Vital Records
Reconstructing a community story begins with families, and family reconstruction begins with genealogy. Some towns have town histories with extensive genealogies, which can be a great savings in research time. These published books are arranged by "Births," "Marriages," and "Deaths." These books should be available in your town library. With careful cross-checking, it is possible to reconstruct families from these accounts, gathered from the ‘true’ primary and original source, the manuscript records of births, baptisms, marriages, and deaths kept by town, church, and residents, or the original gravestone inscriptions of the same time. Keep an open mind about the possibility that a family may have included children whose existence did not make it into contemporary accounts. [Others may be excluded as though they never existed- stillborn children, girls married off, free or enslaved blacks.] In Lexington, there is a very extensive town genealogy compiled and published by town historian Charles Hudson as part of his History of Lexington of the nineteenth century.
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