Tuesday, July 2, 2019

This is What I Have Been Waiting For!

I have been given a wonderful gift!

 This past Saturday, I was a presenter at a Family History Day at Cleveland Public Library.

 My genealogy colleague and friend, Sunny Jane Morton also happened to be speaking, and pulled me aside to show me something.

 I was gobsmacked!

 Sunny had been updating me on a book that she was co-authoring with Harold A. Henderson, and told me it would be released this summer.

 And, it is a book that is definitely needed in the genealogy community!
That's right!

 It's a book on finding your family's history using Church Records.

 Now, why would this be so needed, especially when current polls point to a downward turn in religion?

 Because, our families relied on churches to anchor them and their families, and to turn to for comfort when times became bad for them.

 I have taught a Church Records course with the Rev. David McDonald at GRIP, and I wish there had been something like this to help me as I put together my presentations. There have been so many divisions and break-offs from core religions that it can be difficult to trace what you may need back to its original beginnings.

 This book can help you do that.

 It covers the major American religions, and what you may expect to find as you search their records. To quote from Chapter 1, "What's In Church Records?", just look at what you may find when you delve into denominational records?

  • Births
  • Relative's names
  • National origin or ethnicity
  • Baptisms
  • Confirmations
  • Marriages
  • Memberships and migrations
  • Deaths, funerals, and burials
And, these are just snippets of what you will find throughout the book.

This is a one-stop place for researching all of these religious denominations that would have you going from place to place on the internet.

I commend Sunny and Harold for writing this book. And, I am really grateful for the advance copy Sunny presented to me as a surprise. I had classes ahead of me to teach that day, and the only thing I wanted to do was go into a corner and peruse this book.

This book belongs in any serious researcher's toolkit, and will be kept within arm's reach at my own desk.

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