Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog

Historic Pathways

2012-01-26T06:42:00.000-08:00

If you know anything about Elizabeth Shown Mills, CG, you don't need me to tell you that her new web site, Historic Pathways, is a treasure chest of the best in genealogy writing and reasoning. It includes links to valued sites and to her many books, but for aspiring practitioners the real meat is in 40 previously published articles and reports, most heretofore unavailable on line. That's my count, and it doesn't include a couple of titles promised but not yet posted. The articles and reports are organized by topic, so some are mentioned several times.

You may recognize some characters from one or more of her lectures, including the article ("In Search of 'Mr. Ball': An Exercise in Finding Fathers" with Sharon Brown Sholars, CG) from which sprang the inimitably titled lecture "Margaret's Baby's Father and What He Taught Me."

[Elizabeth Shown Mills and Sharon Sholars Brown, “In Search of ‘Mr. Ball’: An Exercise in Finding Fathers,” National Genealogical Society Quarterly 80 (June 1992): 115–33; digital image at Elizabeth Shown Mills, Historic Pathways (http://www.HistoricPathways.com : accessed 20 January 2012)]

The Association of Professional Genealogists held an experimental on-line Live Meeting this past week about various educational opportunities. We focused on structured opportunities, some expensive, some low-cost.

We didn't get around to totally free opportunities like this -- and there is nothing like this on the web. If you're short of cash and travel time, and if you're tired of the much-recycled and dubiously sourced material that is easy to find on line, then read and reread these articles until you can give an elevator-pitch summary of each and follow the subtleties of the reasoning. You won't get a certificate or a credential, but you will see the genealogy world with new eyes.

CAFG's Newsletter

2012-01-23T03:43:00.000-08:00

The Council for the Advancement of Forensic Genealogy is a relatively new professional group with stiff entrance requirements and a mentoring program. Their newsletter, however, is public, and the January issue of "Forensic Genealogy News" includes two concise and thought-provoking articles. And anyone who want to improve their research skills will find some nifty suggestions for productive practice in Cathi Desmarais's article.

[Catherine Desmarais, "Not Quite Ready for the CAFG Mentoring Program? Gaining
Experience with Forensic Genealogy Techniques," Forensic Genealogy News 2, no. 1 (January 2012):4-5; digital image, Council for the Advancement of Forensic Genealogy (http://www.forensicgenealogists.com/Resources.html : accessed 20 January 2012). ]

If you're counting, this is post #827 since this blog was opened exactly four years ago.

Read "The Legal Genealogist" -- It's The Law

2012-01-20T05:35:00.000-08:00

You may well have met newly minted blogger J. G. Russell already, whether in a class or on a genealogy discussion list. She's the one who doesn't have to say, "I'm not a lawyer, but . . ." when answering a question about dower or copyright.

An astute attorney and genealogist, now she's blogging at The Legal Genealogist, and it's the place to be for those of us who have recognized (with varying degrees of reluctance) that you cannot do top-notch genealogy without knowing (1) what the law was at a given place and time, (2) what people thought the law was at a given place and time, and (3) how often they obeyed either one.

Recent posts include a reminder of IGHR registration at Samford, Martin Luther King Jr.'s family tree, and a series of posts on how old you had to be to do various things in various times and places. Wow -- that alone is worth the price of admission.

More Midwestern Resources

2012-01-16T03:18:00.000-08:00

Today I'm mainly aggregating, not creating!

* Writing in NEHGR's "Weekly Genealogist," Valerie Beaudreault calls attention to a new on-line index to the Wisconsin Medical Journal, 1903-2003. Also a work-in-progress, the Appleton, Wisconsin, public library obituary index for various years.

* Most issues 1899-2005 of the Indianapolis Recorder, an African-American newspaper, are now searchable on line thanks to IUPUI.

* Just one of the best genealogy records blog posts I've seen, about the records of the Chicago Lying-In Hospital, a must-see if you have non-wealthy Chicago ancestors.

* If you need microhistorical raw data on the Black Hawk War, the 40-year-old compilations compiled and edited by Ellen M. Whitney and published by the Illinois State Historical Library, The Black Hawk War 1831-1832, remain the gold standard. If you need a microhistorical narrative -- for instance, to track where an ancestor may have participated in this war -- I have been very impressed by Patrick J. Jung's The Black Hawk War of 1832 (Norman OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007). I have not read it through or purchased my own copy, but I have used it for research (I know, they should usually be the same thing, but not today). The worst thing I can say about it so far is that he cites like a historian (one footnote per paragraph, no matter how many sources were involved).

Ohio Genealogy News Winter 2011

2012-01-09T03:18:00.000-08:00

"Have You Researched Your Ancestor's Mental Health?" is the cover headline on the new OGS News, the class of the state-level newsletters. Among the contents:

Lisa Long (Ohio Historical Society reference archivist), "Mental Health Records: An Introduction for Researchers" and "Selected List of Patient Records in the Ohio History Center." Don't get your hopes up -- asylum and mental health records are "restricted" no matter how old, according to state law (insert your joke here about the lunatics running the asylum), but there are a variety of workarounds.

Deb Cyprych, "Return of Deaf and Dumb, Blind, Insane and Idiotic Persons in Ohio, 1856" -- a township-level partial census, many of the entries including parents' names.

Susan Zacharias, "Searching the Dead in Stark County: Coroner's Records Online."

Beverly R. Austin and Ronald L. Burdick, "Cleveland Public Library's Genealogy Resources."

Wally Huskonen, "Getting Ready to Research in the 1940 Census," including several tips for identifying enumeration districts as we await its indexing.

