by Gena Philibert Ortega
Employment and business records can provide rich detail about the everyday lives of our ancestors. Even if your ancestor was a “farmer,” details about what farming was like during your ancestor’s era can provide you with a better understanding of their life and lead you to other records that may be of assistance to your research.
The following is a general overview of business and occupational records including a look at a few specific occupations. While these records and repositories are specific to researching occupations, some of the ideas also may be of assistance to you as you research other aspects of your family history.
Where do you find what your ancestor’s occupation was? The U.S. Federal Census can provide a glimpse at what type of occupation your ancestor was involved in. City directories also provide information. You can find city directories on genealogy database sites like WorldVitalRecords. Consult the website U.S. City Directories, http://www.uscitydirectories.com/ for information about repositories and the city directories they house in their collections. You can also check out Miriam Robbins Midkiff’s blog, Online City, County and Rural Directories at http://onlinedirectorysite.blogspot.com/. She provides links to where you can find directories online.
Don’t forget to consult obituaries and newspaper articles for information about your ancestor’s work life. Many of the resources we currently use as genealogists include a space for the person who is filling out the form to include information about their occupation. The World War I Draft Registration includes a place for the registrant to add their occupation. For 20th century ancestors, you can order their Social Security Application and see what occupation they listed on that form. However, keep in mind that this will only provide you their occupation at the time they applied for a Social Security card.
Finding your Ancestor
In general you will want to explore various sources online and in the “real world” to find information about your ancestor’s occupation. Do not make the mistake of thinking everything is online. Only a small portion of information is online, the rest can be found in various “real world” places. Places to conduct research include: the library in the place your ancestor is from, the library where you are located, museums, state archives and libraries, county archives, courthouses, organizational archives and libraries, and more. For my checklist on repositories, check out my blog at http://philibertfamily.blogspot.com/2009/05/places-to-find-documents-records-and.html.
When thinking about where business or occupational records for your ancestor may be located, consider what is involved with the occupation and groups that your ancestor may have been involved with as a result of his or her occupation. Was there a union that the ancestor would have had to join? Would they have been a member of a professional or a fraternal organization? Did that occupation or business have a professional or trade magazine or newspaper? Did that business involve interactions with other businesses or the government? Are there government records involving that occupation like a business license, fictitious business name or tax records?
There are some online resources that can help you better understand your ancestor’s occupation. Google Scholar, http://scholar.google.com/ , can lead you to “scholarly” books and journal articles about your ancestor’s occupation. While you probably won’t find information about your specific ancestor in Google Scholar, you can use it as a resource to learn more about your ancestor’s occupation. In one case someone told me about researching his ancestor, a sheriff, and finding a book through Google Scholar about sheriffs from the ancestor’s locality that included his picture.
Google Books, http://books.google.com/books, is a great place to look for local histories and histories of an occupation or business. Don’t forget to look for books that may have to do with a related industry or pursuit. One of my ancestor’s brothers owned a cotton mill. I was looking at a quilt book one day that featured quilts from the state the cotton mill was in and it included a picture and history of that cotton mill.
You can look for images of your ancestor’s specific business or occupation on sites such as Google Images, http://images.google.com/. Look for images that include examples of the industry and how the work was done.
Occupations
Remember that when looking for occupational records you will be looking at sources in many places. Don’t forget to do a locality search on the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC), http://www.loc.gov/coll/nucmc/, and find out what manuscripts exist for the location your ancestor lived in. Manuscripts include unpublished documents like grocery store ledgers, diaries, business receipts, correspondence, diaries/journals, theses/dissertations, etc.
To search on NUCMC go to the website and then in the middle column where it says “Searching Manuscripts” click on the link “Searching on OCLC WorldCat.”
Also try using Periodical Source Index (PERSI) and conduct a locality search to see what genealogy/historical newsletter articles might exist. PERSI is available to search through Ancestry and through Heritage Quest.
PERSI is a service of the Allen County Public Library and they index genealogy and historical newsletters. They only index the title, so you can search for a surname but you probably will have better luck with locality or even an occupation.
Railroad
Was your ancestor working on the railroad all their live long day? There are some places to check for railroad records. For those with railroad workers I would recommend the book, Directory of North American Railroads by Holly T. Hansen. This book contains the addresses of 1600 repositories that hold railroad records. You can purchase this book through Holly’s company, Family History Expos at http://www.fhexpos.com/store/product.php?id=652.
