Ah the memories. School yearbooks, which immortalize how we looked and what we did in high school or college. Whether we looked goofy or cool, that photo is there forever. And they document what clubs, sports or other activities we were involved in. Show Primarily a North American phenomenon historically, the first yearbook published was the Yale Banner in the early 1800’s. But hey – what about our ancestors? They went to school too (at least some of them in the last 200 years). And they belonged to clubs and associations outside of school. Where to Find High School and Colle... Please enable JavaScript I have found some really good stuff about some of my ancestors and relatives. I didn’t know that Brooklyn-born Leo Markheim went to law school at the University of West Virginia. Or that Ethel Tinnemann was a tennis star at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1920s, or that her father Otto Tinnemann graduated with a degree from the same university in 1905, majoring in Mechanical Engineering. And now I have their photos to boot! Nowhere else was I able to find this information or what they looked like at an early age. So for me, discovering more about them and what they looked like has been a real boon to my research and filling out the stories of their lives. Thus your genealogy and family history research won’t be complete without looking into yearbooks. I encourage you to research old yearbooks as well. Offshoots are the Alumni Directories which also include address information and occupations. And there are yearbooks available for many associations that have nothing to do with school.
Yes, The Ancestor Hunt has recently started cataloging the links to FREE (and only free) yearbooks. Check out the Yearbooks tab for the link lists by state and province. Old yearbooks available online can be found in many places. And below are some great places to search. Some require a subscription or payment, but not all. Some are free, some are easy to use, and some are not too great actually. Many of these are for the U.S. only, but some have Canadian yearbooks available in the collection.
And then there is The Ancestor Hunt. What I am attempting to do is to assemble a list of links to school yearbooks that are totally free, regardless of their source. Most are from digitization projects at libraries, whether high schools in the local library’s general location, or at a college/university. There have been a few statewide projects, such as those in Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Virginia. But most projects are for one or just a few high schools. I am gathering the links from a wide variety of sources, such as all the Internet Archive collections, DPLA, Calisphere, users of Digital Commons software, etc. But most are just elbow grease searching. Currently at the date of this article’s publication, there are over 8,000 schools in the list. I don’t know how many yearbooks that equates to, but my guess is that it is over 50,000, but that is just a guess. And I won’t stop there. Like most of my link list collections, whether newspapers or others, I will continually and regularly update these lists. You can expect more links to free yearbooks to be listed in the future. So check out the Yearbooks Page on this site, and definitely make use of those sites listed above. You never know where that elusive yearbook may be found. Can you see high school yearbooks online?Ancestry.com has a collection of 51,000 yearbooks from 1880 to 2012, scanned, indexed, and searchable online. Search for free, but, as is usually the case, you need a membership to peruse the results.
Can you get yearbooks from the past?And since published yearbooks are the property of the schools, the decision of whether or not to supply or approve reprinting of backdated yearbooks is up to the individual school. You may contact the school's media center or yearbook adviser directly to inquire about backdated yearbooks.
How do I find my yearbook pictures from elementary school?Call or visit the elementary school you attended. School libraries and administrative offices tend to keep extra copies of old high school and elementary school yearbooks. Ask the school whether they have copies of old yearbooks. If the answer is no, ask to speak to the school's yearbook adviser.
Is there a digital yearbook?TreeRing Yearbook
TreeRing is an electronic yearbook company that allows schools to design yearbooks, and enables the students to view them online, and if they choose to, order a printed copy for just $12 to $17 per copy.
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