I have been assisting in local archives for nearly a year at this point, and I have gained some lessons which may be helpful to you in researching for ancestry. Here are some key lessons to take away.

A quick note! – If you are going to see these documents in person, be mindful that they can often be very fragile depending on their age and condition. You will also be required to have clean hands before handling them as well. The archivists will take you through this, but it is worth knowing beforehand too.

University Archives

Universities receive donations or ‘accessions’ in a wide range of categories- not simply archives relating to prestigious people or events. It is not uncommon to have letters of correspondence. Sometimes they are between locally important people. Other times, private documents get handed over to universities for historical preservation. It might be worth checking the university archive catalogue in your area to see whether they might have something from your family. If you are struggling to find something, contact the staff and they may be able to direct you more closely.

Even more importantly, if you know that your ancestors studied at a particular university or were professors, there could be class photographs yet unknown to your family. Another great reason to get in touch.

School Boards and Councils

Part of my experience with council archives specifically has been through school board letters. These letters, often addressed to the clerk, can contain an array of fascinating information. Your ancestor may have been a pupil at one of the schools or possibly a member of staff. You could find out if there was any corporal punishment issues surrounding a young schoolboy in your family tree. You could find out about an ancestor, if they were a teacher, assisting at a school for disabled children, or doing extra-curricular activities such as sports or additional tutoring.

These letters that I was exposed to were a mixture of hilarious to quite tragic, depending on the circumstances. The petty arguments between teachers were always an entertaining read! That may well be a part of your history too. Similarly, on the sadder side, many children grew up in poverty and had to apply for financial assistance to make it through school. Letters from school boards can show all of us in a way that a census record will usually not.

Other Unusual Documents

The above advice was pertaining more so to letters or photographs, but you could find all sorts of other archives and items. For example, I have come across items such as sheet music from a student in the nineteenth century, lecture notes (again from a student), to gaming books from large estates. These are all much more unique and specific, and can add even greater clarity as to what your family did for education and work.

The Problem of Literacy

I should say that most of these types of material will limit the search to more middle-class or wealthy ancestors within your family trees. They may have been the ones writing the letters or notes, which places them in a certain privileged social sphere. Finding information on working-class ancestors becomes trickier due to the fact that many people were not fortunate enough to gain literacy. Having said this, these documents will still be of use if you think creatively.

As I mentioned before, school pupils had a range of social upbringings. Your ancestor may not have written the letters themselves, but they might be the subject within the document. A photograph found at a university or council archive can show people of all walks of life. Provided that you know what connection your family has to that area, requesting photographs could still be helpful.

Conclusion

I hope that I have shown a few ways in which your local archives or universities can be of immense value if you have the right information at hand. We can get too narrowly focused on simply tracing birth or marriage records, and forget that some of the best information lies in the more unsuspecting places. It would probably require that you know a fair bit of information about your family tree already. Even so, delving into archives will bring a much better picture as to who they were and the legacy they have left behind.