OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE:
PROCEEDINGS 163
five years ago, Charles K. Bolton,
librarian of the Boston Athenaeum, in
an address on "Genealogy and
History" before the American Historical
Association assembled in Boston (1912)
showed how, as he said, "the
vicissitudes of families conceal the
very sources of political and economic
history." He urged, accordingly,
that genealogists, in their researches
concern themselves not merely with the names,
births, marriages and deaths
of various members of the families
involved, but with the environment,
activities, and existing states of
culture. By doing this, the genealogist
may combine with his interest in vital
statistics an appreciation of the part,
however small, played by the individuals
whose records are being traced,
in the life of the day in which they
lived.33 By doing this, moreover, the
genealogist may understand, as never
before, the importance of the "Per-
sonal Element in History."
33 American Historical Review, XVIII (1912/13), 467.