Genealogical societies are organizations and groups around the world that are devoted to the study of genealogy and family history. Genealogical studies emerged from the earlier medieval and early modern disciplines of heraldry and armory. The first organized genealogical societies were founded in the middle of the nineteenth century, though they only appeared in large numbers from the early twentieth century onwards. Today there are thousands worldwide, some of national status, others focusing on genealogical studies in individual cities or regions. They engage in numerous activities ranging from social activities to the provision of professional genealogical services.[1]
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History of genealogical societies
The first genealogical societies tend to only date from the mid-nineteenth century and in most countries did not emerge until the early twentieth century. The practice of genealogy goes back much further though and is very closely connected to the practices of heraldry. Heraldry was a medieval discipline which involved the recording of the family insignia and coats of arms of royal and noble families. These were included on flags and the livery worn by an aristocratic family’s servants and military retinues and it was important that changes in these that might come about over time owing to the acquisition of new noble titles or the marriage of two aristocratic lines were accurately recorded. Over time this resulted in official positions in countries like England and Ireland such as the Garter King of Arms and the Ulster King of Arms, the chief heralds of those two countries. One will also find a growing number of genealogical charts plotting the lines of descent of prominent families in archives from the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These concerns for heraldry, armory and aristocratic genealogy were all precursors in a way to the advent of genealogical societies in more modern times.[2]
Modern genealogical societies emerged as the aristocratic societies of medieval and early modern Europe gave way to liberal bourgeois societies. As this happened, middle class individuals who had succeeded in politics, commerce, law or some other field began to conclude, that while they might not have come from an ancient noble family that could be traced back to the Middle Ages, their family history was just as worthy of study. Over time, people who were interested in studying their family stories in this way came together to form clubs and societies.[3] At first this occurred in large urban centers with educated upper-middle class professionals with the resources and time available to pursue these interests. For instance, the first genealogical society founded in the United States, the New England Historic Genealogical Society, was established in Boston in 1845. With the growing democratization of society in the western world in the twentieth century and an expanding middle class, genealogical societies proliferated and there are thousands of genealogical societies in the world today.[4]
Examples of genealogical societies
There are a great many genealogical societies in the world today, particularly so as the westernization of the world since the middle of the twentieth century has spread the concept of them far and wide in Africa and Asia. There are over 100 family history societies alone in Britain, some of them being national organizations like the Society of Genealogists, founded back in 1911, while most are local groups dedicated to studying family history in individual counties/shires and regions. Examples include the Buckinghamshire Family History Society, the Cumbria Family History Society and the Fenland Family History Society. Similar hierarchies of local and national genealogical societies exist in many different countries.[5]
The aforementioned New England Historic Genealogical Society is the largest genealogical society in the United States today.[6] Another esteemed group there is the American Society of Genealogists.[7] The Irish Genealogical Research Society was founded in 1936 as Ireland’s first major genealogical society.[8] The foremost Australian genealogical society, the Society of Australian Genealogists, was established in 1932.[9] With the advent of the digital age many of the largest genealogical societies today are relatively new entities using new methods, while many now transcend national boundaries and are internationalist in approach.
Activities of genealogical societies
Genealogical societies engage in a wide range of activities. In their earliest nineteenth- and early twentieth-century iterations they were local in nature. It wasn’t practical for people to travel large distances to consult documents in faraway cities in an age before cheap air travel. Therefore many of them focused on members sharing information about sources for the study of family history in cities or counties. Over time individuals within the first genealogical societies began to engage in the work of making key genealogical sources more widely available. For instance, groups in a city like London or Boston or Philadelphia might prepare editions of key municipal or demographic records for publication to make them more widely available to the public at large, in the process expanding the amount of genealogical data and sources for family history that could be consulted in libraries around the world.[10]
Over time the function of genealogical societies expanded. Some began to include professional genealogists who offered help to individuals that would contact the society in question in tracing their ancestors. Some began to publish official peer-review journals such as The American Genealogist, The Journal of Family History, The Journal of Genealogy and Family History or The Irish Genealogist.[11] More recently, genealogical societies have begun to digitize records and with the development of online databases containing hundreds of millions of records for some countries, the range of material genealogical societies are able to consult has never been greater.
See also
Explore more about genealogical societies
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- Help! How do I separate genealogical fact from fiction? at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
References
- ↑ https://www.readersdigest.co.uk/inspire/life/what-is-a-genealogy-society
- ↑ https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/guide-to-heraldry
- ↑ Francesca Morgan, ‘A Noble Pursuit? Bourgeois America’s Uses of Lineage’, in S. Bekert and J. B. Rosenbaum (eds), The American Bourgeoise: Distinction and Identity in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 2010), pp. 135–151.
- ↑ J. H. Sheppard, A brief history of the New England Historic Genealogical Society (Ann Arbor, Michigan, 2011).
- ↑ https://www.familyhistoryfederation.com/societies-az
- ↑ https://www.americanancestors.org/
- ↑ https://fasg.org/
- ↑ https://www.irishancestors.ie/history
- ↑ https://www.sag.org.au/
- ↑ Michael Riordan, ‘Materials for History? Publishing Records as a Historical Practice in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century England’, in History of Humanities, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Spring, 2017), pp. 51–77.
- ↑ https://americangenealogist.com/