Genealogy Road Trip: Research Beyond the Internet

Episode Overview

Hittin’ the Bricks with Kathleen is the genealogy podcast that features your questions and her answers, helping researchers move beyond online databases and into the archives, collections, and communities where deeper family stories live. In this episode, host Kathleen Brandt gets honest about what researchers cannot afford to forget on a summer genealogy road trip—from choosing the right repositories to asking better questions than simply “Do you have my ancestor’s name?”

Using examples from research trips to Detroit and Ann Arbor, Kathleen explains why offline records are often the key to understanding the motivations, conflicts, migrations, and community ties that shaped ancestors’ lives.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn

•  Why online genealogy databases rarely tell the full story 
•  How to identify repositories worth visiting in person 
•  What kinds of offline records reveal context and motivation 
•  How archivists and advance preparation improve research results 
•  Why community history matters as much as individual records 

Topics Covered

•  The limits of online genealogy databases 
•  Researching letters, manuscripts, minutes, and special collections 
•  Prioritizing repositories by time period, topic, and community relevance 
•  Using AI tools to build realistic genealogy research itineraries 
•  Why calling ahead and consulting archivists saves time 
•  Detroit Public Library’s Burton Historical Collection 
•  Labor archives and society minutes as sources of conflict and motivation 
•  Ethnic community research and migration patterns 
•  Common genealogy road trip mistakes 
•  Avoiding unnecessary travel for records already available online 

Episode Discussion & Key Moments

Kathleen explains why many genealogy researchers reach a plateau when they rely only on searchable online databases. While digitized records provide access and convenience, they often miss the documents that explain why families moved, joined organizations, changed occupations, or became part of specific communities.

Drawing from research experiences in Detroit and Ann Arbor, Kathleen discusses how repositories containing manuscripts, labor records, organizational minutes, and ethnic community collections can uncover motivations and social context absent from census and vital records. She also highlights the importance of preparation—using AI tools, targeted planning, and archivist guidance to make research trips more productive.

The episode emphasizes that successful genealogy travel is not about visiting the largest number of libraries, but about identifying the repositories most connected to a family’s time period, occupation, migration path, or community network.

Key questions examined include:

•  What records are worth traveling to see in person? 
•  How do community archives change genealogical conclusions? 
•  Why do offline collections often explain migration and identity better than databases? 

Resources & Research Tools Mentioned

•  Detroit Public Library Burton Historical Collection 
•  Labor arch

Transcript

Welcome And Summer Trip Setup

John 0:00

Ladies and gentlemen from the depths of Flyver Country in the Heartland of America, the Kansas City on the other side of the mighty Moe. Welcome to Hitting the Bricks with Kathleen, the Do-It-Yourself Genealogy podcast with your questions and her answers. I am John, your humble hubby host, and today we'll be discussing what you can't forget on your summer genealogy road trip. There's a lot to unpack, so let's start hitting the bricks. Uh so we're two minutes behind schedule here.

Kathleen 0:32

We haven't even started.

John 0:35

Um you say that, other than the fact that I retired and I'm home a lot. What inspired your trip to Ann Arbor in Detroit, honey?

Kathleen 0:45

Because you're home a lot and you're retired. Okay.

John 0:49

Now we now we're done with the podcast.

Kathleen 0:51

We're not done yet, John.

John 0:53

Okay. You were saying about why you left town.

Kathleen 0:56

Why did I want to go out of town to do research?

John 0:59

Yes.

Kathleen 1:00

John, I was running away from you. No, I actually needed to go to Michigan. I just wanted to have it.

John 1:06

I just wanted to have it on tape. That's fine.

Kathleen 1:09

I just needed to go to Michigan. I had uh it was graduation weekend for the University of Michigan and Ann Arbor, which is I am a graduate of my master's degree. And I had a person who was graduating from it. Then I did not go to the graduation, but I did go to the family dinner and also catch up with some friends and do a lot of research.

John 1:31

So that that explains why you were missing the dog and I didn't notice at all. Well, I tell you, by the third day, Chewie had some real serious questions about where you were.

