{"id":40,"date":"2006-05-01T23:22:50","date_gmt":"2006-05-02T06:22:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/2006\/05\/01\/when-genealogists-become-family-historians\/"},"modified":"2011-06-05T14:52:28","modified_gmt":"2011-06-05T21:52:28","slug":"when-genealogists-become-family-historians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/40","title":{"rendered":"When Genealogists Become Family Historians"},"content":{"rendered":"

The terms genealogy<\/em> and family history<\/em> are generally used interchangably, although the terms can mean quite different things .\u00a0 Genealogy\u00c2\u00a0uses facts such as births, marriages, and deaths to\u00c2\u00a0define family relationships\u00c2\u00a0and documents these facts with source materials such as vital records .\u00a0 Genealogy can show the descendants of a single individual or the ancestors of an individual .\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Family history, on the other hand, describes individuals and families\u00c2\u00a0through their biographies and in context with local, national, and world history .\u00a0 Sooner or later, many genealogists become interested in more than just who is related to whom, and\u00c2\u00a0seek to understand how\u00c2\u00a0historical events affected the lives of their ancestors .\u00a0 We may want to know why our ancestors immigrated to the United States, or why they chose a particular career .\u00a0 Consequently, we may need to study local, national, and world history .\u00a0 We may need to look into letters written by our ancestors, and we may want to find out where they went to school and where they worked.<\/p>\n

One important aspect of my own family history is to discover where my ancestors lived, why my grandparents came to this country, how they got here, and how they adapted to life in their new environment .\u00a0 Knowing where my ancestors lived is also very important in\u00c2\u00a0order to find\u00c2\u00a0their birth, marriage, and death records, and thus to extend my pedigree further into the past.<\/p>\n

\"Passenger<\/a><\/p>\n

Passenger Manifest for Michael Danko – 1905<\/em><\/p>\n

The passenger manifest for my grandfather, Michael Danko, provides an important clue to learning where he was born and where the records on his ancestors are located (click on the image above to enlarge the image) .\u00a0 On his passenger manifest, my grandfather reported that he was from Nienadowa, his nationality was Austrian, and that he was Polish .\u00a0 From studying history, I know that Poland was partitioned<\/a> by Russia, Prussia, and Austria three times:\u00a0 in 1772, 1793, and 1795 .\u00a0 After these partitions, Poland effectively ceased to exist until after World War I, when Poland’s independence was restored .\u00a0 At the time my grandfather immigrated to America in 1905, Poland was still partitioned and he lived in the Austrian partition, Galicia.<\/p>\n

But what about his village, Nienadowa?\u00c2\u00a0 And where are the records I need to learn about his ancestors?\u00c2\u00a0 In Poland, all the birth\/baptismal, marriage, and death\/burial records were maintained by the parish church to which the people belonged, but most villages did not have a church .\u00a0 How do I learn where the church was?\u00c2\u00a0 The answers to these questions will have to wait until another day.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2006 by Stephen J. Danko<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The terms genealogy and family history are generally used interchangably, although the terms can mean quite different things .\u00a0 Genealogy\u00c2\u00a0uses facts such as births, marriages, and deaths to\u00c2\u00a0define family relationships\u00c2\u00a0and documents these facts with source materials such as vital records … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-journal"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pyBfX-E","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13915,"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions\/13915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}