Birmingham Historical Society frequently receives requests for information on family histories, photograph archives, or specific Southern history items.

The Birmingham Historical Society researches specific subjects and are not the best resource for genealogy. However, we are fortunate to have the excellent Department of Southern History at the Birmingham Public Library. Not only do they offer classes in computer research for genealogy, but for specific requests, you can ’ask a librarian’ in writing to research individual questions.

They offer databases of building photographs, browsing by subject and/or name, and digitized obituaries, newspapers, and magazines. Cemeteries, stories, census records, church histories, military & civil rights histories, marriage records, and maps are just a fraction of the information to which you have access.

The digital collection contains more than 30,000,000 documents and 500,000 photographs.

So next time you want to discover more about your Southern history, ask a librarian!