October is Family History Month, so it’s a great time to think about your family’s story. A family story can mean something different to everyone. I enjoy genealogy research, but I also enjoy exchanging music recommendations with family members (from a recent exchange, let me pass on a recommendation to check out the music of Molly Drake and Mildred Bailey). For us, music forms an integral part of our story: one branch of my family can’t have a wedding reception without a large group circle dance to “Come On Eileen,” and another ends most parties by singing a rendition of “The Parting Glass.”
If you’re interested in more traditional genealogy research, Princeton Public Library has plenty of resources for you. Get started by visiting our Family History and Genealogy resource guide for an overview of our genealogy databases. Some, like Ancestry Library Edition and FamilySearch, require you to be in the library to use them (but no library card is required), while others, like HeritageQuest and Fold3 Library Edition, can also be accessed remotely with your library card. If your family has lived locally for generations, you can find more information in our Princeton and Local History resource guide about both physical and online tools. PPL staff members have also created wider research websites on both of these topics, accessible in the resource guides.
Another special way to share your family and community stories is through voice recordings. I hope you’re familiar with our Voices of Princeton initiative, created in partnership with the Historical Society of Princeton, the Arts Council of Princeton, and the Witherspoon-Jackson Historical and Cultural Society. If not, let this be your invitation to explore it! Voices of Princeton welcomes oral histories from members of the Princeton community, offering a range of perspectives on the history of the town and its people. Thanks to a grant we received through Rev250, we’re working to not only expand our collection of oral histories and share these stories more widely but also make it easier for you to collect oral histories of your own. More details are available in this blog post by my colleague Cliff. We encourage you to explore Voices of Princeton and our upcoming classes. We also hope you’ll consider setting up an appointment with us to add your own story to Voices of Princeton!
No matter how your family tells its story, let us know if we can help you with any of these resources.
Photo by National Library of Medicine on Unsplash