research paper of family history

Search, save and share: family historians’ engagement practices with digital platforms

• Original Paper
• Open access
• Published: 17 October 2022
• Volume 23 , pages 187–206, ( 2023 )

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• Henriette Roued   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3848-259X 1 ,
• Helene Castenbrandt   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6058-0575 2 , 3 &
• Bárbara Ana Revuelta-Eugercios   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2449-037X 2 , 4  

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Alongside established heritage institutions, family historians are central figures in the ecosystem of digital heritage, both as contributors to and users of digitized historical sources. With that in mind, this research aims for a wide examination of family historians' engagement with the broader selection of available digital platforms, providing knowledge about how and why they choose to use one platform over another. This knowledge is important for the future development of sustainable digital platforms in the heritage sector. With a large variety of digitized source providers, many with free access platforms, Denmark and Danish family historians make an excellent case for this study. Through both a questionnaire and focus group interviews, using a grounded theory approach, this study has developed a model of engagement with digital platforms, referred to as a buffet model. This model illustrates how family historians pick and choose from a selection of digital platforms throughout their search and management of information as well as their community interaction. Moreover, through the lens of the Serious Leisure Perspective we find that family history is often a life-long leisure activity and family historians’ usage of digital platforms support this finding.

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Introduction

There is an increasing focus on engagement and participation in archives and the role that community practitioners play in this (Benoit and Eveleigh 2019 ). For many archives, family historians are the largest user group and a long-term source of volunteer labor (Boyns 1999 ). A 2015 user study from the Danish National Archives confirms this. The archives’ services online (96%) as well as in the reading rooms (91%) are mainly used for the purpose of family history research (Tovgaard-Olsen 2015 ). Furthermore, family historians continue to be highly motivated contributors to the ongoing digitization and transcription of historical sources worldwide (Ridge 2017 ). As both contributors and users, family historians are a central figure in the ecosystem of digital heritage alongside established heritage institutions (Shaw and Donnelly 2021 ). As a practice, family history is key to the way millions of people engage with the past (Evans and de Groot 2019 ).

There has been research into family history as an activity, and in relation to identity and information behavior. However, there is still much more to learn about the interplay between family historians and the technologies that have emerged in recent decades. While archives may conduct internal user studies of their own digital services, this research aims for a wider examination of family historians' engagement with the broader selection of digital platforms available. This emphasizes the agency of family historians and is simply a question of knowing how and why they choose to use one platform over another. This knowledge is important for the future development of sustainable digital platforms in the heritage sector.

In order to do this, we focus on Danish family historians and how they find, use, manage, and share information online. This is an underexplored context despite the fact that family history in Denmark is carried out by a sizable and relatively socio-economically homogeneous community with good access to education and internet. There is furthermore a long tradition of using public records for family history research. Finally, the large variety of digitized source providers and a long history of free access makes Denmark an excellent case for this study.

The paper begins by giving a brief overview of previous research on family history, as well as the Danish digital platforms for family history research. Based on the idea of serious leisure, and with a grounded theory approach, we then present our buffet model to show how family historians engage with digital platforms. This model took shape as we analyzed the results from a questionnaire and focus group interviews, both carried out for this study.

• Family history

Family history as an activity has developed exponentially throughout the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries (Evans and de Groot 2019 ) and is thought to be one of the most popular activities online (Barnwell 2013 ). Hence, family history provides good opportunities to understand developments in online behavior (Veale 2009 ) because of practitioners’ avid practice of information seeking and sharing (Fulton 2009a ).

Over the years family historians and their activities have been a field of interest to scholars, viewed from an institutional perspective, where family historians are an ever-growing user group, as well as from a sociological point of view, focusing on family history as a cultural phenomenon (Yakel and Torres 2007 ). Even so, several researchers point to the surprising fact that despite the popularity of family history and their central role in the ecosystem of digital heritage, little research has been published about this group (Boyns 1999 ; Barnwell 2013 ; Evans 2020b ).

Current research on family historians can be found in small pockets across and between fields such as sociology (Bottero 2015 ), archival science (Niu 2021 ), information science (Friday 2014 ), genetics (Strand and Källén 2021 ), anthropology (Cannell 2011 ), digital humanities (Hoeve 2018 ), and public history (Shaw 2020 ). In this paper we are continuing in the footsteps of archival and information science as well as sociological scholarship, while using a digital heritage approach to focus on what family history means for our understanding of heritage data, platforms, and institutions.

There are past accounts of librarians and archivists being contemptuous toward family historians for their supposed ineptness at historical research and uncritical interpretation of records (Bidlack 1983 ). However, it is difficult to gauge the current acceptance or disdain amongst heritage professionals as this often comes up in informal conversation and is rarely documented (Evans 2020b ). At most, we can perhaps reflect on institutional strategies focusing on “new” rather than “existing” users. However, family history has become a prosperous and growing industry with the potential to enable “a diverse group of people to experience a relationship with history” (Evans and de Groot 2019 , (1), thus making family historians central figures in the heritage sector. In fact, Mckay ( 2002 ) reasons that family historians might well be influential allies for archival institutions, both politically and financially. Neither the political nor the fiscal climate for cultural institutions seem to have improved much in the 20 years since. In 2003 Duff and Johnson suggested that knowledge of family history research can be used to improve the design of archival information systems (Duff & Johnson, 2003 ). In the field of digital humanities Hoeve ( 2018 ) even argues for recognizing family historians as partners and team members in the cross-disciplinary use of digital technology. In that sense, many archivists and institutions have come to acknowledge the hobby of family history as a growing interest deserving specific attention, at least as the single largest user group in the reading rooms and online (Tovgaard-Olsen 2015 ). In general, the archival community has leveraged digital technologies, aiming to engage users and expand access to collections, in activities broadly covered by the umbrella term participatory archives (Benoit and Eveleigh 2019 ). These activities have been of great benefit to family historians who often take part enthusiastically (Ridge 2017 ). This paper provides a step toward a deeper understanding of family history and the role of digital platforms in the life cycle of this often long-running hobby.

Much of the previous research into family history has had an American focal point, likely linked to the fact that family history has long been a popular hobby in North America (Bidlack 1983 ). This is possibly fueled by the history of immigration and a wish to preserve memories of origin (Jurczyk-Romanowska and Tufekcic 2018 ). Even though its most common representations are closely tied to the Anglophone and Eurocentric constructs of sources and archives, family history is in essence a global phenomenon. Research into family history outside the above-mentioned contexts, as well as challenging the Eurocentric idea of kinship and history, is less available (Evans 2020a ). Thus, we would like to acknowledge that while this paper studies a case of non-Anglophone family history, Danish source material still has origins in both Christian and colonial heritage and recordkeeping. This invariably influences the way we understand family history as an activity and is why we would encourage many more of these types of studies in different cultural contexts.

Family history as information-seeking behavior

Family history research is inherently an information seeking activity. Through interviews with family historians, Duff and Johnston ( 2003 ) found that the activity can be divided into three iterative stages: (1) Collecting names of family members; (2) Collecting more detailed information such as dates, events, and place names (3) Collecting information about the historical and local context family members were part of. Yakel ( 2004 ) connects this last stage to the concept of orienting information (Savolainen 1995 ) which again is linked to the seeking of meaning and identity. With these stages comes several different strategies that were put into use when searching for new information. If a source or strategy failed the participants had no problem switching to another strategy (Duff and Johnston 2003 ). In a later study Friday ( 2014 ) proposes a cyclical and continuous model of search behavior. This model zooms in on the activities surrounding the actual search and in doing so presents some of the repetitive behaviors that form part of this activity. Moreover, Duff and Johnston ( 2003 ) found that in their information seeking family historians relied heavily on strong informal networks rather than on archivists or archival systems. The participants in their study did not think that archival search systems met their needs, as they were often provenance-based (i.e., structured according to the authority or institution that originally created the source) which is at odds with the information that family historians seek. Furthermore, their limited access to physical archives due to travel time and limited opening hours was an issue. Thus, they resorted to their own networks to help them overcome these barriers (Duff and Johnston, 2003 ). These social networks have their own culture and values of reciprocal information sharing which can be seen both offline and online (Yakel 2004 ; Fulton 2009a ). However, as with institutional crowdsourcing projects (Zeeland and Gronemann 2019 ) most requests for aid are answered by a small group of “super-sharers” (Fulton 2009a ; Willever-Farr et al 2012 ).

Family history as serious leisure

In trying to understand the role of data and platforms in the information behavior of family historians we have, as in previous studies (Fulton 2009a ; Friday 2014 ; Hershkovitz and Hardof-Jaffe 2017 ), turned to the concept of serious leisure. The Serious Leisure Perspective (SLP) was developed by Roberts Stebbins as he started his research on leisure in the 1970s. He recognizes three different types of leisure: casual, project-based, and serious (Stebbins 2009 ). Casual leisure is defined as a short-lived, intrinsically rewarding, and pleasurable activity that requires no special training (e.g., watching a movie or playing a board game). Project-based leisure is a short-term reasonably complicated undertaking that is done a single time or on sporadic occasions (e.g., volunteering for an event). In contrast to the first two, serious leisure is when people engage in activities that they find deeply fulfilling and that acquire special skills, knowledge and expertise, typically resulting in what can be called a leisure career. Serious leisure is also distinctive by requiring a great deal of personal effort as well as the “occasional need to persevere,” meaning that it is an activity that is not always just positive but sticking to it generally results in positive feelings. There are also several durable benefits, including self-enrichment, feeling of accomplishment, social interaction, and a sense of belongingness. Participants of serious leisure also develop a community spirit with shared attitudes, practices, values, etc., and they tend to strongly identify with their activity (Stebbins 2012 ). In our aim to develop a model of family history processes and the usage of digital platforms, serious leisure provides a further steppingstone to discuss the iterations of family history research. Understanding these processes as a part of a life-long serious leisure career also adds important perspectives to how we understand and design archival digital platforms.

Danish digital platforms

Most archival institutions in Denmark offer varying degrees of access to their collections while also individuals, companies, and other organizations make resources available for family history. We distinguish between four categories of digital platforms: (1) publicly funded platforms; (2) nonprofit platforms; (3) for-profit platforms; (4) social media platforms. The resources available have increased especially during the last decade through ongoing digitization and transcription of historical sources. Through various collaborations, many of the same historical sources can also be accessed through different platforms.

Firstly, Danish national, municipal, and local archives have large amounts of digitized and transcribed collections freely available online through publicly funded platforms. The Danish National Archives has a large collection of digitized historical sources with more than 75 million scans of historical sources and 21 million transcribed census records freely available online. They began a digitization project as early as in 2002 with the site “Arkivalieronline” (translated: archival records online) that focused on two of the collections most used by family historians (i.e., censuses and parish records). The transcription project that predated this development began in the late 1990s as a collaborative project between family historians, researchers, and the archive which continues to this day (Rigsarkivet 2022a ). This development is mirrored in similar projects by municipal and local archives.

Secondly, the international Family Search, an American non-profit stemming from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mayfield 1983 ), has made billions of both digitized and indexed records available. Another platform is Danish Family Search. It is operated by two Danes residing in Australia as an alternative platform to access and transcribe Danish historical sources. Through collaborations with the National Archives, they provide a different interface to search both digitized and transcribed census and parish records. The site includes an interface for transcribing and linking these sources and the results of this are fed back to the National Archives. National organizations such as “Danske Slægtsforskere” (translated: Danish Family Historians) and “Samfundet for Dansk Genealogi og Personalhistorie” (translated: Society for Danish Genealogy and Personal History) offer a variety of resources including tutorials, a forum, and organizing various collaborative transcription projects. In addition, it is important to mention the various smaller societies, local volunteer-driven archives, and individuals who provide a wide variety of platforms with digitization and transcription of historical sources and different tools for accessing and understanding these sources.

Thirdly, Ancestry is the world’s largest for-profit family history platform, and was launched in 1996. To this date the site does not have a Danish version and Danish records first became accessible through the Swedish version in 2020 (Rigsarkivet 2022b ). Nevertheless, the Ancestry platform does provide access to records outside of Denmark and the opportunity to upload and organize one's own family tree. In contrast, MyHeritage, founded in 2003 in Israel, has a better foothold in Denmark. Like Ancestry they offer a platform for organizing family trees and sharing them in a network while also automatically connecting family members using their large datasets as well as DNA testing.

Finally, the main family history resource on social media is the group “Slægtsforskning” (translated: Family History) on Facebook, with more than 25,000 members in 2022. It was established in 2007 by the national family history organization and can be seen as a continuation of their own forum from 2006. The forum and the Facebook group provide different ways to communicate with other family historians. While their daily activity level differs, it is still clear that asking questions and providing answers is a large part of the activity on both platforms. There are many other Facebook groups related to Danish family history. Some are on specific topics such as DNA and others are more regionally based groups. However, Danish family history activities seem to be much more limited on other social media platforms.

Methodology

Our analysis drew on the concept of serious leisure and existing models of family history information behavior (see above), as well as a pilot project conducted by Revuelta-Eugercios. We have employed a constructivist grounded theory approach (Thornberg and Dunne 2019 ) where we continually collected and analyzed empirical material while continually and critically reflecting on existing literature (Charmaz 2014 , 306) to further understand and develop a theory of the phenomenon in question. In this, we have been guided by the question: How do family historians engage with digital platforms? Specifically, which digital platforms do they use; how and why? As well as which opportunities and issues do these digital platforms present?

Through a questionnaire we gathered quantitative data on the platforms used, issues and advantages experienced online, and their information behavior. This enabled cross referencing with various demographic and experience related variables. Based on a preliminary analysis of these results we conducted a series of focus group interviews for a more qualitative understanding of the results. This continual analysis resulted in the development of a buffet model illustrating family historians' long-running engagement with digital platforms over many years.

