Genealogy vs. Family History - Any Difference?
Connecting With Other Researchers Who Share the Same Surname
GEDCOM Files - Their Meaning and Use for the Genealogist
Roadblock Trick - Find out about the Siblings of an Ancestor
Free vs Paid Genealogical Records. Which To Use and Why.
Oh My Heavens - I'm Irish! Why Finding Your Irish Roots Used to Be So Difficult.
Black Sheep Ancestors - Nothing to Fear
The Military Pension File and Your Family Tree
Family History Centers - A Treasure Chest
Using Newspaper Archives to Locate Lost Family
The IGI (International Genealogical Index) - Its Meaning and Use
How Not to Spend a Fortune on Your Genealogical Research
Writing Effective Genealogy Correspondence
Social Security Records, What Genealogists Should Know
Ancestral Hometowns
The towns, cities or country sides can be where we grew up with its memories but not necessarily our family ancestral hometowns. It could be your paternal grandfather’s hometown, where he and his parents and grandparents lived for decades. The maternal side of the family could have lived in a different region or area.
Over the last 50 years with the increased movement of individual families to new locations, it is harder to find generations of the same family in the same community for years. However, learning about these ancestral hometowns can yield wonderful dividends in preparing your family history.
Actually visiting the town or farm region where your great grandparents lived and worked allows you to step back in time, to walk where they walked. There can also be family stories or lore about certain locations such as a general store, a theater, a church, a river, a park, etc., that held special meaning to your ancestors. Most important could be a visit to the cemeteries in the area. Many relatives might be buried there with new information offered on the headstones. By actually seeing first hand these varied places, if they still exist, makes those family stories appear in living color.
If it is not possible to visit the ancestral hometown in the near future, you definitely need to learn as much about the location. Review with other family members, what they know of the hometowns for each family branch. Conduct a general search using books and the Internet to explore the history of the town, especially during the time period your ancestors lived there.
The Periodical Source Index (PERSI) has articles on particular towns. This source is an index of nearly 2 million articles in genealogical and local history periodicals (magazines, journals, newsletters) throughout the United States, Canada, England and Ireland since 1800. It can be found in the Family History Centers of the LDS all across the Untied States, the Allen County Public Library in Indiana and some 200 other public libraries. With this index you can search by locations and / or family names. Once you find the content you are interested in, you will also have the publication, issue and date of the article. From there copies of the article can be found in public and genealogical libraries, the article’s publishing company or the Allen County Public Library.
At antique fairs or using the Internet, locate postcards on the hometown. Sending picture postcards of sites was extremely popular for the first half of the 20th century. There can postcards on just about any location within even smaller towns. Images and snippets of information about churches, restaurants, parks, businesses and schools were placed on thousands of postcards. It can provide glimpses into your ancestors’ everyday life, even when those places no longer exist.
Most towns, cities and certainly counties have a historical society, museum or public library. Contact them to learn what is available on the hometown you can view either online, in a printed books or that can be researched from their own files and copies mailed to you for a small fee. Provide them with the family members’ full names, they just might also have histories, newspaper articles, photos, etc. on certain citizens, possibility your own ancestors.
At the Library of Congress is the ‘American Memory Project’, created in the 1930s to preserve oral and written histories and visual images of locations across America. At its online site, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html, you can browse the topic titled, ‘Cities, Towns’. Use the search box to narrow down your selections. There can be maps, photos, illustrations and documents all relating to a specific town at different time periods. Using the topic ‘Culture, Folklife’ can yield journals, posters, letters, poems or photos about a region.
A reminder that ancestral hometowns are not just those in the United States but also include the original home or native lands of your ancestors before they arrived in America. Since everyone is an immigrant or a descendant of an immigrant there is yet another location what should be studied to make your family history complete.