Your ancestors’ churches likely kept more records than the birth and marriage documents you’re accustomed to searching. It may be time for a return visit.
Church records are among the most valuable historical documents for family historians.
Like piecing together a puzzle, creating a family history timeline can help you see the bigger picture.
Because family historians strive to understand their ancestors and their lives beyond the dates we note on a pedigree chart, a timeline can be used to place our ancestors’ lives in historical perspective.
Ask the “w” questions and see where they’ll take you in the quest for your roots.
Thorough family history research depends on the ability to find and evaluate all the evidence available to document a particular ancestor and his or her family.
A diary, letter, journal, and anything else penned at the time of an event can transform our genealogical databases of dry dates and names into a living ancestral legacy.
Camp Barnes
Jan 2, 1862
My Dear Wife
We are all well and I wish you a Happy new year and now I recolect [sic] that last year at this time I was in Providence. Now I am in Virginia. Where shall I be next January. Perhaps at Home.
Today’s family historians are living in the best of times when they consider all the records, online data files, electronic tutorials, Internet-based indexes, and digitized documents that were not available or easily accessible just a decade ago. The amount of data they can analyze to support or refute a hypothesis regarding their ancestors approaches the realm of unbelievable .
The DAR is only one of many lineage-based societies. Apply for the society or start your own that fits your past.
Think back to the days before genealogy became an interest of yours, to a time when ancestors occupied occasional family stories, were visited on Memorial Day cemetery trips, or brushed through your subconscious if Ellis Island or a Civil War battle was mentioned.
Church records of our ancestors are so valuable they should be sought to document every vital event in our ancestors’ lives. Besides providing valuable data about our ancestors, they can also be invaluable in providing relevant information about an ancestor’s family and community.
Something about the finality and mystery of death engenders eloquence from the living. The words we take to heart about a person’s life are often written after he or she is gone and no longer able to hear the praise or dispute the acclaim.
During the first two months of the new year–with the commemoration of the life of Martin Luther King in January and Black History month in February–we have wonderful opportunities to celebrate the richness of African American history and heritage. Genealogists are fortunate to have bountiful resources available to them for researching African American family histories.
What does HisGen have to offer family historians?
Few organizations are as aptly suited to their names as the New England Historic Genealogical Society. It can be an unwieldy mouthful, but it has come to symbolize resources, collections, and a talent pool unrivaled by any other society focusing on New England research and, arguably, any other genealogical society in the country.
