Genealogy

Genealogy received a boost in the late 1970s with the television broadcast of Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley.

Though Farmer died in 1838, his efforts led to the founding in 1845 of the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS), one of New England's oldest and most prominent organizations dedicated to the preservation of public records.

Historically, in Western societies, genealogy focused on the kinship and descent of rulers and nobles, often arguing or demonstrating the legitimacy of claims to wealth and power.

Genealogy often overlapped with heraldry, which reflected the ancestry of noble houses in their coats of arms.

Because a person's DNA contains information that has been passed down relatively unchanged from early ancestors, analysis of DNA is sometimes used for genealogical research.

Most genealogy software programs can export information about persons and their relationships in a standardized format called a GEDCOM.

Genealogists sometimes specialize in a particular group, e.g., a Scottish clan; a particular surname, such as in a one-name study; a small community, e.g., a single village or parish, such as in a one-place study; or a particular, often famous, person.

The LDS Church has engaged in large-scale microfilming of records of genealogical value.

Genealogy (from Ancient Greek γενεαλογία (genealogía) 'the making of a pedigree') is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages.

To keep track of their citizens, governments began keeping records of persons who were neither royalty nor nobility.

The Genealogical Proof Standard created by the Board for Certification of Genealogists is widely distributed in seminars, workshops, and educational materials for genealogists in the United States.