How Can a Presidential Library Help With Your Genealogical Research?

Even if your family had nothing at all to do with any of the United States presidents, there may be material in a presidential library that will help you “put the meat on the family skeleton.” As your family lived through events like World War II or the Civil Rights Movement, what happened to them as individuals was part of the larger history of our country that is being saved and explained in these institutions. Ready to learn about presidential libraries? You can learn about them and so much more at the StLGS Family History Conference coming up next weekend, Saturday, 14 May 2022. Read on for details!

In modern times, as presidents leave the White House, they look for a way to preserve their documents, artifacts, and other historical materials accumulated during their presidencies.

(Photo to the right is the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas, https://www.archives.gov/presidential-libraries/contact/libraries.html)

There are currently fifteen presidential libraries in the U.S., and they fall under the jurisdiction of the National Archives. 

NARA currently administers libraries for the following modern presidents:

• Herbert Hoover
• Franklin D. Roosevelt
  
• Harry S. Truman
• Dwight D. Eisenhower
• John F. Kennedy
• Lyndon B. Johnson
• Richard Nixon
• Gerald R. Ford
• Jimmy Carter
• Ronald Reagan
• George Bush
• William J. Clinton
• George W. Bush
• Barack Obama
• Donald J. Trump

The locations and contents of these libraries vary widely. All but the last two have actual physical locations that can be visited and used by researchers. President Obama's library will be in Chicago, Illinois; to date, there is no location announced for President Trump. For an idea of what is available, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, in Hyde Park, New York, “maintains over 17 million pages of documents, 150,000 audiovisual items, and 50,000 books.” Included are personal papers from both Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and many organizations and people who interacted with them. A wide variety of documents and photographs are also online. The Ronald Reagan library in Simi Valley, California, houses more than a million photographs, 22,000 videos, 20,000 audio recordings, and 600,000 reels of movie film covering Reagan’s time as governor of California through his presidency. (Information from https://www.archives.gov/presidential-libraries)

Regardless of where you live, you may find a presidential library close by and it may be very much worth your while to explore it. We can learn much more about these national treasures by attending the St. Louis Genealogical Society's hybrid special event, the fiftieth annual Family History Conference on Saturday, 14 May 2022 at the Maryland Heights Community Center in St. Louis. Presidential libraries will be just one of eight featured lectures that day, and, if you cannot attend in person, all of the lectures will be recorded and available to watch online after the conference at your leisure.

All of the information you need to register is on our website. You can still register for the in-person conference until this coming Wednesday, 11 May, and the Zoom livestreaming registration remains open until the day of the conference. Dr. David McDonald, our featured speaker, will be giving us valuable information about these under-utilized repositories, and, perhaps, inspire you to “Get in Your Car and Go”!