Thursday, June 20, 2013

A First Step For State Resources




source: Wikimedia Commons

I'm always on the lookout for online genealogy resources for various states.  Because most of my family as well as my husband's family lived in Georgia, I have a lengthy list of bookmarked web sites in a "Georgia Resources" folder.  That works fine until someone moves to Iowa or California or even Mississippi.  Then I need a new place to start looking for family history resources.

Recently I came across a portion of the www.usa.gov web site that provides a list of State Genealogy links.(1)  There is generally one link listed for each state.  That link is often to the State Archives or similar government agency whose web site in turn has links to a number of state genealogy resources.  The link for other states might be to the state's GenWeb Project (as in the case for Iowa), to the State Library (California), or to the State Historical Society (Mississippi).  One note, some of the states whose only link is to the state Department of Public Health / Vital Records may have broken links so you will need to access this state agency on your own.

For me, it has been helpful to use www.usa.gov, an official government web site, as a first step for locating resources of a specific state.  After all, as Lao-tze said, "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a simple step".(2)


http://www.usa.gov/Citizen/Topics/History-Family/State-Genealogy.shtml


(1)  "Genealogy Resources By State." database. USA.gov. http://www.usa.gov/Citizen/Topics/History-Family/State-Genealogy.shtml : 2013.
(2)  The Quotations Page. database. http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/24004.html : 2013.

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