In Her Own Words – Lives of Women Through Diaries, Journals and so much more
We love to explore the lives of our ancestors. Documenting our female ancestors can often prove more challenging. They are less likely to appear in many of the public records created at the time – land, estate, court, tax records, and more. One great resource to learn more about our overshadowed female ancestors is via their own words. Personally written diaries, journals, correspondence, and more as found in private collections a.k.a. manuscript collections at many archives and library collections, are priceless. Until recently with the advent of Archivegrid and online digitized finding aids, it had been challenging to Identify and locate these types of materials. These personally written records are now more accessible than ever to us. Let’s explore how you identify and access these materials as relevant to your research. We’ll explore the lives of a few southern women through the personally written documents which they created, and which survive. These women provide unique perspectives on not only their lives and on those women living in their community.
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Diane L Richard
Diane L Richard, MEng & MBA, Mosaic Research and Project Management (MosaicRPM), www.mosaicrpm.com, has been doing genealogy research since 1987 and, since 2004, professionally focused on the records of North Carolina and southern states. She regularly contributes to Internet Genealogy. She has authored over 500 articles on genealogy topics. In 2019 she published, Tracing Your Ancestors — African American Research: A Practical Guide via Moorshead Publications. Since 2016 she has been the editor of the North Carolina Genealogical Society (NCGS) journal.
As a speaker, she has delivered webinars and in-person talks about the availability and richness of records documenting southerners, pursuing formerly enslaved ancestors and their descendants, genealogical research tips, techniques, tools and strategies, under-utilized resource collections [online and on-the-ground], and much more. She has appeared on Who Do You Think You Are? (Bryan Cranston episode).
She is co-leader of Tar Heel Discoveries, www.tarheeldiscoveries.com, started in 2018, which offers guided North Carolina genealogical research programs providing participants targeted, focused research assistance leading to new family discoveries. She is a board member of NC Historical Records Online (NCHRO), http://nchistoricalrecords.org/, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing public access to high-quality images of original records and other related information useful to researching North Carolina history and genealogy.
