Thanks to the family Bible or your own baby book, you know the names and birth dates of your parents and grandparents, but there are blanks in all your family records for your great grandparents and earlier. Does this sound like your situation?

If your genealogy goes back several generations in Washington County, Pennsylvania, the Washington County Historical Society can help you fill in those blanks in your family tree. The Society offers a kit to get the do-it-yourselfer started on his or her own Washington County family lineage search.  The kit costs just $10 and is packed with helpful information. It contains a fact sheet on how to start genealogical research and a comprehensive summary of research collections in Southwestern Pennsylvania. It also contains a modern map of the county, a reproduction of an 1817 map of Washington County, a Pennsylvania migration map and an overview of county history written by noted historian Boyd Crumrine. Request Kit

Visitors to the LeMoyne House are also welcome to take advantage of our library resources for their genealogical research.  We now have an index of names for many of the various records for cemetery, marriage, death, etc. found in the library and archive holdings.  If you are unable to visit, send us the surname you are researching, and we will email you the entries found in the index for that name.  This may help you decide where to focus your research efforts when using our contract services.

The Society's contracted research service taps into all available Washington County resources, including registered deeds and wills and orphan's court records back to 1781. With access to extensive genealogical holdings, the Society's researchers can unveil countless bits of information – probably all that you would need to unlock your family's seemingly lost genealogical history. Research Contract

For more information about the Washington County Historical Society's Research Library services or genealogical kit, call 724-225-6740, write WCHS, 49 East Maiden Street, Washington, PA 15301 or e-mail us at wchspa@verizon.net.