Home Sources

Home sources come in many shapes, sizes, and textures. A home source can be a wedding band etched with a date of marriage; a quilt with the name of the quilter and the date of completion stitched on it; the account book of a nineteenth-century female entrepreneur who supported a young family as a dressmaker for the wealthy; a drop-leaf desk with a secret compartment containing an unrecorded deed; or century-old letters chronicling the Civil War from the perspective of a young soldier from Mississippi.

Funeral prayer cards, resumes, even articles of clothing can be home sources. The criterion is not an object's monetary worth or research potential. Instead, value may be purely intrinsic. An object might symbolize a previous owner you've come to know through narratives and research; or an artifact might bring another place or time to life. Among one researcher's most prized possessions is a rough, flat rock-a piece of the stone door frame that still marks the valley home of an eighteenth-century Yorkshire Dale's ancestor. The stone provides an almost tangible link to the men and women who populated those rugged, remote regions of northern England.

Home sources offer three significant opportunities to a family historian. First, the very fact of their survival can tell much about the caretaker-the person or persons who found them to be worthy of saving. Second, they can be genuine sources of evidence: the will preserved for generations that names all of a great-grandfather's children (even the illegitimate ones) or the record of an infant's baptism. Third, a home source can be a key that unlocks the approach to an official record, such as a vital record, a cemetery record, or a court case, to name a few possibilities.

Two faded newspaper clippings offered important clues in one research project. The clippings, pasted in a scrapbook, were reports of deaths. One was determined to be the obituary of a merchant who died while visiting family members in the European village of his birth. The translated information provided countless avenues of research. The name of the deceased, his residence, occupation, and date of death led to local historical writings, business and employment sources, a death certificate, and cemetery plot plans. The name and denomination of the minister who conducted the memorial service also proved useful. The listing of other family members, siblings, his widow, and children was especially helpful.

The other clipping contained significantly less detail but its value soon became apparent. This shorter notice included the sentence "Cincinnati papers, please copy." Cincinnati proved to be the home of many family members of the deceased, a woman without close relatives at her place of death, where the original notice was published.

Discussed below are some of the sources most likely to be found among your possessions.

Photographs

Perhaps the most durable of home sources are pictorial items that depict people as they were: photographs that capture the essence of a lifetime in a second, outlasting the people portrayed. Sometimes family history research results from the need to identify the people in a particularly captivating photograph or to learn what secrets their lives held.

Such was the case with one researcher who discovered, amidst several boxes of photographs, an intriguing portrait of a mother and her five children. This print was the key to a series of important discoveries about the finder's family. The photograph held the name and city of the studio in which it was taken. This knowledge led to a death certificate for the woman; one entry provided the city of her birth. This information led the researcher to a search site in a different state, providing a breakthrough to the family's past.

Your research goal for home sources is to organize and catalogue these links to the past and, if you are reasonably skilled or very fortunate, to identify them in time and place. While few clues may be offered, knowledge of dating techniques for a particular object may provide a breakthrough. For example, although a photograph may not contain the name and location of the studio, tracking the changes in photographic processes could help in identification and dating. The photographic process dates from 1839, when physicist Louis Daguerre invented the daguerreotype process. It utilized a silver-plated copper plate and was used in America almost exclusively until the late 1850s. A pocket-size case, sometimes ornately decorated and with a hinged cover, protected the plate.

The ambrotype (a photograph on glass) achieved popularity from about 1855 into the 1860s. Also mounted in a case, the glass that held the negative was backed with dark paint, cloth, or paper. Often confused with the ambrotype is the tintype, or ferrotype, invented in 1856. In it, a plate of sheet iron holds the image. The tintype was more durable and less expensive than the ambrotype. Tintypes could be placed in cases or even be covered with glass, but more often they were unmounted. Tintypes continued being made into the early 1900s, mostly in rural areas. Carte-de-visite photographs were often displayed in albums on parlor tables after 1860. These paper photographs measured approximately 2 1/2 by 4 1/4 inches and were produced in great quantity through about 1890. From about 1870 until 1910, the larger cabinet-size photograph won favor among portrait sitters, and the images of well-known people, such as movie stars, became popular collector's items.

Modern gelatin dry plates, first manufactured in the United States in 1878, were slow in winning acceptance, but in 1888 George Eastman's Kodak began to move photography into the amateur realm. After 1900, card-mounted prints were superseded by durable paper photographs produced by home cameras.

Postcards

Although not as personal as family photographs, picture postcards are an intriguing enhancement to a family history. Picture postcards can depict places where your family once lived, including the European village from which the family emigrated, the ships ancestors might have sailed upon, or events conceivably witnessed by past generations. The messages written on postcards can add to your knowledge about the family while providing important insights into the lives of your ancestors.

Postcards were introduced into the United States from Austria in the 1870s. Designed to convey brief messages, these cards were used for special occasions or as souvenirs. Before World War I, holiday greeting postcards were a popular choice for Christmas, Halloween, and Valentine's Day messages.

Topical postcards encompass advertisements or announcements of special events, such as the cards introduced by the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. Topical cards were also used to depict disasters (such as fires), to provide entertainment, and to promote political figures. View cards are realistic portraits of actual places, people, or objects, tourist attractions and landscapes being the most favored subjects.

