In the upcoming weeks and months, the Daily News will periodically pick a group of questions and guide you to some resources that can help you answer these questions as they pertain to your ancestors' lives. Today's installment will address the context of community.

The Context of Community
Was your ancestor living in a settled community, or on the frontier? How were the relations with the Indians? Was there a nearby fort or town in case of trouble?

Was the community governed by a town meeting? Who attended? Where was the court held? How often?

Where did your ancestor fit economically within the community? Was he a large landowner—or does his name appear in he warnings out?

Urban Communities
The following excerpt is from Chicago and Cook County: A Guide to Research by Loretto D. Szucs, Section 12, Communities and Neighborhoods in Chicago, by Linda Stone Lamberty and Loretto D. Szucs. Although it references Chicago specifically, the points made may apply to other regions as well.

It has been said that the soul of Chicago is reflected in its old neighborhoods. To know Chicago, you have to go beyond Michigan Avenue and the Loop to discover Logan Square, Bridgeport, Beverly, Kenwood, Hyde Park, Greektown, Wicker Park, and the many other official, and unofficial, communities where Chicago thrives.

Anyone who looks at a city history will immediately realize that only a small fraction of the population gains municipal recognition. Information about a citizen prominent enough to be found in a major printed source is often easily found in many other sources. For most Chicagoans, a more manageable and productive search area is the neighborhood or community. Usually the neighborhood will have its own library where you can expect to find more information about the immediate area, including local histories, sometimes still in manuscript form, and even neighborhood newspapers.

Community newspaper allowed a great deal of space for local events and personalities ignored by the big city papers. Neighborhood historical societies and museums are often gold mines of information, but are sometimes more difficult to access since they are not always listed in the phone book, are operated by volunteers, and are often open for only a few hours each week. The local library is often the key to locating community historical collections.

In recent years, a variety of excellent publications have become available which focus on neighborhoods. Enhanced with charming photographs, most of these histories provide an in-depth study of the community and provide bibliographies, which become research tools in themselves.

A breakdown of Chicago communities into seventy-five areas was accomplished through the work of the Social Science Research Committee of the University of Chicago more than fifty years ago. The breakdown was based on the following criteria: the settlement, growth and history of the area; local identification with the area; the local trade area; distribution of membership of local institutions; and natural and artificial barriers such as the Chicago River and its branches, railroad lines, local transportation systems, parks, and boulevards. Requirements of the U.S. Census Bureau also figured in the final determination of boundaries. Two additional community areas have been designated since 1960, bringing the total of official Chicago communities to seventy-seven.

Historical societies serve some neighborhoods or groups of neighborhoods. The Special Collections Department of the Chicago Public Library has an extensive neighborhood collection, which includes books, manuscripts, photographs, scrapbooks, and pamphlets. The Chicago Historical Society also has a wealth of material catalogued by community, neighborhood, and/or even town name.

Ethnic Communities
The following has been excerpted from The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy (revised edition), Edited by Loretto Dennis Szucs and Sandra Hargreaves Luebking, Chapter 13, "Immigration: Finding Immigration Origins," by Kory L. Meyerink and Loretto D. Szucs.

Ethnicity: The natural security of living among people who speak the same language and have the same cultural or religious background is the bonding force that has traditionally kept ethnic communities together. Immigrants, particularly those who did not speak English, tended to settle in enclaves within cities and to cluster in specific regions of the United States. It was common for immigrants arriving in large numbers as a result of difficulties in their home countries to settle together on this side of the ocean, and then to migrate en masse within the United States. Many immigrants felt a need to transplant and preserve, as much as possible, their culture and lifestyle as it existed in their native lands. Immigrant groups frequently founded their own churches, schools, banks, boarding houses, and other institutions. They also had their own academic, athletic, charitable, fraternal, occupational, and social organizations. Volumes have been written about virtually every ethnic group. Ethnic presses generated newspapers and histories that focused on specific communities. Many ethnic publications survive that could be invaluable for those who want to learn more about the lives and times of their immigrant ancestors. Biographical sketches of Mrs. Isabella Atlanta Anderson and Jonas Anton Anderson, published in Algot E. Strand, A History of the Norwegians in Illinois (Chicago: J. Anderson Publishing Co., 1905) (figure 13-1), are typical of those found in ethnic publications. In most cases, birthplace, names of parents, spouse, and children, and details of the family or individual's arrival in the United States and other interesting information is revealed in these historical sources. To learn what motives your ancestor may have had in coming to the United States, which groups came in what time period, where large concentrations of national groups typically settled, and other important information about settlement patterns, consult one or more of the works that focus on the specific ethnic group. (A bibliography at the end of this chapter lists sources for groups that immigrated to the United States in the largest numbers. Other chapters provide more detail for African American, Hispanic, Native American, and Jewish research.)

