cover image Family Trees: A History of Genealogy in America

Family Trees: A History of Genealogy in America

François Weil. Harvard Univ., $27.95 (300p) ISBN 978-0-674-04583-5

Tracing one’s lineage has never been easier—Web sites like Ancestry.com have reduced a once-laborious and time-consuming process to a series of clicks. But that doesn’t mean it’s simple. As the chancellor of the Universities of Paris points out in this fascinating but plodding survey of genealogy in America, the practice of assembling a family tree is grounded not only in the uniquely American fixation with one’s origins, but also in the effort to distinguish families and align them with previous generations. The author enumerates four growth stages in the endeavor: in colonial America, genealogy was the province of aristocrats seeking to elevate themselves by tracing roots to the British imperial establishment, but by the late 18th century, the search came to reflect efforts to establish the family as a “moral, social, and political unit in the new republic.” After the Civil War, a recovering country sought “to define identity in racial and nationalist terms.” Now, Weil (Empires of the Imagination, coauthor) explains how the proliferation of genealogy-focused Web sites and DNA testing has transformed the pursuit into a lucrative commercial venture. Like the families it’s meant to chronicle, genealogy itself has changed quite a bit over time, but it remains, as ever, a dynamic and captivating quest. (Apr.)