Tracking your family’s heritage is more than just adding a leaf to your family tree. It’s an avenue to trace your roots, reconstruct the story of your forebears and connect yourself to kinsmen around the world. But beginning the task can be daunting.
The Butler Center for Arkansas Studies has a free beginner’s genealogy class each month to help the family detective work through the process of finding ancestors through an extensive catalog of indexes, records and maps.
The class - called Finding Family Facts - provides one-on-one guidance with a genealogy specialist to trace lineage through a hefty collection of microfilm, U.S. Census data, Freedmen’s Bureau records, marriage licenses, historical documents and birth, death and military records.
Rhonda Stewart, genealogy specialist for the center, says that tracing your heritage can become empowering. “We come from somebody and it’s important to look back, because 30 individuals are combined to make you,” she says.
“The more you know about your family, the stronger you become.”
Stewart says that on a local level she was able to trace her own family to 1825 in Arkansas. “We were here before there was even a state,” she says. She credits her research abilities to her grandmother, whom, she says, kept a detailed history.
But not everyone’s family kept such a comprehensive list and tracking can sometimes lead to a dead end.
Stewart says that center specialists can assist the researcher to find clues.
“Spelled names are obstacles. Just because a name is spelled different in records doesn’t mean that they are not your relative,” Stewart says.
If your ancestors are from Arkansas, it’s likely they can be traced using a catalog of books specific to each individual county, and a Prior Birth Index has listings of people who were born more than 100 years ago. The significance of the index is that it tracked child births between census years, which allows people to fill in some of the gaps in the family tree.
Often it turns out that your roots are not deeply embedded in Arkansas and that ancestors may have come from other states or countries. She says that shouldn’t stop you, because the center has access to the world’s largest collection of genealogical records and microfilm in Salt Lake City.
The documents are held by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and include non-Mormon records.
Stewart says that through their agreement anyone can request microfilms and records to be sent to the Butler Center. “For 90 days you can browse the film and then it gets sent back,” she says.
The documents can only be viewed inside the Butler Center.
Another benefit to outlining your relatives at the center is the free on-site access to Ancestry.com, says Susan Gele, assistant director for public relations for the Central Arkansas Library System, who says the monthly rates to access the site can sometimes deter people from seeking their roots.
Gele says that the Finding Family Facts program teaches about the databases and offers intensive assistance. The center also has a genealogical research room that is open year-round.
“We are always willing to work with anyone interested in their genealogy,” she says.
Finding Family Facts is held the second Monday of every month from 3:30 to 5 p.m. No registration is required and the course is free. For more information, contact the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies at (501) 320-5700 or visit www.butlercenter.org.
Family, Pages 34 on 08/07/2013