Americans have always been a migratory population. This means that our databases are filled with dozens of locations where our ancestors may have settled for a decade or perhaps a generation or two.
For this reason, it is very difficult to physically visit the library in every town in which our ancestors lived, but as more repositories are placing valuable content from their collections on the Internet, it is becoming increasingly likely that we will soon be able to visit each town in a virtual manner.
A research trip to a brick-and-mortar library gives us a heightened historical perspective of our ancestors and their circumstances via photo archives, information in vertical files, manuscript collections, local histories, and many other location-specific resources that often cannot be found elsewhere. Unfortunately, when it comes to finding this information online, public library Web sites are often ignored by family historians, and in many cases, justifiably so.
Many of the nation’s approximately 9,000 public libraries place Web sites online that contain little more than listings of services and maybe a number of links to other related sites within the community or to particularly popular subject areas. Many of these sites will also link to a card catalog, but this is not of much use to those of us at a distance who want to view content on our desktop monitors.
Fortunately, patrons of online sites and services are seeking more data from Web site visits. And many librarians are seeing their initiatives to place content online become reality through increased funding, grant awards, and heightened understanding of the need for it. Following are examples of a few libraries that are making interesting forays into placing historical artifacts online.
Cemeteries and Gravestones
The Sturgis Library in Barnstable, Massachusetts is popular among researchers of Cape Cod families for the excellent genealogical resources in its special historical collections. The content within these collections is not available online, but the library publishes detailed finding aids including enlightening biographical notes and historical references on its Web site. One unique item on the Sturgis site is a listing of gravestone rubbings that include names and dates from the stones. As an example, one rubbing is cataloged online as "Holmes, Mary Brewster, daughter of Elnathan and Deborah, September 21, 1794." Perhaps, in the future, a digitized version of the particular rubbing will be available. Meanwhile, a name, relationship, and date may provide clues to further research.
As another example, a click on the "Local Information" link on the Web site for the Barrington Area Library in Illinois takes a visitor to some content-filled genealogical resources. This page includes access to a list of cemeteries with detailed history and location information, plus transcriptions of gravestones within each cemetery.
Many libraries already own compilations of cemetery records within their vertical files, but it would be nice to see them duplicated on the library Web sites.
Historical Articles, Book Excerpts, and Journals
More libraries are recognizing that placing a book’s text online is a fairly simple and affordable process, especially when they have knowledgeable, willing volunteers to assist in the task. Genealogists benefit by locating these free, often searchable references to add local context to their family history information.
On the Barrington Area Library Web site, a visitor can also find the full text of A History of Barrington by Arnett C. Lines (1962). It exemplifies a wonderful trend by libraries throughout the country where local histories and county "mug books" are digitized for visitors to read. These Web-based histories are often searchable.
A similar example is located via the Web site of the Chartiers-Houston Community Library in Washington County, Pennsylvania. Within its community links page you can directly access full-text and searchable pages of the History of Washington County, Pennsylvania with Biographical Sketches of Many of Its Pioneers and Prominent Men (1883) by Boyd Crumrine. Simply click on "History of Local Boroughs and Townships" and choose a name from thirty-six options. You can search and browse for key people, the history of a community, and even document transcriptions. The library makes clever use of a seamless connection to databases published online by its local GenWeb volunteers.
The Santa Cruz Public Library in California has a Web site with an impressive number of links to content within the library's collection. There are transcripts of diaries, electronically published historical articles (many with related images), and over 800 photographs. Most important to visitors with a specific search in mind is the Local History Search Form where you can search all online articles and photographs for pertinent names.
In addition to numerous contemporary articles written about the region’s history, this rich resource includes excerpts from books like Eliza W. Farnham’s 1856 California In-doors and Out. She was matron of the womens’ section of Sing Sing prison in New York, and she journeyed to California after her husband’s untimely death in San Francisco. The excerpt offers a glimpse into the life of a progressive female in the mid-eighteenth century.
Also of interest is the journal of Sarah Hinton Gourley’s trip as a child from Whitley County, Indiana to Santa Cruz. She describes a tragic accident encountered by her family and traveling companions while crossing the Isthmus of Panama in 1856. It is a tale that many of us with ancestors who made similar journeys can relate to. This example also illustrates that sources can be located hundreds of miles from the place you would expect it; the first several paragraphs of Sarah’s journal are accounts of her life on the Indiana plains, but her journal is archived in a California library.
