Ohio Civil War Genealogy Journal #4

The last OCWGJ of 2008 is, as usual, packed -- but to me the big news was underplayed. Two new indexes of northwest Ohio Civil War newspaper letters and articles are now available on line!

From Bowling Green University's Center for Archival Collections (which has other Civil War stuff too), there's a "Civil War Newspaper Correspondence Index," listing letters from soldiers published in newspapers in the counties of Allen, Crawford, Darke, Defiance, Hancock, Henry, Huron, Lorain, Lucas, Ottawa, Paulding, Putnam, Sandusky, Seneca, Williams, Wood, and Wyandot. The index includes names of the letter-writers, but it's organized by military unit. Not all newspapers indexed are available at BGSU.

From the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center (which also has more CW material), there's an "Index to Civil War Letters and Related Articles Published in Northwest Ohio Newspapers, 1861-1865." Three newspapers are indexed -- the Fremont Journal (Sandusky County), Norwalk Reflector (Huron County), and the Sandusky Register (Erie County). All are at RBHPC. I think there's some overlap, but in general it appears that the Hayes index goes deeper into a smaller number of newspapers.

And if you've had enough of indexes for a while, the articles this quarter include many actual letters:

"Letters from the Homefront to a Soldier: The Letters of George W. Tope," by Linda Lee Tope Trent. (There's material here even if you're no Civil War buff: when George says he bought his wife a dress, he means that he bought her the proper amount of cloth with which she made the dress.)

"Henry H. Melick, 32nd OVI: The Pensioner's Tale," by Mari M. McLean.

"Letters from Cap. A. N. Goldwood, 64th OVI & 31st USCI," by Gerald Boone.

"Ask the Experts" includes a lengthy and necessarily-but-unfortunately-inconclusive discussion of the fate of Thomas Hemings, 175th OVI.

"Amanda Township, Fairfield County OH: Volunteers of 1863," by Thomas Stephen Neel.

"1883 Census of Pensioners, Stark County, Ohio," by Michael Elliott.