now find things in a few minutes that used to take months.
People like to trace their ancestry.