Getting Started

• Come in for a visit and let our research specialists help get you started.
• Visit our website for do it yourself tutorials and free printables.
• Schedule an appointment with our Genealogy Librarian, Sherri Camp.

We generally recommend people start with themselves and work backwards. Helpful Guide

It's always good to gather things like:

• Family Bibles
• Birth/Marriage/Death Certificates
• Naturalization Papers
• Military Records
• Diplomas, Yearbooks, Diaries, Letters, Scrapbooks
• Photos
• Obituaries

* In library use only

It's best to gather all of the materials you can find and then organize them based on your purposes.  For instance, if you're documenting a great uncle, you might save a picture of him plus his entry in the family Bible.  You might also have a mention of him in someone's journal entry that you can attach to him.

• If your ancestor is deceased, most vital records can be found online, but if they are still living, you'd need to request a physical copy of their birth/marriage certificates from the Office of Vital Statistics.  
• If the relative has passed away, you can always review their obituaries to find information such as direct relatives, descendants, place of death, often the place of birth and birth date.
• The Topeka Room can also help you find birth, marriage and death announcements online and on microfilm.

We do! The Topeka Room has physical city directories from 1870. We have digital as well as physical census resources, and we provide access to military records. (Please note that current or contemporary conflict records or records for living soldiers is often still classified and not available, even under FOIA requests.)

• We can always help you do an Interlibrary Loan if the title you need is only available from another library.  
• We can also help you cross-reference information between sources and find alternate records with similar information.

The Topeka Room has international immigration and naturalization resources, in both physical as well as digital form.  Genealogy resources are updated on an ongoing basis, so new information is always being added, but we have access to passenger lists, registries and rolls, and slave ship manifests.

We specialize in research and it's our job to be familiar with these tools. Let us teach you how to read and interpret them.

Yes and we'll help you find accurate information about your family history.

Always document any book, website, index, ephemera, interview, journal or other piece of material. This will help you prove your story and it will keep you from having to research twice if you forgot where you found something critical.