Online Information
Local historical societies, libraries, museums, universities, living history organizations, and the communities themselves are "going online" in droves, and many of these agencies and institutions have made information available on their Web sites. Below are some examples:

Chicago Historical Society—"Neighborhoods: Keepers of Culture"
www.chicagohs.org/Neighborhoods/NeighborhoodsIntro.html

Yarmouth, Maine Virtual Town Hall, Town History
http://www.yarmouth.me.us/history.html

Sedona Historical Society
http://www.sedona.net/shs/

Long Island History: Profiles of our Towns at the Turn of the Century
http://www.lihistory.com/spectown/townmain.htm

Bridgeport: Lock Zero
http://www.uic.edu/orgs/LockZero/
A brief history and look into one of Chicago's oldest neighborhoods from the University of Illinois at Chicago

History of Rochester
University of Rochester
http://www.history.rochester.edu/rochhist/
A short narrative history of Rochester, plus several online histories of Rochester and other finding aids for Rochester history.

Using a search engine, chances are good (and getting better every day) that you will encounter sites like the ones above with information about the area that you are searching.

An advanced search by keyword at Ancestry revealed the following information from "History of Hamilton County, Ohio" [available to Ancestry.com members] by Kate B. Ford and Henry A. Ford (Cleveland, OH: L.A. Williams, 1881):

"How greatly and essentially the character of the county is changing, however, is shown by the following extract from the report of the secretary of the Hamilton County Agricultural society to the State Board of Agriculture, published in its annual report for 1871. He says: 'Our county is no longer a farming community. Our farms are now occupied as dairies, rented by gardners, [sic] used as pasture or meadow, and on the railroads and leading thoroughfares are being subdivided and improved as country homes by the business men of Cincinnati.'"

I also found this excerpt from "A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans" [available to Ancestry.com members] by William E. Connelley (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, 1918):

"Attached to the Missions of the various churches among the Indian tribes were numerous white people, as there were at the trading posts. In the Wyandot Nation, in what is now Wyandotte County, there were a number of white men and women. Some of these were members of the tribe, and probably not citizens of the Territory under a strict construction of the law. They numbered about fifty persons. In the Shawnee reservation there was the Shawnee Mission of the M. E. Church, South, the Shawnee Baptist Mission and Labor School, and the Quaker Shawnee Labor School. There were possibly forty-five white people connected with these institutions. There were Catholic Missions among the Pottawatomies and the Osages. About these missions were some forty white persons. At the missions of the Iowa and Sac and Fox Indians in Doniphan County, and at the Indian Agency near, it is supposed there were forty or fifty white residents. The trading point of most importance was at Uniontown on the Kansas River. This was in the west line of what is now Shawnee County. Many of the Indians were paid their annuities there, and in 1854 there were probably twelve families living in that vicinity. There were other white people in the Territory, some of whom lived at Fort Scott. There was a trading post on the Grasshopper and one on the Blue. At both of these there were white families. At posts on the Oregon Trail whites were to be found who were in the service of stage lines and freighting companies. This is true also of the Santa Fe Trail. There were always to be found in every Indian community some white men. All the white residents of the Territory, when the act for its erection was signed, numbered less than fifteen hundred, counting the military. Whether any of these whites were legally inhabitants of Kansas Territory at the time of its establishment, depended upon their attitude and intentions. If they decided to remain and become citizens of the Territory, they would be entitled to vote. If it was their intentions to return to some point in the states, they were not to be counted as citizens."

See the entire series:
Part 1: Turning Paper into People
Part 2: Historical Context
Part 3: Clothing and Food
Part 4: Migration
Part 5: Land
Part 6: Ethnicity
Part 7: Housing
Part 8: Community
Part 9: Environment
Part 10: Family