Questionnaire

In November 2020, we distributed a questionnaire, using the online SurveyXact platform, through some of the more popular Danish family history Facebook groups and through our contacts at the archives. Our aim was a wide distribution among family historians in Denmark. The questionnaire was distributed for one month and resulted in a total of 539 complete replies. The distribution of respondents across the regions of Denmark is similar to that of the Danish population (according to Statistics Denmark, dst.dk). The age distribution forms a bell-curve centered around the age group 65–74 and nearly two thirds of the respondents were women. When asked about the types of fields they had worked. Each respondent could choose more than one field if relevant and the definition of work was not limited to paid employment. Despite a wide distribution, the top three fields were (1) office work and accounting (22%); (2) health and care work (21%); (3) IT and technology (17%). Fewer responded that they had worked in manual labor fields as well as fields connected to cultural or religious institutions. While we did not ask about their educational or socio-economic backgrounds, we can conclude that the respondents generally represent a part of the population with a degree of higher education and experience with computer-based work. However, only few of the respondents had any connection to the fields from which the historical sources and digital platforms originate.

Focus groups

All in all, 21 people took part across six focus group interviews. The interviews were conducted in Danish during January and February 2021 on the Zoom platform. Quotes from the interviews, used in the analysis, are translated by the authors. The participants were recruited among the respondents to the questionnaire and grouped according to which of four digital platforms they used for family history activities: (1) the National Archives as an example of a public platform; (2) Danish Family Search as an example of a non-profit platform; (3) MyHeritage as an example of a for-profit platform; (4) the group “Slægtsforskning” (translated: Family History) on Facebook, as an example of social media. Perhaps due to the Covid-19 restrictions, none of the participants seemed to question their participation in a virtual interview, even if this technology was new to some of them. This provided an unprecedented opportunity to gather people independent of their and our physical location and provided an easy way of recording the interview for further analysis alongside the interviewers’ notes.

Each interview began with a conversation about the participants' family history experiences and the geographical reach of their research. After this we moved into questions themed on one of the four platforms. The sessions ended with a question about privacy and data protection and how they cope with this. The final question provided a way to calibrate the overall atmosphere that had developed in the group. Whether it was one of positivity or negativity, a critical or an optimistic sentiment, which opinions dominated, and where they had originated. The interviews formed the basis for exemplifying and elaborating on the results from the questionnaire. Relevant quotes were coded in terms of their place in the model as it developed as a part of the grounded theory approach.

Model of engagement with digital platforms

To explain and illustrate the ways family historians engage with digital platforms we developed a buffet model (Fig.  1 ). Throughout the study we observed a cyclical pattern of engagement with digital platforms in the shape of information seeking as well as information management and community participation. Similar forms of cyclical patterns have been identified in previous studies of family history (Duff and Johnson 2003 ; Friday 2014 ) and were also observed in the pilot study. Using a grounded theory approach, we have analyzed the empirical data from the questionnaire and focus group interviews. Our analyses show how family historians use a wide variety of online resources, picking and choosing the best resource for each phase of their research as if it was a buffet. This is central to the model as the family historians are engaging with a buffet of platforms as they go through each phase of family history research in a cyclical manner.

A buffet model of family historians’ engagement with digital platforms

Our model illustrates how family history engagement begins with a spark. This spark is commonly caused by some external or internal event which launches a process where four phases can be identified. All of these phases are to some extent present in any family history project but can appear both sequentially, and simultaneously within the other phases. The first phase is the collection of necessary key-information , typically in sources with high coverage like administrative records, parish records, and censuses. From this family historians often build what they call the skeleton of their family tree. A second phase is the enrichment of the basic information with other more focused historical sources covering different aspects of the historical person’s life. This is sometimes referred to as the meat on the bones (Jelks and Sikes 1983 ). These two phases normally happen in sequential order where the next two phases can also happen simultaneously. The third phase is information management which involves the process of collecting and preserving the information obtained. For instance, by sharing genealogies online, using family history software, creating family books, or just storing the information on a digital or analogue medium. A fourth phase involves participating in the wider community of family historians in some way. This could be participation in a family history group off- or online by sharing information and asking or answering questions. This could also be through family history related volunteering activities like teaching or supporting beginner family historians or by transcribing historical sources as a part of a crowdsourcing project.

After moving through this model additional sparks, triggered perhaps in some of the previous phases, launch family historians into new iterations of family history research. The conceptualization of multiple sparks allows the model to accommodate both family historians with a more project driven approach with clearly defined outcomes of work (one sequence) as well as those engaging in a serious leisure career. In the latter, the end of one cycle can, in general, not be distinguished from the beginning of a new one. Central in this model is a focus on how family historians engage with multiple digital platforms as they move through these phases. Family historians’ approach this as a buffet where they choose how, what, and when they engage with the different public, nonprofit, for-profit, and social media platforms. In the following sections, through our empirical material, we explore the platforms that family historians use, as well as the different phases in our model.

The buffet: use of online platforms

Central to the buffet model are the digital platforms available to family historians. In this study, we have found that family historians use a variety of different platforms. In the questionnaire, respondents were asked to name up to ten websites they used the most in descending order. These free-text answers were then cleaned so that, for example, the 24 different ways of writing Ancestry (e.g., ancestry.com and ancestry.se) were labeled as one. These labels were then grouped into seven categories: (1) Danish National Archives, (2) Sall data, (3) Danish Family Search, (4) Family Search, (5) MyHeritage, (6) Ancestry, and (7) Other. The category “Other” is the most diverse and consists of over 100 different private, association, and archival platforms in and outside of Denmark. This question gave us an invaluable insight into the immense variety of platforms used by Danish family historians. While 94% of the respondents added at least one platform and almost half added up to four additional platforms only 11% added up to ten platforms. To get a sense of a platform's importance for the respondent we added a weighted count so that a platform mentioned first got a weight of 10 and a platform mentioned as the tenth got a weight of 1. A weighted sum was then calculated for each of the seven platform categories (Table 1 ).

Table 1 shows that Danish family historians’ use of platforms is varied and diverse. The single most used platform category (41% of the weighted sum and used by 80% of the respondents) covers the Danish National Archives’ various platforms such as the online catalog and the scans and transcriptions of parish and census records. Individual platforms (Sall data, Danish Family Search, Family History, MyHeritage, Ancestry) each make up a smaller part of the overall weighted sum and are mentioned by a smaller percentage of the respondents. The large and varied group of platforms in the category “Other” account for 20% of the weighted sum and 72% of the respondents mention one or more of the platforms in this category.

Several focus group participants specifically expressed this eclectic use of digital platforms as part of their family history experience. While talking about how to search for information one participant said: “At first, I try if I can figure out exactly where and when to look in parish records and censuses. Otherwise, I will try to search it all […] all the places I come to think of.” A very experienced family historian pointed out that to get access to all possible transcriptions of census records you had to search across at least four different platforms. Another participant termed family history as a type of detective work and pointed out that it is the different ways of finding information and the difficulties that it poses that makes it interesting: “It is really just about using your imagination […] You dig, and you find something, and it is really great when you find something. But it can take a long time, though. You need to take detours sometimes resulting in a dead end and then you need to start all over again. I find this exciting and without it would not be family history.” While pondering over how convenient it would be with one comprehensive platform that had it all, one participant concluded: “family history would probably also be a bit boring if one could just go in and, voila, there it is.”

This is echoed in other studies that have highlighted the importance of doing the work and the pleasure of discovery for the individual family historian (Lambert 1996 ). Bottero ( 2015 ) found that for the family historians she interviewed, their narrative of discovery existed alongside the stories they discovered. Thus, family history is not about knowing your family but rather a both pleasurable and painstaking journey (Fulton 2009b ) of discovery through a buffet of different platforms. The many options for information discovery are not a problem to be solved, as some archivists may believe (Boyns 1999 ), but rather a core element in family history practices and the detective-like identity of family historians.

Entering the model: sparks and iterations

A spark in this case is an internal or external event that launches the different phases and interaction with the buffet of platforms. In our focus groups participants often recounted how family events led them to a family history project. These events are not seldom of a tragic nature such as the death of older family members. One participant recalls that they “began in 2008 perhaps as many do first in that moment when I was clearing out after my parents. You resent the day you must do this but that does not change the fact. But there I found some papers and started digging into those which slowly got my research started.” These events can also be joyous and relate to the celebration of a family member. For instance, one participant began working on a new part of the family tree, in relation to the birth of a grandchild.

In the questionnaire, when we asked about potential initiators or sparks of family history activity half of the respondents referred to finding new sources of information about the family as a reason for engaging in family history. However, one important underlying factor was to have enough disposable time. Over 90% of the respondents gauged that they, on average, work on their family history every month and over half of them every week. Half of the respondents said that they do more family history during wintertime, although this is slightly more common among the older respondents and among women. However, only a quarter of the respondents did more family history when they were out of the job market (e.g., retired, students, unemployed). In fact, replies in the questionnaire add to the understanding of family history as a life-long activity (Hershkovitz and Hardof-Jaffe 2017 ). While some respondents can be classified as beginners (7% have been doing family history for up to 2 years), nearly 60% of the respondents have been doing family history for more than 10 years. While experience is generally related to age there are also younger respondents with several years of experience and older respondents with less experience. Even for the oldest groups, over 30 years of experience, gives them a starting point in mid-life. Consequently, according to the questionnaire family history seems to be more of a life-long hobby, something many begin in their young and mid adult lives, rather than a short-term project taken up in retirement.

Even so, there is reason to believe that family history had begun as a one-time activity or as a discrete project and developed into a longer engagement. In fact, one participant reported: “I was lured in by [a for-profit company] which said that you can do this in half a morning. It did start really well but it is a system where you quickly gain a large family, and it took time to sort that out.” In other words, his spark was advertising, aimed at his age group, promising fast results. Nevertheless, after this first discovery he also became hooked on finding original sources and discovering more on his own.

The core phase: finding key-information and enriching it

After the initial spark family historians typically move into the phases of information searching using the buffet of platforms available. Most family historians begin by searching for key-information such as births, marriages, deaths, and family relationships. This is thought to be the easiest information to find online according to the respondents of the questionnaire (Fig.  2 ). Practically no one replied that they could not or had not tried to find this type of information and 70% gathered such information easily. Experience played a clear role here in that more experienced family historians said that this key-information was easy to find. This is in stark contrast to other types of sources such as information on local history (only 36% found this easy). Many other types of information such as health, migration/movement, or conflict/crime are generally more difficult to find, or the respondents have not even tried to find them for one reason or another. This is the case with political engagement according to approximately two thirds of the respondents. Here again it seems that experience plays a part where more experienced family historians are more likely to try to find such enriching information and overall find them easier.

Diagram illustrating the questionnaire responses to the question: which types of information have you found online and how easy was it? Answer categories were: (1) easy to find, (2) neither easy nor hard to find, (3) hard to find, (4) cannot find, (5) have not tried to find. The information types were, in order of ease: key-information, local history, occupation, images, building history, migration/movement, military, disease, inheritance, conflict/crime, political engagement

This highlights that historical sources that provide key-information are both more sought after and easier to find. In a Danish context these include parish and census records. It is not surprising as such that the last 25 years of digitization and transcription have provided increasingly better access to precisely these types of sources across various platforms. The improved availability has also led to the boundaries between different institutions being fluent with less significance placed on where searchers are made, or as one respondent put it “I do not limit myself to the Danish National Archives, I use everything.” Most of the respondents (95%) also appreciate the ability to search and find their family through these platforms from the comfort of their home. Nearly all respondents (98%) appreciated how these digital platforms allow them to do family history research when and where they please. However, this factor seemed more important for those who do family history more often than for those who partake once a year or less. There was general agreement across age groups about the advantages. Nevertheless, when asked about issues with using digital platforms for family history nearly a third of the respondents (and more among the younger groups) had issues with the fact that not everything was available online. This was particularly true for those who had a more sporadic family history activity for example with more activity during holidays. However, online access seems crucial for many, especially access to sources that are geographically distant, for example in a different part of the country if confined to your home due to disability or for conducting this hobby while working full time. For instance, one of our focus group participants mentioned how important the online access was for initiating his engagement in family history, making it possible to combine with regular work: “To me, [a public platform] was an important entrance to get started because running around and looking at parish records, visiting libraries, and so on was definitely a barrier. So as [the platform] popped up and you got the opportunity to do different searches, that was what really got me started.” Other participants stressed the importance of material being accessible online, saying that as family history is a hobby and archives are far away it would be unreasonable to spend a lot of time and money on travels, making the online material more important. However, while it is great to have so much data online the problem, with access to sources that are not, remains. The latter are often sources that provide enrichment of the family history.

Preserving findings for the future: Information management

After, or simultaneously as they search, family historians secure the new information for later access. This indicates that the practice of family historians is not restricted to knowing more about the family but also deals with retaining, referring, and preserving that new knowledge, making it theirs in some way. In the current buffet of available digital platforms, one could look up information as needed, as we do on Wikipedia, without needing to store the information locally. However, it is precisely the preservation and incorporation of these new sources of information into existing narratives (their own family history) that may be the hallmark of family history.

So, we questioned the practicalities behind that task: how they extract information from digital platforms and use it to further their family history activities. We were interested in knowing how they used this information or data and how they shared it with family history peers and with their own family members. Nearly all (96%) of the respondents said that they saved key information such as names, dates, and places. We already know that gathering these types of information is an important step in creating the scaffolding of the family tree on which to fasten a richer storyline. Thus, it is not surprising that they are also stored by nearly all the respondents.

While some platforms offer the option to store all findings with them it is very common that family historians extract that information out of the platforms while keeping track of the source metadata. Many respondents saved references to sources such as IDs (77%), as well as the scanned images themselves (71%). However, when it came to saving links to the many sources that are available on various platforms, only about half of the respondents did this. This practice is more common among the younger and middle-aged respondents who were also more likely to save images. Furthermore, those who have worked in cultural institutions or within the church seem more likely to save links and see this as an advantage of using digital platforms. This could be due to their knowledge about certain platforms and trusting that these provide a stable link to the original source. Perhaps this also aligns with the change Willever-Farr et al ( 2012 ) found in co-operative activities amongst family historians from aiding each other with instructions on how to search historical sources toward providing a direct link to a particular record.

