Funeral Programs ... another neat family history research resource

It’s amazing how you read a FB post or e-mail or just playing around on a website and all of a sudden it makes you think of a resource you’ve never used or rarely think of using!

This just happened to me yesterday.  I was visiting the ever-growing Digital NC site (which has a completely different and fun interface now) which has a great collection of directories, yearbooks, newspapers, and more, when I “stumbled” across Chatham County Funeral Programs, described as:

The Chatham County Funeral Programs exhibit documents the lives and deaths of several generations of African American Chatham County residents. The collection was established with the donation of nearly 800 programs to the Chatham County Historical Association by Ms. Annie Ruth Burnette in 2011. 

These are just really neat and give you information that you might not find elsewhere, not even in an obituary, assuming one was published.

As you can imagine, it got me wondering if there are other collections of Funeral Programs available to researchers?  There are many collections, many of which are offline. 

1. Obituary and Funeral Program Collection, 1962-2010 - The Black ... (the blackarchives.org, South Florida – not online)
2. African American Funeral Programs of San Antonio: About this ... (The Portal to Texas History – online)
3. AAHGS Funeral Programs (index online)
4. African American Funeral Programs from the East Central Georgia ... (online)
5. Obituary and Funeral Program Collection - BMRC Color Curtain ... (Chicago -- finding aid online)
6. African-American Funeral Programs (Durham, NC – index online)
7. Funeral program collection offers insight into community (Augusta GA – article)
8. African American Funeral Program Collections (post by Ancestor Callings – mentions various collections)

The first entries discovered were ALL collections of African-American Funeral Programs.  This makes me curious?  Is it different traditions amongst those of differing ethnicities and faiths?  Or, just an artifact of where effort has been put into creating such collections?

Do you know of a Funeral Program Collection?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

copyright © National Genealogical Society, 3108 Columbia Pike, Suite 300, Arlington, Virginia 22204-4370. http://www.ngsgenealogy.org.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Want to learn more about interacting with the blog, please read Hyperlinks, Subscribing and Comments -- How to Interact with Upfront with NGS Blog posts!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

NGS does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Republication of UpFront articles is permitted and encouraged for non-commercial purposes without express permission from NGS. Please drop us a note telling us where and when you are using the article. Express written permission is required if you wish to republish UpFront articles for commercial purposes. You may send a request for express written permission to [email protected]. All republished articles may not be edited or reworded and must contain the copyright statement found at the bottom of each UpFront article.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Follow NGS via Facebook, YouTube, Google+, Twitter

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to [email protected]