Ready to start collecting family pictures? You’ll want to start in the present and work backward just like you do with family history.
First take a photo of every living person in your family. Use a pencil to label the back of each photo with names and dates.
Double-check your family history research—there may be images associated with yearbooks, school papers, and passports.
How close do two people have to be to claim a relationship? That really is all relative.
Based on America’s peculiar and unfortunate “drop of blood rule,” a person with a single drop of “black blood” is considered black by the majority.
That’s why Barack Obama, with an African father and a Caucasian mother, is described as “black” and is billed as a black candidate for president.
[The National Archives] is the raw essence of history—millions of documents attesting to the building of this nation and to the everyday affairs of common individuals. It is Americana at its best: the story of who we are and what we have accomplished.
If your ancestors attended Ben Reitman’s “hobo college,” shopped at the Fair department store, took in a show at the Regal Theater, or worked for Swift or Armour, you can learn more about the town they called home in the Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago. And it’s all right on your desktop.
How often does a plain brown envelope reveal a good story, some historical scandal, and a few too many wives?
Like a few other treasures I’ve received through the years, this one—the pension file of Civil War veteran John Anthony Vanderpool—arrived in a plain brown envelope. It came from the National Archives, cost me a small fortune, and was worth every nickel.
Editor’s note: When we asked for family legends, you sent us hundreds of stories—here’s the first of many we’ll be featuring (this one answered by expert Ceil Wendt Jensen). If you have a legend you’d like us to prove, send the story and your contact information to editor@ancestrymagazine.com. Due to the volume of submissions, we won’t be able to answer every one.
