How to find a grandparent in a 1920s yearbook

If a grandparent went to high school in the 1920s, there is a fair chance that a yearbook printed their name, their face and a line about what they did. Finding it is mostly a matter of knowing which school, which year, and how the book might spell the name. This guide walks through that order of work. It assumes only what a family usually knows.

What to gather first

The full name as they were known then. A grandmother will appear under her maiden name. Add every spelling the family has used, including anglicized forms, because the book printed whatever name the school had on file.
Nicknames. Yearbooks often print one in quotation marks or under the name.
The town they grew up in, not the town they lived in later. Older relatives, a marriage record or a census page usually give it.
Their birth year. Most students finished high school at 17 or 18, so a person born in 1909 would usually be in the class of 1926 or 1927. Look at the years either side as well, because people started late, left and returned, or took five years.

If you do not know the town, the 1930 and 1940 census pages on FamilySearch (free account) show where the family lived and whether a teenager was in school.

A search order that works

Search by name here. The name search covers every person we publish. Try the surname alone and look at the towns and years, then add a first name. Names printed in small capitals are the hardest to read, so also try the first four letters of the surname.
Browse the class lists. If the name is not in search, find the school in our Massachusetts directory and open the class-year page for each likely year. The list is a list of everyone we read from that book; read through it for the surname and its variants.
Search the full text on the Internet Archive. At archive.org/search, choose "Search text contents" and type the name in quotation marks with the town. For more on this, see how to find old yearbooks online.
Check a library's own site (Digital Commonwealth for Massachusetts, or your state's digital library) when the Internet Archive copy is poor.
Open the scan and read the page yourself. Names that the software misread will be plain on the image.

Reading what you find

A 1920s entry usually gives the name, often a nickname, the course of study, sometimes a home address, a line of verse or teasing, and a list of clubs and teams. Our guide to the parts of an entry explains each one. Our pages say the details are as printed in the book, and link to the scan page so you can check.

If you cannot find them

They may not have graduated. Many students left to work. A yearbook senior section lists graduates, so a grandparent who left in tenth grade may appear only in a class photo, a club list or not at all.
They may have gone to a different school. Large towns had separate Latin, technical, commercial and trade schools, and families sent children to parochial schools or to a neighboring town's high school.
The book may not be online. Plenty are not. See where to look when your relative's yearbook is not online.
Our coverage has holes. We publish only books we have read and checked, and a book we have not read may still be on the Internet Archive. The school's page says which years we have.

When you find a match

Do not stop at a name. Compare the town and the age with what you know. If the page shows a street address, look for the family in the city directory of the same period. Note the school, year and page for your tree; the citation guide has formats to paste in. If the person is a relative, we would like to hear from you: every person page has a link to write to us, and we will send the full-resolution scan of the page.

Prefer holding the book? eBay (affiliate link) is one place used copies turn up, and a seller who lists the school and year will often answer a question about one name.

Last checked 20 October 2026.