After death, those living in committed relationships had no legal control on how their families chose to deal with their remains. Their partners, not being legally married had no rights or say. Often lovers were split up by their surviving family members.
In rare cases, before the late 20th century, you […]
From Newspapers, we also can find the ever-helpful obituary. I love a good obituary that takes the trouble of listing all living relatives and all pre-deceased relatives. Sometimes there an unexpected answer in these details, such as half-siblings or blended families. What was once confusing relations in a tree can […]
Yesterday I had the fortunate opportunity to give my LGBTQ Genealogy presentation at Ancestry’s San Francisco office.
On the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, 28 June 2019, I gave the same presentation at the Sutro Library at the invitation of Dvorah Lewis. […]
Hopefully, our ancestors didn’t appear in the news because of a police raid, but in their local gay community paper. Many LGBTQ Newspapers have started since Stonewall.
Here are newspapers and magazines serving the LGBTQ community.
Two of the earliest LGBTQ publications were from
This month, on the 28th of June, we mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village, New York. Stonewall was the watershed event sparking the modern gay rights movement. Our planet has come a long way in 50 years in acceptance of Lesbian, Gay, […]
Newspapers are a major resource for genealogists that can fill in personal history like no other record can. The same is true for finding LGBTQ family, especially if they had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Police raids on queer clubs was […]
When researching materials for this LGBTQ Genealogy lecture I came across a treasured photo blog called HomoHistory.com. The site, published by Jeffery Gent, preserves and shares vintage photographs of Gay & Lesbian people. There are 100’s of beautiful and touching images on this site. I strongly […]
The term “Partner” was used in State and Federal census enumerations in the 20th Century. An example is the 1915 New York census entry for Anne Clark and Adele Albro, enumerated as Partners.
Use of the term “Partner” was vaguely defined in […]
Genealogists use census records to track individuals and families over time and place. Finding an ancestor living with the same partner over subsequent census records is a good clue that they were in a committed relationship. An example from last month’s blog is Willa Cather.
Willa was a Pulitzer price willing […]
One of the first records sets genealogists consult is the United States Decennial Census. The United States Census Bureau maintains a webpage for “Famous and Infamous Census Records” which highlights pages over the decades that list celebrities, both good and bad.
Amongst this listing we […]
