Variations in Record Groups by Locality

Lifeís events are basically the same regardless of the locality involved. For example, people everywhere are born and die. Many men serve in the military, and many individuals eventually marry. However, the records kept of those events can vary widely from country to country or even from region to region within a country.

Just as a builder may use different building materials according to climate and customs of the area, family historians must adjust the use of their building materials, the basic record groups, according to the localities of residence of the families they are researching.

For example, county histories, so prevalent in the Midwest, are much less prevalent in the South. So, when a family historian is reconstructing a family from Indiana, they use county histories to help them build the outer walls of this structure. But when the family was from Alabama, other building materials may have to be substituted because of the shortage of the building material known as "county histories."

Variations in Record Groups by Time Period

Contractors today have a much larger range of building materials to select from than ever before due to many new man-made products. Reconstructing a family of the twentieth century also allows the family historian the luxury of a larger variety of available building materials. As the research extends to earlier generations, the variety of family history building materials becomes more limited.