Kathleen 1:43

Chewie did.

John 1:45

Chewie, he kept on looking at me like, what have you done?

Kathleen 1:48

I always wondered that too, but Chewie and I won't talk about it.

John 1:52

That's all three of us often sit around, and I sit there wondering what I have done. What have I done? What have I done?

Kathleen 2:00

In this case, you've done nothing. I took a great genealogy trip.

John 2:06

Uh what was the what was the focus of your genealogical research?

Kathleen 2:11

I was looking at the different repositories, and what I came out with, which I've always spoken about, is you cannot stay online and think you're going to be able to tell your ancestors' story. You might be able to find some facts, military facts, birth date, census records, locations, but you can't tell the story. And so as I went uh from Detroit and went to Ann Arbor a couple days, I was able to really pull out great repository information. And that's what I want to talk about today.

John 2:46

Obviously, you advocate for getting away from the desk, getting away from the button clicking. But what's your number one why on that?

Kathleen 2:56

Because most of the records, the majority of the world's records, are not digitized and online. They are in the library. So this particular trip, I concentrated on university libraries, public libraries, and museum archives. So I just was looking for what else can I find about my clients or my subject matter? What else was out there? And how can I broaden the story? You know, in the military book that we're working on right now, I talk a lot about the story. What's your veteran's story? The real happenings in his life. Was he part of an organization? Was he active in something you didn't know about? Was he mentioned in labor records or church records that are not online and not digitized? These are the kind of things I was finding over and over again at the six repositories I visited.

John 3:58

I'm assuming there's some specific records, obviously, experiences that an ancestor may have had can't be replicated from the data that's online. That is correct. Yeah, what's an example of that?

Kathleen 4:12

Correspondence, personal letters.

John 4:14

Oh, there we go.

Kathleen 4:15

Yes, that's important. Why they migrated, that answer may be in those archives.

John 4:22

Especially with letters.

Kathleen 4:24

Especially with letters, official correspondences back home through attorneys. We find so much more about the personal life of our ancestors. We also understand the whys. We also understand community disputes, what was going on in their world at that point. As we're always looking for the women. There's nothing better than manuscripts and personal letters to learn about the wives and the daughters and the children. We always talk about pension collections, but as I was going through these letters, I also saw all kinds of community disputes and other kinds of correspondence from the wives or about the wife to someone who was not home. Like a veteran, like a veteran. Someone like a veteran who was out in the in the field. Because the women were exposed a lot more, who was sick, why they were sick, what kind of uh epidemic was going on in the community, those kind of things were were very important to me because I had children who were disappearing and I didn't know why. And that's how I actually decide which repository I'm I'm going to.

John 5:42

Okay, so your trip you had a limited amount of time. And so I I want to know how do you prioritize? So you had X amount of time in these places. How did you prioritize where to go?

Kathleen 5:55

I you mean as far as the repositories are concerned?

John 5:58

Well, not yeah, not to your friend's graduation or or what bar you were gonna hang out at. Yeah, I thought we'd keep it.

unknown 6:07

Okay.

Kathleen 6:08

I chose the ones that have the local community, local community, and um the action for the time frame. So one of the things I wanted to do was find out more about a particular community for laborers, for example. But I choose this wherever I'm going. It's like, okay, in this case, I'm going to Michigan. They were really big in the labor unions, and I was looking for a particular person, the upchurch person. And when I did that, I was able to uncover a repository, a library collection at Wayne State University. I looked for the time frame with the topic I needed. And I did that with church records, labor records. I'm looking for a particular time frame. Is it possible this person has the specific church records that I was looking for?

Pre-Planning With Archivists And Finding Aids

John 7:06

Did you know that before you went to Chicago? Or did you, or you know, before you got on the train? Or did you? When did you find this out?

Kathleen 7:13

I plan out my trip, John, and this is why we're having this conversation because summer research trips are coming up. I plan out this trip about two months in advance.

John 7:25

Okay.

