Genealogy is, essentially, a historical endeavor. Genealogists attempt to discover not only the history of a family but also the history of individuals living during a specific time period. The importance of understanding the social and cultural forces shaping your ancestors during a particular slice of history can not be overstated. Historical knowledge will shape your research efforts and give you a very personal understanding of your ancestors. Knowing where they lived, what they did for a living, what religion they practiced, and even what they died from can tell you something about yourself and your heritage. Our ancestors shaped history, and history shaped our ancestors. Accordingly, as you begin researching your family tree, it is beneficial to simultaneously study history. Historical museums can offer a multi-sensory learning opportunity, a chance to step out of the book racks and see, touch, and even hear information about the period or place in which your ancestors lived.

Before you try to find the right museums to visit, you must first narrow down the time period and geographical location you want to study. For example, are you most interested in your Great-Grandmother Gretel from Germany or your Great-Grandmother Maria from Italy? Look for social or political upheavals that may have lead to your ancestors’ emigration from their countries of origin. Other changes in society, such as abolition or the end of a war, may have inspired a change of residence or the birth of children. If you construct chronological profiles on the ancestors you are interested in, you may be able to pinpoint seemingly out-of-place events in their life or the life of their family that could be the result of external forces.

Once you have narrowed down the time period and geographical location you want to research, look for museums that specialize in that particular era, region, or ethnicity. For example, if your family escaped the Potato Famine in Ireland, look for museums that specialize in Irish History or have an exhibit on the Potato Famine. If your family was a specific ethnicity, such as Chinese-American, look for museums in locales with a high concentration of Asian Americans. These museums are your best bet for research, but don’t rule out large national museums, such as the Smithsonian. The size and comparative wealth of these museums allow them to have extensive information on a variety of topics and time periods and may be worth a visit.

What will you find once you locate an appropriate historical museum? In addition to informative exhibits, museums might contain archives with special collections, such as maps, atlases, gazetteers, or manuscripts that you could use in your research. The National Museum of American History in Washington, DC, which is part of the Smithsonian, collects a large number of artifacts on a variety of topics, from agriculture to food to sports and leisure. The museum can only display a small number of these artifacts at a time, but the whole collection is available to be researched on an online database. The museum also contains a separate database for its extraordinarily extensive archives, which contains letters and other personal papers, photographs and other images, music, films, videos, tapes, business records, advertisements, sheet music and publications of professional organizations. The sheer abundance of materials that you can research at the Smithsonian is almost overwhelming, and smaller museums may possess equally detailed and unique, if less extensive, collections. Museums are more than just places for the public to see a few exhibits. They are repositories of history.

Curators and other research historians in the employ of the museum are also a valuable, yet frequently untapped, resource. Contacting them and asking for their aid can lead you to valuable manuscripts, collections, or information that you may not have found otherwise. Curators at the Smithsonian, for example, frequently have advanced degrees in American History and knowledge of many other specialties, such as African-American history.

A visit to a museum can also be used to gain information from people who witnessed history firsthand. Some veterans are reluctant to talk about their unique experiences in the military. You can encourage them to share their history by taking them to visit applicable exhibits at museums. Sometimes reliving a war through pictures and artifacts is enough to make them begin reminiscing.

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