A Nation of Descendants

Politics and the Practice of Genealogy in U.S. History

Bibliographic Data

ID19986232
AuthorsFrancesca Morgan (corresponding author)
Year2021
Pages301
Publication date2021-10-05
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueA Nation of Descendants (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherUniversity of North Carolina Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.5149/northcarolina/9781469664781.001.0001
OpenAlexW4320159518
ISBN9781469664781
Open LibraryOL32464345M
LanguageEN
Citations received7

From family trees written in early American bibles to birther conspiracy theories, genealogy has always mattered in the United States, whether for taking stock of kin when organizing a family reunion or drawing on membership—by blood or other means—to claim rights to land, inheritances, and more. And since the advent of DNA kits that purportedly trace genealogical relations through genetics, millions of people have used them to learn about their medical histories, biological parentage, and ethnic background. A Nation of Descendants traces Americans’ fascination with tracking family lineage through three centuries. Francesca Morgan examines how specific groups throughout history grappled with finding and recording their forebears, focusing on Anglo-American white, Mormon, African American, Jewish, and Native American people. Morgan also describes how individuals and researchers use genealogy for personal and scholarly purposes, and she explores how local businesspeople, companies like Ancestry.com, and Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s Finding Your Roots series powered the commercialization and commodification of genealogy

Biology · Commodification · Ethnic group · Family tree · Genealogy · Genetic genealogy · Sociology · TRACE (psycholinguistics) · White (mutation) · American History and Culture · Anthropology · Demography · Genetics · History · Mormonism, Religion, and History · Race, History, and American Society

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