Women's History Month 2016: Tip #7 It's Not Unusual

One of my favorite museum displays from Knott's Berry Farm. Seek out the unusual!
(c) 2016 Gena Philibert-Ortega

What is the most unusual source you have ever used? That source might have been in your home or the home of another family member. Perhaps you found it at an archive or in a local history room of a library.

If your brick wall exists because there's nothing more on Ancestry.com for you then your brick wall is really just a speed bump.

Get to know all kinds of unusual sources. One great place to learn more is the book Hidden Sources: Family History in Unlikely Places by Laura Szucs Pfeiffer. Here you can read about sources that you may not have thought of like Agricultural Schedules of the Census, Almshouse Records, Midwife Records, Marriage Dispensations, and records from the Works Progress Administration.

Another one of my favorite ways to learn more about records is to peruse the FamilySearch Catalog. Choose a place and then go through the records in all of the categories. Learn more about what is available.

Seek out the unusual. That's where the best genealogy stuff is!


**A note about today's image. One of my favorite places inside of Knott's Berry Farm is their museum. Inside is this button collection from Mrs. W. H. Dierker of Idaho. Best part? She labeled buttons with the name of each woman who gifted it to her. I'll probably post about this more at another time.