The records of institutions, businesses, and organizations which were a part of our ancestors' lives are one such group of records genealogists should explore. When one finds an ancestor in some of the more frequently used records (e.g., census, vital, land, and court), it is often worthwhile to spend a little time discerning what institutions and organizations existed in the same area and time period. The ancestor in question may have belonged to a club, society, or organization whose records could provide additional details about his or her life, family, and origins. City and county directories, county and town histories, as well as data gleaned from other family records, can all provide information about the existence of organizations.

School Records
Schools were significant institutions in many of the locales where our ancestors lived, and school records represent one of the largest bodies of institutional documents. In most communities, they are readily available at the school corporation itself, the local historical society, or the public library, and the information they provide to the family historian can be consequential. As when evaluating any records for clues and evidence, the researcher using school records should take great care in combing through the documents to acquire the maximum amount of data. One will find many margin notes and penciled-in comments written by teachers in these collected records, providing valuable data and research leads for the astute genealogist.

Enrollment lists, attendance cards, grade sheets, visitor lists, and summary reports on the progress made teaching particular subjects are among the documents that may be found in school records. Many teachers, particularly those who taught in one-room schoolhouses and worked in rural areas, made liberal notes in the margins of these documents. A tremendous number of clues can be gleaned from these notes.

In early twentieth-century school records for Jackson Township, Allen County, Indiana, one can find a teacher, Ervin Doty, commenting on a variety of topics: which families were newly arrived immigrants; the various causes of children being absent from school (including illnesses ranging from chicken pox to Spanish influenza, or staying home to take care of babies or work on the farm); which children he believed were tardy too often; and, of course, which children he believed were not performing up to their potential. A careful reading through an entire year's records will find this same teacher indicating which children left his school to attend parochial schools or schools in the city of Fort Wayne; noting that a particular family had moved in January of 1920 to Pennsylvania; and commenting on which visitors were graduates of the school (including some stated relationships to current students) and which were coming to offer "words of encouragement" to the pupils. These are certainly documents which can augment the life stories of our ancestors.

Death Records
At almost no other time in an ancestor's life is the potential for record creation as high as at the time of his or her death. Many documents are generated announcing the death, dealing with the physical and spiritual sides of the event, and taking care of those left behind, as well as dispensing with personal and real property. And, of course, one can expect to find some institutional records as well, such as mortuary or funeral home records and cemetery records.

While the specific content of mortuary records may vary considerably depending on the geographic location and the time period being researched, the researcher will almost always find the name of the person paying for the funeral, some identification of the deceased (if not by name, then by relationship to the person paying), and some accounting of the financial transaction. One may also find, as in the case of an 1897 Spaulding record from the Duesterberg Funeral Home in Vincennes, Indiana, the names of the clergyman, the pall bearers, and the funeral director, as well as the date of death, date of interment, place of burial, cause of death, and age at death. Very early records of casket companies may also be a good complement to mortuary records.

Often when we think of cemetery records, our thoughts turn exclusively to tombstone inscriptions. It is important to remember that a cemetery is typically affiliated with a particular church or run as a business in its own right. Many cemeteries have documentary evidence of their business transactions—plat maps indicating who is buried where, records of payment for interment and other services, orders and receipts to and from monument companies, pay slips for the principal caretaker and any ancillary workers, permits for burial, and the like.

As with most institutional records, the local historical society and the local public library are excellent places to search for these "death-event" institutional and business records, if the mortuary is no longer in business or the cemetery is no longer an active burial site with a functioning office. The state library and historical society should also be considered if the search for records at the local level is not fruitful. An often-overlooked source of information is the existing mortuaries and their funeral directors. Some of the most knowledgeable people in a community about the history of mortuaries, cemeteries, and their associated records are funeral directors. And they are typically most generous with their time and more than willing to assist researchers in finding records and documents. The National Yellow Book of Funeral Directors provides a contemporary list of operating funeral homes and practicing directors.

Church-Related Organizations
When we think of church documents, records such as baptisms, marriages, and burials, as well as council and vestry minutes, are probably ones that come to mind first. Certainly a case can be built for these records being classed as records of organizations. Exploring a little further, however, one may find an entirely different set of records associated with churches which complement the better-known documents: records of affiliated clubs and societies. A significant number of churches, particularly those in urban areas and ethnic neighborhoods, had social, business, and religious clubs.

A number of Polish Catholic parishes in Chicago around the turn of the century had members who belonged to ethnic clubs such as the Polish Roman Catholic Union and the Polish National Alliance. Most family historians researching Catholic ancestors are familiar with the host of religiously oriented service clubs such as the Marian societies, the Knights of Columbus, and the Oblates of St. Benedict. The records of each of these organizations offer the possibility of finding more specific dates for an ancestor's entrance to and/or exit from a community, as well as some details about his or her personal life.

Some of the clubs affiliated with churches provided purely social functions, such as The Silver Streak Outdoor Club. While affiliated with St. Stanislaus Kostka parish in Chicago, the club was officially incorporated in the state of Illinois on 4 April 1938 and was run as an independent entity until it was disbanded in 1949. Among the records of this club, one can find rosters of officers, lists of nominees for various club positions, details of the club's community activities, and a list of dates and times for roller-skating parties, hiking and ice-skating parties, and the like.

One may seek to obtain copies of these types of church records from the usual array of sources: the church, if it is still active; local historical societies; public libraries; and state historical societies and libraries. One will also want to be aware of denominational archives that may house records important for genealogical endeavors.

Where to Start Looking
The sheer quantity and variety of business and institutional records generated over the centuries should tempt the researcher to take a closer look. From hospital records to insurance company documents, from municipal power plant dockets to general store ledgers, clues to more complete pictures of our ancestors are waiting to be found. An actual document with meaningful data may exist for many of the business transactions in which an ancestor engaged-from grand and complicated financial transactions to simple, mundane events.

How does a researcher successfully locate these organizational and institutional records? The best method is to use a process which might be called an "information dragnet." First, pause and consider the life cycle of your ancestor-birth, childhood, young adult, adult, and senior. Then set this life cycle in the proper time context, geographic context, and, if appropriate, ethnic context. Ask yourself at every stage, "What might my ancestor have been involved in that might have generated documents?"

Young children typically go to school for some period of their lives, except in very rural or frontier areas where there were no schools. Seek the school records. Individuals typically attended church, if not for the spiritual benefits, than certainly for the social benefits. Look for all the records associated with a particular church or house of worship. If individual ancestors worked in occupations that required them to be employed by someone, seek those business records. Knowing that people of similar ethnic groups tended to migrate together and settle together, look for the existence of ethnic clubs and societies, and then search for those records.

Checking city and rural directories in the area of research (for the appropriate time period) for listings of schools, churches, businesses, clubs, secret and benevolent societies, military organizations, and the like is an excellent way of getting a good overview of what the research possibilities might be. Your ancestor may have been involved with any of these organizations or activities. Local histories are another useful source for generating a "pool of possibilities." Encyclopedic works such as The Source can broaden one's research horizons and provide a checklist of business and organizational records to seek. It's certainly worth the look.

Curt B. Witcher is the manager of the Historical Genealogy Department for the Allen County Public Library and is a genealogical instructor and lecturer.