Create a Family History Unit Study

Family history is a huge topic of conversation in my family. My grandparents, great aunts, other family members and both of my parents have over the years shared enormous amounts of information and stories about themselves and other family members, enough to fill volumes of books and I’ve enjoyed hearing them tremendously. I’ve made it a project for each of my children interview their grandparents and glean from their experiences.  Listening to those stories over the years prompted me to do some research about my family to find out what information about my family has been recorded and documented. This has been and continues to be an exciting journey that has included hours of searching on Family Search, a website similar to those listed in the article below as well as a fieldtrip to the South Carolina Department of Archives and History. 

Including your own family history in your curriculum for social studies or history can prove to be an exciting adventure for you and your children.  You can discover interesting information about your background that ties in to the period of history you’re studying. Tracing a family’s movements allows you to do geography and cartography. Make your own family time line. Locate cousins in other states or even countries! Write about your discoveries and share it with your family!  

Our local library has an abundance of information available to help you get started on a genealogy unit.  Libraries have research helps and knowledgeable staff on hand to assist and direct you as you go along. The article below is from our own Grace Cordial.  Mrs. Cordial has been responsible for the day-to-day operation of the Beaufort District Collection at the Beaufort County Library since 1999. The Beaufort District Collection exists to acquire, preserve, maintain and make accessible a research collection of permanent value which records the history, culture, and environment of our part of the South Carolina lowcountry. Besides the research room, Cordial oversees the “Virtual BDC:” the BDC web pages, the Online Obituary Index, the Phosphate, Farms, and Family digital collection, and the Connections blog.

Among her duties is to coordinate or present programs about local history and our coastal environment, including the occasional instructional session about how to perform historical and/or genealogical research.  So take advantage of her expertise and begin your genealogy study soon!

Family Tree Magazine names 101 Best Genealogy Websites 2011

By Grace Cordial

For a number of years, Family Tree Magazine has been searching the internet for the best genealogy websites. In 2010, they highlighted free sites. In 2011, they've compiled a list of the 101 best, including both free and premium sites.

Pay attention to the individual entry for each website because "though some mostly free sites charge for premium services, you’ll see a symbol only next to sites where you have to pony up for the core content." So, it's a mixed bag of pay-to-view, pay-to-view some, and pay-to-view everything.

Categories include:

*Family History Mega-Marts
*Born in the USA
*State-of-the-Art Archives
*Local Heroes
*Ethnic Interests
*Putting Genealogy on the Map
*Share and Store Alike
*Tech Tools
*Canadian Cousins
*Genealogy CSI: Death and DNA
*Crossing the Pond

Read the article. [1] When you have a few minutes to investigate online resources, we encourage you to peruse these recommended websites to help you uncover your roots.

Please keep in mind that all branches [2] of the Beaufort County Library provide customers access to the Ancestry Library Edition [3] subscription database. Here's the caveat: You must use ALE inside our buildings on our public access computers. It is not available through the library's WIFI. (By the way, that's ALE's rules, not ours.)