This article addresses the lineage of Halil Hamid Pasha, an Ottoman Grand Vizier between 1782 and 1785. Since the mid-nineteenth century, the Pious Foundation, instituted in 1783 and ruled by his successive descendants, gave the impetus to various forms of family genealogy. This is what is revealed by a study based on an analysis of a corpus of personal documents possessed by Celal Bükey, who was both a descendant of Grand Vizier Halil Hamid Pasha and the administrator of the Pious Foundation between 1973 and 1981. The article aims to contribute to the understanding of Republican Turkey, a country shaped by an official meritocratic ideology. Although the genealogical genre has never developed there to the extent it has in Western Europe, it has recently expanded among the Republican elites through a renewed historical attention paid to imperial ancestors. This new reality is observed through the way Celal Bükey manipulated the various symbolic materials he had inherited from his predecessors in order to transform an Ancien Régime lineage into a Republican dynasty organized through new family memorial references. It must be emphasized, however, that since the beginning of the 21st century, genealogical activity has not been strictly limited to family occupations in ways that characterized it previously. In the public arena and especially in the press, alternative genealogical discourses have crystallized around the figure of the Grand Vizier and his descendants, addressing the family’s identity through ethnic and national criteria. The study thereby succeeds in delineating three different categories of genealogical activity: first, institutional genealogy conceived as an administrative tool of a pious foundation and a legal instrument of lineage claims; second, dynastic genealogy as encapsulating both family identity and projection of nobility; and third, public genealogy based on an evaluation of lineage within the framework of an evolving national ideology.