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

language, culture and ethnicity differences

Resources

• Internet Research: Sorting the Good from the Bad
• Early Families of New England - Sketches