CHARLESTON, S.C. - We continue our Meet Your Library series discovering the resources available in the South Carolina History Room at the Main branch. Last week, Charleston County Public Library genealogy experts explained the important information to include while assembling a pedigree chart or family tree. Once the family tree is filled out, then it's time to travel to the South Carolina Room to dig through their genealogy resources.
South Carolina Room Manager, Marianne Cawley, says one common mistake is trying to reach a desired conclusion from the start. This often happens when people are looking for documentation for a lineage society or trying to find ties to a specific historic figure.
"Start with yourself and move backwards. If there is a connection, if you think you're descended from Daniel Boone, or Jesse James, or Pocahontas, or whatever, if there is that connection you will find it as you move back," Cawley said.
Typically, the first step will be searching online databases. Heritage Quest and Ancestry are currently available from anywhere with your library card.
"The Census is good. Starting in 1850 it lists everyone in the household. It will give you the husband, wife, and children, ages, sex, race. Some years have different information. So the Censuses are always a good place to start. They can look at the Census and get a feel for exactly where their person was. Location is important in genealogy because most records exist at the local level," she said.
You can also look at death certificates, city directories, and wills.
"You can look at wills, and they name family members, and you can make connections that way. I've seen some which name sons-in-law which can get you the daughter's maiden name and can get you farther. There's all sorts of things you can look at," Cawley said.
"City directories, I often explain them as they were like phone books before they had phones. They list the residents of a city in alphabetical order by name and they will often give a little abbreviation for occupation, like CLK for clerk or LAB for laborer. And they'll often give place of business, where they worked, and their home address. You can use these for the years in between the Census to find out where somebody was."
These resources are hopefully just a starting point and will lead you down new paths with more detailed information.
"I have a great staff. I have a fabulous team here, we know a lot about genealogy, we're all interested in it. We may be able to think of another source to try, another way to approach this problem," she said.
To ask the staff in the South Carolina Room questions before your visit, you can contact them by phone at (843) 805-6956 or by email at [email protected].