Atlanta History Center journal now online

The Atlanta History Center recently digitized and placed online all 169 back issues of the organization’s journal, dating from 1927 to 2006.

The journal began as the Atlanta Historical Bulletin and ended as Atlanta History. The archive is completely text-searchable and you can download an issue as a PDF to reference later.

To access, go to atlantahistorycenter.com and look under research and then search collections and you'll find Atlanta History: A Journal of Atlanta and the South.

The collection includes photographs as well as 1,000 articles covering 17,000 pages.

While the type of articles and authors varied widely over the years, many early issues contain chapters of what became Franklin M. Garrett’s landmark work, “Atlanta and Environs.” This is important because the actual work does not have a full-name index.

The search engine is quite amazing since you can do a name or topic search and all issues containing that combination will pop up. This makes this valuable resource about Atlanta’s history more available than ever for historians, genealogists and students.

TV series returns

The genealogy program “Who Do You Think You Are?” returns at 10 p.m. March 8 on TLC (check local listings).

Celebrities scheduled to be featured in Season 6 include Julie Chen, Melissa Etheridge, America Ferrera, Tony Goldwyn, Josh Groban, Angie Harmon, Sean Hayes and Bill Paxton. On the program, the celebrities visit ancestral homelands, trace unusual ancestors, and show how the research was accomplished using original records and family stories. Research was done by ancestry.com.

What is your earliest memory?

In genealogy, we rely a great deal on family stories, especially when we start out. At a recent dinner, several friends were discussing their earliest memories or what they thought were actual memories rather than family-reinforced recollections.

So what is your earliest memory? Can it be independently verified, such as a natural disaster (we had a tornado when I was 6), a family wedding (supposedly I was audio taped), or being shown at age 5 the Hugh Bentley home in Phenix City, Ala., after it had been dynamited?

What do you remember? And how accurate are your family stories?