Practically all respondents organize and store the information they collect in some way. In practice there seems to be some variety. Just over half the respondents store the information in an app or program on their computer and just over a third use word processing software. Perhaps surprisingly, a third of the respondents use a notebook or loose pages to store information collected online. This occurs more among women and among younger and middle-aged family historians. Whereas the older and more experienced family historians are more likely to store information on their own website. Twenty years ago, Yakel ( 2004 ) noted that the internet was providing opportunities to set up websites to share family trees with living relatives. However, while that may be the case, it seems that there is still an assortment of both digital and analogue methods for storing information. One issue that did come up in the focus group interviews was the lack of easy interoperability between platforms. One respondent said: “I have looked at [a platform's] family tree service. But since you cannot import your own family tree [from a program on her computer] and 25,000 people-you don’t sit and input them once more-so I won’t be using that.”

If collecting and preserving new information is a key activity of the family historian, it cannot be isolated from the critical evaluation of the reliability of that information. In the study, family historians showed a great deal of awareness about misleading or even fake information. In the interviews, there was an understanding about how especially transcribed sources may contain mistakes and how some, especially large international search facilities, can provide a great number of irrelevant results, particularly on the more common Danish names (e.g., Ane Hansen or Jens Nielsen). The earlier idea of family historians uncritically searching for that special connection to grand historical figures, or a ruling class (Redmann 1993 ) was nowhere to be found. There was rather a more critical stance toward this as well as a focus on the multitude of more nuanced stories that form a part of a more diverse historical narrative (Barclay and Kofoed 2021 ). Moving away from the idea of one patrilineage to a family tree with many roots and branches reveals a more heterogeneous structure (Foucault 1977 ). One where identity and sense of inheritance is as complex as the many individual life-stories that came before (Nash 2002 ). In this rhizomatic structure, the importance of meticulous record keeping is a vital tool. Here the platforms that provide direct links to sources are appreciated. This is a practical solution to the sharing of digitized original historical records that support the family tree.

Being part of a community

Even when family historians sit alone in front of their computer, they are embedded in multiple sharing communities. On the one hand, there is the community established with their own kin: those they study and those still living who become the, sometimes reluctant, audience. On the other hand, there is the community of fellow family historians with whom they increasingly interact online through social media. Sometimes these communities merge into one as was the case with one interviewee: “In the beginning when my father had found something [about the family] I rolled my eyes and thought “now this again.” But since I have been doing it myself, I have become as smitten by it as he is.” Engaging with the community is an activity that both follows on from earlier phases and occurs simultaneously as they share experiences and seek and provide help. This engagement can happen across the different fora that some of the major platforms provide but especially in several Facebook groups.

Many respondents report using social media for keeping up with news and being a part of the community. Conversely sharing their own stories on social media is the least common form of engagement. Receiving help with reading handwriting, finding individuals in the historical sources, and generally finding information about historical subjects and places is, on the other hand, an important factor for those who use social media for their family history research. In the focus groups several mentioned the importance of giving and getting help in Facebook groups. “Fortunately, there are some, slightly older, family historians with good experience that can help those of us that cannot figure it out. I think that is what is great with these groups on Facebook. […] It usually does not take more than 20 s before someone comes up with an answer.” “And it is around the clock. It is amazing there are really some dedicated people behind that group, I really think so.”

They also emphasize the importance of helping others: “If people ask about something they should get an answer. If you can help then I think, well, it does not cost you anything.” There is a sense of positive reciprocity in this idea of helping others which relates to Fulton’s ( 2009a ) findings. As one respondent put it: “We all have the same problems, I mean if it is not me today, then there is someone else tomorrow and if I got help yesterday then I might as well help, so I have also helped people in those family history groups. What you get you might as well pass on.” Additionally, the value of these exchanges is not restricted to the person asking for help. Many tips and ideas for new sources to search can be found by following the questions and answers of others in these communities.

Aiding your own family history by supporting others is furthermore related to the continuing and long-lasting crowdsourcing projects that form the basis of the Danish free access to census records. By transcribing the census of one parish which you have a particular interest in you are both directly helping yourself and indirectly the others who come along later. You are also contributing to a source where other people’s efforts are helping you. Even so, only a quarter of the respondents said that they did any type of heritage related volunteering.

In the focus group, it also became clear that the more ad hoc translation and transcription assignments that are possible to engage with through newer platforms like Danish Family Search suit some family historians better than the rather time-consuming transcription of a whole parish in the older census transcription project hosted by the Danish National Archives.

The relatively low number of participants in these crowdsourcing projects follows a pattern where a few do a large part of the work and many do a little bit each, which accumulates (Zeeland and Gronemann 2019 ). Therefore, you need both types of engagement. From this perspective, there is value in a transcription platform where you can contribute both a lot and a little. We also observed a sense of loyalty to older platforms that had served well in the past. However, personal preferences in communication and information behavior seems to triumph over loyalty and experience with a platform overall. For example, focus group interviewees preferred Facebook groups over the more traditional web forum structure for few other reasons than the speed at which questions were being answered. Meanwhile, other family historians might prefer the slower pace of the web forum where posts and answers can easily be searched and added to after many years.

With an increased amount of archival material being made available online and an ever-growing family history community, this paper’s aim has been to further an understanding of family historians and their usage of digital platforms. Two main outcomes can be highlighted from our study of Danish family historians. First, a buffet model of engagement with digital platforms has been developed. It was simply the case that family historians approached online resources as a buffet where they pick and choose the available platforms that were most relevant for their task. They use a variety of platforms mixing the use of public, non-profit, for-profit, and social media platforms interchangeably. Platform usage is dependent on a variety of aspects such as the specific purpose, preferences, advertising, and some form of serendipity. Even though loyalties sometimes played a part, family historians are in general not devoted to particular platforms. They may have preferences but will switch if it serves their purposes and here both the ability to search through resources as well as access to original sources in a user-friendly manner is important. Furthermore, family historians use social media to help each other by providing links to original sources which is an issue with some of the older platforms which do not provide direct links to individual sources. Moreover, the buffet model includes four phases in the family historians’ work: building the skeleton of a family tree with key-information, enriching the data, information management, and participation in the wider community of family historians. These phases take place in a cyclical manner which can be both sequential and simultaneous. These different phases and how family historians move back and forth between these activities and the various platforms added to the analogy of a buffet.

That leads to our second outcome which is that family history tends to develop into a life-long activity. In fact, 60% of the respondents to our questionnaire had been active for more than 10 years. Even so, for some of the participants in our study it started as a discrete one-time project with a specific event, a spark, creating a wish for a family history. With time, it then evolved into what has been called a serious leisure career, meaning that they find deep meaning in their family history work while also building up a great deal of expertise in this field. It is noticeable that the longer they have worked with family history, the more interested they become in accessing other types of material that can enrich their stories, material that sometimes is less accessible online.

We introduced this study by mentioning the under-studied field of family historians. The need for a more comprehensive understanding of this group and their online practices across different cultural contexts becomes clear considering the current focus on engagement with digital platforms and democratic participation within the heritage sector. Thus, we want to offer archives and other heritage institutions a clear take-away from this research. Based on the outcomes we would suggest that these institutions focus their energy and resources on providing access to source-material that can enrich the family history narrative. We suggest that they do so by supporting family history research into their unique collections. Whether this is local photographs or knowledge about local buildings or more national collections about immigration, politics, or occupations. There are already successful platforms available for accessing basic key-information for community-building and for information management. However, collections providing enrichment of the family history are difficult to access in their current, often analog, form and require a great deal of expertise. Finally, experienced family historians seeking sources to enrich their family narrative hold the potential for rich and equally beneficial collaborations between institutions and an interested public.

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Acknowledgements

A special thanks to our colleagues Signe Trolle Gronnemann, Markus Schunck, Nanna Kann-Rasmussen, and Henrik Jochumsen for their invaluable feedback on the project.

Open access funding provided by Lund University. Innovation Fund Denmark, Grand Solutions [grant number 8088-00034A]; and Carlsbergfondet, ”Semper Ardens” Research Project [grant number CF18-1116].

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Helene Castenbrandt & Bárbara Ana Revuelta-Eugercios

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Genealogy 101: Using Theses & Dissertations for Family History Research

Introduction : In this article – part of an ongoing “Introduction to Genealogy” series – Gena Philibert-Ortega writes about an unusual resource for genealogists: theses and dissertations. Gena is a genealogist and author of the book “From the Family Kitchen.”

What sources have you used for your family history research beyond the genealogically familiar censuses, land records, old newspapers, and city directories? What are some of the more unusual sources available to the family historian? You know you should research at a library, and maybe you’ve even ventured out to a university library to do your research. Have you checked out their thesis and dissertation collections?

You may be wondering how an academic thesis or dissertation can help you with your family history research. While it is true that they are less likely to have lists of names, dates, and places, they can include information about a community, a group of people, or even individuals.

Before we continue our discussion, let’s define what theses and dissertations are. Theses and dissertations are unpublished works by college graduate students (Masters and Ph.D students, respectively) who have spent much time and effort researching and documenting a subject. These works focus on a narrowly defined topic within a course of study.

For example, I wrote a Master’s thesis on: “Nineteenth Century American Women’s Attitudes toward Mormon Polygamy.” This means that I researched that topic at length, I used a combination of original and derivative sources, and I wrote about individual women, including one of my ancestors.

In some cases, a thesis or dissertation may be eventually published as a full-length book or a scholarly journal article. While some of these works have no genealogical relevance, there are many in the realms of history, anthropology, social work and other disciplines that would be of interest to the family historian. In some cases, personal and oral histories might be a part of the research paper that may even shed some light on your own family.

In the case of one of my 4th great-grandmothers, her 1850 Texas divorce was documented in a student’s dissertation that was later published as a book. I found the mention of her in that book by searching for her name in Google Books . I found details about her divorce in that book that were not available when I researched at the court house in person.

One of the reasons that family historians don’t explore theses and dissertations has to do with the difficulty in searching for relevant manuscripts. No easy-to-access index is available. There is an index available through the subscription website ProQuest . Unfortunately for family historians, searching the index would need to be done at an academic institution – which isn’t always convenient. However, there are a few other ways to find these works while searching from home. Let’s take a look at a few.

WorldCat is “the world’s largest network of library content and services.” WorldCat is a catalog of over two billion items available from libraries worldwide. You can conduct a keyword search to receive results that include books, articles and yes, even theses and dissertations. To find a relevant thesis or dissertation, conduct a search using a keyword or keywords for the location your ancestor lived, their occupation, an event, or something else that you might want to know about their life. Once you receive your results, narrow the results by the category thesis/dissertation (found on the left-hand side of the page, as shown in this screenshot).

Because the thesis or dissertation you may be interested in might not circulate, consult your public library reference librarian about other ways to access the material.

University Library Catalogs

Another way to find a thesis or dissertation is by searching a university or college library catalog. When searching, remember to not limit your search to just the surname of your ancestor. Instead, search under the ancestor’s locality and any other keywords that may describe him/her, like a religion or occupation. In some cases, under an advanced search option you may be able to limit your results to only show theses or dissertations.

A small example of what can be found are these titles from the University of California, Riverside . A search on the city “Redlands” brings 274 results including books, articles, and newspapers. However, when I chose “Dissertations” under Materials Type in the Advanced Search, I received 9 results, some of which are historical studies of the city and its residents such as:

• A study of attitudes and actions of the citizens of Redlands, California, toward the local Chinese immigrant labor force from 1885 to 1895, by Loren Marvin Horton
• Crime and scandal in early Redlands, by Edith Parker
• Louis Robidoux, California pioneer, by John William Nelson

A search on the phrase “California women” included historically rich results:

• Presidarias y pobladoras: Spanish-Mexican women in frontier Monterey, Alta California, 1770-1821, by Antonia I. Castañeda
• Gender and justice: Women police in America, 1910-1946, by Janis Appier

Google Scholar

Various online periodical indexes might also help in finding relevant works, including the website Google Scholar which is a search engine for “academic” works including peer-reviewed journal articles, books, theses and dissertations. You can search Google Scholar as you would Google. The results I found included some theses and dissertations that were available to download for free.

Theses and Dissertations for Your Genealogy

There are other ways to find theses and dissertations; in some cases a thorough online search may uncover them. I’ve had times when I googled a subject and came across a dissertation available to download as a PDF for free. Googling beyond just your ancestor’s name can lead to helpful discoveries.

Have you used theses and dissertations in your family history research? You should search for topics involving a location, event, occupation, or religion – but you may be surprised to find something focused on your family or surname. For example, did you know that the last name origin for Taylor comes from the occupational name for a tailor? ProQuest published a blog article that lists a few family history-related dissertations to give you an idea of what may be available.

Consider adding a different source to your family history research: explore theses and dissertations. You may be surprised at what you find.

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Writing a family history may seem like a daunting task, but when the relatives start nagging, you can follow these five easy steps to make your family history project a reality.

What do you envision for your family history project? A simple photocopied booklet shared only with family members or a full-scale, hard-bound book to serve as a reference for other genealogists? Perhaps you'd rather produce a family newsletter, cookbook, or website. Now is the time to be honest with yourself about the type of family history that meetings your needs and your schedule. Otherwise, you'll have a half-finished product nagging you for years to come.

Considering your interests, potential audience, and the types of materials you have to work with, here are some forms your family history can take:

• Memoir/Narrative: A combination of story and personal experience, memoirs, and narratives do not need to be all-inclusive or objective. Memoirs usually focus on a specific episode or time period in the life of a single ancestor, while a narrative generally encompasses a group of ancestors.
• Cookbook: Share your family's favorite recipes while writing about the people who created them. A fun project to assemble, cookbooks help carry on the family tradition of cooking and eating together.
• Scrapbook or Album: If you're fortunate enough to have a large collection of family photos and memorabilia, a scrapbook or photo album can be a fun way to tell your family's story. Include your photos in chronological order and include stories, descriptions, and family trees to complement the pictures.

Most family histories are generally narrative in nature, with a combination of personal stories, photos, and family trees.

