Genealogy, or family history, can be thought of as the study of a family’s origins, history, or stories. It was often used by royalty and nobility to showcase their lineage. Descent from ancient kings, queens, chieftains, religious leaders, or warriors conferred pedigree, prestige, and power that allowed the descendant to command authority and respect.

But this area of study is also an everyday hobby or pastime where people (like you and me) can search for their roots and learn about parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. Through these personal stories, enthusiasts can learn about culture, community, and country. And for these reasons, I personally prefer the more intimate-sounding term “family history” to “genealogy”, even as the two terms are often used interchangeably.

To me, family history helps us discover where we come from, who we are, and what values and traditions we held or hold. While many start searching for their roots only when they have retired, one can actually start earlier, as I did, in my early thirties. I have even met people in their twenties who are interested in understanding their families better.

A Popular Pursuit

Family history is an extremely popular hobby among enthusiasts worldwide.

In a 2012 article titled “Who’s Your Daddy? Genealogy Becomes $1.6B Hobby”, ABC News reported that then-CEO of Ancestry, Tim Sullivan, said that genealogy was no longer “a niche” and there was a “broad, mainstream interest in family history”.

A 2014 Time article ran a provocative headline, “How Genealogy Became Almost as Popular as P***”.

And a 2022 New Yorker article even labelled it an “obsession”.

Singaporeans are also deeply interested in family history. A range of public examples proves that this is the case.

In September 2023, The Straits Times reported that Genealogy Society Singapore published 12 Family Histories – A Tapestry Of Singapore’s Multicultural Legacy, bringing to life stories of 12 migrant families of Arab, Bugis, Chinese, Eurasian, Indian, and Peranakan descent who called Singapore home.

In December 2022, The Straits Times reported that the 12th edition of the Pang Family (Singapore) Genealogy Book included, for the first time, women in their latest edition, which had an additional aim of encouraging more families to trace and document their histories.

In October 2022, The Straits Times reported that retired florist Bernard Chiang took 17 years to research his family history, spanning multiple countries and cultures, in The Chiang Family History — A Tale Of Three Cultures And Chia Keng Village.

In June 2022, The Straits Times reported that An Illustrious Heritage: The History Of Tan Tock Seng And Family (a book by Kua Bak Lim, Lim How Seng, and Roney Tan) revealed new details of Hokkien philanthropist Tan Tock Seng and his clan.

In 2020, Samuel Wee self-published his family history, An Exhibition of Ages: Becoming Straits Chinese.

And during the Singapore Bicentennial in 2019, many family history books were published, including Cyprian Lim’s My Maternal Roots: a Story of Family, Faith and Freedom; Vivienne Tan’s Tan Kim Seng: A Biography; Linda Kow, Ruth Chia, and Soh Tiang Keng’s Chia Ann Siang and Family: The Tides of Fortune; and my book, Leader and Legislator: Seah Liang Seah. Earlier, I also launched my first self-published book, Seah Eu Chin: His Life & Times in 2017.

However, family history is not regarded a proper academic discipline.

Many still consider it a hobby or, more charitably, a developing academic area.

While family history has historical elements, focus tends to be on individuals or families.

Some family historians have the tendency to be concerned with minutiae or relatively obscure topics, rather than broader historical themes or the sweep of the longue durée.

And family history is often perceived to be driven by motivated, passionate, and interested individuals or families with vested interests, rather than driven by dispassionate, objective, and rational researchers.

How to Get Started

The truth is that, like many, I am just a history enthusiast. Or if you prefer the National University of Singapore’s label of what I do, I’m a “historical storyteller“.

Whatever one might call me, I’m definitely not a professional genealogist or professional family historian.

However, having spent many years exploring my family history and family tree; having published several books on my family history; and having spent a lot of time with likeminded individuals, I have some unique insights and perspectives that will help those who would like to get started.

And these insights and perspectives are accessible, simple, and direct for normal people like you and me, who might not be academics, professionals, or high-level experts. In fact, I wrote and published my family history books while holding down a full-time job and pursuing this area as a heritage hobby.

In this article, I have compiled and sketched out some general steps, tips, and techniques for you to help you get started on your journey in searching for your roots.

The very first step itself might surprise you.

Start by Setting Goals

Setting goals is crucial.

Decide on your goals before you start and adjust your course along your journey.

Is this search a pastime, hobby, passion, calling, vocation, career, or legacy? Is this research for homework, schoolwork, a Master’s degree, PhD programme, or academic paper? Do you have a research grant or funding support for your efforts, or is this going to be self-funded? How much funding do you have for this project or projects?

And if you are funded, who is the grantor, what are their interests and priorities, what are the milestones and deliverables, if any, and how much is the funding or co-funding?

