Giving Back!

Sometime during the course of your research, you might want to "give back" to the community of family historians/genealogists. That's partly what motivated me to extract information of mostly female Missourians from national women's magazines for MOSGA.org. It's not an easy job to go through old magazines and scan each contributors' letters for personal information, then type it up in a format that everyone could use, but I knew of a private collection of magazines that the public might not ever see and I wanted to contribute something to Missouri's genealogical knowledge base.

Contributing information to a county or state based genealogical society is not the only way to give back. I've donated scans of old postcards and magazine ads to various websites on the internet. 

Christmas greetings from Ell, Norma, &  family, To Miss Laura Ullom, Elkhart, Kansas

I also like to take photos of historical markers of events that my ancestors might have participated in  or experienced to stick into my archive of knowledge about them. Sometimes you get quizzical looks from people when you hop out of the car with your camera or cellphone in hand to take a snapshot. I frequent a website called the Historical Marker Database Organization to see if there are markers that pertain to certain ancestral events. I recently noticed an offer on the front page for FREE business cards you can hand to people should they come to ask you what you are doing. I received mine today in the mail.



The center is left open to attach an personal or business adhesive mailing label or to stamp your name on it  if you wish to add it. So far, I haven't found any markers in my neck of the woods that haven't been added to the site, but if I do find one missing, I can contribute there as well.

The National Archives are looking for transcribers -- people with the ability to read old handwriting script and type into text what they see. If you would like to do this, here's some tips for you -- click here. If you are asked to transcribe marriage records, please include the minister or the justice of the peace who performed the marriage ceremony as we who have those kind of officials in our family like to know whom they married and how often they performed ordnances like that. And if you research in the FAN (friends, associates, & neighbors) style, it will give you surnames of the people who are in your ancestor's environment and you can check them against a census record. 

Article written by Dolores J. Rush, updated: 1/9/2023.