Fleshing out the skeleton

Somebody said once that genealogy was the skeleton while family history is the fleshing out of the skeleton. If you take a person and look up only their name, birth date/place, marriage date/place, death date/place and add where their children and parents were born, you have a bare bones family. That is all the information you NEED to prove things, if you can get that information.


A lot of extra information can be necessary for proving relationships and dates and places. That death date in 1863? Battle death in the Civil War. Which is why you can look up the widow in the Pension Files. Which gives information on where she was living and when she remarried because the pension ended or the children aged out, or whatever. Which is why she dropped off the records radar. But now you have her new name and can follow her to the end.

But while all the "fleshing out" is good for records and evidence, I like it because it gives some insight into their lives. That newspaper article telling of hotel new arrivals? Your ancestor and his brothers were traveling to the enlistment office to join the war effort. That death certificate? It tells of cause of death (sudden or long illness), how long they were in town (same address for 20 years or just visiting), who reported the death (neighbor, child, in-law, etc). They moved six times and their children were all born in different states? Oh, that was during a depression or drought. Or it was when land was getting scarce in one part of the country and was opening up in another.

It makes life more real because you can then compare it to your own family and life and realize some things really don't every change.