The Arkansas Genealogical Society has an “Arkansas Ancestry Certificate” that they will award to anyone that can prove their ancestors resided in Arkansas during a specific period. There are five classes of the certificate:

Colonial – For an ancestor who resided in Arkansas prior to 1 January 1804

Territorial – For an ancestor who resided in Arkansas prior to 15 June 1836

Antebellum – For an ancestor who resided in Arkansas prior to 6 May 1861

Nineteenth Century – For an ancestor who resided in Arkansas prior to 31 December 1900

Civil War Ancestry – For an ancestor who served in a Confederate or Union Arkansas unit between 1861 and 1865, or applied for an Arkansas Confederate pension, or whose widow applied for such pension, or a Union soldier or soldier’s widow who applied for a U.S. pension while living in Arkansas

These certificates don’t really prove anything. What they do, however, is set a goal for our research. To achieve the certificate, we have to provide an unbroken chain of provable genealogy from ourselves back to the ancestor that lived in the time period. I’m certain I can obtain the Civil War Ancestry and the Nineteenth Century certificate with ease, but getting the others will certainly be a challenge.

Sources

Arkansas Genealogical Society.  http://www.agsgenealogy.org “Arkansas Ancestry Certificate”.  Retrieved from the Internet on 10 November 2011.

2 thoughts on “Certifiable”

  1. I gave the link to the main site. Once there, there is a menu on the leftmost side of the page, and one of the items reads “Arkansas Ancestry Certificate”. Just click on that.

    The site offers many other resources as well, which is why I gave the main link.

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  2. Byron – I posted this info on the Watts site and then I went into the URL you posted with it – the AGC – I cannot find anything about this there? Where did you find it and how does a person go about checking it out???
    Thanks
    Barbara

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