Who we are starts with the stories we hold onto — the ones told at dinner tables or scrawled in scrapbooks. But stories can only stretch so far back, and some are only half-remembered across generations. Beyond a certain point, everything depends on records. To understand how that paper trail began, it helps to ask why family trees were created in the first place. Why We Started Tracing Family Trees The earliest family trees were created not out of sentimentality but for practical reasons: to assign land ownership, dictate inheritance, and establish social standing. Over ...Read More