There are a great many more people working on their ancestry search than are working on genealogies. People everywhere are seeking illustrious personages with whom they have blood connection in direct line.

An ancestry search is more fascinating than genealogical examination, because in ancestral work the examiner is usually the pivotal beginning point. He is intimately con­nected with every person found in line, all lines focusing in himself, while in genealogical work, the examiner is only one person among thousands of others who lay claim to a com­mon ancestor. Instead of being a direct descendant of every person under consideration, he may be a thirty-second cousin of many and perhaps then several times removed. The per­sonal element is very much greater in ancestral work.

For those persons who have never attempted an ancestry search of family lines, ancestry hunting is far easier than the work con­nected with the construction of a genealogy, and is to be recommended as an exceptionally good method to gain training along the line of genealogical research. In the pre­paring of a genealogy, because of the remoteness of the com­mencement date the problems to be encountered are near the beginning of the task, while in the construction of an ancestral chart or history the work is being prosecuted from recent date to that more remote, therefore the problems do not present themselves until the worker is fairly well into his task with some experience behind him and his plan of operation fairly well formulated.

To do an ancestry search one must possess some ability properly to start a geneal­ogy, but it is a simple matter for any one to understand that he had two parents, four grandparents and eight great-grandparents every one of whom came from a family en­tirely independent of all the others, that every marriage of parentage merges two families of different blood lines, and that the children of every marriage, while partaking of the blood of both the father and the mother, are an entirely new family composed of a new merger of blood and personalities.

When eight great-grandparents are looked up and properly recorded it is only a step to sixteen great-great-grandparents who will represent sixteen separate and distinct families in no way connected other than that they share the privilege of having been the great-great-grandparents of the same great-great-grandchild.

These sixteen separate and distinct families will probably show several very different family characteristics, many of which have been transmitted in some degree and merged in the character of the common great-great-grandchild. There is scarcely a more interesting study than that of the blending of family characteristics. A family trait is seen to jump inter­vening generations to manifest itself strongly in a remote offspring. Thus an ancestry search takes on a larger meaning than the purely historical and becomes to a marked degree a character study.

In every family there are bound to be found many char­acteristics revealing the noble and the strong, the true and the splendid in human thought and action. And while there may be something of the false and the ignoble, it is usually in negligible quantity. The experience of the professional ex­aminer who was reported to have been paid a thousand dollars to examine an ancestry and then a couple of thousand more not to reveal the result of his investigation, may find its counterpart occasionally, but seldom.

The one doing the ancestry search should be cautioned not to take too seriously reports of the sins and crimes of the forefathers. It will be borne in mind that the witches of Salem were very wicked people viewed in the light of their times while in this day they are looked back upon as martyrs tormented in innocence. The question arises who sinned most, the Quak­ers or those pious old church fathers who condemned them to banishment and suffering because they had moral stamina sufficient to enable them to stand by their belief in the face of punishment. Many a black court record of the old days is washed white in the light of today. It was a crime in early New England days for a man to kiss his own wife on the Sabbath day while bundling was not an uncommon practice among young people, and allowed with the sanction of their elders. No genealogist can long persue his occupation with­out discovering how quickly children followed marriages, too quickly for modern conventions, but without any apparent stigma being attached to the incident either at the time or thereafter. Families where early indiscretions occurred seemed to arise as quickly to prominence in the civil and religious life of the community as did those whose regularity was a matter of record.

The genealogist will very often be reminded of the words of the poet:

There is so much good in the worst of us And so much bad in the best of us That it does not behoove any of us To talk about the rest of us.

In going back three hundred years in American ancestry the ancestry search is to cover the entire development of American life. There will be found many of those sterling people who have contributed to make America what it is today; men who have defended themselves, their loved ones and their homes by great sacrifice; women who have heroically and with great tribulation brought their families into the world; children who have come to maturity with few of the com­forts of childhood that are known to the youth of today. Those persons are the progenitors of the present American people, the history of most of whom never has been written and whose remembrance will only live as their descendants keep the record in their own lives and writings.

Ancestral History

There are many and varied interesting incidents connected with nearly all lives which are worth recording, and as time goes on and generations are added, events that are common­place today will be of increasing interest.

It is advisable and intensely interesting to build up a history of ancestry. Some ancestors have excelled in one thing, some in another. Some have accomplished fame in the professions, some in trade, some in science. Some have de­fended their homes and loved ones from Indians, some have defended their country from tyranny, some have defended great principles for the sake of humanity. A few of these things may be of sufficient prominence to have been set down by the general historian, but the mass of them will be left unwritten only as they are preserved in family writings. They will not make a book for publication if put together in an Ancestral History because, unlike a Genealogy which ever works in a widening circle of interested people, this will work to a narrowing point of one person or one family of brothers and sisters for no one but full brothers and sisters could have exactly the same lines of ancestors. It is a great contribution of accumulated biographies, gathered a little here and a little there, and though various sections of it will be of interest to people in those particular blood lines, in its totality it will appeal to only a few. Such an ancestral history may go back many generations through peace and war; through the families of great men and into the lines of the leading powers of Europe.

It is a simple and easy thing to prepare an Ancestral His­tory from an ancestry search. Like the preparation of a genealogy, there must be system and uniformity in all this work. All work should be orderly with a certain place for certain items and dates and every one in its appointed place. The genealogist should never form the disorderly habit of having to search all over a page to find the date of a birth. Birth dates should always appear in the same place on the page and all other dates in their allotted space. Thus the reader can quickly find what he wants without excessive search. It is just as easy to be orderly as it is to be disorderly. It is purely a matter of habit. It is recommended that letter size sheets (8½ x 11) of paper be used for this project. But whatever size is selected should be chosen with a thought of the binder to be used to hold the work. The Ancestral History will become a manuscript book. Unlike a genealogy where the manuscript becomes the printer's copy, the Ancestral History as prepared by the genealogist is in finished form. Therefore it is essential to choose all materials with a view to their permanency.

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