Rather than following one family, it follows several intertwining ones through WWI, WWII, and the Cold War/Civil Rights era. All European and American, but with some good attention paid to women, gay people, and black people. No heirlooms, unless a family tradition of being politically active counts as an heirloom.

~Neshomeh

Non-fiction, though--a sort of creative autobiography mixed with family history, IIRC. It's called The Hare With Amber Eyes (I've forgotten the author's name). It uses a particular type of Japanese figurine (the name of which I have also unfortunately forgotten) as a thread in a family story that stretches from Europe to Japan and I think America too? It does include Western Europe, IIRC, but it's really not the typical story, and it's not following a white family. It stretches across several centuries, at any rate, including both the author and his ancestors.

I don't remember being *that* caught by it--among other things, the print in my copy was really small--so I didn't finish it, but the story itself was interesting and I know my mom (who's much more into non-fiction and autobiographies than I am) read it and liked it. I think she said it picked up a bit after the beginning, though.

Anyway. Not straight historical fiction, but certainly interesting, and it does otherwise fit that subgenre you're talking about. At any rate, it was the first thing I thought of.

~Z

The closest thing I've seen is that thing creators do sometimes when they make one story's protagonist the descendant of another story's protagonist as kind of a fun detail or easter egg. (Yep. iD Software in my brain again.)

...You know what? You've got me motivated. I seriously want to try my hand at something like this genre - probably a fantasy counterpart, since I'm not really a historical fiction person. That would be pretty cool. Now to figure out a plot!

-Twistey

(Am I being shunned, or do I just need to learn how to make my Board posts better at adding something to the topic? Probably the latter. That'll take some time to learn, given how I was with my Scratch comments... }:P)

Wikipedia has a list of some popular works in the genre.

is the North and South trilogy by John Jakes. It presents the U.S. Civil War period through the eyes of two separate families from Pennsylvania and South Carolina, reaching from the decade of unrest that led to the war to the reconstruction period long after. The focal characters of each family are sons of roughly the same age, who meet while attending West Point and become friends, only to end up fighting against each other during the war.

It's not exactly a fee-good story, and for me, it had rather too much sex in it. The last book felt like it went a bit off the deep end compared to the earlier two, and some of the supporting characters dive a bit too far into the realm of strawmen as well, Overall, though, I think it gives a much better feel for the place and time than any history textbook I ever encountered could manage.

—doctorlit

...Because look at Foundation: It has a lot of aspects that you're discussing: an heirloom (The Seldon Plan and the videos) as a common thread, following a common line across a wide swath of history (but now the common line is a civilization). OTOH, this isn't historical at all, being entirely set in the future.