Family Bibles

The written record endures in many forms. Letters and personal accounts of events or eras are highly valued for the information they contain-but it is the family Bible that most often becomes the object of diligent searching.

Should you be fortunate enough to possess a family Bible, the following techniques might help you to evaluate its usefulness as a source of information. First, note the date of its publication. Match the publication date against the span of events written upon the page for family history. If the handwritten entries predate the publication, it is clear indication that they were recorded not as they occurred but at a later date. Next, examine the handwriting used for each entry. Is it all in the same script, indicating that they were written by the same person? Are the entries in the same ink, suggesting that all were made at one sitting? Is there an inscription?

Check each page of a Bible or inherited book for notations or enclosures. Some owners recorded the dates of events, such as memorial services, weddings, and christenings, in the margin adjacent to the Bible text used for the occasion. Others used favorite books to hold prayer cards, obituaries from newspapers, significant scraps of church bulletins, and handwritten notes. Such a note enclosed in one book contained, in German script, the full name and birth date of each child born to the finder's great-grandparents.

Diaries and Journals

Diaries and journals are valued highly by family historians. It is easy enough to verify the accuracy of news and events: weather, surroundings, world and local happenings the diarist might have chosen to record. The accuracy and completeness of such entries can in part indicate the care with which other, more family-oriented, news was recorded.

Official Documents Held by Family Members

Did family members save copies of documents created by public rather than private entities? Birth, marriage, and death certificates; naturalization papers; military discharges; and legal papers from court actions are among the official records families may chose to retain. Valuable in themselves, such documents become priceless when the original documents have been lost through fire or neglect or are otherwise unavailable to you.

What do the records tell you? Are the names recognizable? Is there evidence of where the original record might be, or perhaps the name of the county or church that created the record? Such tips can be springboards to finding other information. A will might be only one of dozens of documents pertaining to an estate that are on file at a county courthouse.

Of course, it is possible that your home copy of a document may never have been in a courthouse. People sometimes found it inconvenient or too expensive to officially record certain events. An early deed or mortgage, an original will, or the marriage certificate of a penniless couple might be the only record of a particular event. Such semi-official records should be stored in a safe place that will slow or prevent their deterioration. (See "Restoration, Preservation, and Disposal," below.)

Privately held documents should be evaluated without bias and with some understanding of their history. Be especially careful to avoid reaching unfounded conclusions about their value. For example, take care with land patents (documents that transferred property from the federal government to private citizens). Patents dated before 2 March 1833 were signed by the president of the United States; after that date, designated officials signed on the president's behalf.

Samplers

When I this little Record see I think how haPPy it would be If Pa and Ma should live to say Our children walk in wisdoms way. And when the Parting stroke is come And they and we are called home. May we all meet in heaven above And sing redeeming grace and love.

When nine-year-old Mary A. Richards (1814 to 1873) of Jaffrey, New Hampshire, applied crinkled silk floss to linen, she began a family record sampler that has survived more than a century. Her wish, above, is a pleasant suggestion of the era. But it is the family record embroidered above this little poem that provides the data so avidly sought by family historians

Family Record

Mr. Luther A. Richards born sept. 26 1785/Miss Mary Page born/June 8 1794/Luther Richards & Mary Page married July 5 1813/Mary Adeline born Jan 1 181[4]/Roderick Streat born June 22 18[15]Abijah born APril 10 Died APril 18/1817/Luther Abijah born APril 12 1818/Sarah Ann born June 15/1820/Amanda born August 7 1822/Harriet born Oct 1 1824/Huldah Hopkins born April 13 ?/M.5

For more than two hundred years, the making of samplers was part of a young American woman's education. Introduced in the seventeenth century by settlers from England and northern Europe, samplers soon acquired distinctively American characteristics. Mary Jaene Edmonds, an authority on samplers, has determined that samplers were created in the classroom according to the instructions of women teachers. Edmonds has traced numerous samplers back to the influence of private schoolmistresses, whose teachings can be seen in the selection of patterns and the methods of execution.6

Other Artifacts

Not all home sources contain as much obvious family information as does the sampler described above, yet even the most unlikely of trinkets can be revealing by providing identifiers that direct or define a search.

One researcher discovered a police badge among her family's home possessions. There was little on it to connect the original owner to a particular police department or time period, yet it opened doors otherwise closed. This object provided an indicator, in this case an occupation, that distinguished the ancestor from the many other urban dwellers of the same name. Knowledge of the police connection enabled the researcher to track its owner through several years of city directories, providing a given name for the family member, an approximate year of death, and the year of arrival in the city. With these facts, the researcher was able to venture into records of immigration, death, and probate, a difficult task in an urban area.

Jewelry is often a valued family heirloom. If a piece has monetary value, it may be fairly easy to date. Two books that offer discussions of valuable jewelry are Joseph Sataloff and Alison Richards, The Pleasure of Jewelry and Gemstones (London: Octopus Books, 1975), which focuses on English jewelry and has useful information on mourning jewelry, including pieces containing locks of hair of the departed; and Margaret Flower, Victorian Jewellery (South Brunswick, N.J.: A.S. Barnes & Co., 1967), which is helpful in dating late nineteenth-century jewelry and may identify a place or manufacturer of origin