ROOTS / FAMILY HISTORY RESOURCES

You may be well versed in the use of genealogy tools, internet mailing lists, and bulletin boards. But in case you're just setting out, here's a very basic "how to" page.

How to Trace Your Family History

Courtesy Lance Mayer

GRAVESTONE STUDIES Finding one's roots is a virtual journey that often leads to real homecoming trips and adventurous pursuits of heirlooms, lot lines, homesteads, and family plots. Thanks to the art of early carvers, looking through old cemeteries rewards the discerning eye. Finding them, however, may be more science than art - especially if you pack some new technology. Using New Technologies to Find Old Cemetaries - Tips from a Westerville, Ohio genealogist. New London Ancient Burying Ground - Condensed from the work of gravestone historian James Slater. OTHER RESOURCES Association for Gravestones Studies - Appreciating and preserving the work of early gravestone carvers.

ORAL HISTORY Let's talk history... Have you ever sat down with your grandmother or your uncle or some really interesting friend or neighbor in your town and asked about their childhood? If so, you've already made a start at doing an "oral history." To do a proper interview you'll need to think back over those rambling conversations and remember what interested you the most. Then narrow that down a little more - and even do some research on the subject and the period, so that your questions are specific and to the point. Don't try to write the person's entire life history all at once. Start by focusing on a specific or even a specific part of his or her daily routine.

Courtesy "Swapping Stories"

It's not hard to do an oral history interview, but there are a number of hints that will make it more interesting. For a really short list, see the University of California/Berkeley Library's "One-Minute Guide to Conducting Oral History." Theatre and dance are part of the preparation, when Barrett Elementary School students and seniors in Arlington, VA come together to tell and retell each other's stories. See images from 2001 (a bicentennial project) and 2002 and visit the "Swapping Stories" homepage MORE HELPFUL LINKS ON ORAL HISTORY: Useful Books on Doing Genealogy & Oral History - Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Smithsonian Folklorists' Guidelines About The Grand Generation - Smithsonian Center For Education and Museum Studies Oral History Questions - Joanne Todd Rabun on the Gene Pool Using Oral History: Lesson Overview - American Memory, Library of Congress Learning About Immigration Through Oral History - Barbara Wysocki and Frances Jacobson Oral History Association - Dickinson College

LITERARY EVIDENCE "Doing" family history takes us into attics and archives - and we soon become adept at threading rolls of microfilm and running through census CD-ROMs. Most thrilling of all is finding a cache of real, handwritten letters. As many of the contributors to these ROOTS pages have discovered, there's much to learn from them beyond our own particular family's history. Under the expert guidance of their teacher and mentor Robert Welt, student members of the Groton Middle School Stamp Club share their comments with contributing editor Susan Chenelle - a stamp collector herself. Learning From Letters- Stamp Club Students in Groton, CT, find history through a hobby.

MORE ARCHIVAL INFO: Editing Family Manuscripts - by Robert Root, Department of English, Central Michigan University. Digitizing Documents - Notes on scanning documents for scholarly study. Boswell Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale. Style Manual - Papers of George Washington Editorial Project, University of Virginia.