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Family Bibles, Wills, and other official documents

Home » Genealogy » Sources for Genealogy Research - Family » Family Bibles, Wills, and other official documents
Posted by Your Guide on July 6, 2006 9:45 PM

Family Bibles, copies of Wills, and other documents are fabulous treasure to a family history researcher. However, these documents are rare for most families. If you find them among your relatives, rejoice.

Finding family Bibles and other documents usually happens unexpectedly as older relatives pass away and their belongings are shared with other family members. It is important for the family history researcher to remember that you do not have to own or possess an artifact to gain the information from it. Asking for treasured items can appear greedy to other family members, but asking for permission to copy the family pages from a Bible or to photocopy an item for your files probably will not. When other family members understand that the information is what is important to you, not the item, they will often share willingly with you.

As rare as family Bibles and other official documents can be, personal letters, greeting cards, journals and diaries are abundant. As time goes by, it may be that email notes become the accounts of every day life in the modern world. Notes, letters, and journals provide a window into a spot in time and often mention family relationships, names, and important events. Even mass produced greeting cards can give us a wealth of information, such as the fact that little Sallie had two grandmas, one named Nana, and the other named Gram. She also had a grandpa named Papa and another named Paw Paw. These loving pet names are often lost in the years after a child grows up and almost never appear in formal or legal documents, so their appearance on an aging birthday card make them all the more precious.

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