Kathleen 7:26

I already have what repository I'm going to, who's the archivist that I need to speak with? What am I looking for? Where's their finding aids? I have already scoured what they have online, but I have also engaged an archivist.

John 7:44

Okay, so you've already talked to the people at the repositories. Okay, so do you pull up a um picturing you with a big uh Michigan yellow pages where you're just going through and looking for repositories? How does that work? How do you how do you find your targets? Because I'm assuming you don't know them off the top of your head.

Kathleen 8:04

Absolutely not. And but this is the day and age of artificial intelligence. So you just asked. Yes, Claude and Chat GPT.

John 8:15

Hey, hey Claude, I need some help on this.

Kathleen 8:18

And uh and they and I said, Can you write up an itinerary for me, even for what should I see as a genealogist? What might have the records I'm looking for, be specific, in Detroit. And what about Ann Arbor? Because I can also get to Ann Arbor.

John 8:34

How did how did AI do on that?

Kathleen 8:36

Excellent. They told me what public libraries, which historical libraries, it outlined for me the community, the labor union archives, which one will have the church records, and none of these to set the public library of Detroit was on my radar.

John 8:54

Wow. This this turns into advocating computer use for not using a computer for research, is that it can get you there and get you in the right place to do the physical research that needs to be done.

Kathleen 9:08

That's correct. And when I got there, if you're really organized, you would have them already pull the files. I did not. It was graduation weekend. I wasn't sure what day I was going to plan it around my social event.

John 9:22

No.

Kathleen 9:25

But I did. I was able to walk in, I got tours, I talked to, for example, a historical museum. We forget about historical museums. Within the museum, they also have archival information about our ancestors. So I was able to talk about that. Now, some of those are off-site though. So you can't just walk into a museum and say, I'd like to make an appointment and see these records. You have to get them in advance.

John 9:52

Where did you go first? Because I know you began in Detroit.

Kathleen 9:56

So first I went to the public library of Detroit that has 36 branches, but I just needed the main branch. And the main branch has a lot of collections in there, which is wonderful. I met with this lady named Laura Kennedy, and she was the archivist for the special collections. So those are the kind of questions I ask. Is that I asked, do you have a special collections? And do you have an archivist that's over that that I can talk to and connect with? And in this case, it was Laura Kennedy at the Detroit Public Library at the Main Branch. And the collection she is in is in the Burton Historical Collection, which was absolutely perfect for me.

John 10:40

Why was the Burton collection so important or so perfect?

Kathleen 10:43

Well, besides the fact it had a rare book collection, which I didn't have time to go through, it did have a lot of other information. So one of the main things I wanted to learn is how did that state recruit their soldiers for the Civil War?

John 11:00

For okay, for how did Michigan don't really think about Michigan in the Civil War?

Kathleen 11:05

Exactly. That is the issue, is we need to broaden our perspective of what was going on, and they did. And anytime I wanted to follow the money, they had that information, especially on things that were rare. It was just an unusual look. I'm looking for documents that might name a particular ancestor within some Civil War record. In a state that you don't think about the Civil War.

John 11:32

Yeah, generally not.

Kathleen 11:33

So that's the kind of things I did look at at the Public Library of Detroit. And I was able to find exactly what I was looking for, matter of fact. And my subject matter came up. Seriously? Yes, and I was able to find not only about him, but about his family and how they were taken care of. I was able to learn about World War I also, some more information on that. So with that Detroit Public Library, the main branch, I was able, at that collection, you would just be amazed. They also have stuff like the Performing Arts Collection. They had a collection on like the National Automotive Historical Collection, which I did also find my subject matters name in there that told me how where they stood and how they were active in it. There was quite a bit that I found, but that was the main part. My question was, how was he recruited? I know he got into the Civil War, but how and why?

John 12:36

You went to these repositories and you found a bunch of stuff, right? Yes. And you were very excited about it and very happy. Here's the big task. What did you find that you could not have possibly gotten from home?

Kathleen 12:51

All of that. That is not online. Seriously. No, they had the only copy. They had the only copy of a lot of documents. Willie, I mean, I went to one, they had the only copy of some uh correspondence of Thomas Jefferson, and they had the only copies of letters that are not online. They have never been digitized.

