How to Trace Ancestors Through Letters and Postcards
Length: 60 minutes
Summary: Letters, postcards, and telegrams preserve everyday voices of the past. These communication records reveal family relationships, migration stories, and daily life. This presentation shows where to find them, how to interpret them, and why they matter for genealogy, transforming ephemera into powerful tools for family history research.
Audience Level: Beginner -Expert
Requirements: Projection for computer on a large screen; internet connection
Content: 4-page PDF handout
Outline
Letters and postcards are some of the most personal and revealing resources available to genealogists. They provide a rare opportunity to hear ancestors’ voices, document family connections, and record daily experiences. This webinar starts by explaining why correspondence is important for family history, showing how postmarks, greetings, and even silence can offer valuable clues.
Strategies for finding correspondence within families, in archives, and through public collections will be explored. Preservation and digitization best practices will be introduced to ensure these fragile records are protected for future generations. Next, we’ll examine physical features such as paper, ink, stationery, stamps, and postal markings that can help date and locate undated correspondence. Techniques for transcription, including handling old handwriting, bilingual passages, and cross-writing, will be shared.
We’ll then move into content analysis, extracting life events, relationships, and migration clues from even the briefest messages. Postal geography will be covered, demonstrating how routes, postmarks, and addresses align with patterns of family migration. Finally, attendees will learn how to correlate correspondence with census records, directories, and vital records to strengthen their conclusions.
Attendees will learn how to:
- Identify where to locate family letters and postcards, both within the family and in archival or public collections.
- Analyze physical features such as handwriting, stationery, stamps, and postmarks for dating and geographic context.
- Apply transcription and content analysis techniques to extract genealogical evidence from correspondence.
- Correlate information from letters and postcards with other historical records to strengthen conclusions and solve identity problems.
Book This Webinar NOW!
Click HERE to have me present this webinar either through your group’s virtual meeting platform or my StreamYard platform. Includes 45-50 minutes of instruction plus 10-15 Q&A session, PDF handout and a limited time (one year) webinar recording.