Do you intend to write mostly about just one particular relative, or everyone in your family tree ? As the author, you need to choose a focus for your family history book. Some possibilities include:

• Single Line of Descent:  Begin with the earliest known ancestor for a particular surname and follows him/her through a single line of descent (to yourself, for example). Each chapter of your book would cover one ancestor or generation.
• All Descendants Of...:  Begin with an individual or couple and cover all of their descendants, with chapters organized by generation. If you're focusing your family history on an immigrant ancestor, this is a good way to go.
• Grandparents:  Include a section on each of your four grandparents, or eight great-grandparents, or sixteen great-great-grandparents if you are feeling ambitious. Each individual section should focus on one grandparent and work backward through their ancestry or forward from his/her earliest known ancestor.

Again, these suggestions can easily be adapted to fit your interests, time constraints, and creativity.

Even though you'll likely find yourself scrambling to meet them, deadlines force you to complete each stage of your project. The goal here is to get each piece done within a specified time frame. Revising and polishing can always be done later. The best way to meet these deadlines is to schedule writing time, just as you would a visit to the doctor or the hairdresser.

Choose a Plot and Themes

Thinking of your ancestors as characters in your family story, ask yourself: what problems and obstacles did they face? A plot gives your family history interest and focus. Popular family history plots and themes include:

• Immigration/Migration
• Rags to Riches
• Pioneer or Farm Life
• War Survival

If you want your family history to read more like a suspense novel than a dull, dry textbook, it is important to make the reader feel like an eyewitness to your family's life. Even when your ancestors didn't leave accounts of their daily lives, social histories can help you learn about the experiences of people in a given time and place. Read town and city histories to learn what life was life during certain periods of interest.  Research timelines  of wars, natural disasters, and epidemics to see if any might have influenced your ancestors. Read up on the fashions, art, transportation, and common foods of the time. If you haven't already, be sure to interview all of your living relatives. Family stories told in a relative's own words will add a personal touch to your book.

Don't Be Afraid to Use Records and Documents

Photos, pedigree charts, maps, and other illustrations can also add interest to family history and help break up the writing into manageable chunks for the reader. Be sure to include detailed captions for any photos or illustrations that you incorporate.

Source citations are an essential part of any family book, to both provide credibility to your research, and to leave a trail that others can follow to verify your findings.

• Celebrate Family History Month and Explore Your Lineage
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9 Tips for Getting Started on Writing Your Family History

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Written by Diane Haddad, unless otherwise noted.

Once you’ve been doing genealogy research for a while, and you have a family tree or a computer hard drive or a filing cabinet with a bunch of notes and old records, you might wonder what to do with it all. Or perhaps you’ve always harbored the dream of sharing your family history, and you’re not sure how.

It’s a hard truth: Few people have much use for an unstructured assortment of documents and computer files. Even folks who are curious about their family history—and that describes most I’ve met—aren’t likely to sort through your research and rebuild the store of knowledge you’ve amassed over years.

If your family research is to live beyond you, you’ll need to do the work of putting it into some shareable, lasting form. That usually means summarizing your finds in writing, maybe enhanced with photos and images of interesting documents. Whether you go all-out with a self-published hardback or just pass out stapled pages at the next family reunion, you’ll create a legacy—a framework others can use to understand your family’s story and the genealogical evidence you’ve gathered.

We can’t promise the project will be a breeze, but we can promise it’ll be easier when you follow these tips and use our handy organizing worksheet.

1. Know Your Purpose

Before you begin, it’s important to know what you hope to accomplish with this writing project. Do you want to summarize all your research, share your family legacy, pass down the stories Grandpa told, tell how your family fits into local history, share the story of an ancestor or family you admire, celebrate your ethnic heritage, or something else?

A strong focus makes the project more manageable, says Sunny Jane Morton, author of Story of My Life . “A small, finished project is better than a three-volume tome that exists only in your dreams.”

Need help narrowing the scope? Morton advises looking at your research for the most compelling story or interesting person. Author Sophia Wilson, who penned an 160,000-word history of her family, started her project by writing as many family stories as she could think of, then turning them into short biographies of the people involved. She wrote every day for at least 15 minutes, but sometimes for hours at a time. Taken together, those biographies served as the starting point for her project.

Alternately, you could choose a topic that commemorates an upcoming family milestone, such as your parents’ 40th wedding anniversary. Or you might start with whatever is most doable.

Your audience is an important aspect of your goal. For a project just family will see, you might use a casual writing style, refer to relatives with familiar titles (“Great-grandpa Thornton”), and use in-text source information. If other genealogists will read your work in a newsletter, journal or published book, you’ll want a more authoritative style with an emphasis on your research process, and formal source citations in footnotes and source lists.

Think about your audience’s age (or level of maturity), too. Wilson recalls how her research turned up stories that might not be appropriate to a younger audience. “Instead of shifting the focus of my book, I decided that children could simply read the unvarnished truth once they were mature enough,” Wilson says. “Age-appropriate stories could be extracted and adapted for a younger audience, for whom I would also write at a lower reading level.”

“I kept coming back to what I wanted the project to accomplish (preserving and sharing memories for the younger generation) and letting that guide my decisions,” she says.

2. Make a Plan

An outline gives you a framework for building your project, especially if it involves multiple people or a long time span. Make a list of elements you want to include. Don’t worry about organizing the list yet.

Here’s an example for my maternal family history opus:

• a family tree of Mom’s family
• information about the places the family came from with a map, including why so many immigrated from each place
• names and immigration details of all the immigrant ancestors: Henry Seeger, Eduard Thoss, Mary Mairose, Thomas Frost, Edward Norris, Elizabeth Butler, Henry Hoernemann, Anna Maria Weyer, and so on.
• where these families settled in the United States, their jobs and their children
• Eduard Thoss tavern in Northern Kentucky
• info on Cincinnati Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, where so many settled
• Dierkes boys in family cemetery plot
• Henry Seeger’s cigar store, with photos and timeline, and two babies who died as infants
• Thomas Frost/Mary Wolking divorce
• Ade Thoss and the Covington Blue Sox
• possible family connection to Windthorst, Kan.
• death of Elizabeth Teipel Thoss and several of her children
• Benjamin Teipel trap-shooting invention and death
• Civil War service of Frank and Benjamin Thoss
• firefighter Raymond Norris and Newton Tea & Spice Co. Fire
• how Grandma and Grandpa met

Your list might cause you to rethink your project scope. For example, I’m seeing that I could divide up my project by family branches, breaking it down into smaller parts (and this is only part of my list).

When you know the topics you want to cover, arrange them in an order that makes sense to you. You could do chronological order, geographical order (group all information related to Germany, all immigration information, all second generation information), family branches one at a time, or some other arrangement. You could opt for a general overview then add several shorter profiles of specific ancestors or families.

Wilson shares how she thought about structure while planning her project:

One option would be maintaining individual biographies, organized in the book by birth year, generation or location. Or I could combine all biographies into a single narrative chronology, or even organize the stories by theme (women, farming, culture, etc.). I opted for the most straightforward and comprehensive order: chronological. With this approach, I gained a deeper understanding of how my ancestors’ lives developed over time, and how one event flowed into another.

Next, create an outline by organizing topics into sections or chapters. Read published family histories for examples. One of my favorites is Family by Ian Frazier.

3. Say It with Pictures

Pictures and graphs will engage your readers, help them follow complicated lineages and show what you’re talking about. “Plan as you go which pictures, documents, maps, charts and genealogical reports will best illustrate your narrative,” Morton advises.

Depending how many photos and documents you’ve found, you’ll want to winnow the options to those from key moments in your family history, selecting those that will reproduce well in the finished product. Consider adding transcriptions for hard-to-read or foreign-language documents.

Keep copyright in mind. If you plan to publish your work (including on a website), get permission from the copyright holder or owner of any images you didn’t create or that aren’t in your personal collection. For a quick read about understanding copyright laws, check out this article .

4. Get Organized and Utilize Apps

Now you’re ready to write. As you work, go over your records for families and people you’re writing about. Wilson developed a filing system that automatically sorted documents by individual. “I created a separate document for every event so I could easily insert new findings, titling each with the event, the date and the location,” she says. “I then grouped the documents into folders, one folder for each year.”

To help you organize source references, add in-text references with the title, author and page or record number in parentheses when you use information from a record, article, book or website. Also create a bibliography of sources as you go. This should include everything needed to find that source again: title, author, publisher or creator (such as the National Archives), publication date and place, website, etc.

Later, when your project is mostly complete, you can keep the in-text references, or number the references and create footnotes (short-form citations at the bottom of the page) or end notes (short-form citations at the end of a chapter). Include the bibliography at the end of your work. For help with source citations, use the book Evidence Explained by Elizabeth Shown Mills (Genealogical Publishing Co.).

You might have a writing head start if you can pull together blog posts or short essays you’ve already written about your family history. Your genealogy software or online tree might offer a timeline you can follow, or even generate a narrative report for you. For an ambitious project or if you do a lot of writing, you might invest in software such as Scrivener . Additionally, writing apps can help you create an outline, organize and edit your story.

Read: How to Create a Genealogy Source Citation

5. Generate Ideas through Prompts and Research

If you’re still having trouble knowing what to write, try answering the family history writing prompts in a book such as Stories From My Grandparent or from Family Tree Magazine . These will help you flesh out ideas and take your family stories in new directions.

Revisit your research for story ideas, and let what you find in documents inspire you. Wilson consulted books (both digital and physical) about her ancestors’ location and ethnic group, as well as documents on genealogy websites like Ancestry.com and Newspapers.com. One book on Ancestry.com contained all the church records for her ancestors, some written by her great-great-great-grandfather’s best friend.

Wilson also revisited local histories and newspapers she had found early in her project. “Now that I was further in my research, I recognized more names and better understood the relationships among them,” she says. “People I had dismissed as “townsfolk” turned out to be in-laws and close friends of my lineal ancestors.”

6. Seek Out Help

Look for writers’ groups and classes in your community. From online groups to friends and family members, having a community you can rely on for feedback and encouragement is essential.

Reaching out can also lead to new research finds, important for sourcing the details in your stories. Wilson connected with other family historians, as well as genealogical societies and libraries (who scanned entire chapters of reference books for her to consult). One cousin-in-law even sent her photos and a relevant family keepsake they found on eBay.

7. Begin in the Middle

Don’t let the “how to start” roadblock stall your project right out of the gate. If you don’t know how to begin, just start writing a story you like—maybe it’s about an ancestor’s immigration, military service or venture to the wrong side of the law. The words will flow from there.

“My goal wasn’t perfection, just to get memories on the page,” Wilson says about her first step of writing family biographies. “I didn’t waste time checking spelling and grammar—that would come later.” An interesting or dramatic event is often the best way to begin a story, anyway. Remember, you’re not carving in stone: You can always rearrange things later.

8. Write Naturally

If you’re writing for relatives, pretend you’re telling your family story to a friend. If you’re writing for a publication, tailor your work to that publication’s style.

Wilson had to wrestle with how to balance facts she found in her research with storytelling. “I thought of how much I hated history class growing up—all those names-places-dates to memorize, and no story to latch onto,” Wilson says. “I resolved to … strive for historical accuracy without resorting to the dry tone of a textbook.”

9. Take Your Time

A deadline can motivate you, but give yourself plenty of time. You want this project to add fulfillment to your family research, not cause stress. Start now and work on your writing project a little at a time, once a week or every evening if you can manage it. Imagine where you’ll be a year from now.

A version of this article appeared in the December 2018 issue of Family Tree Magazine , written by Diane Haddad. Sophia Wilson’s article on the steps she took to write her family history narrative appeared in the March/April 2022 issue of Family Tree Magazine .

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• J Behav Addict
• v.9(2); 2020 Jun

Family history of substance use disorders: Significance for mental health in young adults who gamble

Jon e. grant.

1 Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

Samuel R. Chamberlain

2 Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

3 Cambridge and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust (CPFT), Cambridge, UK

Although family history of psychiatric disorders has often been considered potentially useful in understanding clinical presentations in patients, it is less clear what a positive family history means for people who gamble in the general community. We sought to understand the clinical and cognitive impact of having a first-degree relative with a substance use disorder (SUD) in a sample of non-treatment seeking young adults.

576 participants (aged 18–29 years) who gambled at least five times in the preceding year undertook clinical and neurocognitive evaluations. Those with a first-degree relative with a SUD were compared to those without on a number of demographic, clinical and cognitive measures. We used Partial Least Squares (PLS) regression to identify which variables (if any) were significantly associated with family history of SUDs, controlling for the influence of other variables on each other.

180 (31.3%) participants had a first-degree family member with a SUD. In terms of clinical variables, family history of SUD was significantly associated with higher rates of substance use (alcohol, nicotine), higher rates of problem gambling, and higher occurrence of mental health disorders. Family history of SUD was also associated with more set-shifting problems (plus higher rates of obsessive-compulsive tendencies), lower quality of decision-making, and more spatial working memory errors.

Conclusions

These results indicate that gamblers with a first-degree family member with a SUD may have a unique clinical and cognition presentation. Understanding these differences may be relevant to developing more individualized treatment approaches for disordered gambling. Compulsivity may be important as a proxy of vulnerability towards addiction.

Introduction

Family history of substance use disorders (SUDs) has been examined for the past forty years, most often in the context of understanding phenomenological differences in those adults with alcoholism who have or do not have a family history of addictions ( Latcham, 1985 ; Penick, Nickel, Powell, Bingham, & Liskow, 1990 ), identifying predictive factors that may or may not result in treatment differences in those with alcoholism ( Drake et al., 1995 ), understanding cognitive and biological differences seen in neuroimaging of alcoholics ( de Wit & McCracken, 1990 ; Krystal et al., 2003 ; Muller et al., 2015 ; Schaeffer, Parsons, & Yohman, 1984 ), and identifying those at risk for developing SUDs ( Barnow, Schuckit, Lucht, John, & Freyberger, 2002 ; Beseler, Aharonovich, Keyes, & Hasin, 2008 ; Cloninger, Bohman & Sigvardsson, 1981 ; Dawson, Harford, & Grant, 1992 ; Goodwin, 1983 ; Harrington, Robinson, Bolton, Sareen, & Bolton, 2011 ; Schuckit and Duby, 1982 ).

