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My earliest North American immigrant ancestor stumbled off a ship onto Virginia soil about 370 years ago. Other ancestors hopped on board ships sailing across the Atlantic for the next 200 years.

Coastal life didn't seem to suit any of them because every branch of my family tree fanned out across the country not long after they hit dry land.

At last count, my ancestors and their staggering numbers of descendants took up residence in 29 states, all before 1900. That's a lot of research ground to cover.

There's no way I can physically visit every county court house, every cemetery, every library and every ancestral nook and cranny where they all lived. I have to find other ways to get my hands on information about my ancestors.

One option is to scour the newsletters and journals published by the local genealogical and historical societies. These county, regional and state organizations eagerly publish stories and records about the local folk.

You'll find lists of burials, marriages and veterans. You'll find stories told by old-timers. You'll find compiled genealogies. You'll find who paid taxes and who sold property. And you'll find transcriptions of wills, Bibles and old letters.

Eventually, if you're lucky, one of your ancestors will show up on the pages of a genealogical society journal. That's the good news.

Here's the bad news. Many of these newsletters and journals have been published for years, some even over 100 years. That's a walloping number of back issues to read.

Never mind the fact that you would go blind reading every society newsletter that might mention your ancestors. The logistics of getting your hands on all of those journals equals the likelihood that I could decipher an Einstein equation. In other words, you don't have much of a chance.

Enter the ambitious people at the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Ind. In 1986, they established the Periodical Source Index, or PERSI.

PERSI is the world's most comprehensive subject index for genealogical and historical periodical articles. PERSI has more than 2 million entries referencing more than 10,000 periodicals.

You don't have to scan every journal published by the genealogical societies where your ancestors lived. You can use PERSI.

PERSI isn't perfect. Because it's a subject index, you're not likely to find your ancestor's names unless the entire article was about them. While a journal might publish the names of people buried in a certain cemetery, PERSI only indexes the subject of the article, not the names.

Not every article related to genealogy is in PERSI. But, it's still a good place to start looking.

Access PERSI through HeritageQuest Online, a bundle of genealogical databases available to libraries. A less current database is on Ancestry.com. If you don't subscribe to these, you can access both for free at the Albuquerque Special Collections Library.

Once you find some positive search results, you need to track down the original article. Check your library first. The Special Collections Library receives more than 250 genealogical and historical publications.

If the local library doesn't have the periodical, you can order it directly from the Allen County Public Library. Go to: acpl.lib.in.us/genealogy. Click on the link for "Article Request Form."

digital.library.pitt.edu/d/documentingpitt/yearbooks.html

See University of Pittsburgh yearbooks from the years 1907 to 1980.