Who are the people with you on your journey? Who would you network with and cooperate with to share data and activities? Are you a member of any associations, clans, or churches?

Are you doing both research and writing? Or are you hiring a professional genealogist to help you with the research while you focus on the writing? Or are you hiring a professional ghostwriter?

Are you writing a story based on the life of your favourite relative or direct ancestor, or several family members, or your entire clan or community (for example, a one-person biography would be different from a many-person biography)? Are you setting up a website or blog?

What are you writing? Is it a nonfiction book? Or is it something less formal like a family tree poster, a scrapbook, or a newsletter? Is it a record of your experiences and discoveries? How would your writing be organised? Would it be organised chronologically, by family branch, or by historical theme? What method of academic citation will you use to document sources of information?

You should pace yourself as a family history project might take a long time — and might never end. Remember that retired florist Bernard Chiang took 17 years to research his family history.

Reevaluate and adjust your goals and objectives as you progress in your journey.

Interview Your Family

Your family is the natural starting point for foundational research. Start with your immediate family, beginning with who and what you know to be true, and build on from there towards the unknown. You can expand the search to extended family members later.

When I first started, I spoke with my father and one of my aunts who was essentially our “family historian”. I learnt from them. Even when they did not know, they were able to point me to useful resources or give me leads to follow up on.

In general, most people also begin similarly by interviewing family members and consulting family records, marriage certificates, death certificates, photos, diaries, and letters, as a starting point to gather information.

In fact, interviewing relatives is enjoyable. People enjoy sharing about topics close to their hearts. The key is to transform pleasant afternoon conversations into solid foundations for future detective work.

Remember to capture relatives’ memories before they pass away. Ask many questions; record or videotape answers if possible. If they can write or type, try to obtain their recollections and thoughts in writing. (Personally, I find that I greatly prefer capturing information in writing, and asking them to directly make edits or corrections in writing, so that there is a written record for me to refer to.)

Preserve originals or copies of all photographs and documents they share with you. Identify people pictured in photographs while living relatives can still identify them.

Visit the Library

Tap into the wealth of library materials. In libraries hide genealogies and family trees; histories of communities, cities, and countries; and maps which ground events in the physical world. You can access books, journals, magazines, newsletters, archival material, oral histories, and e-resources.

Personally, I find Singapore’s National Library Board’s e-resource, NewspaperSG, useful for family history research. Old newspapers have a wealth of information in the obituaries section. From death notices, you could pick up information like the full name of the deceased; their religion; names of spouses and children; and maybe names of their grandchildren.

And in the past, when prominent pioneers passed away, their passing would be reported in the newspapers. The descriptions of the funeral procession and names of those who attended could help augment information found in obituaries.

Beyond conducting family history research, going to the library also allows one to learn about the historical, political, economic, and social context of the time. Books on history, politics, economic history, and sociology can shed light on what you have found. Sources should be examined in light of historical events. And one can also use historical content to transform seemingly-boring facts into engaging life stories.

Take for example, my grandparents’ marriage certificate.

When I first looked at the date to find out when they were married, the year staring back at me was “2604“. They were also married in “Syonan-To”. One might reasonably ask: how could they have been married in the year 2604 in Syonan-To?

This is why history matters. When the Japanese occupied Singapore, they renamed the island “Syonan-To” (Light of the South). They also used their Imperial calendar, which was different from the calendar we are familiar with.

Incidentally, many history buffs and Singaporean students are familiar with the Japanese fighter aircraft, the Zero. During the Second World War, this aircraft was used in military operations. One might wonder: why was it known as the Zero?

It was known as the Zero because the year its production began, 1940, was the Imperial year 2600, hence its designation.

With some basic historical knowledge, we can deduce that my grandparents were married in Singapore (“Syonan-To”), in 1944 (“2604”).

Visit Places

You could also make trips to places rich with sources, such as archives, clan associations, or churches. Some enthusiastic people even travel overseas to places their ancestors originally came from to look for sources and meet members of their extended family.

For example, among people in clan associations, it is common to hear of people either wanting to go back to China to visit their ancestral villages or actually having been back there. (I find it fascinating when they share about their experiences and what they have learnt from the visit, even though I personally do not have such an urge to travel back.)

In Chinese clan associations, there are often jiapu and zupu (family or genealogical records), which can help in reconstructing one’s family tree. However, this is a science in itself, because only those with technical knowledge can read a Chinese family tree and decode the characters and system.

Using church records (parish registers) as another example, the recording of civil status data in records of churches started as early as the 16th century. Old church records can today be found in parish archives and some old registers have been recorded on microfilm.

