What Does Success in Genealogy Mean?

Genealogy isn’t a competition, and that’s one of the most important things to remember.  You’re not competing with anyone.  Genealogy is very personal.  It’s family, and there’s nothing more personal than family.

That means you get to determine what success is for you – not me, and not anybody else.

Research and genealogy come more easily to some people than others.  Some people may progress quickly, while others work at it for a long time.  Even then, two people may end up in very different places.  One person may trace ten generations, fully documented and completely sourced, while another may only reach their great-grandparents.

Neither is wrong.  Neither has failed.

Success Changes as You Grow

When I first started with genealogy, I’m not kidding—the idea of success didn’t even enter my mind.  The very first time I did genealogy, I was 14 years old, attending a genealogy activity with my youth group, and I didn’t even know if I would find anyone that day.

My definition of success was simple: find someone.  Anyone.  Even somebody who had already been found.  I didn’t care.

As it happened, that first day I found someone my family had been trying to find for about 20 years.  That was an unexpected and exciting discovery, but it had nothing to do with how I defined success at the time.

In those early days, every time I found somebody I thought belonged to my family, I was so excited I did this huge happy dance.  It was a major win.  I would make a photocopy of whatever I had found, take it home, and put it in my binder.

Back then, I just saved the documents.

There was one problem: I wasn’t recording where any of them came from.

Eventually, that caught up with me.  I might have a photocopy of a census record and realize that I needed to go back to the original source.  Maybe I had found the family in several censuses and wanted to look for them in another year.  I had the photocopy sitting right in front of me—but sometimes I couldn’t figure out where I had originally found it.

I spent hours recreating research I had already done.

Eventually, I learned my lesson.  Finding something wasn’t enough.  I needed to document what I found, where I found it, what I searched, and even what I searched without finding anything.

My definition of success changed.

Success became finding something and documenting it well enough that I could find it again.

Eventually, even that wasn’t enough.

I didn’t want my research to depend on haphazardly coming across something and documenting where it came from.  I wanted to know what I was looking for, what sources I needed to check, and whether I had actually checked them.  I wanted to research systematically.

So my definition of success changed again.

Success wasn’t simply finding something.  It became making a research plan and working that plan.

None of these lessons are unique to me.  Other genealogists learned them long before I did.  I just happened to learn many of them the hard way.

That’s part of why I’m sharing them—to make them easier to understand and, hopefully, a little easier for you to learn than they were for me.

Your definition of success will probably change as you gain experience, too.  The things that feel like enormous victories when you’re beginning may eventually become ordinary parts of how you research.  At the same time, you’ll develop new skills, encounter harder questions, and probably meet a few people you thought would be easy to find who turn into the world’s biggest brick walls.

As your skills grow, what you expect from yourself will change.

And your definition of success can change with you.

Genealogy Is Not a Competition

Because everybody gets to determine their own definition of success, two people can have completely different goals in genealogy – and both can be successful.

One person may simply want to know who their parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents were.  They may not have the time, energy, or desire to research every aunt, uncle, cousin, or collateral relative.  They simply want to know where they came from.

That is a completely acceptable reason to do genealogy.

Another person may want to find every available document about an ancestor.  Someone else may want to identify every person they can within a particular line. 

Those are completely acceptable goals, too.

If your definition of success is tracing your direct line back three generations, and you accomplish that, you have succeeded.  If your goal is to find every available document about a particular ancestor, and you accomplish that, you have succeeded.

Your definition of success doesn’t have to match someone else’s.  It just has to be right for you.

It’s your family.  You get to decide what you want to learn about it.

Why Does Genealogy Sometimes Feel Competitive?

If genealogy isn’t a competition, why does it sometimes feel like one?

I think part of the problem is that we judge how well we’re doing by looking at what someone else is doing.

Someone on day six of their first week of genealogy may compare what they’ve accomplished with someone who has been researching for 40 years.  But what those two people know, the skills they’ve developed, and the experience they bring to their research are completely different.

Even experienced genealogists shouldn’t assume everyone has the same circumstances they do.  Sometimes people will tell you, often with the best of intentions, “You really should be doing this,” without knowing anything about your situation.

They don’t know how long you’ve been researching.  They don’t know how much time you have.  They don’t know that you’re already doing your best with the circumstances you have.

Research itself isn’t equally difficult for everyone, either.  Some people inherit years of family research or collections of records.  Some families left behind abundant records, while others are much more difficult to trace.  Some researchers encounter brick wall after brick wall.

And then there is simply time.

Someone working more than 50 hours a week while raising three small children cannot reasonably compare the amount of genealogy they accomplish with someone who is retired, whose children are grown, and who has considerably more time available for research.

Their circumstances are different.

Their families are different.

Their research is different.

So their success can be different, too.

Genealogy Is About Sharing

Ultimately, I think much of the feeling of competition in genealogy comes from comparing ourselves to other people when we don’t need to.

Genealogy isn’t about comparison.  It’s about sharing.

I can share what I’ve learned with someone else, and you can do the same.  You don’t have to be an expert to have something worth sharing.  Once you know even one thing that someone else doesn’t know, you have something that may help them.

And when we share what we know, we all benefit.

That’s one of the things I love about genealogy: what one person learns can help someone else move forward in their own research.

What I Hope Genealogy Gives People

More than anything, I hope genealogy gives you a sense of connection.

I hope it gives you a greater sense of who you are and where you belong.  I hope that as you learn about the people who came before you, your family begins to feel bigger—not simply because you have added more names to a family tree, but because those names begin to represent real people.

You may never have known any of them.  But they had children, who had children, who had children, and eventually that line led to you.  They raised families.  They lived their lives.  Some had better lives than others.  Some undoubtedly made better choices than others.  But each became part of the chain that eventually led to you.

We sometimes say, “It’s a small world,” when we unexpectedly meet someone who knows a person we know.  In some ways, I’ve found that genealogy makes the world feel even smaller.

The more you learn, the more connections you begin to see.

You understand people better.  You understand your family better.  Sometimes you understand your parents or your children better.  And sometimes, through learning about all of them, you understand yourself a little better, too.

In the end, that’s what I hope genealogy gives you: connection.

Connection to the people who came before you, a better understanding of the people who share your life now, and a sense that you are part of something that extends beyond yourself.

You are connected to your past.

And you are connected to your future.

So, What Does Success in Genealogy Mean?

Success in genealogy isn’t measured by how many generations you’ve traced, how many records you’ve found, or how your family tree compares with someone else’s.

Success is accomplishing what matters to you.

Maybe you want to identify one unknown grandparent.  Maybe you want to trace your direct line back three generations.  Maybe you want to document every person in a particular family, solve a brick wall you’ve been working on for years, or simply understand where you came from.

Your goal may be completely different from mine, and your definition of success may change as you learn and grow.  That’s okay.

Genealogy is personal because family is personal.  There isn’t one finish line that we’re all racing toward.

So decide what success means for you.  Make your plan.  Work toward the questions that matter to you.  Document what you learn, and share what you can with others along the way.

And don’t forget to enjoy the connections you discover while you’re doing it.

In the end, the genealogy that matters isn’t the genealogy that looks most impressive when compared with someone else’s.

It’s the genealogy that matters to you.