The kids are back in school, and fall is in the air.   The beginning of the school year always brings back memories of days spent in classrooms and adventures with friends.  Fortunately for me and my husband we still have copies of our high school yearbooks to help us reminisce and remember the stories of those past years.  But what about your ancestors?  Did they have yearbooks that can help you discover who they were in their youth?

A good resource for high school yearbooks is ancestry.com.  Yearbooks won’t necessarily contain the vital statistics that birth and death records contain, but they can help to place an individual in a certain place at a particular time.  What then can you learn from an ancestor’s yearbook?  There are at least 5 key things look for:

1. Which sports they played.  It’s likely that this will only pertain to the males in your family tree, but it can help you see your male ancestors in a different light.  Uncle Bill may have played basketball, and Grandpa Tom played football.  Those things may be new pieces of information you didn’t know before.  Who were the players on those teams with your ancestors?  Don’t just stop at the facts that the yearbook gives.  What are the expressions on the faces of those men?  Can you learn about character traits that have been carried down the line?  Doing a quick search on my deceased brother I was able to find several high school photos of him, playing football and also managing the basketball team.
2. Which clubs they joined.  While your ancestor may have grown up to be an attorney, it might surprise you to see him in the Future Farmers of America club.  Being in the Latin club often made the members look smart.  Were they part of the Scholarship Society?  How they spent their leisure time in regards to school can help you see aspects of them that you haven’t imagined before.  Searching for my father in his yearbook, I discovered that he had been a charter member of the W6OHS club.  This club met several times a month, and studied and experimented with the theory of radio and electricity.  Five members were shown in the yearbook.  It’s no wonder that my father wired the entire basement of one of our houses several years later.  I discovered that my mother was president of the Beethoven club for two years, in charge of the calendar for the yearbook staff, and also Senior class secretary.
3. Who their friends were.  If you have the opportunity to scan an entire yearbook, you may be able to find candid photos of your ancestors.  If you are able to find them, see if you can also find additional photos of the persons in the photo with them.  Putting a name to them helps to expand the story of your ancestor.
4. What ambitions they had.  Some yearbooks contain the ambitions of the graduating seniors.  What were the plans outlined by your ancestor?  What profession did they hope to pursue?  Will you be surprised by what your ancestor hoped to be?
5. What their community was like.  Look at the pictures of the students.  What is the variety of ethnicities?  Are they all alike?  Look also at the advertisements from local businesses.  What are the cultural groups represented there?  These are all clues to the community in which your ancestor lived.

The greatest treasure in finding your ancestor’s yearbook is the pictures.  I find it interesting to see the resemblance to nieces and nephews when I look at the pictures of my parents.  There’s my nephew Ryan when I look at my dad’s high school picture.  And the picture I found of my brother totally looks like one of his grandchildren.   –Liz Kennington   [Source: “5 Things to Learn from Your Ancestor’s Yearbook,” FamilyTree advice blog, 7 August, 2018]