John 13:16

Wow. And are they just sitting in a box?

Kathleen 13:19

They're sitting in boxes. Some of them are not.

John 13:22

Okay, so but let me let me just get it out of my head. These are like archival boxes that these aren't like shoe boxes with stuff tossed in. Yeah.

Kathleen 13:35

No, but they're organized.

John 13:38

I just have these images of like, you know, Thomas Jefferson corresponding with somebody and they're in a shoebox in the basement of a library somewhere, but that's not what's going on, right?

Kathleen 13:48

No, they are cataloged. The the collection is cataloged, the finding aid is there. You have to show up to see it. Or some of them will copy stuff for you and send it to you, but they also have restrictions. Like one of the repositories I went to will only copy up to 250 pages per year. I believe that was at University Ann Arbor's uh one of their repositories I went to.

John 14:13

So oh, so they cap you.

Wayne State Labor Records And Society Minutes

Kathleen 14:14

Sometimes they do, but only if you're ordering them. If you go on site, you can make copies of anything you you call. Right. Any any that you see. So while I was also in Detroit, I went to the Wayne State University Library. So it was the Walter Ruther, it's like smoother. I met with a person named Shay Rafferty, and she gave me a tour. They had a lot on labor events. So, of course, I'm in Michigan, and my person was involved in labor events, but they had it nationwide. They had records from Minnesota in Michigan. They had records in Idaho in Michigan, and the only copy. So one of the things I wanted was looking for a particular woman, some a teacher. And the collection was from 1898 to 1970. It was the Idaho labor records also that were there with mining and timber. Because all of these people are collecting these records because they're interested in it, and they're bringing them in their collection, and then the collection becomes part of this university library.

John 15:30

Okay, so who collects this stuff from Idaho and then leaves it in Michigan?

Kathleen 15:36

In this case, it was Walter Ruther Library.

John 15:39

Okay, so Walter Ruther Library, why is there an Idaho connection that you can tell me about? Or was it how did that happen?

Kathleen 15:48

Walter Ruther was really interested in labor relations. He was a leader in it. He was part of the UAW, he was a civil rights activist, uh, and he was just very active nationwide, and he was well, well known. So people also, as they collected their state records, they often donated to his collection upon death or upon the closing of something. So as I mentioned, there was a uh woman I was looking for with the St. Paul Federation of Teachers. And that collection is there from 1907. It started to 1970. And the Idaho labor collection of miners and timber workers, it was at that collection, which was wonderful because all of a sudden I remembered I had a Idaho client I was looking for about two years ago, and I quickly decided, let me research that person. And true enough, the relatives were in there. And the last thing was at Vosburg. Yeah, the last thing was at Vosburg. And so these kind of records, you're gonna be shocked at what you'll find. Now, that particular collection, Walter Ruther Library, is specialized in Michigan labor history societies. So if your ancestor joined one of the societies, you might find them there. You might even find where they had a conflict with another member, which is what I saw. And there was how did you see that? They pulled the boxes for me.

John 17:22

Well, no, no, no. And what sort of documentation was there?

Kathleen 17:25

It was in a it was in a journal in a minute. It was in journal and minutes of a society meeting. Yes.

John 17:31

And what society?

Kathleen 17:32

That was the Michigan Labor History Society.

John 17:35

Okay.

Kathleen 17:35

They have all these little history societies or all these different little societies. I mean, we think of DAR type of society or or as well.

John 17:44

Not national, but these are these are local societies, like the Pyrian Club.

Kathleen 17:50

Exactly.

John 17:51

Okay, and so you get those minutes, those end up in a collection.

Kathleen 17:54

But that's where you get a little bit more personal information.

John 17:58

Mm-hmm.

Kathleen 17:59

Because they're sharing or they're arguing a point that specifically is about them. It's not, you know, just the state saying, How tall are you or or how old are you?

