Michigan Small City Directories Content and Index

There's still something cruelly tempting about an inadequately labeled box of microfilm! For those who don't recall my previous posts on this topic, I recently discovered (by accident, while looking at Texas) that the admirable "City Directories of the United States" series includes a few boxes for most states that are labeled only with the state name and a date range. The only way to find out what's in them is to scroll through and look, which can be a pain when your target may not be there at all!

Michigan has seven such boxes, and microfilmed therein are a scattering of directories from the early 1900s for smaller cities that didn't have continuous runs (or at least appear not to -- check locally before concluding that!). I went through and found that these films contain 39 directories covering 37 communities and six counties for the first third of the 1900s. Each film is identified both by its long CDUS number and by its short Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center number (where I encounter them); that plus the item number within specifies each directory. (Most city directories at Allen County are well labeled and catalogued in their microtext catalog.)

I worked from the title pages and did not analyze the contents of each directory. It could well be that some of them cover more of the surrounding rural county than expected. In all cases, there is hope that additional directories may be held locally.

Over at MidwestRoots I have posted the item-by-item, film-by-film listing, followed by an alphabetical index by community or county and time, running from Allegan in 1921 to Sturgis in 1934. (If you get lost just go to midwestroots.net and hit the top menu for "Unfindables" or the entry for Michigan on the list of categories on the right-hand side.) Happy hunting!


Harold Henderson, “Michigan Small City Directories Content and Index” Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 30 April 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Words from IGS Conference Day

Several admonitions are echoing in my mind from the Indiana Genealogical Society's day-long conference in Fort Wayne; other attendees' mileage may vary.

More than half of the 111 attendees also attended the business meeting, where we heard that our 76 volunteers had helped index 100% of Indiana's portion of the 1940 census in less than a month, far ahead of all neighboring states.

* Speaker Michael Hall, deputy chief genealogical officer of FamilySearch: “Every one of you should be writing in the FamilySearch Wiki [page about your county] about your libraries and resources,” thus helping draw genealogical tourism.

* Speaker Debra Mieszala, who works in the genealogical part of the process of identifying and returning remains of US soldiers long lost in action: The military now uses all three kinds of DNA -- Y-DNA, mitochondrial DNA, and autosomal DNA, so relatives of missing soldiers may have new opportunities to provide reference samples. Of the 88,000 missing, 78,000 are from WWII.

* IGS president Michael Maben, who asked for volunteers for an advocacy committee and identified the State Archives (long relegated to an outdated warehouse) as a problem to be addressed: “We need to press our legislature to replace that facility."

* Mieszala again (part of an informative talk on finding the patent filings of inventive ancestors): The Great Lakes Regional Branch of NARA has a Facebook page, and we should "friend" it. Among the many great examples they post from their holdings, one is a patent infringement case.

Lots of good people and good laughs, all in a day's genealogy work . . . the April 2013 conference in Bloomington will feature Josh Taylor.


Harold Henderson, “Words from IGS Conference Day,” Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 29 April 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.] 

Indiana Genealogical Society seminar

Things I wouldn't know about if I hadn't attended the annual IGS seminar in Fort Wayne Friday the 27th:

* the pros, cons, and potentials of Vu-Point and Flip-Pal scanners;

* the latest thinking (from ACPLGC's Curt Witcher and others) on how best to publish indexes and abstracts when paper publication is way expensive (do it digitally while granting libraries permission to print a copy if they see a need);

* newly available on-line indexes for Grant County and newspaper pages for Putnam County;

* how to (and how NOT to) use social media to attract new members to your genealogical society (Tina Lyons).

* a cache of World War I documents including some results of a Women's War Census taken in April 1918 for the Indiana State Council of Defense Women's Committee.


Harold Henderson, “Indiana Genealogical Society seminar,” Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 28 April 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]  

Real meetings and virtual genealogy

Successful corporations like Southwest Airlines say it; moribund dinosaurs like Sears say it too, because it's true: "Thank you for choosing us. We know you have many choices."

The same is true in genealogy. Genealogy meetings have lower attendance now than they did ten or twenty years ago. Partly it's because many genealogists wrongly believe they can find everything worth finding about their families on line. Partly it's because many genealogy societies proceed much as if it were still 1989 -- or 1949! -- and wonder why their attendance is dwindling.

But I'm not here to whine about that. People have more choices now than they did then -- deal with it!

