Records

Post offices aren’t just about employees or even the mail. Most of us receive our newspapers and magazines mailed directly from the publisher or purchased in a store. That wasn’t how it used to be - there was no rural door-to-door delivery before the turn of the 20th century!!! Who handled subscriptions for reading material? They were handled by the postmaster at the post office! Wouldn’t you like to see great-great-grandpa’s subscription list? Some of these subscription lists DO survive and can provide insights about a person, including religious and/or political leanings, hobbies, news interests, and much more. We’ll also talk about other post office records that tell us who our ancestors purchased from, sent mail orders to, and more! Information often found nowhere else!

Important records for our research are acquiring birth, marriage, and death certificates as they include many juicy details of names, dates, places, and family relationships. What happens, though, when our ancestors are born before the government starts keeping these records (e.g., North Carolina didn’t begin birth & death registration until 1913 with a bump in compliance in 1936 due to Social Security starting but no full compliance till maybe as late as WWII)? Wow – that is a lot of ancestors for whom we won’t find official records of birth, marriage, or death for. This means we must seek alternative records to document these important vital records. We’ll explore some obvious and many less obvious places where we might find the details we seek.

Post offices aren’t just about employees or even the mail. Most of us receive our newspapers and magazines mailed directly from the publisher or purchased in a store. That wasn’t how it used to be - there was no rural door-to-door delivery before the turn of the 20th century!!! Who handled subscriptions for reading material? They were handled by the postmaster at the post office! Wouldn’t you like to see great-great-grandpa’s subscription list? Some of these subscription lists DO survive and can provide insights about a person, including religious and/or political leanings, hobbies, news interests, and much more. We’ll also talk about other post office records that tell us who our ancestors purchased from, sent mail orders to, and more! Information often found nowhere else!

Small business/organization ledgers document everyday business transactions that involve our families. This webinar focuses on the many kinds of ledgers created by the types of businesses found in every small town or county where your ancestors lived in the 18th through early 20th century. The talk will highlight where we can locate these ledgers and what we can learn from them. Ledgers place individuals and families in space and time, sometimes give relationship information, document women & children, employees, enslaved, Free Persons of Color (FPOC), etc. You might learn about your ancestors' shoe size, what type of dresses, hats, and formal clothing they wore, what illnesses they were treated for, what newspapers they read, and more. We will explore ledgers from a diverse range of businesses. What are you waiting for? Do not assume that ledgers don’t survive for your ancestor’s community or that your ancestors will not be listed!