Pomp and Circumstance
What do you know about your ancestors’ schooling? Did your grandparents study in a one-room country school? Did some relatives go to college? Were any of them teachers?
The answers may lie in school records: yearbooks, class photos, report cards and graduation announcements that you and your relatives may have in your possession. Obituaries, local histories and personal interviews can also provide valuable information about your relatives’ education.
Fortunately, many of those education-related sources are now online. Here’s where to find them, and what I’ve been able to uncover about some of the scholars in my own family. Throughout, a dollar sign ($) indicates a site that requires a fee to access at least some resources.
THE BIG GENEALOGY WEBSITES
First up are the school records on each of the “Big Four” genealogy websites.
Ancestry.com ($)
Begin your search for school-related collections by going to Search > All Collections <www.ancestry.com/search>, then selecting Schools, Directories & Church Histories from the Explore by Collection column. Use the form to search all school-related collections from various countries at once, or click on “View all in Card Catalog” to select a specific category. You could also go to the Card Catalog directly <www.ancestry.com/search/collections/catalog> and use filters or keywords to find relevant collections; school records are in the Directories and Member Lists category <www.ancestry.com/search/categories/dir_school>, or you could filter by the school’s location.
’s largest relevant collections are of US yearbooks>, US school catalogs (1765–1935) <>, and Canadian yearbooks (1901–2010) <>. Most collections can be searched by name, but a few (such as “South Dakota, U.S., School Records, 1879–1970” < >) are browse-only.
