Finding Family in Archives at Duke

The University Archives at Duke contain many resources for finding family members who have attended or worked at Duke. Here are a few tips to start your search:

1. To find past students, try looking at the digitized yearbooks (Chanticleer), the digitized student newspaper (The Duke Chronicle), and student groups' collections.
2. To find past faculty, you could also start your search with Chanticleer and The Duke Chronicle, or just do a simple search for their names in the catalog and collection guides. You could also browse the different record groups in University Archives. "Record groups" are what they sound like--groups of records. Many different collections have been organized into larger groups so that it is easier to understand and navigate the archives as a whole. In the case of searching for faculty and staff, it may be helpful to browse Papers of Faculty, Staff, and Associates record group.
3. To find family members who worked at Duke as laborers and non-faculty, you will probably have to perform a more thorough search of the archives, and you may not find anything at all. Sometimes Chanticleer included some pictures of these workers (with and without captions). As part of a few projects at Duke, researchers have tried to find the names of past workers by going through old account books. Visit the Stone by Stone website to view a list of workers who built the Duke Chapel.