Society Saturday: Proso -- what?!? (or Accuracy in Genealogy)
As a member, I recently received a copy of the Winter 2011/2012 newsletter for the Western Michigan Genealogical Society. This is a very active society, established in 1954. They have a great number of programs and mini classes available for local members. Several of the upcoming programs sound awesome, I just wish I lived closer. The society does offer a good deal of information for remote members on their website, in their quarterly magazine Michigana and with publication and access to other society materials as well. I am definitely renewing my membership.
One scheduled talk is described as including a discussion of using "prosopography" for learning more about the residents of Cherry Street in Grand Rapids, MI. Proso-what?!? I had never heard of it. Is it a good tool for genealogy?
I did a google search for the term and found a good article at trusty Wikipedia which says that prosopography is an increasingly important approach within historical research. The definition states that it's
"an investigation of the common characteristics of a historical group, whose individual biographies may be largely untraceable, by means of a collective study of their lives, in multiple career-line analysis." The article mentions that prosoprography is related to, but distinct from, both biography and genealogy and that "well-conducted genealogical research reconstructing family relationships may form the basis of a prosopography," although the "goals of prosopographical research are generally wider."
It's probably a lot more intellectual and scholarly than most of us achieve in pursuit of our ancestors, but I would liken it to cluster or whole family genealogy research which can give you a much broader and more accurate knowledge of family history. And really, accuracy should be a top priority for all genealogists. As Michael Hait said in his blog post, "who wouldn’t hate to discover that after years of research, you had been tracing someone else’s family?"
One scheduled talk is described as including a discussion of using "prosopography" for learning more about the residents of Cherry Street in Grand Rapids, MI. Proso-what?!? I had never heard of it. Is it a good tool for genealogy?
I did a google search for the term and found a good article at trusty Wikipedia which says that prosopography is an increasingly important approach within historical research. The definition states that it's
"an investigation of the common characteristics of a historical group, whose individual biographies may be largely untraceable, by means of a collective study of their lives, in multiple career-line analysis." The article mentions that prosoprography is related to, but distinct from, both biography and genealogy and that "well-conducted genealogical research reconstructing family relationships may form the basis of a prosopography," although the "goals of prosopographical research are generally wider."
It's probably a lot more intellectual and scholarly than most of us achieve in pursuit of our ancestors, but I would liken it to cluster or whole family genealogy research which can give you a much broader and more accurate knowledge of family history. And really, accuracy should be a top priority for all genealogists. As Michael Hait said in his blog post, "who wouldn’t hate to discover that after years of research, you had been tracing someone else’s family?"
Comments
Post a Comment