At Boston University, students don’t need to make family trees to figure out their roots.
The Howard Thurman Center offers a semester-long Family History Project, designed to help students discover the “common ground” between their origins and their ancestry.
The project is paired up with the New England Historic Genealogical Society, said HTC director Katherine Kennedy.
“They have their genealogists work with individuals to trace family history,” she said.
Founded in 1845, the NEHGS is a family historian research center that gives students free membership and access to its online databases, book sources and assistance from real genealogists, according to the NEHCS website.
The NEHGS research library at 101 Newbury St., contains more than 12 million sources for students to uncover their ancestral pasts as well as find documents and certificates useful to their search, according to the NEHGS website.
In addition to tracing their family histories, students can also attend “mini lectures” at HTC, Kennedy said.
“We supplement the experience by having professors come in to talk about historical perspectives, how different cultures of people moved from one part of world to another, how did people get their names, some of the geographic, historic stuff,” she said. “Students are able to access ancestry.com, then what they can’t access there they can find at the genealogical society downtown.”
HTC student ambassador Jackie Chang said this is the first year this type of program was opened up to the general undergraduate public.
In fall of 2009, BU’s Martin Luther King scholars were involved with a pilot program similar to the program HTC has now.
Some of those students had major successes in tracing their roots, she said.
One student even discovered she was related to Bill Gates.
Chang said a group of 50 students, separated into two subgroups, embarked on this fall semester’s Family History Project.
The first 25 started their family history research on Sept. 22. The remaining students will begin their research on Oct. 27.
Chang explained that the project is broken up into four formal meetings. Every Wednesday for a month, the group meets at the HTC to discuss the research and specific topics related to the project, such as how far DNA goes into unraveling family history.
However, most of the research is done independently, Chang said.
One student recently discovered her ancestors were part of the Salem Witch Trials, and another learned about Slovakian ancestry unknown to the family, Chang said.
Student Ambassadors such as Chang volunteer to run the programs associated with the project.
“We answer questions, send out meeting reminders, and continually correspond with the NEHGS to make sure they will still attend our meetings,” Chang said. “Ideally, I would like to do a little of my own research, but I haven’t been able to really do any.”
Chang called the program “a literal common ground because of the shared blood and the history of [students’] stories connecting with the experiences of their ancestors.”
College of Arts and Sciences freshman Deana Gordon said she is working on tracking her roots.
“My mom’s parents both survived [World War II] and the Holocaust,” she said. “We don’t know too much about it, so I tried to find all records including birth, marriage and death certificates. Unfortunately, it’s been nearly impossible because where the documents should have been are gone.”
College of Communication freshman Kendall Croutier said she’s participating in the program to find out specifically where her great-grandparents came from.
“I think it’s great, other people are probably finding more stuff than I am, but I hope to continue my search,” she said.
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