Use Tech and Work on Digitisation

Today, the range and scope of tech has expanded.

Software, online tools, and other tech today can help with building family trees, conducting DNA testing, or compiling genealogical information. Many of my fans and supporters do use such platforms and occasionally tell me about them, like Geni.com.

However, as I have no direct, personal experiences with using such tools, others would be better placed to explain how best to use these tech tools.

But when it comes to digitisation, I have much experience in this.

Digitisation means to transform a physical medium into a digital one, including scanning documents or taking photographs.

I personally find it satisfying and therapeutic when I scan documents using my printer. And I am lucky to have a small team of volunteers who can utilise technologies like OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to convert images to text.

There are good reasons for me to digitise information. This is because documents, photographs, and other physical items are “perishable”. They need special care, tech, and expertise to be properly cared for and preserved. And despite one’s best efforts at preservation, mistakes can happen and precious artefacts can be damaged or destroyed.

Digitisation helps you access sources safely in the future. Some best practices include keeping storage media up-to-date and creating multiple backups of digital data. Sometimes, I even send myself an email (and I also archive my emails).

I would strongly recommend digitisation to anyone doing research into their family history.

Don’t Believe Everything

It is important to be a critical thinker and watch out for our cognitive biases.

Family history today does depend heavily on Internet sources, including records and sources found online. But do watch out for “fake news” on the internet. Not all online sources are reliable and distinguishing between reliable and unreliable sources is more art than science.

Online falsehoods spread faster and go viral more quickly than facts, accurate figures, and truths.

But more challenging than “fake news” or DRUMS (distortions, rumours, untruths, misinformation, smears) on the Internet are actual secrets that families have tried to keep hidden. There are issues of silences and omissions, and family members changing and altering records and family stories to serve their own interests. Errors are one thing, but deliberately falsifying or changing information can pose problems.

For example, in Chinese jiapu and zupu, it was not uncommon for families to strike members of the family off the record if they became criminals or were unfilial. In fact, they could be struck off for any personal reason whatsoever that led to the family or clan “losing face”. It was also not uncommon for people to change their names; take on different surnames; or amend the records.

(Personally, I know people who changed their names through a deed poll or resorted to a different name after a past situation.)

These days, it is also not uncommon that, after DNA testing, people find out that their parents are unrelated to them because they were adopted or their parents were their uncles or aunts.

All these mean that the savvy researcher must strike a delicate balance, deciding between fifty shades of truths. And upon finding out the truth, or perspectives on the truth, the savvy researcher needs to be able to sensitively, diplomatically, and sensibly handle such information. Interesting, but not easy.

Bring in the Professionals

You may also wish to pay a professional genealogist or an expert to undertake research.

Even though there are many free resources on the Internet (including articles I have written) dedicated to family history research or writing on one’s family, many family historians recognise the value of having a professional assist in the search.

Or alternatively, you might want to develop your skills to a high level, such that you become a professional genealogist instead.

I imagine professionals have a rewarding and meaningful job. Essentially, they are paid to research, build family trees, and help find long-lost relatives. In other words, a genealogist is like a history detective solving family mysteries. Currently, no formal qualifications are necessary, but many have a history degree, or a library or archive-related qualification. Experience in dealing with a wide range of sources is necessary.

Let Your Intuition Guide You

No one expects a smooth journey when it comes to family history.

Sometimes the sources are not there. Sometimes they are there, but you have not found them yet.

If you hit roadblocks, sometimes what you need is to let your intuition guide you. Let your interests, current findings, and experiences guide your journey. Constantly re-adjust your course in light of new findings or leads.

Maintain your faith in your search. Something big might turn up, sooner or later. It might just be round the corner. Take a deep breath and carry on.

Conclusion

To recap the broad key points to help you start your family history journey:

(1) Set your goals and objectives;

(2) interview your family and collate photographs, documents, and other artefacts;

(3) visit the library to learn history and view sources;

(4) visit other places rich in sources, like archives, clan associations, or churches;

(5) digitise what you have found and tap into online resources while

(6) discerning between fact and fiction(s);

(7) consider bringing in professional genealogists if necessary; and

(8) trust your intuition to get you through tough times.

Like me, I am sure you will find your search interesting and meaningful.

Our family history helps us learn where we come from, who we are, and what values could anchor and guide us to keep moving forward. By knowing where we come from, and who we are, we have a good chance of remaining rooted and centred in an ever-changing world. I wish you all the best for your search and journey.

Thank you for reading.

Cheers,
Shawn Seah

(The original story of how to get started on family history and genealogy was first posted on my Medium blog on 23 October 2022. This story was updated on 31 March 2024.)