Follow Friday: Seeking Michigan

***"Follow Friday" is a theme where the blogger posts about another blog, website, or other resource that may be valuable to other readers of their blog.

Today, I'd like to share a wonderful source of information for those interested in Michigan history and genealogy. The government-sponsored website is called Seeking Michigan and contains millions of documents and photos chronicling our state's rich past.

Perhaps the resource most useful to genealogists is the large collection of millions of death records from the years 1897-1920. These are actual images of the death certificates themselves, which are a wealth of information such as birth date, death date, name of parents, cause of death, place of burial, and more. Doing a general search can be a bit tricky but the "advanced search" tool is very helpful.


Also useful to genealogists are enlistment records, manuscripts, and photos of Michigan Civil War soldiers. I have yet to explore these, but the images look great. There are also early photos, maps, and WPA (New Deal Program) Property Details.



Great resources for those interested in Michigan's history are oral histories, early documents, a collection of 400 pieces of sheet music by Michigan composers, information and photos of the Governors of Michigan, architectural sketches and photos,photos and postcards of the Lighthouses and Lifesaving Stations of Michigan, and a "Main Streets" postcard collection featuring postcard images of Michigan's downtown areas.



There are several pages worth of printable historic photos and postcards from our area lighthouses available.



Or, if you're feeling nostalgic, check out the "Look" section which has pleasant pictures and stories of days gone by by the archivists of the State of Michigan. (That will be me someday!)


I hope you have as much fun exploring this site as I do! Happy Friday all!