Recently my wife was peripherally involved in a local church fund-raising event tied to the centennial of the 1912 Titanic disaster. (That whole craze gave me the creeps, but I'm not here to whine about that either.) The church in question is a diminished congregation chained to a massive century-old edifice in need of equally massive renovation. Many free events had generated little help. In this case, they held a 1912-costume ball with thematically appropriate music and asked the attendees to (a) dress up in period style and (b) fork over $45.

An hour before it opened there was line of well-dressed chatty people out into the street!

Morals for us: (1) Insofar as possible, cater to what people really want. It may not be brain surgery, but our local society tripled our usual attendance with a 1940 census program. (2) And consider having a party and charging more for it!

As to the Titanic angle, I especially admire Lake County Historian Diana Dretske's post on the subject for responding to the public craze and still tying it to real genealogy.



Diana Dretske, "Titanic's Lake County Passengers," 12 April 2012, Illuminating Lake County History, Lake County Discovery Museum (http://lakecountyhistory.blogspot.com : accessed 23 April 2012).


Harold Henderson, “Real meetings and virtual genealogy” Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 27 April 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you mention it on line.]

Connecting Print and Virtual Worlds

Blogs, as the original name ("weblog") suggests, primarily discuss other blogs, web sites, and social media. Few genealogy blogs focus on the many ongoing print publications relevant to our field.

Since I spent most of my life in the 20th century, I am either confused or ambidextrous, as I partake of both. So does this blog. One of my goals here is to mention the best of print and hopefully get it into on-line circulation.

Your suggestions or pointers as to juicy tidbits I may have missed are welcome. This includes mentions of your own local, regional, or state publications (most of which I do not see regularly), as well as blog or Facebook or forum posts that I overlook; I will happily give credit if I mention them. Thanks!


Harold Henderson, “Connecting Print and Virtual Worlds,” Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 26 April 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

FHL microfilms already in the Midwest

Family History Library microfilms are not for sale, but local Family History Centers often have individual microfilms on “indefinite loan.” You can view on-line lists of such films held at Family History Centers in Wilmette, Illinois, and in Valparaiso, Indiana. The Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center in Fort Wayne also has such a collection housed in its microtext area. Over at Midwest Roots I have listed the films in the Genealogy Center by number as of 2 April 2012. Suggestions and corrections are welcome.


Harold Henderson, “FHL microfilms already in the Midwest,” Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 25 April 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if prefer.]

Letters from Illinois to England 1850

More than a quarter of the current 64-page Illinois State Genealogical Society Quarterly is given over to letters describing northern Illinois as of 160 years ago. "The Letters of John Wightwick of Tenterden, Kent, England and St. Charles, Kane County, Illinois," was contributed by descendant Lillian S. DeHart of New York.

Part of the family emigrated in 1850; the eight letters were mostly written in that year but extend up to 1853 when some of the family were in Chicago. The writers exchanged family information, Methodist exhortations, descriptions of American life, and pleas for loans so that they could not only purchase land but get a house and fence on it. The Americans, John commented 10 August 1850,

generally have three meals a day, animal food at every meal. They seldom have anything cold, Their stoves are exceedingly hand and convenient. Can bake bread or cakes in a very short time, fit for the table in an hour for instance. As the farmers keep cows and poultry there are many eggs, custard pudding, cream etc. etc., ice cream etc. . . . As this part of Illinois is an infant state there is not much fruit at present. The trees are all young, . . . They do not farm very well. They do not plough their ground very well, plough only about 3 or 4 inches in general and harrow very little so their land is very rough . . . they will find they must manage their land instead of throwing it away instead.

Clearly just transcribing the letters was a labor of love, as they were written cross-hatch style first across the paper and then up and down over the previous writing. Annotations are sparse.

The whole business of publishing old letters tends to be a bit random, and this reader would have appreciated more annotations as to who was speaking to whom in the family, and any other Illinois and England context that was known. But as I know from working in this genre, that is a pit as bottomless as genealogy itself!

Those of us with less articulate English ancestors in the Midwest at this date will greatly appreciate this glimpse of how the Wightwicks saw their new home. Join ISGS and get your copy of the whole thing!


Lillian S. DeHart, comp., "The Letters of John Wightwick of Tenterden, Kent, England and St. Charles, Kane County, Illinois," Illinois State Genealogical Society Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 1 (Spring 2012), pp. 13-30, 48.

Harold Henderson, “Letters from Illinois to England 1850,” Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 24 April 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific article if you mention this post online.]

More CG blogging

Cathi Desmarais, CG (SM) of northern Vermont, principal at Stone House Research, has picked an apt name for her new blog: No Stone Unturned, Adventures of a Board-Certified Genealogist in Vermont. As the descendant of at least two early Vermont families, I look forward to learning more about a place that I've only researched, um, amateurishly.

