Joan Shurtliff remembers the woman from Utah who came to the Seward County Genealogical Society a few months ago with a newspaper clipping she found through the Seward Public Library’s online newspaper search.
She wanted to join the Daughters of the American Revolution, which requires a family tree linking the potential member to someone who fought in the mid-1770s to create the United States. She was looking for a missing piece in her genetic chain.
“A lot of people we deal with come from out of state and they want to see where their families lived,” Shurtliff said.
She was able to use the clues in the newspaper clipping to go to a specific cemetery record book that is archived by the society to find the missing ancestor.
“Everybody has their own unique story,” said Shurtliff, who spent years reporting for small town newspapers as she moved with her husband’s National Resource Conservation Service job around Nebraska, Montana and South Dakota before following their grown children back to this area around 2010.
Her own family had homesteaded near Ceresco back in the 1870s, so she was familiar with this region.
People researching their family histories have multiple resources in Seward, for example, online genealogical programs, the Seward Public Library’s tools for searching newspapers, National Guard specific information at the local museum, school census, birth records and property records at the Seward County clerk’s office, online U.S. Census records, and the Seward County Historical Society’s collection.
But Shurtliff said the Genealogical Society is in a special place because it holds on to an array of materials other groups do not.
Chief among those resources are the more than 200,000 index cards that hold newspaper clippings and other references filed by family names in an old style library card catalog cabinet. But there is also military information from branches other than the National Guard, family scrapbooks and diaries, obituaries, yearbooks, church histories, plat books, and cemetery sexton record books that chronicle the care of the cemetery and the people buried there.
Since the 1980s, the local society has created this card system to locate articles (sort of Google before Google) and preserve the varied and sometimes odd documents they have been given to tell the story of Seward County.
That’s why the visitor from Utah could find the information on burial plot purchase that led to the information she was seeking. Especially if graves remain unmarked, it can be hard to connect bits of information.
“It’s kind of an eclectic mix of items,” Shurtliff said. “It is not like we have one place in the county that is a one-size-fits-all place.”
The 501(c)3 nonprofit organization joined the Seward County Gives program this year, hoping to raise funds for protective archival sleeves in which to store and preserve documents. They do not charge people seeking their research help but appreciate freewill gifts.
“There is a lot that is on the internet. There’s no way it is going to be everything in the world,” Shurtliff said.
Some of the pieces the society preserves are just not in high enough demand to be digitized.
For most of its existence, the group was holed up in the basement of the Seward Civic Center, keeping most of the information under protective wraps.
“Who knows when somebody will walk in and that will be the book they are looking for,” Shurtliff said.
Most of the people who contact the society are doing their own research, not looking for someone to do it for them. They just need some help.
“It’s the thrill of the chase,” Shurtliff said.
With the remodeling project ongoing at the civic center, the society was one of many groups that had to give up its meeting and storage area. But an unnamed individual rented a house for the group to use for the next few years and the space is allowing the society members to unpack things previously packed away.
They are now fully occupying the 1950s bungalow at 233 Jackson St. and are open Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Fridays from 3 – 5 p.m., and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., as well as by appointment by calling (402) 400-5250. A core group of eight to 10 society members meets at 10 a.m. the third Thursday of each month.
They also have a presence on Facebook, where they have more than 200 followers, many living outside Nebraska.
“It has been fun to repurpose the house,” Shurtliff said. “It is a nice research environment.”
