Graduates of East St. Louis Senior High School

By Lillian Williams

The million-dollar question remains: How do you solve that last piece of the puzzle in your family history research? Sometimes family, friends, and online databases provide the answer. In other instances, you might dig for days within off-line storehouses without results.

Here’s another idea: Connect with social organizations in a community that might have information relevant to your research. Also, contact local churches and other religious organizations. They are known to produce anniversary booklets with photos and descriptions of families.

The Chicago public library, however, offers another suggestion: Check out local school yearbooks.

The Yearbook As A Research Tool

“Yearbooks can be a great tool to learn more about your ancestors, their interests and the school they attended,” according to an article in the Nov. 18 Chicago Public Library blog. “Yearbooks can also provide insights into how high school students initiate and respond to changes in their community and the world.”

Yearbooks can be a goldmine for photos, too, the blog points out.

Not only might you find a photo of your ancestor, but you might discover extracurricular activities; the elementary school they attended, and their post-graduate plans, according to the post.

Yearbooks could reflect the social climate of that era. Importantly, they could show how your ancestors responded to issues of the day. Note this early 20th century yearbook entry:

“In this example from the June 1918 edition of Lake View High School’s Red and White, Lydia Trowbridge wrote an article called, “War work for Women and Girls,” in which she highlighted ways they could help the war effort by doing farm work during summer vacation, working with children, teaching English in factories, writing articles and typing wartime bulletins, speaking to women’s groups about the war effort and child welfare.”

The 1918 yearbook article reflects a vigrous effort to encorage women to participate in the war effort. That’s a noteworthy finding for historical context.

Ancestry.com Has Some U.S. High School Yearbooks

The blog also points out that Ancestry.com has digitized some U.S. high school yearbooks. You can access those yearbooks at home through your computer until Dec. 31, free of charge, with a local library card. After that date, you can utilize the computers at your local library to acess the yearbooks.

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Cheers,

Website founder and editor Lillian Williams

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