The Dakota County Historical Society will host a genealogy presentation called “The WPA Era-Free Records Boon from the Government" by Paula Stuart-Warren on Thursday, Sept. 21 at 7 p.m. Admission to the program is $10 per person, or $5 for members of the Dakota County Historical Society. To register, please visit the Dakota County Historical Society website.
The presentation will be a hybrid presentation, with an in-person or virtual option. The in-person option will be held in the flexible meeting room at the Lawshe Museum. The virtual option will be held via Zoom and registration is required to receive the meeting link.
During tough economic times in the 1930s and 1940s, government programs put many to work. The Works Progress/Projects Administration and the Historical Records Survey created a goldmine of records that are useful for today's genealogists. WPA record transcriptions, courthouse and manuscript inventories, indexes, city and county histories, and histories of businesses and families may exist for your ancestral locale. We will discuss many of those WPA creations, some of which you already use regularly, and where others may be found today.
Stuart-Warren is an internationally recognized genealogical educator, researcher and consultant focusing on unusual resources, manuscripts, methodology and analyzing records. She also specializes in railroads, the WPA, and Native American records. She has spent extensive research time at libraries, courthouses, state archives and historical societies. She is a coordinator and instructor for the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh and former board member of the Board of Directors of the Federation of Genealogical Societies, the Minnesota Genealogical Society and the Association of Professional Genealogists.