Steve Penick, Head Archivist of The Stearns HIstory Museum, chatted with me today about some great FREE resources for those people that might want to take this social distancing time to dig deeper into their family history.

You can listen to my interview from Tuesday May 21st, 2020 with Steve by clicking on the player below.

ON THE NATIONAL LEVEL

Lets say you want to get to know more about your Great Grandparents; where they came from...what color their hair was; what the did for a living. Getting started can be a little bit overwhelming; so start with a person of interest, and then check out these resources to see if you can get some details about the first person you want to learn about.

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Will guide you into different resources that you may need. If you are looking for things like obituaries, that may give you a good overview.

Find A Grave has the worlds largest gravesite collection. Here, you can find gravesite and memorial information about a person, which usually includes dates of birth, death, and burial information, as well as biographies, family information and pictures.

This is a little broad. It IS free but you must get registered. You can find census records, and is a national based listing. They say they are the world's largest family tree.

CHRONICALLY AMERICA
This is done through the library of congress and is newspapers throughout the US dating from 1789 to 1963, as well as more info from 1690 to present time.

REGIONAL RESOURCES

LOCAL RESOURCES

There are many other places you can search for information about your family.

  • HISTORICAL SOCIETIES
  • INDIVIDUAL FUNERAL HOMES ARCHIVES
  • MILITARY RECORDS AT STATE LEVEL AND LOCAL HISTORICAL SOCIETIES

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