An Archive gem: Genealogical Society library

At the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center, we respond to a lot of questions by email and in person from people who want to know more about their family history. We love the opportunity to help fill in gaps in people’s knowledge, and we accomplish this by finding ancestors’ names in the historical county records (deeds, tax books, estate papers) and in the Cape Girardeau County Genealogical Society’s library.

Full disclosure: I am a Genealogical Society officer — corresponding secretary. I work with Society librarian Dorothy Rowley to screen books donated to the Archive (or new history books published) to add to the library. Teamwork. Also, other research sites in the county have their own impressive libraries to check out: the County History Center in Jackson, State Historical Society of Missouri in Cape Girardeau, Cape Girardeau Public Library, to name just a few.

Step into the Archive Center and you’ll be greeted by the staff members and the genealogy room. Four tables, three desks with computers and other equipment for research, and 11 bookcases holding more than 2,300 volumes on history relevant to Cape Girardeau County.

An index on each table details the books’ title, author and call number. It starts broadly, with United States history, then branches into state histories (alphabetically), and under each state history are county histories. Books on family histories are next. Several volumes of “Dead Guy Files” round out the collection. These files contain papers written by Southeast Missouri State University students profiling prominent people in the region’s history.

The books themselves are on varied topics, as you might guess. Cemetery surveys, church records and directories, census records from neighboring counties, diaries, history books on various towns, narratives outlining migration patterns (helpful for establishing context around one’s family history), indexed obituaries from Cape Girardeau County newspapers, and so much more. The Carolinas, Pennsylvania, Texas, Ohio, the Dakotas, all saw families migrate here, so they too are among states represented.

Many past and current members of the Society have also written books or transcribed information, and those volumes are each included in the library — several co-edited by Southeast Missourian historian Sharon Sanders.

The Genealogical Society’s quarterly newsletter, The Collage of Cape County, back issues are also in the library, and this is another rich vein to mine for tidbits on family history (which, really, is the region’s history).

Then there are the family binders — the “overflow,” as we call it, because there’s no room for it up front. Each binder contains genealogical charts and some narratives on families with deep roots in the county, and there are well over 50. Each was compiled by former members of the Society and can help a researcher avoid doubling effort — or provide a good resource for fact-checking their own work.

As to the society itself, it is a not-for-profit organized in May 1970, dedicated to education in the field of genealogy. Annual membership dues are $10 for an individual, $15 for a couple, and life memberships are available for a one-time payment of $250.

Our next meeting starts at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 24, at the Archive Center, 112 E. Washington St. in Jackson. Charlotte Slinkard, director of the Cape Girardeau Heritage Museum, will present on her new book, “The Girardeaus: Eighteenth-Century French Colonials in Upper Louisiana”. Join us!