We have a lot of fantastic digital resources, many of them courtesy of the Arkansas State Library. Because we’re a library in Arkansas, we have access to their Traveler Database. For this entire year, every month, we’re going to look at the different features available on these databases. For this month, we’re going to focus on the genealogy resources.
To get to the genealogy resources, follow the directions in the first post of this series.
Once in the Arkansas Traveler database, go to Genealogy.
You’ll see two different databases–African American Heritage and HeritageQuest Online.
If you’re researching African American ancestors, African American Heritage is a rich repository of sources and reference help.
It compiles federal census results, marriage records, military draft and service records, registers of slaves and freed persons of color, and 19th century Freedman’s Bank records.
I particularly like the Black Genesis resource, which is an online book that includes a basic overview of African American genealogy pointers, as well as more specific state-by-state information.
If you click on the section for Arkansas, you get information for the state archive in Little Rock, as well as a historical timeline and notations on state-specific resources. For instance, the book notes that the Arkansas Historical Commission has weekly editions of Arkansas Mansion, a newspaper for Little Rock’s African American community in the 1880s. It also provides a helpful bibliography of suggested titles to read.
The second genealogical database, HeritageQuest, also has a robust online collection of genealogical records.
It has all publicly available federal census records, from 1790-1950, as well as US Indian Census Rolls and the Freedman Bank Records that African American Heritage also has. You can also access decades of Canadian census records. HeritageQuest also has an extensive collection of archived newspapers, probate records, and Revolutionary War pension claims.
HeritageQuest also includes a nice series of primers that can walk you through how to do genealogical research, particularly on how to use census records.
There’s also a really cool map feature that lets you see how county boundaries evolved over the years for each state. This is interesting on its own, but it’s also incredibly useful for determining where records you’re looking for may be held.
For our own Carroll County, the current boundaries didn’t really solidify until 1870. Before then, our county covered a much wider range of land and encompassed parts of neighboring counties, like Boone and Newton, while the western most tip of Carroll was then part of Madison County.
Though these resources are specifically offered through the Arkansas Traveler databases, they’re not the only genealogical databases we offer.
On the main Digital Tools page, we have HeritageQuest available there, alongside a helpful video tutorial, and we also have the library edition of Ancestry, which you can only access at the library. It doesn’t allow you to save records, but you can search for many of the ones that would be available on a personal account.
The page also has digitized Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, which can be a real goldmine for genealogists and historical researchers. If you access it, you can see several fire insurance maps for Berryville from 1897-1937.
You can also check out some of our other posts that identify genealogical research resources we have within the library.
This is not genealogy related, but thanks to our sister library in Green Forest, our entire system now has access to a digital compilation of resources on auto repair through Auto Repair Source.
What’s your favorite digital resource the library offers? Do you use the Traveler databases? Which of these databases are you most excited to try?
Berryville Book Buzz 