If you're lucky you may stumble upon old photos, or perhaps painted portraits, if your ancestor was well-to-do. For the majority of people in my genealogy database, I don't have anything like that. However, in some of the sources I use less often, I sometimes find physical traits and personality descriptions.
This information can be stored in the notes field for the target person, but in the genealogy databases I've used, there is often a way to create custom events, which can then be queried out later. Most of the time I use a generic description event field, where I store the text of the physical or personal traits. These events can then have sources attached to them, just like any of the other event types associated with the people in the database.
Some examples of places where I've found physical and/or personal characteristics:
Military records and draft cards: These sometimes have height, weight, complexion, hair and eye color. On Family Search, you can enter the person's name, and a year range, and then in the search results, filter by collection. Choose Military Records, then you can drill down further, to a more specific location. You will have to look at the actual photo of the record to retrieve the soldier's physical characteristics. I have a Civil War cousin/ancestor who was 5' 9" with black hair and gray eyes, according to his enlistment information.
Old municipal history books: The "History of" books that became popular in the late 1800s often times are illustrated with drawings, photos, and portraits. Sometimes there are personality descriptions.
Lineage books: A description of Aaron Denio as having somewhat of a quick temper comes to mind.
I have also read a description of ancestor Capt. Daniel Litchfield as being large and having a gruff voice.
Newspaper transcripts: I especially like the descriptions of weddings, and what the bride and her attendants were wearing.
Transcripts of old letters: When I found a note that said one of my ancestral grandmothers liked to rock on the front porch, smoking a pipe, it helped create a pretty specific mental picture of her. I found another description of an auntie who wore braids, which mentioned that, when she let her hair down, it came down past her waist.
Annals and histories of civic/fraternal organizations: Many times the people described in these books are well known; however, some of the descriptions I've read came from people fairly well acquainted with the subject-person, and the details can be a nice supplement to what you find in more standard sources and wikipedia. An example, from "The Agrarian Crusade: a chronicle of the farmer in politics" by Solon J. Buck, there is a description of Oliver Hudson Kelley as "An engine with too much steam on all the time" and having "the high broad forehead of a philosopher, and the eager eyes of an enthusiast."
The point is, in order to keep these items separate and easy to find (and search for), I generally extract them to a separate event or description field in order to keep them from being buried within the big "notes" field associated with a person. Also, take special care to populate these fields with this same information about yourself, your spouses, and your other "near" ancestors as well.
Copyright 2012, 2023 Barbara Pahlow all rights reserved
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