GenealogyBlog

Do you know what sports if any your father or grandfather played in high school, college or beyond. Perhaps your mother or grandmother was the star of the basketball team or the ping pong champion of the school. With a little digging you can find out about the youthful activities that occupied your ancestors time.

The first and easiest way to find out is to ask. If your ancestor is still around ask him or her. If they are not, ask an older aunt or uncle or anyone who knew your ancestor. You might be surprised about what they know. Here are a few questions about what to ask them.

• What sports did you play when you were in high school or earlier?




• What position did you play?




• Tell me about one particular game or match that you remember playing in.




• What special awards did you earn while playing in the sport?




• Tell me about one of your teammates that you remember.




• Did you continue playing the sport in college or afterwords

You can use these or come up with some questions on your own. Try to ask them open ended questions rather than a questions which can be answered with a yes or no.

If there are no older relatives to ask, there are still resources you can look for to understand your ancestors life in school and sports. Here are some of my favorite resources to look for;

• High School Yearbook: Many of these can be found at the local historical society or library.




• College Yearbook: You can find these at the college library.




• Local Newspaper Articles: A lot of newspapers are being digitized and indexed. If your lucky your ancestor’s hometown newspaper is one of them.




• High School or College Programs: Many teams published a yearly pamphlet about their teams


Below is a small sample of what you might find.


• High School or College Newspaper: School newspapers highlighted the sports programs.


Here is another example of what you might find.

If you know of any additional resources to find out about the sports your ancestors played, please reply to this post. We would love to hear about them.

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Newspaper Archive Search at Genealogy Bank

Newspaper Archive Search and NewspaperArchive.com

I was browsing through the many great genealogy blogs on Geneabloggers and came across the Irish Genealogy News blog. As the name implies, this genealogy blog focuses on Irish Genealogy. They post quite often averaging more than one blog post per day in 2012. Some of the recent blog posts I liked included;

• More burial records for Northern Ireland
• National Archives launches genealogy website
• 1922 Military Census online for browsing

These were just a few of the many wonderful and informative blog posts. They quite often point out new databases regarding Irish Genealogy which have come on-line.

If you have any Irish ancestors, be sure to check out this blog.

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This is a photo which was shared with me by a cousin who has since passed on. It is believed to be a bunch of Fox relatives from County Leitirm, Ireland.

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This tombstone is from the Village Cemetery in Newtown, Connecticut. My ancestor Alfred Banks died on May 8, 1852 at the age of 28 in Great Barrington, MA. He left two young boys, Edwin and Edward. Edwin and Edward were twins of Alfred Banks and Jane Ann Shepard. In 1860, the family was living with their grandparents Orrin Shepard in Newtown. The twins would later join the civil war when they were 17 years old.