Finding the Voices of Our Families
For so many people, the excitement and passion surrounding family history is the quest of discovering who their ancestors really were. What did my great-great-grandfather think of farming? How did my great-great-grandmother nurture a family in such brutal surroundings?Deep inside each of us is a quest to hear our ancestors’ voices—the voices of family members from near and far, both in distance and time. Fortunately, projects that take advantage of today’s technological advancements are providing us with opportunities to find and hear some of these voices.One of the most consistent methods of discovering the voices of your ancestors captured in digital archives around the country is to explore the websites of libraries, archives, and historical societies in the specific geographic locale where your research has lead you. Then investigate the websites of state libraries, state archives, and state historical societies in the state of your research interest; and never forget the riches of the Library of Congress.
An example is the Library of Congress’s Veterans History Project, which contains a collection of stories of twentieth-century military veterans of the United States. Interviews, diaries, letters, memoirs, stories, photographs, and ot her memorabilia of veterans are being collected, preserved, and digitally copied and shared over the Internet.
You could spend hours exploring the website where this content is located. Plus, the site offers a useful set of resources for anyone interested in working with a twentieth-century veteran to capture his or her story. Tips are offered for both planning and conducting interviews (and these tips certainly apply to any oral history projects or family interviewing you may wish to do as well).
One of the most fantastic parts of the Veterans History Project site, however, is the ability to search the site’s database. You can search by combinations of descriptors including a particular surname, war, and branch of service as well as by highest rank, interviewer, and notes. This feature is a gateway to a collection of stories told in the first person and the documents that evidence the lives of the individuals whose stories are presented.
Searching under the name Wilkerson, for example, nets six results ranging from World War II to the Vietnam War, and includes individuals from the army, army air corps, and WAVES (Navy Women’s Reserve). Individuals found through the database search are linked to their respective pages of collection information including dates of service, military engagement or war, unit and location of service, highest rank achieved, and honors and awards, as well as the name of the interviewer and the original repository of the interview data and other collected information. Collections are housed at the Library of Congress’s American Folklife Center.
If you find a veteran listed with a View Digital Collection button, that means some consequential number of materials for that particular veteran are available online—no trip to the American Folklife Center required. Selecting the View Digital Collection button for Georg e Smith Wilkerson, for example, reveals the availability of a forty-four minute video recording of his interview, completely downloadable and viewable for free over the Web. You can watch George and listen to him tell, in his own words, what he was doing on 7 December 1941, how his training experiences were at Camp Campbell, when his unit’s captain was captured, how weather and the supply of fuel affected his unit’s ability to fight, and how his armored division moved about.
Exploring the database, you can uncover such a variety of materials—all voices from families across the country. Among family stories are eleven photographs and a sixteen-page typed manu-script of Sergeant Gunner W. F. Nice’s 2nd Division, 49th Company in World War I; an audio tape and complete transcription of an interview with World War II navy aviation machinist William Sidney Armstrong; Vietnam veteran Roy William Smid’s photograph and eleven-minute oral interview; and Persian Gulf War veteran Colonel Jayne H. Cooley’s thirty-seven-minute video interview.
In addition to the personal histories and documents collected from veterans themselves, the Library of Congress is also interested in collecting, preserving, and making available personal histories from Americans who participated in home-front activities including USO workers; industrial laborers who made military vehicles, munitions, and other necessary wartime accoutrements; medical personnel in support of armed services actions; and civilian trainers and instructors of military personnel.
There are also a number of oral history initiatives that are being conducted or have been engaged in at state and local levels. Humanities and Social Sciences Online, or H-Net (hosted by Michigan State University), is one of a number of places where researchers can find a listing of oral history projects by subject. Among the projects listed is the Barrio s Oral History Project focusing on Hispanic communities of Tempe, a number of international projects, and the Institute of American Indian Studies’ projects at the South Dakota Oral History Center.
Reaping the Rewards of Experience
While it is extremely rewarding to listen to family members tell their stories in their own words, it can be equally satisfying to experience family members and ancestors through their written words. Technology has opened the door for everyday researchers to access these collections as well, like those available through the Library of Congress’s American Memory Project.The American Memory Project provides free access to some of the vast digital archives of the Library of Congress, including more than 9 million digital images in more than one hundred collections that document the history and culture of the United States. Among these collections, researchers can find the words of ordinary Americans in both interview transcripts and digitized copies of letters and diaries.“Prairie Settlement: Nebraska Photographs and Family Letters, 1862–1912” is one such collection. Three hundred and eighteen letters of the Uriah W. Oblinger family, containing nearly three thousand pages, have been both transcribed and digitized. The Oblinger family homesteaded in Nebraska from Indiana in 1873, and the letters are filled with all the excitement, joy, longing, disappointment, hardships, and successes that you’d expect of a poor pioneering family. It is so consequential to read about life’s ups and downs in a person’s own words, but to see the actual handwritten documents and observe how family members saved paper by writing across a single sheet in two different directions is nearly golden.
A benefit of having original documents transcribed is that the researcher can use the Find feature of a web browser or software program to search for names, dates, organizations, and events within the document. Remember, however, that this ability to quickly navigate through a document should never replace exploring written sources to ensure faithful and complete transcriptions.
Technology is enabling historical societies, libraries, and archives all across North America and the world to provide researchers with access to letters and diaries from yesteryear. Wonderfully, it is not just the moneyed, landed, and well-connected whose voices have been preserved and shared. The voices of everyday people—families that struggled to survive, individuals who served three-year tours as privates, and men and women who just wanted to make a difference in the lives of their fellow Americans—are so frequently a part of these collections. And if you look and listen, you may be surprised to find that the voices of your own ancestors can often be heard.
Curt B. Witcher, MLS, FUGA, is the Historical Genealogy Department Manager at the Allen County Public Library and a former president of both the Federation of Genealogical Societies and the National Genealogical Society.
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