All the genealogy databases I have on the WorldConnect website:
One thing you learn with genealogy is that names do not confer anything. In the historical context, names are irrelevant.
Watching the generations roll by is very informative. You might think it is easier to trace families from males because they carry the name. However, there are adulteries, fornications and rapes that rarely get recorded in church documents. In most cases a known male was substituted as the legitimate father. The exception was strict Catholic record keeping. If you were born a bastard then your life was shot to shit. Males also are a lot more mobile, so even if a name is known they are a lot harder to trace. This is especially true in Scandinavian countries where last names were the same as the farm you lived on. When the family moved, suddenly all their names changed. For Jews, genealogy is especially hopeless, since the Nazis destroyed everything the Jews ever did.
Female oriented genealogy is simpler than you might think, because females are less mobile. They tend to stay in one place for more generations. In addition, genealogy and history is a female activity. Females are more human oriented and gossip a lot about the extended family, marriages and even sexual escapades. In fact, females have such an interest in "illicit" sex that I believe it is an extension of the historian role they played in tribalistic times. Women are more accepting of extramarital sex, while males get neurotic over it. You will never meet an old man who has as much information about the entire family as an old woman.
Genealogists normally use the wife's maiden name in databases. If you ever read a database where they use the husband's name you know you are dealing with a religious nut. Many old church records disregard the maiden name entirely, so researching Catholic genealogies can be frustrating. Your best bet is obituaries, where they recite all families regardless of male inheritance. Immigration and census reports are good too, since they were not religious in nature. Jewish genealogy is very strong in supplying maiden names, because you inherit your Jewishness through your mother.
I could write an entire book about all the ins and outs of genealogy research, but I won't. It's pretty interesting, and really gives you a perspective on human nature.
One thing I discovered when doing multigenerational genealogy trees is that bad families tend to die out. Lazyness, promiscuity, addiction and sexual abuse all lead eventually to extinction. It may take 6 generations, and it's not an absolute, but as a general rule it is true. This may be what the Ten Commandments mean by "I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of them that hate me".
Children from bad families can regain some sense, and become better people, and break the pattern of destruction. It's continuing those destructive behaviors that leads to extinction.
CategoryAnthropology