It's Saturday Night -
time for
more Genealogy Fun!
Our mission from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings is to:
1) What is a "new
to you" resource that is helping your genealogy research? [Thank you to
Linda Stufflebean for suggesting topics!]
2) Write your own blog
post, or add your response as a comment to this blog post, in a Facebook Status
post or note.
Here’s mine:
Like Randy, I have not used a “new to me” resource recently.
I use Ancestry, FamilySearch, Fold3, newspaper databases, and
digital book sites such as Google Books, Internet Archive, and HathiTrust
often.
I would say what is new to me would be making a visit to a
local archive to see one-of-a-kind resources. I did that this past week when my
friend and I visited Turlock, California for two days. We visited the archives
in the library at California State University Stanislaus, the Turlock
Historical Society, and the Turlock Public Library, as well as two local
cemeteries.
As CSUS, I looked through several boxes of archive material
which included store records, historical society newsletters, a World War I soldier’s
personal papers and diary, and 1920s newspapers. I took over 120 images of records
and look forward to reading the soldier’s diary.
At the Turlock Public Library, I looked at microfilm of the Turlock
Journal and Turlock Tribune. The local newspapers in the area have
not yet been digitized. They also had a complete collection of Modesto City
Directories which include the town of Turlock and neighboring areas. Their
microfilm machine was old and my neck got tired from sitting in a chair that
was too low. I found a couple of items but the dates I was most interested in
were not available. I hope these papers will be digitized soon so they can be
searched instead of just browsed.
At the Turlock Historical Society, I was hoping to see the
materials in their archives, but we were not able. They are in the process of
organizing the materials and were not ready for us to view them. They also have
plans to digitize the newspapers in their collection. They did have Turlock
High School yearbooks and my friend was able to locate her parents and aunts
and uncles in several of the issues. It wasn’t a lost cause, as I enjoyed the
exhibits in the museum.
If you haven’t been to an archive to research your family, give it a try. Even if you cannot visit, you can write to them or give them a call. They just might have something unique to help your own research.
I would love to visit an archives some day. The closest I've come is the Barry County, Missouri courthouse back in the early 1990s. After showing us the copy machine, the clerk let my husband's aunt and I loose (!!!) to look at anything we wanted. All we had to do was report the number of copies we made and pay a dime for each copy! I'd love to visit the NJ and ME State Archives.
ReplyDeleteI find it's both fun and rewarding. I volunteer at an archives and it's satisfying to help others who come in to research.
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