Follow
Umbrella project: "working with sources"
Types of sources
Family Tradition
- Family Bible
- interviews
- privately published memoirs
- family trees
- scrapbooks
- ...
Records
- Birth / marriage / death
- Military
- Land
- Wills (probate, inventory of estate)
- Immigration (ship passenger lists)
- Naturalization (denization)
- Tax
- Census
- Business (invoices)
- Correspondence
- Directories (membership, address, ..)
- Newspapers
Objects
- tombstones
- paintings
- heirlooms (china, silverware, furniture ...)
- artifacts (archeological evidence)
Images
- of all of the above
- photographs
Repositories
- your home
- flea markets
- private collections
- Town Libraries:town histories with genealogies; check surrounding towns. For more recent, Yearly Town Reports give birth, marriage, death, land transfers, many occupations.
- Town Histories: Most have a section that gives the terms of settlement to the settlers; denoting their responsibilities to gain full title of the land and establish a Town.
- Historical Societies (Town and State)
- museums
- universities
- Genealogies (often also found under archives on the Web)
- internet providers
- Small map of USA
- map of railroad routes
regional differences
"Best of Breed" for ...
- New England
- MidAtlantic
- Southern USA
- Westward migration
- more recent Immigrants