Do you know that you have 64 great-great-great-great-grandparents? That’s a lot of ancestors who each had their own life story.
The Cumberland County Public Library’s Local and State History Department can help you get started in the quest to find out more about the lives of your ancestors.
October is Family History Month, and to commemorate this observance, the Local and State History Department is hosting Family History Day on Saturday, Oct. 14, at Headquarters Library.
Come learn the importance and value of preserving family history, plus some tips and tricks for documenting family history to help you in your discovery. Participants will learn how to create a family history featuring oral interviews, genealogy trees and family history records.
Cheri Molter of the North Carolina History Center on the Civil War, Emancipation and Reconstruction will give a presentation at 1 p.m. on the importance of recording your family history. At 3 p.m., the library will host a meeting of the Cumberland County Genealogical Society when members will discuss how libraries can help with genealogical research.
Participants can record a short oral history of their family from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. At a later time, these recorded oral histories will be given to the family members for their own records.
Family History Day is part of the history department’s Cumberland County Oral Histories project, which is made possible by a grant from Friends of the Cumberland County Public Library.
The Local and State History Department is collaborating with the River Jordan Council to conduct oral history interviews for the downtown civil rights protests in the late 1950s and 1960s. If you are interested in participating, please reach out to the Local and State History Department about this opportunity.
Family History Day will be from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Oct. 14 in the Local and State History Room. Oral history interviews will take place from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. To reserve your time slot to record your family history or for more information, call 910-483-7727, Ext. 1365, or go to cumberland.librarycalendar.com/events/month/2023/10.
