Ancestry Magazine

Your family’s ethnicity can play a vital role in discovering their whereabouts and activities once they landed on U.S. shores.

Many family historians long for simple research methods and straightforward processes that conclusively identify their ancestors from among the individuals in any g iven collection of records. Our longings become more intense if we happen to be researching a common surname or if we are researching in a geographic location where few records remain. Both scenarios are consternating and leave us wishing our ancestors would have been more generous in leaving their mark for us to discover.

In a very real sense, though, if we pay closer attention to our ancestors’ “ethnic fingerprints”–the ancestral origins of our forebears–we will uncover more documents that meaningfully witness their lives. There are unique records and sources that come to light when at least a part of your research is focused on the ancestral origins of each family being explored.

While the history behind “America–The Great Melting Pot” is understandable, the concept of millions of immigrants coming to U.S. shores, losing their ethnic “fingerprints,” and becoming generic Americans is simply not true. It is the diversity, the uniqueness, and the special contributions of each wave of immigrants coming from nearly every corner of the world that can be most clearly seen in communities from coast to coast. Researching in a nation of immigrants then can be most successfully done when a fair amount of attention is paid to understanding the ethnic groups of your family lines and committing to continually keeping your research in those ethnic contexts.

Even the most general survey of the history of an ancestral line should uncover some indicators of the family’s ethnicity. Use these indicators to explore published records such as town and county histories where the family lived. Since individuals from the same ethnic group often traveled to the emigration port together, migrated together, and settled in this country together, published records can be extremely helpful. Often these published records will indicate when particular ethnic groups came into an area, what drew them to the region, and most importantly where they heral ded from in the old country. Hence, one of the first steps in discovering the details of an ancestor’s origins is to search the records of the localities where your ancestors have been found.

In The History of Dubois County, Indiana (Chicago: Goodspeed Bros. and Company, 1885) you will find a brief but useful narrative regarding the town of Ferdinand. The history states that the town “bears a close connection with the German settlement in the county. Plan of the town of Ferdinand, in the North American free State of Indiana, Dubois County, established January 8, 1840, in honor of His Majesty, Ferdinand I, Emperor of Austria.” It goes on to identify the town’s founder, the first church, reasons for establishing the village, and the relationship the town had to surrounding towns and villages.

Even more contemporary histories are rich with ethnic identifiers. In Elsie Johnston’s Laurel’s Story: A Montana Heritage (Laurel, Montana, 1979) provides ethnic identifiers in the opening pages. “The history of Laurel,” she writes, “would indeed by incomplete without a background of the German settlers who have had so much influence in the progress of the community.” Following that introduction are the details of settlement and migration in Eastern Europe and eventual emigration to the United States. In the more than seven hundred pages detailing life in this modest-sized community, is information on the families, businesses, churches, clubs, organizations and schools–all made richer when studied through an ethnic context.

Larger cities and municipalities have clearer examples of ethnic populations settling in their own neighborhoods. Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York are among the best examples of these ethnic settlement patterns. But you should not be led to believe that the establishment of ethnic neighborhoods only happens in larger cities. A general examination of most communities will reveal some ethnic clustering. Together with town and county histories, directories of all types can assist in determining ancestral origins by identifying these clusters. Some directories have sections in which individuals of particular ethnic groups are listed separately. For example, a number of Los Angeles city directories in the early 1900s had special listings of ethnic populations in the front of the compilations, such as French, Dutch, Bohemian, etc.

There are numerous sources for locating published materials; many are conveniently available to researchers via computer from their homes or local libraries. One of the best online sources available to researchers through libraries is OCLC’s WorldCat. Using WorldCat is similar to searching across several thousand library catalogs at once. You can search under the name of the town or the county to determine what kinds of published materials might be available. The WorldCat database also indicates which libraries that are members of the cooperative own the materials in the database.

In addition to WorldCat, researchers can use the Family History Library Catalog to locate more published materials. Also freely available on the Internet are the online catalogs of public and state libraries. These repositories contain a wealth of published materials about various ethnic groups that settled in a particular area.

