5 Genealogy Activities for May

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Throw open the windows—warm temperatures are here to stay! Breathe some fresh air into your house and your research with these projects that will keep you busy all month long.

1. Find (and Visit) Ancestral Homes

Family historians study the whole family—people, but also the places and objects important to them. House histories collect information about the places your ancestors called home: when the house was built, what it was made of, who lived there (and when), what landmarks were nearby, and maybe even how it was decorated.

You can use many of the same records to study houses as you do to study the people who lived in them. Author Chris Staats recommends the following:

Deeds and other land records
Permits
Tax records
Sanborn maps and insurance records
Other historical maps (see No. 4)
Local and county histories
City directories

The US census includes the house number and street name for each dwelling, which can serve as a starting place. Watch out for inconsistencies in census indexes, which may not have correctly transcribed addresses.

Think beyond the houses your ancestors lived in. Did your aunt and uncle host Christmas dinner at their house? Or maybe your family rented out the same cabin for vacation each summer, or were weekly attendees at a specific church’s services. Also consider schools, businesses, or (if your ancestors served) military bases.

If it’s in your budget, you could plan a trip to an ancestral homeland or even host a family reunion there. The town or countryside may look quite different today than they did when your ancestors lived there, but walking the streets where your ancestors lived can give you a connection that few other experiences can.

2. Virtually Visit Places

I’ve already talked about the importance of places in your research. While heritage travel can be immensely meaningful, it’s not always practical. Travel costs or mobility issues might keep you from trekking to ancestral locales. Or maybe you can’t find the exact modern location of your ancestor’s abode.

Fortunately, technology can help you virtually “visit” even far-fling places from the comfort of your home. Google Earth and Google Maps give you the ability to see a “street” view of places photographed by Google’s sprawling network of employees. From Google Maps, type in an address to be transported to an interactive view of that place, and even click forward and backward to other locations on the street.

You might also be able to take virtual walkthrough tours of museums, libraries or archives. One such example is the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland, a portal that attempts to virtually reconstruct a Dublin courthouse that burned more than 100 years ago.

3. Study Military History

Memorial Day (celebrated in the United States on the last Monday of May) calls to mind those who have died while serving in the armed forces. Note that Memorial Day honors those who died fighting in military service; all veterans are honored on Veterans Day in November.

Your ancestors may be among those who were killed in action, so take time to study the details of their service this month. Military records are generally organized by wider conflict, so knowing their age and a bit about US military history will help you identify wars they might have fought in. Documents include draft registration cards, service records (collected as CMSRs prior to the Civil War) and pension records, in addition to sources you might have at home such as medals and correspondence.

At Your Service: A Military Genealogy Research Guide

Launch an offensive to discover your family’s military history—but first, arm yourself with our guide to records and resources.

Cemetery records can be valuable resources about fallen service members. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) sponsors the National Cemetery Administration, which has a database of burials from VA cemeteries. (The site also publishes a list of Memorial Day commemorations at its cemeteries.) US military dead from World Wars I and II who are buried overseas can be found through the American Battle Monuments Commission.

Note that many 20th-century service records were destroyed in a fire at the National Archives building in St. Louis in 1971. Discharge papers (called DD-214 forms) can serve as partial substitutes for destroyed records; learn how to request them from the National Archives here.

You can also commemorate your ancestor’s sacrifice by creating an online tribute to them. Fold3, which specializes in military records, allows users to make profiles on its Military Honor Wall. View memorials others have created, or make your own using this tutorial.

4. Find Old Maps

While you’re researching family homes (No. 1), don’t forget to look for historical maps that cover the places your ancestors lived.

In addition to helping you find addresses and landmarks, historical maps give valuable context about a place. Was the community urban or rural, and how far was it from other communities? What was the terrain like—flat or mountainous, river-run or dry, landlocked or seaside? Was it along a major migration route, railroad, or highway?

Maps can also supplement more-conventional genealogy documents. Enumeration district maps indicate how a community was recorded in the US census, and plat maps cross-reference land records like deeds. You can even track border changes by comparing maps from different time periods, helping you better understand where to find records.

Explore maps through various websites, notably the David Rumsey Map Collection and the Library of Congress. Check in with libraries and archives near your ancestral hometown as well.

5. Digitize Your Photos

May is National Photo Month, making it the perfect opportunity to evaluate your photo collection. Have you scanned all the photos in your possession, or do you still have unorganized photos lying in a pile? Save those photos for future generations—and make them easier to share with relatives today—by digitizing them.

Scanning photos may seem stressful and overwhelming. But with the right workflow, you can digitize and manage even massive photo collections. We have tons of resources on our “Preserving Your Family Photos” landing page.

Give your newly scanned photos meaningful names, and look into options for adding metadata and captions. Create multiple copies of your files and store them across devices to prevent losing them to hard-drive failure or natural disasters.

Make sure you’re storing the original photos in archival-safe materials and away from environmental hazards like direct sunlight, rapidly changing temperatures or humidity, and pests. Instead of storing them in the dangerous magnetic albums of old, curate an archival-safe album or create photo book using digital versions.

Last update, April 2024.