Tagged: familyhistory

The American State Papers

In today’s blog post we’ll look at the American State Papers (Papers). This collection consists of 38 physical volumes containing legislative and executive documents of Congress from 1789-1838. They include papers that cover the critical historical gap in the preservation of federal documents from the first presidency in 1789 to the printing of the first volume of the US Serial Set in 1817. The Serial Set picks up where the Papers leaves off and continues to this day. Luckily for genealogists, these historical document sets are freely available on the Library of Congress web site A Century of Lawmaking For a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1873. Among the many items are the American State Papers (1789-1838) and the U.S. Serial Set (1817-1873). For more information, read this great article, “Those Elusive Early Americans: Public Lands and Claims in the American State Papers, 1789-1837.” The American State Papers...

The Internet Archive for Genealogists

History of the Internet Archive The Internet Archive (https://archive.org) is a non-profit that is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. It provides free access to researchers, historians, scholars, people with print disabilities, and the general public. Their mission is to provide Universal Access to All Knowledge. The Archive began archiving the Internet in 1996 It now has over twenty-three years of web history accessible through the Wayback Machine and partners with over one thousand and other partners to identify important web pages. It soon began providing digital versions of other published works. At this time it contains seven hundred thrity-five billion web pages, forty-one million books and texts, 14.7 million audio recordings (including two hundred forty thousand live concerts), 8.4 million videos (including 2.4 million television news programs), 4.4 million images, and eight hundred ninety thousand software programs. It pays to set...

Farm Directories

Directories are much like today’s telephone books except that they offer a better panorama or “bird’s-eye view” into the makeup of a community or an organization during a particular time period. They offer an abundance of terrific clues and research tips about finding people from the past. Much of this information cannot be found elsewhere. While city directories are a popular tool for finding urban ancestors, researchers should keep in mind that there are farm directories geared toward the rural population. Like city directories, their purpose was to be a tool for businessmen. Not only do farm directories provide valuable family information—especially for those years in between the federal censuses—they also offer a kind of “snapshot” of life on the family farm. Depending on the publisher, you may find various types of information in a farm or rural directory. There were several publishers of these directories, and in today’s blog,...