The Single Family History
In the narrower sense of the term, a family history is a biography of a single family over several generations, based on a tested genealogy and fleshed out with the fuller story of the family's place in society, the dramas of its achievements or failures and its acquisition or loss of wealth and rank.
Such a study mainly draws on oral history for the recent period and archival records for the period beyond living memory. Where an individual's own story is unknown, much can be inferred from other literature. For example, a single soldier's experiences can be inferred from the history of his military unit, or a migrant's journey can be described from the shipboard diary of a fellow traveler.
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Famous quotes containing the words single, family and/or history:
“Home! Yes! she would see Trafalgar Square, again; and Nelson on his plinth; and Chelsea Bridge as it dissolved into the Thames at twilight ... and St. Paul’s, the single Amazon breast of her beloved native city.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“There was books too.... One was “Pilgrim’s Progress,” about a man that left his family it didn’t say why. I read considerable in it now and then. The statements was interesting, but tough.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“If you look at the 150 years of modern China’s history since the Opium Wars, then you can’t avoid the conclusion that the last 15 years are the best 15 years in China’s modern history.”
—J. Stapleton Roy (b. 1935)