Other Genealogy Resources: Libraries, Travel to Ancestral Places and Professional Genealogists
Editor’s Note: Joe rounds out his advice with a list of resources beyond DNA. Public libraries increasingly have genealogy departments with staff who will search their archives — the library in Joplin, Missouri, where his mother’s family has history, once emailed him photographs of old newspaper articles free of charge. There is no substitute, he says, for traveling to the places where ancestral events took place and visiting the local historical and genealogical societies, even in an age when the Kankakee County history and the Canavan farms can be found online. And for research in a foreign country with an unfamiliar language, as with a friend headed to Latvia, hiring a professional genealogist can be well worth it.
Transcript
Speakers: WJB — William J. Bowe; JH — Joseph Hart. Transcribed from the recording; punctuation added and obvious mis-hearings corrected.
JH: Let me just run through, too, a list of resources. Besides DNA, which is definitely a legitimate source for clues, is — don’t forget public libraries. Many libraries now have genealogy departments. They’ll have a staff member in charge who can help you look at the archival materials that they have. So, because my mother’s side of the family has history in Joplin, Missouri, I visited there at least once and went to the library, and found some very enlightening information. And I’ve been able to get in touch with them by phone on occasion and ask them to research their archives for me, and they’ve sent me some very interesting information. And most recently, it looked like digital files, that they were photographs of articles out of the local newspaper, and they just do a search, and they didn’t even charge me anything for it. And I thought, “Well —”
WJB: Hear, hear.
JH: “— it would be so easy. All they do is put in a name and punch a button, and they spit this out and they send it to you.” And I thought, “Oh, my God.” That was pretty interesting. Also, there’s no substitute, too, for going back to the locations where significant ancestral events took place. So, going back to Joplin, as an example. They have historical societies, they have genealogical associations, and you can find documents that maybe aren’t on the internet yet. That would be kind of surprising, especially when you can find the Kankakee County history online, and find out about the Canavans that were on the farms, and their neighbors. It’s amazing what you can find on the internet these days, but still, I think that there’s no substitute for going back to the actual location and visiting the local library. And then if you want somebody else to do all the work for you, there are professional organizations, or businesses that have professionals that do this all the time. And I think that that might be particularly helpful if you want to do genealogy in a foreign country, where there’s a language that you aren’t familiar with. I gave some advice once to somebody who wanted to go to Latvia. They had some very good starting information, and I think that they were going to have a lot of success in going to a particular town and looking through records, but still, there was going to be the language barrier. And I suggested that they get in touch with somebody. And you can do that on the internet. You can find either companies that do this internationally, or you can go to a particular country and look for somebody just in that country if you wanted to. But anyway, and I think that’s about it. As much as I would add.
WJB: Well, great.
