-. 1. -

               It does not rest with to us to make a history of the genealogy, this one having been the object, already, of exposed brilliances, but it appears important to us to stress that the genealogy is with the root of the human thought. In unconscious individual the and collective one, the genealogy is related on the existential problem of dead and the need to justify our own life by a permanence in time.
               Whatever civilizations, the first writings have a relationship with the genealogy:  hiéroglyphes Egyptian, Bible, homeric songs, etc. Graeco-latin mythology is structured on the model of the family, as for Christianity it will establish like dogma first: the Man is son of God .

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               The first, the monarchs monopolized the genealogy to sit their dynasties, the nobility followed to preserve its privileges and Armorial of Hozier (inter alia) is known of all the historians. Today, the churls of yesterday, the unpleasant ones, assert the right to belong to a line, the right to belong to the History. In other words, the genealogy has been democratized, it knows for several decades a true passion, which was not without "hustling" the archivists, guards of the collective memory! But while being democratized, the genealogy modified its goals (more dynasty nor of privileges to put forward! ) and benefitting from the human advances in knowledge (History - which are not only any more event-driven, linguistics - and more particularly onomastics), the genealogy is essential little by little like a true science... for little that certain rules, as in all research, are complied with.

                                                   -. 2. -
               Certain academics measure with contempt the genealogists. For them, the genealogist would belong to the names, accompanied by a date, then would align them by respecting the chronology as a young girl who would thread her pearls with great care and would say triumphing,
                            "looks at, mom, my beautiful collar! "
unless, having a temperament plus calculator, it does not exploit the quantity like a small boy counts his balls:
                                   "- do T'en have how much?
                                     - eight hundred and ten eights.........
              - inserted, my old man, I have nine hundred and forty twelve of them!"

               That such behaviors exist, it is possible, as there are the miserly ones which jealously preserve their "lucky finds" of fear of having to divide them, unless they are not ready with the monnayer. But are these behaviors so numerous to authorize the critics to generalize them? The personal experiment that we have of the departmental Genealogical Circles us taught the opposite: the serious one, co-operation until devotion and even a transfer enthusiasm, factor of major friendships.

At all events, this first phase, which consists in practising the most exhaustive possible census, is only the anteroom of the genealogy.
It is what we call: the exhumation.

                                                   -. 3. -
                 It is not enough to exhume our expensive "défuncts" , to pin on the shroud an identification number that it is of Sosa or Aboville, it is necessary to then to give again them life and with this intention, to replace them in what was their basic cell: the family. A man is initially a son, then a brother, a husband, a father, a grandfather. This is why we adopted the practice of the "tables" which summarize all the home environment, allowing to seize of a simple glance a particular situation. How to include/understand Louis Rioland, if it is not known that it is the last of a family of 10 children, that only 2 girls, before her birth, had escaped with the chopper of the infant mortality, that he was born very old parents and that its destiny was to be, very young, orphan?

                We added, in these tables, with each time it was possible, the godfathers and the godmothers, because they make it possible to weave bonds of adjacency (family or simply emotional). Conversely, how not to raise such bizarrery: two brothers living in the same locality and none of both having been godfather of a nephew or a niece! Which competition opposed them to this point? Nothing prevents the genealogist bringing closer the tables and from thus recreating a widened home environment.

It is the second phase of our research: with each one of our ancestors,
a family

(Our research always does not lead to the establishment of a table; we deliver however all our information - in bulk, if we can express ourselves thus - in the hope which they make it possible to the other genealogists to supplement their data)

                                                   -. 4. -
                       Our ancestor is now reanimated. He (she) assied with the family table, pokes embers of the chimney, rocks the last-born child. The third phase is most difficult by far: to recreate - at a given time - the social background.

               The difficulty is that of the historian. We observe the past through the glazed window of time. It is necessary to be demolished of any subjectivity, if not the glance runs up against deforming prisms, with mirrors - when one believes capacity to judge one situation to the light (!) of his own experiment, it is not the image of the other which returns to us, it is our own image, our ego. This research is primarily concrete: it is to collect testimonys, to visit an old house, to inventory a trunk of "herds", a trunk of books posting with pride, under their red cover, the prize list of the prize giving, it is to seek in the notarial studies, with the departmental records, a will, a sale contract, it is to visit the multiple local, unknown museums of large crowd, which preserve with jealousy the thousand and one richnesses of our inheritance, it is to lean on a chart, that of Cassini for example, to find, at a given time, the landscape, the distribution and the localization of a habitat,
            Whereas the historian endeavours - generally - to brush syntheses, the genealogist sticks to the truth of the detail. Historians and genealogists are not opposed, they are complementary.

                                               -. 5. -
The search of identity is the major motivation of the genealogist, it is an obviousness; (it is it all the more in certain particular cases: orphan, natural child, emigrated parents, etc...) The important place that takes the genetics in modern sciences can only increase this research.
But the genealogy is much more still, by marking out the past of a multitude of reference mark, it makes it possible to include/understand the advance traversed by the company during last centuries, it makes it possible to locate us on the axis of the evolution.
Lastly, while excusing us to call upon the vocabulary of the pathos, we will say that the genealogy, it is also a duty of memory, and, for much even, - an act of love.