Friends of Genealogy helps people trace ancestors, find identity

70-year-old Linda McCall began looking for records of her ancestors as a teen in the 1960s. She became curious about her roots as she discovered traces of relatives she had never met while growing up on her family farm.

After doing a genealogy search, McCall discovered that one of her ancestors was a Sangamon County pioneer and two fought in the American Revolution. Now she’s helping other people trace their roots through a Chatham library group, Friends of Genealogy.

“The group was inspired by shows like 'Who Do You Think You Are' and ‘Finding Your Roots' with Henry Louis Gates Jr.'. People became more interested in learning about their own families and found it easier to with the availability of search engines ancestry.com," McCall said. " We teach them how to navigate the search engines or sometimes it's how to get into records for our county. We've all been working on our family trees for years so we get together to share our knowledge."

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Friends of Genealogy is a volunteer based group that has about 25 members and has been around for more than 10 years. Alanna Sablotny, staff liaison for the group, said members help people find resources and fill in the blind spots when building their family trees.

"We analyze the information they have initially and then connect them with resources that can be used to go back another generation based on our expertise," she said. "The research process can be very in depth so we help patrons interpret information and figure out the next step to learn more."

When helping someone build their family tree McCall said she starts by asking for information about their grandparents.

"If they're still living then I’ll ask about the great grandparents and what part of the country they were in,” she said. “With just that information I can go to ancestry.com and it’ll lead me to some sort of tree with more records. There's so much you can find even if you only know small details about who you're looking for."

Vickie Matteson, president of the Illinois Genealogical society in Springfield, said the internet and genealogy search sites have made it easier to access information.

“It was tough before the internet because we had to write letters or make calls to get records like a birth certificate or marriage license, and it could take a very long time,” she said. “These sites make it easier for people to get a lot of information but unfortunately some people think if it's not on the internet, it doesn’t exist. Sometimes you need to go to the courthouses because you may be looking for a marriage license from 1780 that you can't find on the internet but they have it in their books, it just hasn’t been digitized.”

Matteson said one of the greatest benefits of genealogy is that it can help connect the dots of one’s identity.

“Sometimes you’ll wonder why you do the things you do and as you research you realize ‘oh that's a family trait,’" she said. "There are things you look back at and say, 'wow that's why everybody’s so tough in my family, because of my grandmother and what she went through.' You don't know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been, and genealogy is a puzzle because you're always trying to find the answer."

Matteson said groups like friends of genealogy and the genealogical society are important because it gives people a sense of community.

"If I tell my sister I found a record she’ll roll her eyes but someone in my group will be excited for me," she said.

The ability to assist people with the research process and provide that sense of community can help if someone learns something new about their family that they weren't prepared for, McCall said.

"We meet a lot of people who are just starting their journey with genealogy and don't know where to turn so there's enough of us that have been doing it for a long time that can take them under our wing," she said.

Friends of Genealogy meets bimonthly on Saturdays at Chatham Library. For more information or join the group call 217-483-2713.

This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Friends of genealogy at Chatham library builds family trees