Whether through family data, published materials, or other documents, once you have determined the ethnic origin of a particular ancestral line, you can begin to use that information as a research fingerprint. There is much useful information available once you start looking for a particular ethnic group rather than looking solely for surnames.

Serial Publications
A useful first step in gathering more data about an ancestral line’s ethnic fingerprint is to identify any serial publications that might deal specifically with your ethnic group of interest. Again, WorldCat and the Family History Library Catalog can be helpful in discovering these publications. The Periodical Source Index (PERSI) is another way to identify both ethnic publications and significant ethnic articles.

The Maine Finn, published by the Finnish-American Historical Society of Maine, can provide excellent research tips and meaningful historical background for those researching Finns in Maine. Der Brief, a newsletter of the Historical Society of North German settlements in New York, provides much the same kind of information but only for a different ethnic group settling in a different geographic area.

Even if a particular serial was only published for a short period of time, the information contained in its pages will be specific and available in precious few other places.

Ethnic Guidebooks
An important research complement to ethnic society serial publications are ethnic guidebooks. At the top of the list is the Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups (Harvard University Press, 1980). This is a must-use work if you are seriously exploring ancestral origins as a research fingerprint. Virtually every ethnic group represented in the United States is covered with a significant chapter in this book. Each section deals with a different ethnic group and typically provides the researcher with an old-country history of the ethnic group; a map of the significant old world regions; reasons for emigrating, ports of immigration and locales of settlement in North America; religious groups, aid societies and other organizations affiliated with the group; and a useful bibliographic note. The straightforward sections in this book should be a must for every family historian.

Other important national tomes that provide vital contexting information about ethnic populations include the four volumes of The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History (Yale University Press, 1986—). Each volume is carefully researched, richly documented, and contains numerous tables, charts, and maps identifying areas and time periods of settlement by various ethnic populations. Similarly, European Immigration and Ethnicity in the United States and Canada: A Historical Bibliography (ABC-Clio Information Services, 1983) can be a paradise when looking for sources for the ethnic fingerprint of those ancestral origins.

In addition to large, national compilations, there are two other very important types of ethnic guidebooks. The well-researched tomes on specific ethnic groups that settled the North American continent are very helpful to the family historian.

Faith and Family: Dutch Immigration and Settlement in the United States, 1820-1920 is an example of one such publication. Fifteen of its more than three hundred pages contain a detailed bibliography to lead you to important sources of data regarding this ethnic group. Many important details about Dutch communities in the United States are discussed.

Another example, The German-Americans, An Ethnic Experience (Max Kade German-American Center, Indiana University-Purdue University, 1993), provides information on why Germans left home, where they settled, and concludes with a timeline and bibliography.

A second type of ethnic guidebook is the statewide compilations. Many combine the details you would find in a national compilation and the specificity in ethnic-specific tomes and all are rich with information that will lead you to new sources of data.

Peopling Indiana: The Ethnic Experience (Indiana Historical Society, 1996) is one of the best examples of this type of guidebook. A specific section represents every ethnic group that ever settled in the Hoosier state, and each section contains the history that surrounds the group settling in Indiana, patterns of settlement in the state, and the churches and other organizations with which they were i nvolved.

Newspapers
Historically, newspapers have played a vital role in chronicling the lives and events of communities across the country. Besides the town and area newspapers we are familiar with in our research, our quest for newspapers should be widened to include those special ethnic dailies and weeklies that have dotted the countryside in previous generations. Often local public and historical societies will have copies of these valuable documents. Don’t overlook the state library in which you are researching; these institutions typically have very robust newspaper collections.

If we spend the time to look for those ethnic fingerprints that exist because of our family’s ancestral origins, our research paths will be clearer and the sources we have to search for data will be greater.

Curt B. Witcher, MLS, FUGA, is the president of the National Genealogical Society and the manager of the historical genealogy department for the Allen County Public Library. He is also a popular genealogical lecturer.