Tip of the Week – DO THE LEG WORK

It’s true that the popularity of genealogy has exploded since all the on-line resources available have made it so much easier to gather information on our ancestors, but let’s not forget that some of the best things can only be found if you’re willing to do some good old fashioned leg work.

This summer I traveled back to the Midwest and interspersed my visits with the living with side trips seeking answers about the dead. In two states, I visited five cemeteries, two genealogy societies, the Cuyahoga County Archives, and a small town library.  From each place I walked away with a treasure, often not the information I was seeking, but something totally unexpected. Something not available on the Internet.

I found headstones for children that never lived long enough to show up in the census, I learned my great-great-grandfather, listed as a musician in the 1885 Boston directory and 1900 Ohio census, was a professor of music that played cornet as well as violin,  and my favorite find was in a filing cabinet in the basement of a small town library. This cabinet was full of folders much like the Surname Vertical Files we have at SGS. In there I found transcriptions of Civil War Letters between a brother and his sister, my son-in-law’s ancestors.

The brother was a young Union soldier. His personality really shined in these letters. It was fun to “get to know him”.  He always closed with a “Give my love to the family and any inquiring friends and save a good portion for yourself. Your affectionate brother, John F Brown”. It was sad when I found that 6 months after the letters stopped he died in Georgia as a POW in Andersonville Prison.

You are encouraged to come into the SGS Library and check the Surname Vertical files as well as the Family History Collections. Try visiting the small cemeteries,  libraries, and historical societies near where your ancestors lived. Maybe there are some unexpected treasures waiting there for