Using Digital Genealogy

A later Hanoverian London business family under a materiarch's hand

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A re-assessment of the presentation of the Nelson-Haxell business, family, kin group and the analysis of the history of the family that flows from it is possible due to the products and outputs of digitised genealogy. These have only become apparent in recent years and are still changing.

For instance, the digitisation of London records and national records mean that simple searches of ancestry.co.uk and The National Archives can pull out the records that are most likely to connect to Mr Nelson. Obversly the poor quality 1841 census means that the Nelson family units are difficult to extract from the data systems.

Time to journey a bit farther into what digitised genealogy draws out for Digital Genealogy to engage with?

beginnings 1790-1800
widow 1800-1830
innovation 1830-1852
nuclear not kin 1852-1892

Being careful to be aware vs proceeding to assert with Digital Genealogy as a second-wave Digital Humanties toolkit, is absolutely crucial to avoid research that gets stuck in narration. The distraction of narration means that analysis gets lost. The five parts of second-wave Digital Humanities, qualitative, interpretative, generative, experiential and emotive is a useful framework to get beyond the narration. The Nelson-Haxell study shows this.

Digital Genealogy as a generative tool asks: why skip over Brighton?

Digital Genealogy's ability to be interpretative highlights geospatiality and temporality.