ERASTUS SNOW AND FAMILY
FROM THEIR LETTERS
©2015 by Donald R. Snow
Sections of the Class Notes
- Welcome and Introduction
- About Our Erastus Snow Family Letter Collection
- Powerpoint About Erastus Snow and Family From
Their Letters
- About Letter Collections in Family History
- Conclusions
This page was last updated 2015-08-14.
Return to the Utah Valley Technology and
Genealogy Group Home Page or Don's Class Listings Page
.
WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION
- Instructor is Donald R. Snow ( snowd@math.byu.edu
) of Provo and St. George.
- These notes with active Internet links are
posted on http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
, along with a set of notes about dealing with Letter
Collections in Family History and the ERASTUS
SNOW FAMILY LETTERS COLLECTION.
- Tips: (1) To form an icon on your
desktop to open your browser and go directly to
this (or any other) webpage, drag the icon from in
front of the address in your browser onto your
desktop. (2) To open a link from here
in another tab, but keep your place in these
notes, hold down the Control key while clicking
the link.
- Problems for today:
- What do we learn about Erastus Snow and his
life and times from his personal and family
letters?
- What can you do with a collection of
letters?
ABOUT OUR ERASTUS SNOW FAMILY LETTER
COLLECTION
- About 225 personal and family letters
- Have several hundred more business, official,
and church letters that we haven't transcribed
yet.
- Sources of the letters
- Passed down in our families, some only in
typed form, so we don't know where the originals
are
- Various libraries, including Church History
Library, BYU Special Colllections, U of U
Marriott Library
- Still need to determine sources of some
- Transcriptions are posted on my website (above)
and are completely every-word searchable there
- Much editing still needed to identify some
individuals and places mentioned
POWERPOINT ABOUT ERASTUS SNOW AND FAMILY FROM
THEIR LETTERS
ABOUT LETTER COLLECTIONS IN FAMILY HISTORY
- See my other sets of notes on my website for
many helps and more details about all of this
- Letter collections only discuss events and
family life when someone is away, so they don't
give a complete picture of the family.
- You never know if your collection is complete,
since you may not have found all, some weren't
saved, and some may have been destroyed on
purpose.
- Where to find letters - family, libraries,
newspapers, books
- Organizing, naming, and scanning
- Transcribing
- Editing
- Analyzing the collection
- What they tell us
- Glimpses into the lives, events, and
personalities of the people
- Preserve things like reactions to historical
events, language, and sayings of the times
- Genealogical information
- They "turn the hearts of the children to the
fathers"
CONCLUSIONS
- Letter collections give a summary of the life of
the family, especially if family members were
apart and the family wrote many letters
- Provides a database that can be searched for
names, events, locations, etc.
- May lead you to family history
information about other family members
mentioned
- Turns your heart to your fathers
Return to the Utah Valley Technology and
Genealogy Group Home Page or Don's Class Listings Page
.