Using Archives to Fill the Gaps in Your Ancestor's Timeline

Using Archives to Fill the Gaps in Your Ancestor's Timeline

Do you have gaps in your ancestor's timeline? Are you curious about what your ancestor's did in-between the time the census was taken? You might just find what your looking for in the many records collections of an archive.

Lyle Family Records Collection, Houston County ,TN. Archives

Working daily in an archive, I get to work with many kinds of records that are not your "normal" genealogical records. A lot of these unique records are not online and have to be sought out by the genealogist. Records in archives can help you fill in the gaps in your ancestor's timeline.

As a genealogists for the past 27 years, I have been working diligently on my own family history and that of my husbands. Recently, I was able to combine both archives work and genealogy research all in one with a fantastic result.

The Stewart County, Tennessee Archives is just one of our wonderful archives here in Tennessee and the area where my husband's family lived back in the 1800's. I recently became aware of a packet of records that had been found in the Stewart County, Tennessee Archives for a Jesse Glasgow (1816-1892), my husband's great great grandfather. I requested copies of these original records that included over 50 pages of documents and receipts that have never been microfilmed and are not online anywhere.

Inside the Stewart County, Tennessee Archives. Photo courtesy Stewart County, Tennessee Archives

One of the documents that was sent to me was a copy of a receipt for a Louisiana Lottery Ticket that Jesse Glasgow had purchased in June 1888. Jesse bought 1 ticket and the ticket number was #92074.

Courtesy Stewart County, Tennessee Archives, Jesse Glasgow Louisiana Lottery Ticket Notification, June 9, 1888

I found it interesting that Jesse Glasgow was buying a lottery ticket from Louisiana while living in Tennessee. And I didn't even know there was a lottery in the 1800's. So I did some research and found that the Louisiana Lottery was a very controversial event in the history of the State of Louisiana. You can read about the Louisiana Lottery here: http://www.nola.com/175years/index.ssf/2011/09/1888_the_louisiana_lottery_was.html

It is not known if Jesse Glasgow won anything from the Louisiana Lottery but the fact that he bought a ticket and I have a copy of the receipt from the Stewart County, Tennessee Archives helps me to document an event in his life that happened between the 1880 and 1900 census records. I had nothing recorded for Jesse between these census years and now I do because of a county archive with records that they have archived and preserved.

Courtesy "The Times-Picayune" Newspaper Photographs, an example of a Louisiana State Lottery Ticket, May 8, 1888

Remember: It's Not All Online, Contact or Visit An Archive Today!


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