Obituary and Death Notice Index to The Chronicle, Scott County, Indiana 1880-1978
Index of Obituary and Death Notices in Clark County, Indiana Newspapers 1872 - 1900 (by Diane Henley, in print since 1992)
Hat tip to Cyndi's List What's New.
Genealogy and family history in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan, and neighbor and feeder states
Index of Obituary and Death Notices in Clark County, Indiana Newspapers 1872 - 1900 (by Diane Henley, in print since 1992)
"Broadening the research to include community and kinship groups, rather than focusing on the parentage of a specific individualThe article steps through oral history, original post-emancipation records (vitals, 1870 and 1880 censuses, land and probate records, Freedmen's Bureau records), identifying the slave owner (slave census schedules, tax records, estate records, and deeds), finishing with my favorite, "interweaving the evidence," where he pulls together the evidence identifying 22 individuals in two families, name by name. This article is a tour de force of interest to anyone with a tough problem, whether it involves slave research or not.
"Recognizing the indirect evidence that records provide, rather than seeking only those records that specify relationships directly
"Combining information from multiple records to reveal evidence not found in any single record, rather than analyzing each record separately from the others."
What developed in America was an agricultural society whose real attachment was not to the land but to land values. . . .Read the whole thing.
For farmers who had made out badly, the fresh lands may have served on occasion as a safety valve, but for others who had made out well enough on a speculative basis, or who were beginning a farming "career," it was equally a risk valve -- an opportunity to exploit the full possibilities of the great American land bubble. Mobility among farmers had serious effects upon an agricultural tradition never noted for careful cultivation: in a nation whose soil is notoriously heterogeneous, farmers too often had little chance to get to know the quality of their land; they failed to plan and manure and replenish; they neglected diversification for the one-crop system and ready cash. There was among them little attachment to land or locality; instead there developed the false euphoria of local "boosting," encouraged by railroads, land companies, and farmers themselves; in place of village contacts and communal spirit based upon ancestral attachments, there was professional optimism based upon hopes for a quick rise in values.
Why would an Italian peasant from Puglia who shunned the central government in Rome proudly tell his kids about the first time he voted for an American president? Why would a Jew who smuggled himself out of the Pale in a hay-cart in order to avoid military service under the Russian tsar enlist in the United States Army? Why the profusion of American flags hung outside Polish-American homes on U.S. national holidays? The answers have shades of difference for each group, but the common factor is opportunity: not only the obvious peacetime opportunities of paying jobs, social fluidity and basic human rights, but also the wartime opportunities provided by military service.
Read the whole thing. Something to think about when tracking these or other immigrants.
Richard J. Oestreicher’s book, Solidarity and
Fragmentation: Working People and Class Consciousness in Detroit,
1875-1900 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), and Olivier
Zunz’s The Changing Face of Inequality: Urbanization, Industrial
Development, and Immigrants in Detroit, 1880-1920 (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1982), both offered statistics on the
numbers of immigrants in Detroit, placing immigration in the context
of other Midwestern cities. Oestreicher also compared the wages of
skilled laborers by occupation versus unskilled laborers. No, my
immigrant ancestors were not mentioned by name in these books, but I
gained a better understanding of the ethnic German east-side
neighborhood where they resided.