Welcome to this special issue of Family Tree Magazine, America's favorite magazine for discovering, preserving and celebrating your family history. Our focus in this 2002 edition of our annual genealogy sourcebook is on place — or, rather, places, the countless places from coast to coast where you'll find answers about your ancestors.

After all, your ancestors' lives — and the records that you can use to re-create their history — were inextricably linked to the places they lived. Whether they stayed in one place or migrated across the country in search of a better life, they left their mark on the places where they were born, married, bought land, raised families, wrote wills, paid taxes, got counted in the census, died and were buried. Tracing their histories will inevitably mean a lesson in geography as well as genealogy.