What do you do when you see that there is a class being offered that you might like to participate in? I imagine you consider the history of your family and if it is in a region, state, or country your research tells you there might be family connections.

Where do you find that? It might seem obvious that census records could point to a particular area. If you have done as several of our presenters over the years have suggested and built a timeline then you would have a pretty good start to this. There are those in between years and if you have land records that might help you navigate some of those years.

I have also found it helpful to figure out who was living in the area at the time your family might have been there or even before or shortly after. If it was early in American history, who owned the area? Was it French, Dutch, Spanish, English? Was it part of a larger territory such as Louisiana or Virginia? Were there early settlements of Germans? Were there settlements of Quakers or other religious groups fleeing from one of several situations that brought them to what would become America?

Did the family come to the new country and stay put where they landed or did they move north or south or west? What brought them in the first place and what motivated them to move on?

So many questions? Which have you looked into and which are you still considering? Have you written the questions down so that they become a focus for some of your research? AND, HOW DOES THE NEXT CLASS HELP YOU FIND THE ANSWERS YOU ARE LOOKING FOR?

Our next class is doing Missouri research? You may have lots of history here or you may have none but is there something you can learn about doing research in general that this class could help you with? Mybe you are like me, I don’t know at this point if I have family that was in this area for a long time, but I have suggestions that they at least were there for a short time. Many of them farmers who went for less crowded more fertile land only to find that in the neighboring county which was a different state they could find less crowded more fertile land. Perhaps it was because of the geography or the politics but many of these state research classes address the potential for some of this.

Consider all of the questions that might help you tell the story of your family? They might not immediately pinpoint an exact family member giving dates, locations and names but maybe they will suggest the story behind the family and the culture they brought with them through the years or why “fruitcake” was on the holiday table?

“See you in Missouri!”

Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com