Researching Your Family Tree Through Organizations

Researching Your Family Tree Through Organizations

Researching the branches of your family tree can be a complex and time-consuming process. Sometimes you may feel like you have reached a dead end and not know where else you can look. That’s when it’s time to think like your ancestors and look for them in unexpected places. Perhaps they were a member of a church, a professional organization, or a civic organization. These organizations often create and store records of their own, in which you might find vital information on your family members.

Your ancestors, like most Americans, were most likely members of a church of synagogue, which might still have records of baptisms, first communions, confirmation, bar or bas mitzvahs, marriages, or deaths of their members. Organizations within the church may also have kept their own records that you can research. Baptism records may provide evidence of your ancestors’ parents, their residence at the time, their date of birth, and the names of friends or relatives who acted as their Godparents. Confirmation records, which are usually kept for adults, may provide clues to childhood activities or spouses. Burial records may have information on spouses and direct descendants and act as a supplement for or in lieu of a death certificate. Marriage records vary in detail, possibly containing the names, ages, residences, and parentage of a couple in addition to their occupations, educational history, and the name and locations of their witnesses. In order to find church records, you must first find the congregations of which your ancestors were a member. Be careful not to assume that all family members went to the same church. Different family members can be different religions. Also some denominations have changed their names over time. Memorabilia, such as family bibles; newspaper articles and obituaries; death certificates and funeral home records; marriage records; and census records could provide you with clues to your ancestor’s church membership. Once you locate the church, check their records first, if they have any. Later you can solicit information about records from church or clergy members or at local history libraries. Churches that no longer exist may have records at affiliated churches nearby, in the church denomination’s archives, or in local libraries or museums.

School and universities also may keep records, such as enrollment records and transcripts, and the local or state government may keep records on students as well for tax or census purposes. Different college keep records differently, however, and, for the sake of privacy, most make it difficult, if not impossible, to obtain transcripts for students within the past seventy years. Depending on the state, if you request a transcript for an ancestor who attended school there great than seventy years ago and can prove that you are related, you might not have a problem, though. Besides transcripts, you could also look in alumni association or university archives for student directories, yearbooks, literary journals, newspapers, and scrapbooks. Sororities and fraternities, honor societies, and other service organizations may also keep their own records. Public libraries and museums may keep yearbooks or other school publication, particularly for school that closed down. Finally, local newspapers may contain information on students or school events.

After school is thoroughly searched, comes work, and if you can identify your ancestor’s occupation using other records, such as census records, you can usually find employee records of unions and other organizations. Employment records for early railroad workers and early employees of the federal government are available in publications in history libraries. Different organizations also exist for businessmen and other professionals, such as engineers, teachers, doctors, and even dairymen and morticians. These organizations often have their own publications, which may contain biographical information, such as birth date, education, residence, and death date. Publications about members of the clergy can also be found in church archives.

Finally, if you can identify and civic or fraternal organizations to which your relatives belonged, you can seek out any records they may have kept. The Mason, for example, keep very good records. Libraries, archives and museums may also contain organizational records. The Smithsonian, specifically the National Museum of American History, possesses extensive archives containing manuscripts and publications of professional organizations. If your great-grandpa worked in advertising, for example, their collection of advertising materials may be the place to look.

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