DocSOUTH – A NC Genealogy Resource Not To Be Missed

Do you research North Carolina ancestors? If so, are you familiar with the Documenting the South project (DocSOUTH) ?  If not, you are in for a treat. DocSOUTH is a project of the University Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hills to tell the story of southern history.  This online collection includes personal letters, oral history, maps, photographs…. The list is long and varied. Most of the items presented digitally are part of the Southern collections in the university’s libraries. There are several ways to search the DocSOUTH collection depending on your research objective.

Specific Names/Persons

If you are researching a specific person or a family name, check the DOCSOUTH site.  From the homepage, click “subject search”. From here, click on the letter of the name you are researching. For example, if you are researching the Hallyburton family, you would click “H”.  Scroll the the alphabetical listings and you will find a listing for George B Hallyburton. The listing is for a photograph of George Hallyburton and his wife.

Collections

The thematic collections in DocSOUTH provide resources to learn about southern history, culture, and literature. Here you will find slave narratives, “The Homefront, 1861-1865”,  and “First Person Narratives of the South”. The NC map collection is invaluable to your genealogy research.

North Carolina Counties

Under the Geographic tab, you will find a link to a North Carolina County map.  From this map you can click on the individual county you are researching.  The list of what is available for each county varies.  Did you have an ancestor who was a doctor? Then this document from 185_ on the the medical costs set by the Wake County Medical Society might be of interest. Ancestors in Oxford, NC?  Perhaps they shopped at the this dry goods store.

This is only a small sample of what Documenting the South has to offer the genealogy researcher, but I hope I have piqued your interest enough to delve further into its resources.