Fun Research Databases

I have found a few things that have made the family history research a little more interesting lately.

The U.S. School Yearbooks 1880-2012 database on Ancestry.com was really fun to look through. I found my grandma's senior year picture in the 1944. 

 And my mom's from the 70's...

(Don't be mad at me mom, it's cute!)

(one of my husband's relatives in 1933)

Luckily mine wasn't in the database yet. My senior picture had some unfortunate blonde hair going on. You can see from the pictures I did not inherit natural blonde, so it wasn't the most flattering color for my skin tone.

Looking through the yearbooks was cool! In my grandma's they listed activities students were involved in and what their plans were after graduation. My mom's didn't do that, but it was a larger yearbook with more information on the clubs and activities. I thought I loved the 40's, but as I looked through the 1933 yearbook I was in heaven. They were all fun to look through and see the styles and what was going on at the time. 

Another cool database on Ancestry is the U.S City Directories, 1821-1989. This one gave me lots of really cool information. My grandma told me that her family lived in a lot of different homes in their town, but the directory gave me addresses!! I was able to googlemap some of the addresses and see the houses, though I'm not sure if they're still the original homes or if they were rebuilt at some point. I'm going to look them up with my grandma soon so she can tell me if they're still the same homes.

 I thought I was really cool when I found out that my grandparent's lived within just a few miles from each other. They're about 8 years apart in age so they would have had no reason to know each other, but I thought that was pretty cute. While talking about it with my grandma, she told me that at one point my grandpa and his mom lived in the basement of the house that my grandma and her family lived in! They were dating at that point, so when my grandpa and his mom needed a new place it ended up working out that way. My grandma said it worked out really well for them. Haha, I bet :)

The directories also frequently said where they were employed or what their job was. My grandma couldn't remember where her mom worked, but the 1946 Binghamton directory showed me. She's Grace Hays and it shows her job, where she worked and her address.

Another year's directory (they came out frequently) showed my grandma's sister Dot and her husband Ken and then a couple years later in 1944 I found them again, but it listed her as a widow because he was killed in WW2. I thought it was interesting that they still listed his name on the directory even though he'd passed away. Maybe a show of respect?

What was really cool about these things was that when I brought them up to my grandma, she ended up telling me more about the areas and what was going on at the time. This is when I learned that my grandpa bought his mom a house right around the same time he bought his own house, among other cool things I was able to record. I'm really trying to focus on gleaning as much information from my grandma as I can, so using these random databases are really helping me out! Hopefully knowing about these will help you in your searches (even if it's just to make fun of your parent's yearbook pictures)!

No journal prompt this week, I've got plenty to write about already from last week!