The Anne Arundel Genealogical Society is pleased to announce a lecture by Eric Stoykovich, “Women’s Letters and Diaries in 19th-Century America: How Archival History Can Assist Genealogists”

Were 19th-century women ‘archivists by constitution’? Focusing on 19th-century America, we will explore how women thought about efforts to record, shape, preserve, and even destroy the memory of their loving ones, family, and friends. The history of family archiving can assist genealogists to better understand why certain family documents have survived, why some documents were not created in the first place, or why some families are better documented than others.

Eric Stoykovich, Historical Manuscript Project Archivist in the Special Collections and University Archives in Hornbake Library at University of Maryland, will speak about his current
research project. He is studying how women in the 1840s began saving documents, preserving records, and cultivating family memories, thus creating an archive of materials that can be used in family history.