Around the house—maybe your house, maybe your parents or grandparents—are many artifacts or mementos that can give clues to your family history. Genealogists call these “home sources”. People save the strangest things, but usually the things that are most important to them and that help define who they are. These items will help you expand your family history, and sometimes even help you identify previously unknown ancestors and relatives of a prior generation.
Home Sources Will be Found Throughout the House
“Home sources come in many shapes, sizes, and textures.” So says The Source, Ancestry’s guidebook of American genealogy. “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…”
When you visit the house of an older relative, look around. Everything is a potential home source. Antique furniture may have been passed down for generations. Military medals are a source of family pride. Older family members will be only too happy to talk about these items. They become an ice-breaker of sorts that can lead into a broader conversation about the family.
Photographs Identify Relatives and Help with Relationships
Photographs are the most common home source available to genealogists, and probably the most durable. They tend to be displayed in the home, or excess ones are typically kept in a box, seldom seen, and not subject to wear and tear. Photographs of family members and complete families are most common. But houses, places of business, workshops, vacation sites—all of these might have been captured.
Family groups are particularly important. The children in the picture will be siblings, or perhaps cousins when adult siblings gathered. The ages of the children can be estimated, and the date of the photograph can be estimated from which children are present. In one photo of my wife’s family, the youngest child is not in the picture, and the second youngest child is a toddler. The mother is not visibly pregnant. This allows dating the photograph to within a few months of when it was likely taken.
When looking at photos, consider who probably took it. Studio prints are important because it establishes the location of the photo. That might help with figuring out the town or region the family lived in at the time. Occasionally, the records and negatives of an old studio will still be available, though lots of digging might be required to find them.
When the photo was not from a studio, consider who might have taken it. Which uncle is missing from an otherwise complete family group? Or which parent? Or, if the entire family group is present, including in-laws, might a neighbor have been called on to that the photo?
Old Documents Provide Names and Addresses
Wills, deeds, letters in mailing envelopes, record books, powers of attorney, voter registration card, diaries, journals, address books. These are but a few of the paper records that can be found in the house. People kept what was important at the moment, put them in a box or a desk drawer, and forgot about them for forty years. When found, they are a treasure trove for the family historian.
Old letters can help define an extended family. The envelope they were kept in will give where someone lived, perhaps two someones if a return address is visible. A postmark can provide a date when the letter is not dated. The contents of the letters can give little tidbits of information. A letter from my wife’s grandmother to her son serving in the military overseas provides the only record we have of the funeral of a great-grandmother.
“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…witnessed by past generations.” [The Source, p. 10] The messages on the postcards might add to your knowledge of relatives gone by, or might help define neighbor relationships.
Unexpected Home Sources and how they can Help the Genealogist
Every genealogist who has been researching for any time will have stories about how home sources have helped them. These stories are often inspirational and motivating to the genealogist. They also give hints as to what type of home sources to look for.
I have several such stories. Among items found at my father’s house when he passed away were papers and photographs from his parents and from my mother’s parents. Among the papers were post cards and letter envelopes from the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, where my maternal grandmother was born and raised. These gave hints as to business relationships and possible relatives.
I also found a funeral card for my great-grandmother in those items, the only record so far of who she was. In my grandmother’s old address books I was able to trace the “migration” of several family members, and learned of a whole branch of the family that had been purposely kept hidden from us for a lifetime.
Pursue home sources are vigorously as you can. There’s no downside to doing so, and the information gained from them might not be available anywhere else.
David A. Todd - David Todd is a civil engineer, a genealogist, a citizen concerned with the environment, and a writer by passion.
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