Students will have the opportunity to learn how they connect to American history on Friday.
The Michigan Society for the Sons of the American Revolution are holding a genealogy workshop 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Knorr Student Center’s Weigand Computer Lab. Participating Hillsdale College and Academy students will have the opportunity to use online genealogical resources to explore how their family’s past fits into American history.
“High school and college history can be archaic and distant,” said David W. VanHoof, chancellor of the MISSAR. “It’s not relevant to their lives. Any type of contact with personal history, it becomes their history, not just national history.”
Those looking to attend the workshop should bring with them the birth dates and location of their grandparents and great grandparents if possible.
At 11 a.m., VanHoof will do a half-hour presentation on what the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution are and the application process for the groups. After that, students will use the computers in the lab and the Heritage Quest and Family Search databases through Mossey Library to dig through their family’s history.
The workshop is held alongside the MISSAR’s quarterly board of managers meeting. It is the first time the group is doing a genealogy workshop, but VanHoof said he hopes to take it to other campuses in the future.
“Understanding where they come from helps develop within the people today a concept of civic-mindedness,” VanHoof said. “We’re trying to whet their appetite.”