The Resource Library
In-depth guides, field references, and research tools, all built for Appalachian research.
Whether you want a full deep dive before you begin or a quick reference beside you while you work, these guides are built to help you move through Appalachian records with more confidence and less wasted time.
The Essential Research Series volumes are full-length ebooks. Each one teaches you how to understand an entire category of Appalachian research from the ground up. You get the history behind the records, the method for using them, and state-by-state repository guidance along the way. They are meant to give you the background and method before you start searching, not just another quick reference sheet.
The issue guides are shorter, but they are built for actual use. They give you record overview tables, signal charts, search notes, repository leads, worksheets, and room for your own findings. A guide might show what a warrant names that a docket does not, why a sheriff's fee book can matter when the jail register is gone, or how a surety name can point toward kin and neighbors. Each one is meant to help you work a specific Appalachian record problem with more direction.
The subscription is for researchers who want the steady library as it grows. Most weeks bring about two new issue guides, with Essential Research Series ebooks added as they are published, plus the Ancestor Deep Dive benefit and other subscriber-only material. It is $15 a month or $144 a year. If you only need one topic right now, individual copies are available too: $5 for issue guides and $8 for Essential Research Series ebooks.
Sample Guide
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Coming in the Essential Research Series
Essential Research Series · No. 6
The Great Migration Gaps
Ancestors rarely stayed in one place. This guide tracks the specific routes families used through the mountains, the Wagon Road logic, trading post stopovers, and the economic forces that pushed families west.
Essential Research Series · No. 7
Appalachian Food Preservation: Recipes and Records
From smokehouses and root cellars to canning journals and kitchen daybooks, this guide pairs traditional Appalachian preservation methods with the domestic records they left behind and the genealogical evidence those records contain.
Every Companion. One Subscription.
Monthly subscribers receive everything here plus all future additions for as long as their subscription is active. All of it for just $15 a month or $144 a year.
Subscribe and Access EverythingThe Essential Research Series, all guides, and every future addition are included. Just $15 a month or $144 a year.
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