Has It Already Been Done?
Even if you can't locate someone in your immediate family who has researched the family history, it doesn't mean it hasn't already been done. Most family trees have many, many branches that have spread far and wide through successive generations. This means that records that detail your family may not always be found in the possession of your relatives, or even in the area where your ancestors lived. A written family history, a collection of old family letters, or a scrapbook of ancestral photographs may have been donated to a library or repository on the other side of the country, but how do you find it?
Look for Published Family Histories
In reality, only a small percentage of families have published genealogies. It is, however, always worth a look to see if someone has compiled and published a genealogy on your family, or the family in which you're interested.
One of the best places to search for published genealogies online is the Library of Congress, which has one of the world's premier collections of genealogical and local historical publications from the United States and around the world. To find published family histories that may relate to your family, search the library's online catalog (
Remember the old adage that just because it's in print doesn't make it true? Family histories, both published and unpublished, vary in scope and quality. Errors can be found in most such works, particularly when the author has not cited the sources of his information. For this reason, always consider compiled genealogies as secondary sources that need double-checking with primary documents.
The Family History Library also maintains a large collection of published family histories. Use the surname search in the Family History Library Catalog to locate catalog entries for family histories and other compiled works that include a specific surname. More than 5,000 of the family history books, biographies, and diaries from this collection have been scanned and placed online in digital format by the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University as the Family History Archive (
The Family and Local Histories Collection created by ProQuest contains more than 7.5 million fully searchable pages from more than 7,200 family histories, as well as local histories and other published primary sources. This database can be accessed online through HeritageOnline, by members of subscribing libraries, as well as on
Thousands of genealogy and local history books are also available online on Google Books (
More than 30 percent of published material related to genealogy and history, including family genealogies, can be found in genealogical and historical magazines and journals. The Periodical Source Index (PERSI), which indexes more than 5,000 such periodicals by surname and locality, can be viewed in most major libraries and online as a searchable subscription database at
If you locate a reference to a published family history online, you'll often be able to find a copy in the collection of the local public library or genealogical society library that serves the area where your ancestors lived. Check their online catalog, if available, or e-mail them to ask if they have a copy. If they do, you can generally request copies of selected pages for a fee.
Seek Out Manuscript Collections
Manuscript materials such as unpublished family histories and collections of family and personal papers are actively collected by more than 1,400 American institutions. A manuscript is basically a handwritten or typed document, as distinguished from a printed, published record. These may include personal letters and diaries, coroner's inquests, prison records, church records, and voter registration records. The difficulty lies in locating a manuscript that may be useful to you. One very handy tool for this is the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC), an index to mostly unpublished materials in both well-known and obscure repositories across the United States. NUCMC records created since 1986 can be searched on the website of the Library of Congress (
Don't let the dates fool you! Dates in the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC) refer to the date the records were catalogued, not when they were created. Many older records have been added to the collection since 1986, and are available in the free version available on the Library of Congress website.