Other, albeit limited, research has suggested that a family history of SUDs may be an important information in terms of how it impacts other psychiatric symptoms. For example, an early study of patients with bulimia nervosa found that those with a family history of drug abuse were more likely to have experienced drug abuse problems themselves, to have a history of having been overweight, and report more family disruption ( Mitchell, Hatsukami, Pyle, & Eckert, 1988 ). Another study found that people with trichotillomania or skin picking disorder, who also had a family history of SUDs, exhibited more severe forms of illness, more depressive symptoms and higher rates of co-occurring ADHD, than those with the identical disorders but no family history of addictions ( Redden, Leppink, & Grant, 2016 ). These studies suggest that family history of SUDs may have important clinical associations beyond their predictive effects of a future SUD.

Gambling is a commonplace activity across much of the world, and the majority of individuals who gambling do so recreationally, without developing disordered gambling. Disordered gambling encompasses a number of features, conceptually derived largely from prior work in substance use disorders, including escalation over time, difficulty cutting back, neglecting other areas of live, and functional impairment ( Hodgins, Stea, & Grant, 2011 ). Gambling Disorder is the only behavioral addiction currently listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Version 5 (DSM-5) category of Substance-Related and Addictive Disorders ( American Psychiatric Association, 2013 ). Gambling exists along a continuum from endorsement of none to endorsement of all Gambling Disorder diagnostic criteria. Research indicates that endorsement even of a couple of diagnostic criteria can be sufficient to be associated with marked functional impairment ( Chamberlain, Stochl, Redden, Odlaug, & Grant, 2017 ). Despite gambling symptoms being nosologically related to substance addictions in the DSM-5, surprisingly little research has examined the impact of family history of SUDs on the clinical and cognitive presentation of people who gamble. Such examination could have implications for tailoring treatments for disordered gambling.

One way to understand how a family history of SUDs might impact gambling is to see it as a potential clinical marker for underlying relational/cognitive/genetic/neurobiological issues that are not beholden to diagnostic boundaries. Insights can be gleaned from findings other than gambling. For example, one recent study performed a longitudinal functional magnetic resonance imaging in 43 children of alcoholic families (family history positive) and 30 children of controls (family history negative) using a go/no-go task. The study found that differences in response inhibition circuitry were visible in family history positive individuals during childhood and into adolescence ( Hardee, Weiland, & Nichols, 2014 ). A recent review examined the neurobiological phenotypes present in youth and adults with positive family histories for alcoholism by describing findings across neurophysiological and neuroimaging studies. The review found that individuals with positive family histories differed from their peers in amygdalar, hippocampal, basal ganglia, and cerebellar volumes, with mixed directions of effect ( Cservenka, 2016 ). In addition, functional magnetic resonance imaging studies have found altered inhibitory control and working memory-related brain response in youth and adults with positive family histories, suggesting neural markers of executive functioning may be related to increased vulnerability for developing alcohol use disorders in this population ( Cservenka, 2016 ). One large Internet-based assessment of mental health in college students ( n = 6,032–7,169) found that a family history of alcohol and drug problems, in addition to being associated with increased alcohol consumption, were weakly and positively associated with openness, extraversion and neuroticism, and modestly associated with impulsivity ( Kendler et al., 2015 ). Although such studies suggest that these findings from neuroimaging and cognitive profiles may be contributing factors for subsequent substance use problems, one could also imagine that these cognitive/imaging findings might predispose to disordered gambling, given the neurobiological overlap with SUDs ( Grant & Chamberlain, 2019 ). In a recent consensus statement, it was reasoned that different mechanisms may be involved in disposition towards addictions, whereas other variables may be more important in terms of chronicity ( Yucel et al., 2019 ). Overall, there was consensus that cognitive abnormalities reflecting reward dysfunction, disinhibition, and action selection were likely to be important in terms of addiction vulnerability and chronicity; whereas other aspects (such as habit and compulsivity) were hypothesized to be relatively unimportant for vulnerability ( Yucel et al., 2019 ).

Understanding of gambling “subtypes” and how to classify people with gambling problems is highly relevant from a clinical perspective, and family history may be one way to more effectively categorize people. Because research suggests that young adulthood may represent a vulnerable time to develop gambling problems ( Welte, Barnes, Tidwell, & Hoffman, 2008 ), and that different developmental, psychosocial, and cognitive pathways may underlie the development of problem gambling in young adults ( Dowd, Keough, Jakobson, Bolton, & Edgerton, 2019 ; Grant, Chamberlain, Schreiber, Odlaug, & Kim, 2011 ), young adults who gamble may be ideally situated for study before other confounding variables (i.e. greater brain dysfunction and comorbidities) take effect.

Although possibly predictive of future addictive behavior, existing data on family history provide only limited information as to what, if anything, these types of familial associations may mean for gamblers in the general population, as opposed to specific groups of patients recruited from clinical settings. Therefore, understanding differences between the gambling individuals with positive and negative family histories of SUDs may be important in order to identify potentially clinical and cognitive subtypes and improve neurobiological models and treatment. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether young adults who gamble with a first-degree relative with a SUD had a different clinical and cognitive presentation than those without, and whether analysis of different families' histories had any clinical relevance.

576 young adult participants (aged 18–29 years) were enrolled from a study of impulsivity in young adults. Study inclusion criterion was participants had gambled at least five times in the past year and that they were able to be interviewed in person. The only exclusion criterion was the inability to understand and consent to the study. Participants were recruited in the Minneapolis and Chicago metropolitan areas using media advertisements. Participants were informed that there was no treatment component to this study. Each participant received a $50 gift card to an online store as compensation. The assessment took approximately 4 h in total, with cognitive testing being approximately 45 min long. Participants were free to take breaks as needed during the assessment visits.

Assessments

Demographic variables, including age, gender, and highest level of education completed, were recorded for all participants. Subjects received a psychiatric evaluation, which included the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Inventory (MINI) ( Sheehan et al., 1988 ) (a clinician-administered psychiatric interview that evaluates for major depressive disorder, panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, eating disorders, and others); the Minnesota Impulsive Disorders Interview (MIDI) (which screens for impulse control disorders, including compulsive buying, kleptomania, trichotillomania, skin picking disorder, pyromania, intermittent explosive disorder, compulsive sexual behavior, and binge eating disorder) ( Chamberlain and Grant, 2018 ; Grant, 2008 ); Structured Clinical Interview for Pathological Gambling (SCI-PG) ( Grant, Steinberg, Kim, Rounsaville, & Potenza, 2004 ) adapted for DSM-5; the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS-11) (a self-report questionnaire, was employed to quantify impulsive personality; Patton, Stanford, & Barratt, 1995 ; Stanford et al., 2016 ); the Padua Inventory (PADUA) (questionnaire consisting of 39 items, assessed common obsessive and compulsive phenomena; Sanavio, 1988 ); Quality of life was measured using the Quality of Life Inventory (QOLI) ( Frisch, Cornell, & Villanueva, 1992 ).

In addition to paper-pencil measures, participants underwent selected cognitive tests from the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery after the clinical interview. Tasks were administered in a fixed order. Study subjects completed the following cognitive tasks in a quiet room using a touch screen computer under the guidance of a trained assessor:

Intra-Extra Dimensional Set Shift Task (IED)

This task examines cognitive flexibility.

Subjects are presented with four boxes: two contain pink shapes and two are blank. Using a rule set by the computer, subjects are notified that one of the displayed shapes is correct and the other is incorrect. Individuals must learn this rule and then select the correct shape in as many trials as possible. Once the subject chooses a number of correct shapes the computer switches the rule to introduce a new “correct” shape. The subject must adapt; this is the intra-dimensional set shift. Following this portion of the task, the computer introduces a set of white shapes overlaying the pink shapes. The new correct shape is one of the white shapes. Again, the subject must identify the correct shape as chosen by the computer. This addition of stimuli is the extra-dimensional set shift (ED). The number of total errors throughout the task was the outcome measure of interest ( Owen, Roberts, Polkey, Sahakian, & Robbins, 1991 ).

Stop Signal Response Task (SSRT)

This task measures response inhibition. Subjects are presented with a series of directional arrows that appear one at a time on the screen. The subject must immediately press the corresponding arrow computer key matching the direction of the arrow as fast as they are able. When a buzzer sounds after the directional arrow is displayed the subject must resist pressing the computer key. The estimated time it takes for the subject to suppress the already triggered response when the buzzer sounds is calculated as the “stop signal reaction time” ( Aron et al., 2007 ).

Cambridge Gambling Task (CGT)

The CGT examines decision-making. During each trial subjects are presented with ten blocks, a portion of which are red and a portion of which are blue. A token randomly resides under one of these ten boxes. Subjects must decide if they think the token resides under a red or blue box. After a decision is made they are given an opportunity to bet a certain amount by pressing a box showing decreasing values on the screen. After a time, the box shows incrementing or decrementing values and the subject must again decide how much they want to bet. The outcome measures of interest were the total proportion of points gambled, the quality of decision-making, and risk adjustment ( Rogers et al., 1999 ).

Spatial Working Memory Task (SWM)

The SWM tests the ability to remember spatial information and to use working memory in that process. Similarly to the OTS, PIU may be characterized by impaired working memory performance. Colored boxes are presented on a screen, one containing a blue box in it. Subjects click the boxes in order to find the blue box. Once they find it, they can use process of elimination to find all of the other blue boxes until a column on the right of the screen is filled. The number of boxes in each trial increases over time. SWM total errors is the number of times the subject clicks a box that is known not to contain a blue box ( Owen, Downes, Sahakian, Polkey, & Robbins, 1990 ).

Family history assessment

We undertook the family history method where the proband is asked about psychiatric and substance use problems in their relatives, despite its methodological limitations ( Andreasen, Endicott, Spitzer, & Winokur, 1977 ; Kendler et al., 1991 ). Participants were asked about the presence of SUDs (which included alcohol and drug use disorders, but not nicotine) in all first-degree relatives. Substance use disorders were defined as the chronic use of drugs or alcohol resulting in either noticeable social and occupational dysfunction or the need for a twelve-step program or formal treatment. All information about relatives came from the proband. No direct evaluations of the first-degree relatives were performed.

Data analysis

Differences in demographic, clinical, and cognitive variables between the groups were identified using analysis of variance (ANOVA). Results were cross-checked using non-parametric tests where normality assumptions were violated. Statistical significance was defined as P < 0.05, Bonferroni corrected for the number of multiple comparisons.

In order to identify variables associated with family history of SUDs, whilst controlling for inter-relationships between such variables, we used the powerful statistical method of Partial Least Squares regression (hereafter referred to as “PLS”). PLS is a versatile multivariate approach to data modeling that analyses relationships between one set of variables ( X ) and another set of variables ( Y ) by means of fitting one or more latent components ( Wold, Sjostrom, & Eriksson, 2001 ). Unlike standard regression, PLS is robust to violations of normality assumptions and to item cross-correlations. Hence PLS is ideally suited to the current dataset. Candidate X variables in the PLS model were the demographic/clinical/cognitive measures, and the Y variable of interest was family history of SUDs. By convention, and for computational reasons, the X matrix is usually the larger set of variables; we do not mean to suggest by this that X causes Y . Rather, we used PLS as a valuable tool to understand the relationships between these two sets of variables.

PLS modeling was conducted using JMP Pro software. The PLS model was fitted using leave-one-out cross-validation (non-linear iterative partial least squares, NIPALS, algorithm), and the optimal model was identified based on minimizing predictive residual sum of the squares (PRESS) per convention. Only X variables with a Variable Importance Parameter (VIP) >0.8 were retained in the model, in line with recommendations for PLS modeling. X variables significantly contributing to the model (i.e., explaining significant variance in current compulsive and impulsive problem behaviors) were identified on the basis of 95% confidence intervals for bootstrap distribution of the standardised model coefficients not crossing zero ( N = 1,500 bootstraps; P < 0.05).

The Institutional Review Board of the University of Chicago approved the study and the consent statement. The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committees on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008.

Of the 576 young adult gamblers, 180 (31.3%) reported a first-degree family member with a SUD. Comparisons between the two groups on the variables of interest are summarized in Table 1 . For demographic variables, family history of SUDs was significantly associated with older age, female gender, non-Caucasian racial-ethnic group, and lower quality of life.

Demographic, clinical, and cognitive differences between young adult gamblers with and without a family history of substance use disorders

∗ P < 0.05 significant group difference with Bonferroni correction (threshold 0.05/21 = 0.0024). Statistical tests are ANOVA for continuous variables, and Likelihood Ratio tests for categorical measures. # presented in binary form for simplicity but all levels analyzed.

Abbreviations: SCI-PG = total symptoms endorsed from Structured Clinical Interview for Gambling Disorder; MINI = Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Inventory; MIDI = Minnesota Impulse Disorders Interview; BIS = Barratt Impulsivity Scale; IED = Intra-Dimensional/Extra-Dimensional Set-Shift Task; SST = Stop-Signal Task; SSRT = Stop-Signal Reaction Time; CGT = Cambridge Gamble Task; SWM = Spatial Working Memory Task.

For clinical variables, family history of SUDs was significantly associated with more money lost to gambling in the past year, higher SCI-PG scores, greater nicotine consumption, higher occurrence of one or more MINI mental disorders, and higher Padua obsessive-compulsive scores.

For cognitive variables, family history of SUDs was significantly associated with more IED total errors (adjusted), less risk adjustment on the CGT, and more SWM errors.

In Partial Least Squares (PLS) analysis, an optimal one-factor model was identified that accounted for 22.7% of variance in the demographic/clinical/cognitive variables, and 13.8% of variation in family history of addiction status. Demographic, clinical, and cognitive variables significant in the model ( P < 0.05, bootstrap) are shown in Fig. 1 . Family history of SUDs was significantly related, in the PLS model, to older age, female gender, lower quality of life, more money lost to gambling in the past year, more gambling symptoms, greater alcohol use, higher cigarette use, and higher presence of mainstream mental disorders on the MINI. Family history of SUDs was also significantly associated with more IED errors, worse quality of decision-making on the CGT, and more working memory errors on the SWM.