And speaking of up-north genealogy, blogger Paula Stuart Warren, CG (SM) will be doing a "crash course" for newcomers to Minnesota genealogy on Family Tree University Wednesday.

Tales from the Courthouse

My article with this title has been published at Archives.com. The stories are fragmentary, some funny, some horrific. If you don't use court records regularly, check it out and see what you've been missing!

Previous Archives.com articles are listed here; the full roster is here.

Ohio in The American Genealogist

For my money, the most important census not yet digitized is the 1855 New York state census, which contains a wealth of information not matched in federal censuses until at least 1880. The January 2011 issue of The American Genealogist (published November 2011) bolsters that opinion. Todd Farmerie uses that census and some careful elimination to identify the parentage and immigrant ancestor of William A. Haswell, who died in Tuscarawas County, Ohio, in 1836, leaving a widow and two sons.

Microfilm in Mishawaka! Indiana newspapers uncatalogued

The Indiana State Library has the best collection of Indiana newspapers in the world – check out their guide.

What may well be the second most extensive such collection is in the Heritage Center at the Mishawaka-Penn-Harris Public Library in St. Joseph County, much more conveniently located for those living in northern Indiana (and for those who approach the state from the north). But it is not enumerated on their web site. I have posted my personal list at Midwest Roots.

Volunteer for the 1940 census indexing!

What Kimberly Powell says about helping index the 1940 census.

I would add two things:

(1) Indiana has started indexing; I joined the FamilySearch indexing under the auspices of the Indiana Genealogical Society. Here's how to get started.

(2) Any kind of volunteering that exposes us to the original records will make us better researchers (almost without trying) because we will get better acquainted with the records and all their little quirks.

I've already encountered one enumerator in Allen County who wrote "Indiana" in the column for the city in which the family had lived in 1935! If the FamilySearch index allows us to search by city of residence in 1935, there will be some strange entries . . . hopefully the researchers will look into the original record and figure out what was going on.

Top Genealogists on the Web

Just in case you missed the memos, it's now easier than ever to get a good genealogical education while spending no money, or very little. Four good free sites to start, the first two just recently opened:

Elizabeth Shown Mills, Historic Pathways: a collection of published articles on difficult genealogical questions.

Elizabeth Shown Mills, Evidence Explained: excerpts and lessons from the classic reference on citation and evidence analysis (2nd edition), plus a store and discussion forums.

Craig Scott, Stump Craig (blog): Q&A Format, and yes, he has been stumped on occasion.

Board for the Certification of Genealogists, in particular the examples.

Feel free to discuss additions to this list in the comments.

Illinois Small City Directories Contents and Index

There's still something cruelly tempting about an inadequately labeled box of microfilm! For those who don't recall my February 25 Indiana post on this topic, I recently discovered that the admirable "City Directories of the United States" series includes a few boxes for most states that are labeled only with the state name and a date range. The only way to find out what's in them is to scroll through and look, which can be a pain when your target may not be there at all!

Illinois has 12 such boxes, and microfilmed therein are a scattering of directories from the early 1900s for smaller cities that didn't have continuous runs (or at least appear not to -- check locally before concluding that!). I went through and found that these films contain 66 directories covering 100 communities in 22 counties for the first third of the 1900s. Each film is identified both by its long CDUS number and by its short Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center number (where I encounter them); that plus the item number within specifies each directory. (Most city directories at Allen County are well labeled and catalogued in their microtext catalog.)

I worked from the title pages and did not analyze the contents of each directory. It could well be that some of them have more coverage of the surrounding rural county than expected. Several of these directories are for neighborhoods of Chicago. In all cases, there is hope that if you visit or consult locally you may find additional directories that the microfilmers missed.

Over at MidwestRoots I have posted the item-by-item, film-by-film listing, followed by an alphabetical index by community or county and time, running from Addison in 1915-1916 to Winfield in 1924-1925. (If you get lost just go to midwestroots.net and hit the tab for Illinois small city directories.) Happy hunting!

Ohio Genealogy News with extended on-line versions!

The excellent genealogy newsmagazine Ohio Genealogy News has made an improvement: in addition to its print publication, it now provides on-line extended versions of two articles in the current issue, one on the Western Reserve and the other on Geauga County.

I know that the Indiana Historical Society's twice-yearly The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections publishes supplemental data on-line, coordinated with articles published in the hard copy.

I wonder why none of the top-line genealogy journals -- all seriously constrained for space by the cost of paper -- have not chosen this route. Is there a downside?