There is a great article about researching railroad employees on Genealogy Today entitled Locating Railroad Employee Records at http://www.genealogytoday.com/guide/railroad-employees.html. This article also includes links for railroad employee records, related organizations, employee magazine online and additional records. Some of the records linked to are available at Genealogy Today. Remember with most online genealogy databases you can search for free-you just have to pay to see the “hits.”
You might want to consider checking out railroad maps, especially if your ancestor “rode the rails” for his occupation. Some sites where you can see railroad maps are The Library of Congress Railroad Map Collection 1825-1900 at http://rs6.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/rrhtml/rrhome.html . The Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum, http://cprr.org/, has some great 19th century maps that will be a bonus to your research.
If your ancestor worked for the Railroad after 1936, you could request records from the Railroad Retirement Board, http://www.rrb.gov/mep/genealogy.asp. However, you can only request the records of those that are deceased. It is a $27.00, payable in advance, to have the Board look for records for your ancestor and that fee is non-refundable even if they find no records.
Was your ancestor in a railroad accident? The National Archives (NARA) has records of railroad accidents from 1911-1984. To learn more about railroad records at NARA, consult the article, Riding the Rails Up Paper Mountain: Researching Railroad Records in the National Archives at http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1997/spring/railroad-records-1.html. You can also find details of accidents from newspapers local to the accident site and sometimes even farther. My grandfather was an engineer for a railroad and was involved in a large accident that occurred in the desert region of Riverside County, California. The details of the accident were reported as far away as Los Angeles County. Don’t forget to look in surrounding areas for the accident coverage.
I would also recommend looking at collections housed at museums, including railroad museums and historical societies as possibilities for additional records.
Inventor
Did your ancestor invent something? Did they apply for a patent for that invention? You may want to check the Google Patent Search, http://www.google.com/patents. This patent index allows you to search over 7 million patents. Once you find the one you are interested in you can read the application online or download it as a pdf file. You can also cross reference it to patents for similar inventions.
Coal Mining
One website that includes links to coal mining resources is Genealinks at http://www.genealinks.com/coalminers.htm. A website about Southeastern Ohio coal mining can be found at http://www.ohgen.net/ohathens/coalhistory.htm. For those with UK coal miners, there is a fabulous site called The Coal Mining History Resource Center at http://www.cmhrc.co.uk/site/home/. This website includes a database of UK mining deaths, a pictorial of a day in the life of a miner in 1939, mine location maps in Great Britain and the Isle of Mann. A description of Scottish miners can be found at http://www.ancestralscotland.com/research-your-roots/working-men-and-women/coalminers/. A History of coal mining in Nova Scotia can be found at http://www.mininghistory.ns.ca/.
The Department of Mining for each state (United States) generally published an annual report that detailed information about a mine and can include any mining accidents and the names of those who were involved. These may be kept at a historical society, library or a state archive or state library. An example of one such report is the West Virginia Dept. of Mines and Mining Annual Report for 1883 found at Internet Archive at http://www.archive.org/details/annualreportdept19west. The 1911 version can be found at Google Books at http://tinyurl.com/yjaz74d.
A list of reports for Pennsylvania can be found at http://tinyurl.com/ygqlp5a.
To learn about coal mining research, read the article, Coal Mining Research in the United States by Tim Pinnick , originally published in the NGS magazine (July/August/September 2006) at http://www.blackcoalminerheritage.net/pdfs/NGS_coalminer_article.pdf.
Farmer
Agricultural Schedules, part of the non-population schedules to the U.S. Federal Census, provide an example of a county and what farming and other activities happened there. For an explanation of the non-population schedules, consult the National Archives at http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/census/nonpopulation/.
You can read these Agricultural census reports at http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/Historical_Publications/index.asp, beginning with 1840 and ending with 1950. Just as a side note, this website has the 1840 report that includes the list of Revolutionary War pensioners, listed by name and state.
Resources for researching an occupation are so vast, they could fill a book. To learn more about researching business records consult the book, The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy by Loretta Dennis Szucs and Sandra Hargreaves Luebking . If you do not own a copy, you can read the chapter on business records, starting on page 99 at Google Books, http://tinyurl.com/ykouwfe.
