The Rockland Room: Guide to Resources of the New City Library Local History Collection: Books

Proven Solutions for Your Research Challenges Has your family history research hit a brick wall? Marsha Hoffman Rising's best-selling book The Family Tree Problem Solver has the solutions to help you find the answers you seek. Inside you'll find: Ideas on how to find vital records before civil registration Tips for finding ''missing'' ancestors on censuses Instructions for investigating collateral kin to further your pedigree A look at advanced court records and how they can help you find answers Work-arounds for lost or destroyed records Techniques for correctly identifying and researching ancestors with common names

The quest for roots has been an enduring American preoccupation. Over the centuries, generations have sketched coats of arms, embroidered family trees, established local genealogical societies, and carefully filled in the blanks in their bibles, all in pursuit of self-knowledge and status through kinship ties. This long and varied history of Americansâe(tm) search for identity illuminates the story of America itself, according to François Weil, as fixations with social standing, racial purity, and national belonging gave way in the twentieth century to an embrace of diverse ethnicity and heritage. Seeking out oneâe(tm)s ancestors was a genteel pursuit in the colonial era, when an aristocratic pedigree secured a place in the British Atlantic empire. Genealogy developed into a middle-class diversion in the young republic. But over the next century, knowledge of oneâe(tm)s family background came to represent a quasi-scientific defense of elite âeoeAnglo-Saxonsâe#157; in a nation transformed by immigration and the emancipation of slaves. By the mid-twentieth century, when a new enthusiasm for cultural diversity took hold, the practice of tracing oneâe(tm)s family tree had become thoroughly democratized and commercialized. Today, Ancestry.com attracts over two million members with census records and ship manifests, while popular television shows depict celebrities exploring archives and submitting to DNA testing to learn the stories of their forebears. Further advances in genetics promise new insights as Americans continue their restless pursuit of past and place in an ever-changing world.