John 18:10

or It's one of those things I would assume. It's not just what they did, and it's not necessarily political affiliation, but it's you can see what they actually cared about.

Kathleen 18:20

You see what they cared about, and they often tell you why. One of my big discoveries there was how many people I was looking at that explained their migration path. I'm not gonna get that just by looking at a land deed. The land deeds tell me, okay, at this point he was in Indiana, now he's in Michigan. Well, you know, Michigan was part of the Indiana Territory, so that's not telling me much. But what does tell me is why he moved, where he moved, and what church he followed, and his neighbors, and why they moved all together even back to Missouri.

John 19:00

Oh wow, yeah.

Kathleen 19:01

So, John, one of the other things I find there in these kind of libraries are ethnic groups, their information.

John 19:10

Okay. In I'm assuming you're meaning that from the un underreported side.

Kathleen 19:14

Correct. I was looking at a Danish family. I noticed that they were from Iowa. There was mentioning of them in the Michigan Records from Elkhorn, Iowa. So now I know that there is also a repository since I've come back. My follow-up says, what else is in Elkhorn, Iowa on the Danish? But while I was there in Michigan, I learned quite a bit about the Finnish. So one of my people of interest was Finnish. And those records were in Ann Arbor. I was able to locate a lot more about the Finnish community, which I'm not going to get just by following my own family. I needed a broader look to see what was going on that this many Finnish people were in Michigan, and why were they in Michigan? And what was going on that they stayed there?

John 20:13

Okay. I know you were in Ann Arbor since you bring it up. You were in Ann Arbor. You took two days to travel there by stagecoach. I mean by uh Greyhound.

Kathleen 20:24

No, it was not.

John 20:25

Okay, but you took you did two trips there. Yeah. Why why was it worth those two trips?

Ann Arbor Deep Dives And A Standout Project

Kathleen 20:32

Well, other than other than my friends. Well, yeah.

John 20:36

Other than graduation and the friend. Yeah.

Kathleen 20:41

Well, because they had their own sets of records. So in Ann Arbor, I went to the Bentley Library, which was excellent. It had a lot of county records. The Washingtonall County, which is Ann Arbor area. And those, again, are not digitized anywhere. They brought out the book, and I have been blogging on this, by the way, and putting stuff on social media. Um, they also had a wonderful, wonderful project I have to talk about. So the Bentley Library is on the University of Michigan campus. Actually, I was able to wave at Rackham Hall, which is the school I went to and I was there back in the 80s. As I went to the Bentley Library, I know our listeners want to know that.

John 21:32

All your exploits while you were at the uh University of uh Michigan.

Kathleen 21:38

And I stayed till they cl they closed and kicked me out. Because it was so exciting about this one particular project. I spoke with the guy.

John 21:45

Oh, I thought you were I you're talking about this last trip. I thought you were talking about when you were there at school and you stayed until they kicked you out. Okay. Well, that's a way of being kicked out.

Kathleen 21:58

Yeah, well, that's true. They have this African American student project. It was part of their bicentennial project that was supposed to be in 2017, but they've continued it. And I Brian just happened to be there and he took me on a tour of the whole project. And it is the best project I have seen done like this. This group of people went through every school yearbook. And if they looked like they were a person of color, they wrote it down. And then they pulled the records to see what else could they get from a record, like an application to enter the school. Now they already have the school yearbook picture, and they started this in the 1800s when the African Americans were allowed to go, but they still weren't allowed to live in the dorms. They were in the housing in the community. And they already had mapped out the black community, and they were finding out where all their students were living, what they majored in, what happened to them afterwards. It is a wonderful, wonderful project. And I think they told me there was over 17,000. Maybe I have that number wrong, but it was a very impressive number of African Americans from the time they started, and now they've gone up to 1980s. And I graduated in 1983 or four. So I'm not in their project. Yes. Yes.

John 23:36

So is okay, so that's fascinating. What else got you to Ann Arbor?

Kathleen 23:41

The land records, the local land records, but it's not like just land deeds. It was a lot more how these communities were developed. And then from there understand my subject matter, whether it was Finnish or whether it was African American or whether it was the labor groups, so where did they live? So these kind of things give me a better background of my ancestor, John.

