"Family history is not real history" - discuss

My father (who is a "real" historian, by his own definition) has always been very disparaging of family history - declaring that it is not "real" history.

I've never really understood how he arrives at this prejudice. I mean, what is it that "real historians" do that family historians don't? As a family historian, I consult archive material, track down records and evidence that enables me to build a picture of who specific people were and what they did in past ages.

Sometimes the evidence is lacking; or sometimes I have to piece the story together by painstaking analysis of many shreds of tangential evidence.

So, OK, the people I'm seeking to find out about are agricultural labourers, basket makers, shoe makers and shepherds rather than kings and princes and statesmen. But that's only because my ancestors happened to be agricultural labourers, basket makers, show makers and shepherds rather than kings and princes and statesmen.

So what do you think? Is family history a branch of "proper history"? Or is it a wholly different and unrelated discipline?

 

Maybe it's a prejudice because most families were not the movers and shakers in history. On the other hand, mainstream historians do look at the families of royalty, aristos, etc.

I think you could say that family history is a branch of social history.

 

Without all the families the royalty would not get anything done.

 

I like to see what they may have looked like, clothes etc, if an occupation is found, just what that occupation may have been like then! Where and how the families might have lived! So yes, it could be classed as proper history, but its what you want to make it, how far you go into it yourself, but not everyone wants to go that far! Not everyone likes to know the truth of what they find back there!
There is a hero and vilain in everyones past, not everyone wants to know both!

 

family history is more real history then political or economic history.

what is more real, is the history of places. the geographically based history, not of the antecedents of whatever currently dominant culture surrounds us, but of the evolution of cultures in the place where you are.

of course that isn't the reason we are taught history, but it ought to be. the history of the specific place where we individually live, very locally, and the adaptation of human life and culture to how nature works in this place.

not who gave what speech on which day for what reason, unless it has a direct bearing on actual location, but the evolution of the groundswell of popular sentiment, whoever it may have been, was co-opting credit for.

 

My ancestors owned the land that is now Richmond, VA. My great x9 grandfather was captured by pirates from Ireland when he was 11 and brought to America where he worked basically as a slave until he was 16. I love family history.

 

Me too. I've found that I'm related to some well known names.

 

When your family has been around for centuries you see it all as one whole great big story with lots of other sub plots, gambits and sagas. You see people all the time "I'm descended from princess di!" But they act like princess carribou...family history used to be prominent, but these days people like oscumma and the scuslim brotherhood hate families and family history because it reminds people of the strength, honor and dedication they came from. Evil people hate that most. It threatens the falseness which their "emminence" depends on. The false hates the true and those who would deateoy history do it to maintain their control and deceit of the hapless who were born better than them.

 

i can see both sides. yes, history is told by everyone. however, my "family history" is largely unproven bs from my mom. sometimes "family history" is just some bs stories to give the look of normalcy or to hide other issues. i certainly know my maternal "family history" isn't very reliable.

 

Does your father have a degree related to history?

Sounds like dad is just boosting his own ego by devaluating what you do.

 

Sometimes the two merge. My father(son of a Arkansas cotton farmer) told me once that our distant kin in England were 'of the blood' and the old family motto was "never be a Politian, own one". (Family oral history.) Years later while visiting London I came across a 'square' bearing the family name and in a library nearby I looked up the name in their oldest copy of "Burke's Peerage" and found the same motto quoted. No one in our branch of the family had been in contact with the English side of the family since the 1700s. Yet the oral and written histories agreed.

 

Did they?

Or did somebody in about 1900 see (or hear about) the entry in Burke's peerage and think "Hey yeah ... I like that ... AND it's my family motto"? That is to say, can you be sure that the transmission chains are entirely independent?

 

I doubt that. It is unlikely a copy of the book was to be found in the Arkansas of that day and prior to the 1900s the family had been in the mountains of the Cherokee Nation (Kentucky & Tennessee). The patriarchal of our family was a former colonial governor and younger brother of an Earl and hence was seen as a Tory or English loyalist leading to a need to migrate west. The first recording of the family name was in 1055 as an ancestor enlisted with the Yorkshire Freemen.

 

OK ... you've convinced me. That's sounding like the transmission of independent traditions ...