Purposes of Genealogy

There are abundant reasons to research one’s family lineage and develop a full family history. Today, one excellent reason is to have a medical family history. With the knowledge of genetics, medical science needs to know an individual’s family history; what one’s parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles suffered or died from assists the doctors to better know how to prevent and treat you, the descendant, as an individual today.

The discovering of geographical locations and the historical time periods in which your ancestors lived offers a better perception of what shaped their lives and eventually your own. An example; if an ancestor was living in the rural English countryside of the Lake District in the 1880s, their farm life focused on the four seasons. It would be a different lifestyle for those individuals living in west central England and working in Manchester’s industrial factories.

Life insurance can also be used to replace the lost income of the deceased person. You and your spouse planned a life together, and that life very likely required two incomes in order for it to continue. A life insurance policy can provide you, and your spouse, with peace of mind. You can rest assured that the lifestyle and standard of living that your spouse and children are accustomed to can continue after you are gone.

With a cultural mixture of ethnic groups, languages and nationalities in every location around the world, by investigating your family background you can achieve a sense of your own roots. In turn, you might just learn of a previously unknown cultural heritage.

It is important to note that a life insurance policy is designed to cover only one person. This means that your life insurance policy is only going to step in and provide assistance in the case of your death, but will not help if your spouse dies. Instead, your spouse needs to be covered by a separate, individual, life insurance policy.

There are differences between genealogy and family history, yet both are dependent on each other. The main lineage of a family is the heart of genealogy. You need a listing of the ancestors; names, places and dates. This creates the facts from which to build. Then, learning about each ancestor as a person; their strengths or their weaknesses, their abilities and their achievements, in a sense, puts a real face to that ancestor’s name. You might not have a photographic image, but you can get an impression of who they were by learning more about each person.