So you say you want an evolution (family, that is)? Ever since the mini-series "Roots" held Americans, well, rooted to their television screens in the late 1970's, the population of this (for the most part) immigrant-descended nation has been obsessed with tracking the origins of family, ethnic, and national backgrounds. Even given the distinction between the Native population and immigrant population (and that between those immigrants who came here willingly and those who did not), Americans of all backgrounds are deeply interested in matters genealogical. A sense of knowing our personal history plays out as an important fulfillment of knowing our particular place in the world we inhabit today.
Since we're not in the enviable position of the citizens of Iceland (in which every person of the country -- due to its small size, homogenous population, and relative geographic and historic isolation -- can trace his or her family history in government-maintained archives), we must turn to other means with which to explore our roots. Pre-Internet, that meant traveling to the specific city or state the birth or death certificate of the forebear, and then searching amongst dusty archives by hand, until we found the wished-for document. If you happened not to live near the city or state (or country) that maintained said archive, you were out of luck. Spending your holiday delving through distant records was one of the few options left to the serious, amateur genealogist. However, the Internet has helped change that. The Internet has spurred the explosion of genealogical searches. Government archives might be on-line, or if the archive itself is not, information on how to negotiate their labyrinthine record-keeping bureaucracies might be. Access to out-of-state or foreign records, offices, or even family members are now fast and affordable.
This writer logged on to a series of sites which led to a page listing all the variances of my last name; knowing the potential variances of the name armed me against any problems I might have looking through records written when spelling didn't enjoy set rules. Another issue for immigrant-descended searchers to consider is that the family name might have undergone a change at some point in the transition to becoming a new American. An example of this would be a non-English family picking "Smith" as their new moniker, which is what happened in at least one family I know of. Before emancipation, African-Americans legally had no surnames: either they carried the name of the white slave-owners, or they had none at all. This was indicative of the nation's legal system which refused to accord them the status as full human beings. Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X are just two examples of African-Americans who chose their own surnames.
People have also started looking not just for ancestors, but also for long-lost (or never known) lateral relations. Family reunions just aren't the same now that folks are able to bring in untold hundreds more into the fold. These relations, aside from adding to such celebrations, are often great resources for filling in the blanks for names and dates, for some of the family stories you may be trying to reconstruct.
One great on-line site to check out is that of the Church of the Latter-Day Saints, better known as the Mormons. They maintain