Photographs
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then many library sites are becoming more fluent in communicating the community’s history. Many libraries have great photographs in their collections that are seldom seen because of preservation considerations. Scanning photographs not only protects them from mishandling but also enables easy upload onto a Web site.
Way Public Library in Perrysburg, Ohio has a link to its local history. In addition to old photographs and detailed descriptions, the site includes information about an online history project designed to provide access to a collection that is "too fragile for the general public to experience firsthand." The site publishes photos from its own collection as well as from community donors. The scanned collection includes over three hundred photos of local people, buildings, and events from the late-nineteenth century to the present.
Ethnic Resources
The Richard B. Harrison Library in Raleigh, North Carolina lists a remarkable array of resources in its Special Collections section, most notably the Mollie Huston Lee Collection, which chronicles local and national African American experiences. A visitor can access links to vertical file information for biographies, churches, and even programs of special events, such as a 1960 Freedom Day Celebration in which Jackie Robinson was the featured speaker.
The Web site of the Local History and Genealogy Room of the Corpus Christi (Texas) Public Library is another example of a library that publishes historical content online. Of special note within its collection of full-text historical documents is a translation of Jose de Escandon’s documentation of Spanish settlements in 1757, including a search engine and an index. This is an ideal example of how a local library learned of a patron’s talent, translating Spanish text to English, and used that talent to enrich the library’s data pool.
The Santa Cruz Public Library (mentioned previously) also includes links to articles covering Native American history, specifically the Ohlone culture. The link from "Spanish Period & Earlier," takes the visitor to articles that are intriguing, scholarly, and enlightening to anyone doing Native American and mission-era research.
Oral Histories, War Books, and Pedigrees
The Historical Collections Department at the Bridgeport Public Library in Connecticut has a link that will bring you to special resources including a library exhibit entitled "Bridgeport Working: Voices from the 20th Century." Oral histories, photographs, and articles from and about every decade in the last century are located within its pages. It is a good example of how a local exhibit of one city’s history can be enjoyed by anyone simply through the Internet.
At the Champaign County Library (Ohio) Web site, you can click on the Local History/Genealogy link. This link will bring you to an example of how an old resource, in this instance a sketch book from the Civil War, can be scanned, digitized, and accessed by anyone visiting the Web site.
The book Personal War Sketches of the Members of W.A. Brand Post No. 98 of Urbana includes a partial listing of burials, an index to the soldiers listed within the book, and a regiment listing for the soldiers. Under the "Index to Soldiers" you can access a particular name, and learn his birth date, when and where he was captured, and the names of his army buddies. The library also has online Sanborn maps that have been digitized from microfilm and placed into a searchable database.
The Future
In addition to greater support within communities, libraries are realizing unprecedented access to grant money and funds created especially to preserve and digitize historical documents and archival materials.
The name alone is enough of a description to whet a genealogist’s appetite for content. "Your Library: A Treasure Trove" is a project designed by the Cleveland Area Metropolitan Library System (CAMLS) to help the libraries in its network digitize and preserve their records in time for Ohio’s bicentennial in 2003. This excerpt from the project description will keep genealogists hungering for more: "The participating libraries will acquire the hardware, software, and training to prepare them for a successful first effort at digitizing valuable primary resources relative to their library’s history and role in the community."
"DigitalPast," a project of the North Suburban Library System in Illinois is also notable. It is already publishing local history information from a number of libraries within its network. More information is available online, where the project is highlighted and any available content is searchable and browseable. This site includes links to other digitizing projects and information.
For every public library highlighted here, there are dozens more working on similar initiatives. The future for accessing historically pertinent information online is wide open and endless. We can make a difference by loaning items to libraries to scan, donating transcriptions we have made, supporting libraries in similar projects, and helping our favorite public libraries access funds for digitizing collections. It is comforting to know that our public libraries are taking the initiative to provide historical information and local resources online for everyone to access.
Laura Prescott Duffy is the director of membership for the New England Historic Genealogical Society.
Return to the Ancestry Magazine November/December 2001 Table of Contents.
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