Model coefficients for centered and scaled data, in the PLS model relating the variables below ( X ) to family history of substance use disorders ( Y ). * P <0.05 statistically significant by bootstrap. Abbreviations: SCIPG = total symptoms endorsed from Structured Clinical Interview for Gambling Disorder; MINI = Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Inventory; IED = Intra-Dimensional/Extra-Dimensional Set-Shift Task; CGT = Cambridge Gamble Task; SWM = Spatial Working Memory Task

This study examined demographic, clinical, and cognitive associations with family history of substance use disorders (SUDs), in a large sample of non-treatment seeking, community-dwelling gamblers. The study found that family history of SUDs had a number of important associations in gamblers. Here, we focus on those that were significant in Partial Least Squares regression modeling, because this statistical approach effectively controls for the potentially confounding influence of variables on each other, indicating that the associations were robust even accounting for the influence of other variables.

For the demographic measures, family history of SUDs was associated with older age and higher likelihood of female gender. The finding of gender differences is provocative but not new. In fact, an early study by Petry and colleagues found that women with a positive family history of alcoholism had higher discount rates than women with a negative family history and could be suggestive of different mechanisms by which risk is transmitted between genders ( Petry, Kirby, & Kranzler, 2002 ).

For the clinical measures, family history of SUDs was associated with greater substance use (alcohol, nicotine/smoking), and higher rates of disordered gambling problems (both in terms of the number of gambling disorder symptoms endorsed, and the amount of money lost to gambling in the past year). The likely explanation for this is that addiction tends to run in families, likely due to the influence of genetic, cognitive, and environmental factors. Prior research in twins indicates that substance use and gambling disorder have shared genetic contributions ( Huggett, Winiger, Corley, Hewitt, & Stallings, 2019 ; Lobo & Kennedy, 2009 ; Slutske, Ellingson, Richmond-Rakerd, Zhu, & Martin, 2013 ). In terms of common environmental mediators that may contribute, observing one's parents having an addiction could lead to “modelling” whereby offspring are more likely to also develop similar problems over the course of time. Family history of SUDs was also associated with lower quality of life. In terms of mental disorders, in general the likelihood of any mental disorder (including depression, anxiety, and substance use related) was higher in those with a family history of SUDs. Presence of impulse control disorders on the MIDI was not significantly related to family history of SUDs, but these conditions were relatively uncommon, which would have limited the ability to detect such associations.

Turning to the cognitive variables, family history of SUDs was associated with worse set-shifting (IED task), lower quality of decision-making (CGT task), and more working memory errors (SWM task). Worse set-shifting is in keeping with also finding that family history of SUDs was linked with higher compulsive tendencies on the Padua inventory, indicating that a predilection towards a more rigid cognitive style may tend to run in families and predispose towards developing compulsive clinical problems. Deficits on the IED task are a common finding in compulsive disorders such as OCD, and gambling disorder ( Leppink, Redden, Chamberlain, & Grant, 2016 ), and also are found in clinically asymptomatic first-degree family members of OCD patients ( Chamberlain, Blackwell, Fineberg, Robbins, & Sahakian, 2005 ; Chamberlain et al., 2007a ; van Timmeren, Daams, van Holst, & Goudriaan, 2018 ). In terms of quality of decision-making, this measure has previously been found to be impaired even in the relatively early stages of disordered gambling, when subjects endorse some diagnostic criteria but insufficient for a full diagnosis ( Grant et al., 2011 ). Working memory constitutes another distinct aspect of executive functioning, and has previously been found to be impaired in some OCD studies, especially when using relatively demanding tasks ( Harkin & Kessler, 2011 ) such as the SWM ( Chamberlain et al., 2007b ). Findings using SWM in gambling disorder are mixed ( Clark, 2014 ).

In terms of cognitive processes that may be involved in different stages of addiction ( Yucel et al., 2019 ), if one views family history of addiction as a proxy for vulnerability, our data indicate that compulsivity (as indexed by the Padua inventory and set-shift task) may be very important even in the earlier stages of addiction, i.e. in terms of rendering one vulnerable to developing an addiction. This is potentially important because it runs counter to the prevailing current view of experts, who felt compulsivity would only be important in terms of chronicity but not vulnerability ( Yucel et al., 2019 ). Thus, future work should evaluate whether trans-diagnostic markers of compulsivity in fact are important in addiction vulnerability in general, ideally using longitudinal studies. By tradition, the main focus has been on impulsivity rather than compulsivity.

If family history of SUDs is a useful clinical subtype of young adult gamblers, can we improve treatments using this subtype? One approach would be to use this information to identify vulnerable young adults and then test early interventions. For example, if a family history of SUDs suggests an underlying cognitive predisposition to gambling (and possibly comorbid addictions such as nicotine use), young people with this family history could undergo brief cognitive therapy focusing on these cognitive deficits (decision-making, working memory, cognitive inflexibility). In this way, we could prevent future development of more serious gambling problems as well as other addictive behaviors. Although speculative at this point, it could represent a targeted early intervention approach to gambling problems.

The domain of family history, however, may often be far more complex than a simple reflection of cognitive vulnerability. Having a parent with an SUD could be associated with childhood abuse or neglect, it could affect the kind of attachment developed by the child, and it may have associations with other psychosocial variables such as poverty, poor nutrition, and early life stress ( Ahuja, Cunningham-Williams, Werner, & Bucholz, 2018 ; Calado, Alexandre, & Griffiths, 2017 , 2018 ; Felsher, Derevensky, & Gupta, 2010 ). Any of these may in turn increase the probability of developing gambling problems as a means of coping with problems or emotions or alternatively lead to a need to over-control situations. Larger longitudinal studies are needed to parse out these complex components.

There are several limitations to this study. Participants were included in the study if they had some baseline level of gambling (having gambled at least five times in the preceding 12 months) and were not treatment seeking. Thus, these findings may not generalize to other less impulsive young adults in the community, or to clinical samples (including those in treatment). Second, we examined family history of SUDs as a unitary construct. Of course, it remains possible that family history of particular SUDs may have different associations from each other. However, our categorical approach (family history of any SUD versus not) is one that can easily be used in clinical practice whereas asking about history of a multitude of types of substance use disorders is challenging and time consuming for participants. The PLS approach had family history of addiction as the Y variable of interest, but we do not mean to suggest from this that X variables cause Y : rather, PLS was used as a method of constructing a model to maximally explain the relationships between two sets of variables, and the matrix with the larger set of variables is held in X by convention and for computational reasons. PLS does not indicate the direction of causality. We selected cognitive tests based on a review of the existing literature coupled with the need not to expose subjects to excessively long testing batteries; as such we did not quantify all domains and future work could examine other functions such as temporal discounting, Iowa Gambling Task performance, or executive planning. Another potential limitation is that we did not collect measures of fatigue during the cognitive testing sessions. However, in our experience cognitive testing of around 45 min is generally extremely well tolerated. Tasks were administered in a fixed order. Because medication use was not a reason for exclusion, the use of psychotropic medications could conceivably have affected cognitive performance in some subjects; we did not track medication use in the subjects, and so these findings may benefit from replication in subjects who are known not to be taking medications. Lastly, we did not differentiate between parental and sibling family history of SUDs.

In conclusion, this study found that family history of SUDs has a number of potentially clinically important associations in young adults who gamble, not only greater rates of addictive problems (alcohol, smoking, and gambling), but also relative impairments in some cognitive domains indicative of cognitive inflexibility and riskier decision-making. The latter may constitute trans-diagnostic markers that could run in families, acting as vulnerability markers for the development of different related addictive symptom domains.

Funding sources

This study was supported by a grant from the National Center for Responsible Gaming. Dr. Chamberlain's role in this study was funded by a Wellcome Trust Clinical Fellowship (Reference 110049/Z/15/Z).

Authors' contribution

Dr. Grant designed and conducted the study and drafted the manuscript. Dr. Chamberlain performed statistical analyses of the data and helped with writing the manuscript.

Conflict of interest

Dr. Grant has received research grants from Promentis and Otsuka Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Grant receives yearly compensation from Springer Publishing for acting as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Gambling Studies and has received royalties from Oxford University Press, American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc., Norton Press, and McGraw Hill. Dr. Chamberlain consults for Promentis, and Ieso Digital Health. Dr. Chamberlain receives a stipend for his role as Associate Editor at Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews; and at Comprehensive Psychiatry.

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How One Conversation With My Father Inspired ‘Inheriting’

• Learning history to connect 
• Learning history to heal 
• Learning history in solidarity 
• Listen to 'Inheriting'

My father’s side of the family spoke Mandarin, but my father did not. So, my sister and I never learned.

We spent a lifetime clumsily sounding out the 谢谢 and 再见 of our heritage language, while relatives smiled sympathetically. I always felt a little less Chinese American for it, always resented my dad a tiny bit for quashing what felt like a cornerstone of our identity.

But when anti-Asian hate crimes rose to an all time high in 2021, I chose to look more deeply at my family history – and realized how misguided my resentment was.

The process of interviewing my own relatives about our family history inspired “ Inheriting ,” co-created with Anjuli Sastry Krbechek and an entire team at LAist Studios. Set in California, this multi-part, narrative podcast about Asian American and Pacific Islander families explores how one event rippled through the generations that followed.

On “Inheriting,” the past is personal. Families are acknowledged and celebrated as actors in history. Our team wanted to know: What would happen if we talked about the past beyond facts and figures? What if history became a means for bridging intergenerational gaps, tending to our mental health, and processing the world we live in today?

Ultimately, we want “Inheriting” to inspire others to interview their own family members (however you define family), and to use our show and  digital resource guide as a model for navigating conversations about the past.

Learning history to connect

The past became personal to me when I stumbled upon a single date, 1943. That was the year the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed, just as my grandmother, Hui Chen, was preparing to immigrate to the U.S. When I stitched these two timelines together – my family history and sociopolitical history – my perspective of my own family shifted.

I imagined the long shadow of that xenophobic law across my grandmother’s 17-year-old face, a Chinese college student fleeing war with Japan and determined to survive in New York City. I got curious about how languages and traditions die within families, and how historical and collective trauma shapes a family for generations.

My first real attempt to answer those questions was in 2021, when I interviewed her son – my father, Christopher Kwong – for almost two hours for the NPR series " Where We Come From ." He told me a story I had never heard before: about speaking Mandarin as a kid, his kindergarten teacher’s belief that bilingualism would hold him back academically ( a now unproven idea ), and his parents’ overnight decision to become an English-only household.

I pictured my five-year-old father in khaki shorts on summer vacation, doing vocabulary drills with my grandmother. He softly told me it was “a decision for (his) own emotional and social survival.” The more I learned about my father’s determination to adopt English, the more my resentment dissipated.

In that two-hour interview, I opened up to him too. I shared how disconnected I’d felt from our culture, our extended family, and why I decided to learn basic Mandarin as an adult. After we wrapped, the distance between us felt shorter. I asked him, “How does it feel to talk about all of this?”

“It’s very therapeutic,” he said. “For people who need to unburden themselves, I think it’s very necessary.”

Learning history to heal

After that conversation with my father, I interviewed my Auntie Linda and Uncle Dick with my microphone and tucked those audio files somewhere safe. I began snapping pictures of sepia-toned family photographs and memorizing the names of those long gone.

Through these conversations, I’ve come to understand how war, racism, and assimilation have shaped our family, and how it runs down the family tree like an inkblot all the way to me.

I was a very depressed and anxious teenager. High-achieving, but unable to get out of bed for stretches of time. No one in my suburban Connecticut hometown had a family history like ours. Therapy and medication have been life-saving, but the real healing has come from talking to other Asian Americans. Other people’s stories have kept me alive. Stories were the proof I needed that life is flexible, and survivable.

A 2019 study from Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services (SAMHSA) found that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders were the least likely of any racial or ethnic group to seek out mental health services. The barriers for affordable, culturally-competent care are numerous, but there is a generational change afoot.

The list of therapist directories , in-language conversation starters , and recognition of non-Western care practices is growing. Podcasts and new books devoted to intergenerational trauma are flourishing. Our show wants to be a part of that change.

Take care of yourself and your loved ones as you process this history. Our team’s favorite care resources include the Asian Mental Health Project , Pacific Asian Counseling Services , AAPI Equity Alliance , and Yellow Chair Collective .

Throughout production, our entire team learned so much from Sherry C. Wang , our consulting psychologist on the show, about the intersections between family history, community dialogue, and mental health. “Just talking about it is a big deal,” she’d constantly reassure me. On “Inheriting,” we explore intergenerational trauma most deeply in Episode 5 of the show, with Leah Bash. Both sides of her Japanese American family were incarcerated during World War II.

I want this show to find those that need it, perhaps a teenager in an all-white suburb like I once was, feeling lonely and disconnected from other people. And I want listeners to experience what it's like to bridge that gap, through intentional conversation, deep listening, and moments of real learning and sharing.

Learning history in solidarity

Seven families participated in the first season of “Inheriting,” from Cambodia, Guam, Japan, India, Korea, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Vietnam. All of them processed a life-changing historical moment, across hours of conversation.

Interested in interviewing your own relatives? Our team highly recommends the oral history resources from Self Evident and StoryCorps . Also check out the "Inheriting" digital resource guide .

As the reporter facilitating those conversations, I was astonished how little I knew about other communities. In so many ways, this show is the history class I wish I took in college. By deconstructing the AAPI monolith, our team sought to tell a fuller story of these communities.

While making this show, I clung to Erika Lee’s The Making of Asian America and Renee Tajima-Peña’s 5-part PBS series Asian Americans . Social media has busted down doors in making learning more accessible. A growing list of states are requiring AAPI studies in their K-12 curriculum.

And yet, a growing number of states have restricted or banned teaching critical race theory . Last year, Florida banned an AP African American studies course , while approving an AAPI history bill for K-12 schools. This move prevents the next generation from understanding how different communities have historically affected one another.

“Inheriting” approaches history education differently, holding our stories alongside other immigrant and BIPOC groups. The first two episodes of the show focus on the 1992 Los Angeles Uprising for that reason, examining how decades of segregation, disinvestment, and police brutality led up to that one week in April. It ends with a call by professor Carol Kwang Park to her students: “What are you going to do to stop it?”