John 24:05

Let's look at the from from my favorite angle: the the angle of what are gonna be the common mistakes that people make on research trips.

Kathleen 24:14

So that's a good question. I want to first of all make sure people know I'm not really talking about the Michigan repositories as much as what is possible in a state on the ground. So that's first. But the second thing is the common mistake is that they haven't given their ancestor a well-rounded personality with a human aspect to them. They are like us. Every day they wake up, something happens in their life. Every day they wake up, there's an issue, there's something good. Where do we find that information? To me, it's exhilarating when I can find something. Uh, just one name, one diagram, one correspondence that might not even mention my ancestor, but mentions the situation which explains my ancestors' decisions.

John 25:06

So really going in with the idea of researching a story, not just a place or a person.

Kathleen 25:12

That is true.

John 25:14

So some some pointers for this episode would be utilize AI to help you plan your trip, I think, was uh was a big one that I hadn't anticipated.

Kathleen 25:24

Yes, that was a lot of fun. I asked it to do the same thing for Detroit and then one in Ann Arbor, and they uh she's giving my top three, knowing that I can only probably do two a day. Uh what and what do they have to offer engine or what's their specialty?

John 25:41

See, that's an i what you just said is an interesting point too, because I guess you'd need to pay attention to how much can you realistically do in a day. You you said that you could realistically visit two, but you got the name of three, which covered you if one of them's closed, but it's not fast food you're picking up. You're uh you're going in to do a little bit of work, I would imagine.

Kathleen 26:03

So, John, when I went to the public library in Detroit, it was so filled with everything. I spent the morning there, went to lunch, and then went to another repository in the afternoon. But when I went to the public library in Ann Arbor, I only needed to stay there about 10 or 15 minutes. Because of what they didn't have, when they were telling me they had all this genealogical stuff, it was all databases. So I think you know that's another big mistake. It's like, oh, I can get databases, I can get ancestry at home, I can get photo three at home.

John 26:34

Oh, okay. You do want to verify that they have something for you that you can't get from home.

Kathleen 26:39

Exactly. That is, and then they it narrowed down to some old newspapers that are digitized. So again, I don't need to do that.

John 26:50

So the idea would be is when you're talking, when you're doing your pre-calls with the repositories, be very specific on what you're looking for, and the even saying, I don't want anything that I can get online, only want to deal with things that are physical there that uh I have to travel for. That's that's a really good point.

Final Takeaway And How To Write Us

Kathleen 27:09

And one of the libraries I went to, and I have this on social media, they had hundreds and hundreds of card catalog, handwritten, with notes on the backs of them of what else was in that particular location. So I could call that one and say, Do you have anything on the Upchurch file? She said, Yes. We have a small file and probably newspaper clippings. And I said, Well, I'll definitely want to see that. But it also had it divided by geographic, all of the different states that that particular library had, even though it's not, you know, in Michigan. It also had the ethnic groups, it also had a whole list of the associations information. And I could have spent hours going through the card catalog, which, if I would not have already called the library and understood what they had. Now, when I got there, I still went to it, but I knew what I was looking for. I think if we had a takeaway from this episode in general, I would say that genealogy travel is not about collecting names. You're looking to understand the places and the communities and the lives that your ancestors actually lived. You should have already gotten names and basic dates from your databases. This is to fill in and create their story.

John 28:30

That's a really good distinction on what you're looking for, and that would make any trip, I think, worth worth going on, even if you didn't have friends. So are you gonna go with me next? No, absolutely not. Um well, congratulations, you've made it to the end of another episode. Thanks so much for staying. Thanks to Chewy Chewbacca Bratt for his unwavering lack of interest in anything we're doing. The theme song for Hittin' the Bricks was written and performed by Tony Fistknuckle and the Pearls. Watch for the next appearance at a bivalve near you. Do you have a genealogical question for Kathleen? Drop us a line at hitting the bricks at gmail.com and let us know.