Including Genealogy Research in Your Summer Fun

When I think of summer, I think of vacations, long weekends, road trips, and day trips. It’s during the summer months that many people are planning trips to beaches, national parks, and family reunions. Family historians have a unique opportunity to add a little genealogy to their travel plans. Whether you’re taking a cross-country vacation, visiting family, or simply looking for a day trip close to home, some of the nation’s premier genealogy libraries and archives are worth adding to your itinerary. Even a few hours of research can lead to discoveries that aren’t available online.

Here are five genealogy destinations on my bucket list, and one honorable mention. I have had the wonderful opportunity to visit a few on the list already. This list is in no particular order:

• Family Search Library in Salt Lake City, Utah is the largest genealogical library in the world, with more than 4,000 Family Search Center affiliates. It has a huge collection of primary sources, including US federal and state census records, passenger lists for most US ports, naturalization records, foreign civil registration records, thousands of maps, and a memory lab with digitizing equipment.
• Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana holds over 1.2 million physical items, including census records, city directories, military and church records, cemetery records, and 68,000 family histories.
• Midwest Genealogy Center in Independence, Missouri holds over 100,00 family history books and local history items, over 500,000 rolls of microfilm and over 7,000 maps. The library also contains immigration and naturalization records, manuscripts pertaining to the American slave trade and antebellum south as well as the complete US census as well as the General Registrar Office Vital Records Indexes for 1837-1930 for England and Wales.
• The National Archives in Washington DC and regional research centers gives researchers access to primary federal records that document your ancestor’s lives, military service, and immigration. NARA locations hold national, regional, and maritime documents that take family history far beyond basic names and dates
• International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina includes a Center for Family History. It is a premier, specialized research center for exploring African American genealogy. It provides access to expansive digital archives, premium databases, and expert staff to help retrace ancestral pathways before and after the 1870 US Census.
• Honorable Mention: National DAR Library in Washington DC houses the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution applications and supporting files plus biographies, genealogies, cemetery records, Bible records, church records, city directories, periodicals, and manuscripts making it a great resource for tracing your ancestry to the Revolutionary War.

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Click HERE to read more about my trip to the Family Search Library

Click HERE to read more the summer of 2024 trips to different libraries to start my family digital archive

Click HERE to read more about my visit to the International African American Museum