Asian Americans are the fastest-growing group of eligible voters and the fastest growing racial and ethnic group in the United States. When I think about that fact, Carol’s question rings in my ears. What are we going to do with our expanding political power?

This is a show meant to spark conversation within families– a starting point for those who want to engage deeply with the past. That’s why we built a digital resource guide to accompany each episode, alongside lesson plans from the The Asian American Education Project for K-12 instructors and students.

Listen to 'Inheriting'

My father has been one of the biggest supporters of me making “Inheriting.” Every plot beat, every historical deep dive. But he’s nervous.

Over the phone, he said, “I gotta be honest with you Emily, I’m not sure if anyone will want to listen to this.”

I get his concern. The people in “Inheriting” are neither celebrities, nor power brokers. But they are all actors in history, and that is compelling in every sense.

All across the Asian and Pacific Islander diaspora are people who took heroic leaps to keep their families together – whose choices made a difference – fleeing war, occupation, and social upheaval. Our families have shaped social movements, as activists and artists, and done good where they could: in gas stations and courtrooms, behind barbed wire and bullhorns, on the farm and on the picket line.

That inheritance is ours for the taking, if we’re willing to go back and reclaim it.

New episodes of “Inheriting” come out every Thursday. Listeners can subscribe   on the NPR app , Apple Podcasts , Spotify and wherever podcasts are available.

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• Family Health History
• Family Health History Tools and Resources
• Family Health History and Pregnancy
• Family Health History and Your Child
• Family Health History for Adults
• Family Health History Resources for Health Professionals and Researchers
• MFHP Algorithms
• Genomics and Your Health
• About Cascade Testing
• Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer
• Hereditary Colorectal (Colon) Cancer
• Heart Disease, Family Health History, and Familial Hypercholesterolemia
• Public Health Genomics at CDC

What to know

If you have a family health history of a chronic disease such as cancer, heart disease, or diabetes, you are more likely to get that disease yourself. Knowing your family health history risk can help you—if you act on it. Share your family health history with your healthcare provider, who can help you take steps to prevent disease and catch it early if it develops. Finding disease early can often mean better health in the long run.

Knowing and acting on your family health history can be an important part of staying healthy. Family health history can help your healthcare provider decide what screening tests and other interventions you need and when. For example, if you have a parent or sibling diagnosed with breast cancer before age 50, your healthcare provider might refer you for cancer genetic counseling .

Whether you know a lot about your family health history or only a little, take time to talk to your family about their health histories. It might not be easy. Your family members might not be used to talking about their diseases or might not want to talk. But starting the conversation is important. Remember, you're asking not just for your own health, but for the health of everyone in your family.

If you have a medical condition, such as cancer , heart disease , or diabetes , be sure to let your family members know about your diagnosis. If you have had genetic testing done, share your results with your family members. If you are one of the older members of your family, you may know more about diseases and health conditions in your family, especially in relatives who are no longer living. Be sure to share this information with your younger relatives so that you may all benefit from knowing this family health history information.

Collect and share your family health history

Are you ready to collect your family health history but don’t know where to start? Here’s how!

Talk to your family. Write down the names of your close blood relatives from both sides of the family: parents, siblings, half-siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews. Talk to these family members about what conditions they have or had, and at what age the conditions were first diagnosed. You might think you know about all of the conditions in your parents or siblings, but you might find out more information if you ask.

Ask questions. To find out about your risk for chronic diseases , ask your relatives about which of these diseases they have had and when they were diagnosed. Questions can include

• Do you have any chronic diseases, such as heart disease or diabetes, or health conditions such as high blood pressure or high cholesterol?
• Have you had any other serious diseases, such as cancer or stroke? What type of cancer?
• How old were you when each of these diseases and health conditions were diagnosed? (If your relative doesn’t remember the exact age, knowing the approximate age is still useful.)
• What is our family’s ancestry? From what countries did our ancestors come to the United States?
• What were the cause and age of death for relatives who have died?

Record the information and update it whenever you learn new family health history information . My Family Health Portrait , a free web-based tool, is helpful in organizing the information in your family health history. My Family Health Portrait allows you to share this information easily with your healthcare provider and other family members.

Share family health history information with your healthcare provider. If you are concerned about diseases that are common in your family, talk with your healthcare provider at your next visit. Even if you don't know all of your family health history information, share what you do know. Family health history information, even if incomplete, can help your healthcare provider decide which screening tests you need and when those tests should start.

Share your medical and family health history with your family members. If you have a medical condition, such as cancer, heart disease, or diabetes, be sure to let your family members know about your diagnosis. If you have had genetic testing done, share your results with your family members. If you are one of the older members of your family, you may know more about diseases and health conditions in your family, especially in relatives who are no longer living. Be sure to share this information with your younger relatives so that you may all benefit from knowing this family health history information.

Act on your family health history

Having a family health history of a disease doesn't mean that you or your family members will definitely get it. Knowing about your family health history of a disease can motivate you to take steps to lower your chances of getting the disease. You can’t change your family health history, but you can change unhealthy behaviors, such as smoking, not exercising or being active, and poor eating habits.

Talk with your healthcare provider about steps that you can take, including whether you should consider early screening for the disease. If you have a family health history of disease, you may have the most to gain from lifestyle changes and screening tests.

What you can do if you have a family health history of

• Colorectal cancer : If you have a mother, father, sister, brother, or other close family member who had colorectal cancer before age 50 or have multiple close family members with colorectal cancer, talk to your healthcare provider about whether you should have screening starting at a younger age, being done more frequently, and using colonoscopy only instead of other tests. In some cases, your healthcare provider may recommend that you have genetic counseling, and a genetic counselor may recommend genetic testing based on your family health history.
• Breast or ovarian cancer : If you have a parent, sibling, or child with breast cancer, follow current recommendations and start getting mammograms at age 40. If your relative was diagnosed with breast cancer before age 50, if you have a close relative with ovarian cancer, or if you have a male relative with breast cancer, your healthcare provider might refer you for cancer genetic counseling to find out if genetic testing is right for you. In some cases, your healthcare provider might recommend taking tamoxifen, raloxifene, or aromatase inhibitors, drugs that can decrease risk of developing breast cancer in some women.
• Heart disease : If you have a family health history of heart disease, you can take steps to lower your chances of getting heart disease . These steps can include eating a healthy diet, being physically active, maintaining a healthy weight, not smoking, limiting your alcohol use, having any screening tests that your healthcare provider recommends, and, in some cases, taking medication. If you or a family member has low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels over 190 mg/dL (or over 160 mg/dL in children), talk to your healthcare provider about getting checked for familial hypercholesterolemia (FH), especially if you have a family health history of early heart disease or heart attacks. If you have FH, you might need to take additional steps to maintain your health.
• Diabetes : If your mother, father, brother, or sister has type 2 diabetes, you and your other family members could have prediabetes and are more likely to get type 2 diabetes. While most people with type 2 diabetes are older adults, more and more children, teens, and young adults are developing type 2 diabetes. But there are important steps you and your children can take to prevent type 2 diabetes and reverse prediabetes if you have it. Take this test to find out if you or your family members could have prediabetes. Ask your healthcare provider whether you need earlier screening for diabetes. Find out more about the National Diabetes Prevention Program 's lifestyle change program and how to find a program near you .
• Osteoporosis : This is a medical condition where bones become weak and are more likely to break. A family health history of osteoporosis is one of a number of factors that make you more likely to develop osteoporosis. For example, if you are a white woman whose mother or father fractured a hip, talk to your healthcare provider about screening for osteoporosis earlier (at about age 55, compared with age 65 for most women).
• Hereditary Hemochromatosis : Hereditary hemochromatosis is a disorder in which the body can build up too much iron and can lead to serious liver damage and other problems. If you have a family member, especially a brother or sister, with hemochromatosis, you may be more likely to develop the condition yourself. Talk to your healthcare provider about testing for hemochromatosis and whether you should take steps to lower the amount of iron in your body.

Learn how collecting your family health history can help prevent disease or find it early.

For Everyone

Public health.

UF record-setter Jac Caglianone’s success with Gators has been a family affair

G AINESVILLE — The end of Jac Caglianone’s record-setting run is set to arrive like one of the towering lefty’s 98-mph fastballs — fast and a bit unpredictable.

Perhaps the best two-year stretch in program history has been a blur for the 21-year-old two-way star and Gator Nation, led by his two biggest fans.

Jeff and Johanne Caglianone have shared a front-row seat for their son’s improbable journey, rarely missing a game at home or away.

“It’s really kind of surreal for us,” Jeff told the Orlando Sentinel. “He’s had success at a lot of levels, but you never envision what he’s been able to do.”

Against all odds, Jac Caglianone wants to keep on going during the postseason, beginning Tuesday at the SEC Tournament in Hoover, Ala. The 9th-seeded Gators (28-26) face No. 8 Vanderbilt (35-20) with the winner advancing to the double-elimination championship bracket and the loser going home.

A season after coming one win shy against LSU of a College World Series title, Florida has struggled despite Caglianone’s efforts at the plate and on the mound.

“It’s frustrating,” his father said. “He can be torn at times — ‘I’m having success.’ But it’s not as important when we’re not winning. That sounds cliché, I get it. But he really wants the team to succeed.”

The 6-foot-5, 250-pound Caglianone has endured soul-crushing losses, outsized expectations, the omnipresent spotlight and the focus of every UF foe to produce another historic individual season.

“He walks on the field, and he’s the biggest and strongest guy on either team,” coach Kevin O’Sullivan said. “You’re being singled out. You can feel like you’re on an island.

“It’s not easy.”

Yet Caglianone is batting .413, currently third in school history, with 29 home runs, 4 shy of his 2023 record 33, and has a slugging percentage of .851, well ahead of Matt LaPorta’s school record .817 in  2007. During a 9-4 loss last Thursday at Georgia, Caglianone’s hit streak ended at 30 games, tied for the school record.

If Florida, which sits No. 24 in the RPI , picks up some wins at the SECs and slips into the NCAAs, he’ll have a shot to break LaPorta’s record 74 homers set from 2004-07. After all, Caglianone has 10 multi-homer games and this season tied the NCAA record with 9 straight games with a home run.

Despite prodigious power, he has a possible future as a pitcher, earning him the nickname Jac-tani — a nod to MLB star Shohei Ohtani. 

UF’s most consistent hurler on a struggling staff, Caglianone is 5-1 with a 4.35 ERA and 68 strikeouts in 62 innings. While control can be an issue — he’s allowed 44 walks — he’s developed a change-up to pair with a blistering fastball.

Whatever the future holds, Caglianone is a projected top-5 pick with options.

“He’s been asked that question I don’t know how many times,” Jeff Cagilanone said. “He can do both.” 

Jac Caglianone’s passion and penchant for baseball were evident early on and nurtured by a father who played the game, including two seasons at Stetson University.

Jeff coached Jac from age 3 in T-ball at the YMCA until he reached Plant High School.

“I wanted him to hear a different voice,” Jeff said.

But until college, father and son continued to spend hours on the game’s fine points during hitting drills and strategy sessions, developing Caglianone’s high baseball IQ.

“We’ve worked situations,” Jeff said. “You have a place to be — no matter what position you play — on every pitch. He was always working on something as opposed to see how far he could hit.”

The evening routine became predictable.

Jac would come home from practice, eat dinner and head to the field with Jeff, a managing partner at a Tampa law firm.

“He was always like, ‘Dad can we go hit?’ ’’ Johanne recalled. “[Jeff] never said no, because he said, one day I won’t be able to do this.”

When Caglianone fulfilled his childhood dream and signed with UF, where Tampa Plant legend Preston Tucker starred a decade earlier, Jeff and Johanne became season-ticket holders and fixtures at the top of the lower bowl along the first-base line at UF’s Condron Family Ballpark.

When their son is pitching, those prime seats are often empty.

“It’s hard; you want him to do well,” Johanne said. “You just hold your breath.”

While Caglianone threw during the Gators’ regular-season finale, Mom nervously paced the concourse. Meanwhile, Dad was a ghost.

“I don’t know where he is,” Johanne said.

But once the game ended with a 7-5 loss to Kentucky, Caglianone rose to the occasion amid the disappointment in his final home game.

None of the fans who lined up for his autograph left disappointed. Later outside the ballpark, a girl in braces flashed a big smile wearing a No. 14 jersey with Caglianone’s John Hancock on the back.

“A lot of the stuff he’s done on the field is great,” Jeff said, his eyes welling up. “But when we see him interact with the kids, we kind of get more satisfaction from that.”

Caglianone won’t sign another autograph or perform in Gainesville for UF fans. After leaving his home field for the final time, he reflected on the best days of his young life.

“Just playing in front of your home crowd, there’s nothing like it,” he said. “It’s been nothing but great for me and my family. They love it.

“I’m going to miss it all.”

Edgar Thompson can be reached at [email protected]

©2024 Orlando Sentinel. Visit orlandosentinel.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Too Red, Too Vampiric, Too Sexy: A Brief History of Polarizing Royal Portraits

Jonathan Yeo’s painting of King Charles III has prompted both admiration and bemusement, but it’s far from the first royal portrait to divide opinion.

By Emma Bubola

Reporting from London

Royal family members sit for portraits a lot. And even when they don’t, artists paint them anyway. Some of these portraits have drawn near-unanimous praise and stood the test of time, captivating viewers generations later. Others have attracted mixed reactions, scandal or controversy.

With some artworks, critics objected royals were too gloomy, too naked, or, in the case of King Charles III’s latest portrait, too red.

In the painting unveiled on Tuesday, Charles is enveloped in a cloud of crimson, hot pink and fuchsia.

The artist, Jonathan Yeo, told The New York Times in an interview last month that he got to know his subject over four sittings, beginning in 2021, when Charles was still Prince of Wales, and continuing after the coronation last May.

“Age and experience were suiting him,” Mr. Yeo said. “His demeanor definitely changed after he became king.”

“Life and death and bloodlines and damask. Wonderful,” wrote Jonathan Foyle , a British academic, on social media. But not everyone was as impressed.

