Ancestry.com School Yearbooks



Locating by whatever method a school yearbook on an ancestor can be such a treasure. No matter which it was middle grade, high school or college, it could reveal little known facts about your relative.

Using the Ancestry.com collection of 324,000 yearbooks and more than 52 million pages you have a good shot of locating one or more ancestors. To help you in that search, use a variety of the ancestor’s names and their spelling. You might know your grandfather as ‘Richard’ but in school, he was ‘Dickie’.

When looking check the state listing, not solely a town or county. Your relative could have attended school miles from their home. That includes if the family near another state, on the border.

Never just look for those with a name listing. Your ancestor may have been pictured but name not labeled on other yearbook pages.

See if there are other family members with different surnames in that same yearbook – say a cousin or two.

This expanded Ancestry.com yearbook collection cover 1900 to 1990. It is available with the fee-based subscription. It may also be available through a county historical or genealogical society or a public library. Always check.  Start with the large Ancestry. com Yearbooks.

Photos: 1939 Haverhill, MA Yearbook page for Elsie T. Kershaw; and 1919 Towson College, MD Yearbook page for Mae Musselman.

Related FamilyTree.com Blogs:

Yearbooks

Back to School for Your Ancestors

Finding a Lost Cousin at a School

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