THE FAMILY HISTORIAN AND TEMPORAL ORIENTATIONS TOWARDS THE ANCESTRAL PAST

In a society preoccupied with the future, genealogists or family histo rians devote a great deal of effort to constructing family ancestry on paper and in the mind, and situating the ancestral family in its hist oric time and place. This study explores the temporal orientations, an d the content of these orientations, which genealogists bring to this activity. Findings are reported from a 1994 mail survey of 1348 member s of a Canadian genealogical society. In addition, this paper examines the relationship between historical time and autobiographical time, a nd the impact of the family historian role on personal identity and fa mily culture.