Family History Resources and Services

The internet and massive projects to digitize vast compilations of source materials and generate indexes to the contents have revolutionized family history research. Complex sites like RootsWeb and FamilySearch open up a bewildering variety of resources for family historians. FamilySearch’s How to Start Your Family History is a good introduction.
Nebraska residents can use Heritage Quest Online(tm) through the NebraskAccess service from the Nebraska Library Commission.

If you are looking for information about past residents of York and the surrounding area, the resources noted in our local history page may be useful.
The library’s staff can perform some limited searching for people who cannot come to the library. Searches that can be completed in an hour or less may be completed in a few days. The library does not have a large enough staff to undertake extensive original research in local document sources. An hour is sufficient time to look up and copy a couple of obituaries when the death dates are known or can be determined from local cemetery indexes or the York County Historical Association’s “Metz index”.
The “Metz index” is the largest of several indexes to early printed sources for local family history generated by the York County Historical Association.

The library’s York Area Cemeteries page lists the cemeteries and links to google maps(tm) to locate each of them.