Friday, March 5, 2010  Faces of America v Who Do You Think You
Are  The first episode of NBC's Who Do You Think You Are has
aired. Lots of Genea-bloggers are writing their posts, comparing
it to PBS's Faces of America, which just completed.  Here's a
quick comparison I've come up with:  Who Do You Think You Are:
Genealogy Television Faces of America: Family History Television
What's the difference?  A genealogist searches for vital
records, trying to trace back the family tree as far as they
can. A family historian is looking for the stories about who
those ancestors were. How they lived their lives. An individual
can be one, the other, or different parts of both. I think most
of us who are obsessed with this pursuit are a little bit of
both, but we may weigh the two differently.  I believe Henry
Louis Gates Jr., the host (and one of the executive producers)
of Faces of America, was attempting to tell the 'family history'
of an entire nation by researching the ancestry of a handful of
notable individuals. Si