One social media user said the king looked in the painting as if he was “burning in hell.” Others compared the work to the possessed portrait in the 1989 film “Ghostbusters II,” haunted by a medieval tyrant’s ghost .

“Has a portrait of a blue-blooded British monarch ever been so very pink?” Laura Freeman, The Times of London’s chief art critic , wrote. While she praised the face (“beautifully done”), saying that Mr. Yeo deserved a knighthood for it, she added, “and off to the Tower with the background to await a grisly execution.”

The Daily Telegraph’s art critic Alastair Sooke noted that “painting a monarch ranks among the toughest of artistic gigs” and concluded that one thing seemed certain: the portrait “will be remembered for its fluorescence.”

Here are other royal portraits, painted with less jaunty palettes, but in their own way, as surprising or contentious.

Kate: ‘Vampiric’

While some described the then Duchess of Cambridge’s first official portrait as natural and human, the reception that greeted Paul Emsley’s soft and diaphanous 2012 painting of the former Kate Middleton — now Catherine, Princess of Wales — was marked by harsh criticism.

The Guardian’s culture writer Charlotte Higgins said it was like “ something unpleasant from the Twilight franchise ,” referring to the brooding vampire romance movies. She decried the Duchess’s “vampiric, malevolent glare beneath heavy lids,” which give the portrait a “sepulchral gloom.”

That was not the worst feedback the portrait received.

Michael Glover of The Independent called the portrait “catastrophic.”

According to British Vogue , Mr. Emsley said that the attacks were so nasty at first that “there was a point where I myself doubted that the portrait of the duchess was any good.”

But British newspapers quoted Kate as telling the artist that she found the portrait “amazing. Absolutely brilliant.”

Queen Elizabeth II: ‘Decapitated’

“The queen had already been decapitated, albeit on canvas, by her latest portrait painter,” the BBC wrote when Justin Mortimer painted Queen Elizabeth II on a yellow background with her head floating away from her body.

The artist, who was 27 when he was commissioned to paint the portrait by the Royal Society of Arts after winning the National Portrait Gallery’s portrait award in 1991, told the BBC he had aimed for the painting to be “fresh and funky.”

Some loved it, but many Britons did not get the joke.

“‘Silly’ artist cuts off the queen’s head,” The Daily Mail wrote.

Mr. Mortimer told The New York Times that after the Queen sat for him, “I ended up basically taking out her neck” to be “cheeky.”

“I knew people would bring ideas, like, ‘Cut off her head!’ to it,” he said. “I didn’t go in as a raging republican. I just wanted to suggest this vein of unease about the royal family at the time.”

Prince Philip: Shirtless

In a 2003 portrait by Stuart Pearson Wright, Prince Philip , the husband of Queen Elizabeth II, stands bare chested with a bluebottle on one shoulder and a sprout of cress growing out of his index finger.

The painting was initially commissioned by the Royal Society of Arts to honor their Philip as its president, and he sat for it, but the final result was deemed “inappropriate,” the artist told the BBC . He was asked to come up with a smaller version that only focused on the prince’s face, which is now on view at the Royal Society of Arts.

Mr. Pearson Wright told the BBC that when he showed the prince the work in progress and asked if he thought it resembled him, Philip told him, “I bloody well hope not.”

The portrait is titled “Homo sapiens, Lepidium sativum and Calliphora vomitoria”: a wise man, some cress and a bluebottle. Prince Philip did not strip off during the sitting, Mr. Wright told The Guardian, explaining that he had based the hairy chest on that of an older man in East London.

Queen Victoria: ‘Sexy’

“Victorian” is often used as a synonym for prudishness and modesty, but in a 1843 portrait by Franz Xaver Winterhalter, the queen is far from buttoned up.

In the oil painting, a lock of Victoria’s hair falls lavishly over her uncovered shoulder as she leans against a red cushion, gazing into the distance with her mouth slightly open.

Prince Albert, Victoria’s husband, kept the painting in his private writing room at Windsor Castle until his death, and the portrait was considered to be too overtly sexual to be shown to the public until 1977, according to The Telegraph .

The Daily Mail called the portrait, which Victoria gave Albert as a surprise 24th birthday present, a “sexy picture.” The Royal Collection Trust, which manages the royal art collection, deems it “alluring,” and says it was Albert’s favorite portrait of Victoria.

“I felt so happy and proud to have found something that gave him so much pleasure,” Victoria wrote in her diary .

Henry VIII: Codpieced

In the 1530s, Hans Holbein the Younger painted a majestic portrait of Henry VIII in which the monarch dominates his surroundings, his feet planted apart, his body draped in furs and golden cloth. The painting, now lost, was copied widely at the time and is acknowledged as a masterpiece of royal iconography. But one detail in particular tends to draw the eye of modern observers.

Among all the finery and symbols of grandeur, Henry’s padded codpiece seems designed to arrest the viewer’s attention.

Codpieces, the pieces of cloth that Renaissance men wore over their crotches, sometimes decorated with silk, velvets and bows, initially served a protective purpose, but they became exaggerated in a game of one-upmanship, according to BBC History Magazine .

“What better way to assert your masculinity than by having a mighty codpiece bulge out of the center of your portrait like a 3-D object?” Evan Puschak, an art and culture critic, said.

“Henry VIII remains the poster boy for codpieces,” The New Yorker wrote .

Emma Bubola is a Times reporter based in London, covering news across Europe and around the world. More about Emma Bubola

7 family-friendly things to do in northeastern Wisconsin this summer

Summer is littered with federal holidays — Memorial Day, Juneteenth, Fourth of July — meaning there's plenty of time to enjoy all the state has to offer.

We’ve compiled seven activities to engage the whole family for these glorious breaks. Explore Northeastern Wisconsin with this list!

Note hours are subject to change, and they may be closed on holidays.

Green Bay Botanical Garden (and its Children's Garden)

The Green Bay Botanical Garden, 2600 Larsen Road, Green Bay, boasts more than 98,000 plants from Wisconsin and around the world. Plus, much of the garden has paved walkways, making it a more accessible space for people using mobility devices. 

There’s also the Carol and Bruce Bell Children’s Garden, which really solidified the Botanical Garden’s spot on this list. Treehouses, slides, sculptures, interactive educational signs and — perhaps most notably — the Fischer Family Lily Pad Splash Play Area all make this an ideal place to visit with little ones.

Access to the Children’s Garden is included with admission. 

The Green Bay Botanical Garden is open from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily, May through August. Members and ages 2 and younger get in free. Admission prices are $15 for adults, and $5 for ages 3-17. Seniors (age 62 and older), military and college students get in for $13. Reduced admission is available for those receiving food benefits; $1 per person for up to four people for a family.

For more information, visit gbbg.org .

Wisconsin Timber Rattlers games

The Timber Rattlers prove you don’t need to be a baseball fan to enjoy a night at the ballpark, 2400 N. Casaloma Drive, Appleton.

This is, in part, due to the team's variety of theme nights and giveaways. After some games, there are fireworks; sometimes the park offers 10-cent hotdog days. The list goes on and on. 

Among the popular theme days are Bark in the Park days. During these select dates, furry friends can watch the game with you for free. And, for every dog in attendance, Tito’s Handmade Vodka will donate $1 to The Hope Highway Dog Rescue.  

Ticket prices vary. Visit milb.com/wisconsi n to learn more about the Timber Rattlers and to buy tickets, bit.ly/TRthemenights for theme nights and giveaways and bit.ly/TRspecialdates to view daily specials and Bark at the Park dates. 

Heckrodt Wetland Reserve and its unique play area

Heckrodt Wetland Reserve, 1305 Plank Road, Menasha, is the perfect place for nature-lovers, big and small.

Just being out in nature at the reserve is entertaining enough. You’re bound to see wildlife if you spend enough time there. 

Fox Valley parents and kids love “The Wild Space,” a nature-inspired playground of sorts. It’s different from the playgrounds you typically see at parks;' you’ll notice natural colors, educational opportunities, treehouses, a zipline, tunnels, a faux fox den and the “mud kitchen.” 

Be sure the kids wear clothes you don’t mind getting dirty. 

There’s also the Discovery Den inside the nature center that has a slew of activities of its own, including puzzles, books and a “reading tree,” which looks exactly like a real one. 

Heckrodt Nature Center is open from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays. It is closed Sundays and Mondays. The trails are open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. The trails and general admission are free.

For more information, visit heckrodtnaturecenter.org .

Bay Beach Wildlife Sanctuary

At Bay Beach Wildlife Sanctuary you can see tons of animals — including wolves — that you don’t see every day, but these animals cannot be released back into the wild for a variety of reasons. 

You can also purchase corn to feed geese and ducks. 

In addition to viewing animals you might not see on everyday nature excursions, there are also hiking trails. 

Summer hours at the sanctuary, 1660 East Shore Drive, Green Bay, begin Saturday of Memorial Day weekend and run through Labor Day. Summer hours are 8 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. daily. Fall and winter hours are 8 a.m. to 4:30 pm.

Admission is free.

For more details, visit baybeachwildlife.com . 

Bay Beach Amusement Park

Whether you’re there for thrills or Ferris wheels are more your style, Bay Beach Amusement Park has something for everyone. 

A comprehensive list of rides is available at greenbaywi.gov/456/Rides , divided into three categories: kiddie rides (for younger children), family rides and thrill rides. Perhaps the most notable is the Zippin Pippin, the roller coaster Elvis Presley made famous when it was in Tennessee. 

Why not stop by and see what the hubbub is all about? 

Its hours vary throughout the season, visit bit.ly/BayBeachhours . There is no admission or parking fee; however, tickets must be purchased to access rides. Tickets cost 25 cents each; each ride ranges from one to four tickets.

Bay Beach Amusement Park is at 1313 Bay Beach Road, Green Bay.

More: It'll now cost more than $1 to ride the Zippin Pippin roller coaster, as Bay Beach Amusement Park raises prices on 10 attractions

More: Bay Beach Amusement Park hopes to get an inclusive playground. Here's what to know.

National Railroad Museum

The National Railroad Museum, 2285 S. Broadway, Ashwaubenon, is a train lover's dream, but can be neat to see even for the non-train obsessed. 

It’s one of the few locations across the U.S. that houses a Union Pacific “Big Boy” locomotive. And it lives up to its name, as it weighs over a million pounds and is almost a half a football field long, the museum’s website says. 

Patrons can also take a ride on an actual train, as the museum restores rolling stock which are added to the museum’s collection as they are fully refurbished.

There’s also the Children’s Discovery Depot, designed specifically to explain the wonders of trains to children. 

Members get in free, while admission prices for others are as follows:

• Ages 13 and older: $13
• Ages 62 and older and college students: $11
• Ages 2-12: $9
• Younger than age 2: free

Hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesdays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays. The Polar Express Train Ride in the winter may affect these hours.

For more information, visit nationalrrmusuem.org .

History Museum at the Castle

Learn all about the Fox Valley, and perhaps its largest claim to fame, Harry Houdini, at the History Museum at the Castle in Appleton.

As of mid-May, there’s an exhibit dedicated to the famous magician who called Appleton home for four years. There’s also the “You Are Here” exhibit , that seeks to present a “comprehensive history” of the Valley, and “Perspectives, a Fox Valley Visual Anthology,” where you can see the community from various vantage points, the museum’s website says. 

The exhibits are subject to change, so if you’re interested in a particular subject, call the museum at 920-735-9370. 

The museum is open daily, except for Tuesdays, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and closed holidays. Members and children younger than 3 get in for free, ages 3-7 for $7.50 and adults for $10. Those using food assistance can get in for $3.

At 330 E. College Ave., the museum is conveniently located in downtown Appleton, within easy walking distance of many great stores and restaurants. If your visitors are looking for something Wisconsin or Fox Valley specific to take home, Blue Moon Emporium,  227 E. College Ave., Appleton, is the place to go. 

For more information, visit myhistorymuseum.org .

Madison Lammert covers child care and early education across Wisconsin as a Report for America corps member based at The Appleton Post-Crescent. To contact her, email  [email protected]  or call 920-993-7108 .  Please consider supporting journalism that informs our democracy with a  tax-deductible gift to Report for America   by visiting  postcrescent.com/RFA

Research Essentials

Lesson 16: building a research plan.

These lessons will introduce you to the basics of doing family history research. As you go through these lessons you will learn about an effective research process to help you develop your research skills, as well as various other methods for learning more about family history research.

Before Beginning

Before you begin, remember to download the Learning Checklist. This is a handout that will guide you as you work through these lessons, and it also provides a checklist for you to track your progress. You can download the Learning Roadmap for these lessons by clicking here

Lesson Slideshow

Use the arrow buttons at the bottom left of the slideshow below to navigate forward and backward through the slideshow. Or you may also click directly on the slideshow image to advance the page forward.

The history of the Pink Squirrel ice cream drink, invented in Milwaukee

If you’ve dined at a Wisconsin supper club or visited a traditional cocktail lounge, chances are you’ve heard of (or enjoyed) the Pink Squirrel. In the family of ice cream drinks like the Grasshopper and the Brandy Alexander, the Pink Squirrel has a special Milwaukee connection: it was, as far as anyone can tell, invented at Bryant’s Cocktail Lounge , 1579 S. 9th St., in the 1940s.

With just three ingredients — vanilla ice cream, creme de cacao (chocolate liqueur) and creme de noyaux (almond-flavored liqueur) — the Pink Squirrel is a sweet, nutty, creamy way to drink your dessert. 

Both the rosy hue and nutty flavor can be attributed to the creme de noyaux, a liqueur made from apricot, peach or cherry kernels and originally colored with cochineal. 

As the story goes, Bryant and Edna Sharp opened Bryant’s as a Miller Brewing tied house in 1936. Within a few years, Bryant abandoned the beer hall approach and transformed the business into the first cocktail lounge in Milwaukee and, quite likely, Wisconsin.

“People who knew him described him as quiet and serious, with a talent and passion for mixology,” a history of the bar says of Bryant Sharp. “He also was known for putting together unique flavors, which he sold to cordial companies.”

It’s only fitting that this classic ice cream cocktail can trace its roots to one of the Dairy State’s favorite drinking establishments.

See the rest of Milwaukee's 100 objects