Hoosier Genealogist: Connections Fall/Winter 2011

2012-01-02T03:47:00.000-08:00

Indiana's semi-annual genealogy magazine The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections, from the state historical society, has a number of articles:

Rick Bell, "Below the Falls," a story of early New Albany and other Ohio River towns, tied into the new IHS collection of essays, Full Steam Ahead: Reflections on the Impact of the First Steamboat on the Ohio River, 1811-2011.

Jennie Regan-Dinius, "SHAARD," describing a database of historic properties and cemeteries across the state. Searchable categories are theaters, ISSHI (Indiana Historic Structures and Sites Inventory), cemetery registry, bridges, and National Register [of Historic Places]. Begun in 2009 with federal government support, it remains a work in progress as information both new and old continues to be added.

Geneil Breeze, "Early Settler: Thomas Kirby Warner...," on an early settler of Kosciusko County. I was struck by how various siblings reacted to the deprivations of pioneer life, and came and went accordingly.

Karen M. Wood, "Constructing a Biography," on William S. Hall of Rush County and his role in early stages of school consolidation, beginning in 1873.

Joyce Baggerly, "Family Poetry," with extensive quotations from Margaret Bruner's poems and the Baggerly family.

Glenda Thompson and Judy Ditzler, "The Indiana Boys' School." The Indiana State Archives holds letters and files of the school and a database of boys committed to the institution 1868-1930 is in the works. In the meantime, a visitor to ISA in Indianapolis can view bound volumes of commitment records in chronological order. (Always call first before visiting an archive!)

OGS Quarterly Fall 2011

2011-12-26T03:20:00.000-08:00

Documented articles and research guides from the Ohio Genealogical Society Quarterly, from the nation's largest state genealogical society:

Sharon Alwart, "Thomas and Jane Stephens, Coshocton County Pioneers." This article provoked me to reflect on how and why we attribute emotions to people living 200 years ago who left no record of how they felt. It is difficult for us to imagine a time when personal feelings may not have been the most important things.

Rachel Dilley, "Pietism's Last Stand," an account of Crawford County's Chatfield Evangelical Pietist Church.

Mary Jo Howard, "The Untold Story of Eugene and Kittie Howard" -- a terrible and long-suppressed tale of Cleveland in 1902. Looks like OGSQ is on a roll with tales that go "beyond the black sheep." (I'm thinking of Kathleen Reed's research tale in the summer issue.)

Deborah Crowdy, "Coshocton County Locality Guide." This listing goes both ways, listing eight repositories in the county and information about five kinds of records. UGA's Crossroads has also been publishing some of these as well.

Thomas Stephen Neel, "Richland County, Ohio, Road Petitions, 1817-1820." Road records in general are underused, but when they contain the names of all the petitioners, I'd say they're scandalously underused!

Fort Wayne and Chicago digitized newspapers

2011-12-19T01:58:00.000-08:00

When you ask to "browse collections" on Fold3.com these days, you can choose among the records of seven wars and -- "other records."

The site's new focus on on military records has many upsides, but one downside is that researchers might forget that the former Footnote.com has marvelous collections of city directories -- and digitized newspapers. For researchers working the Midwest, Fold3 has both the Chicago Tribune (1849-1923) and seven titles from Fort Wayne:

Daily Gazette 1882-1898

Gazette 1899

Journal Gazette 1899-1923

News 1874-1917

Sentinel 1870-1923

Weekly Journal 1890-1899

Weekly Journal Gazette 1899-1914

Put 'em together and that's more than half a century.

Revolutionary patriot William Berry in NEHGR/AAJ

2011-12-12T14:27:00.000-08:00

William Berry declared for a Revolutionary War pension in 1832 and made a detailed will shortly before his death in Allegany County, New York, in 1839. A probate and many deeds among his descendants followed, all carefully preserved in the Belmont courthouse.

Together these documents provide enough information to identify his seven children, some of their spouses, and more than 30 grandchildren. The first half of my article laying out the evidence and reasoning has just been published in the American Ancestors Journal supplement #3 to the October 2011 issue of the New England Historical and Genealogical Register.

William was the great-grandfather of my mother-in-law Eloise's great-grandmother Sarah Mehitabel Humphrey Coleman Bliss. Eloise would always ask for any news of ancestors when we came to visit; I'm sorry I didn't get this done in time for her to see it in print.

December Indiana Genealogist

2011-12-05T13:26:00.000-08:00

The December issue of the Indiana Genealogical Society's all-virtual quarterly, Indiana Genealogist, is just out and has the usual collection of short items from all around the state, as well as two longer ones:

* John J. Weidner of Lake County explains his research into his ancestral Kolling family, who were early settlers in the county, and

* I describe some time-machine-like land records for Gibson County (and other counties) that are available in the National Archives branch in Chicago (near Midway Airport).

If you have Indiana people, do consider writing them up for this publication.

More Midwesterners in NYGBR

2011-11-25T14:47:00.000-08:00

For those who enjoy national-level publications -- but enjoy them even more when they contain Midwesterners! -- the October issue of The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record (vol. 142, no. 4) includes the second and final installment of Dawne Slater-Putt's "John and Elizabeth (Halbert) Blair of Ontario and Yates Counties, New York." Descendants of theirs are identified in Michigan (Lapeer and Wayne counties), Ohio (Williams, Portage, and Summit counties), and Illinois (Henry County) -- as well as in the California Gold Rush.

New Midwestern research resources

2011-11-18T04:39:00.000-08:00

From Rootsweb's Cook County mailing list, a listing and map of current Chicago Catholic parishes. It's more than a year old and I didn't observe a source, but I may not have looked in all the right nooks and crannies.

From ChicagoGenealogy.com, Ancestry's new index for Chicago marriages 1912-1924, also apparently unsourced. Cynthia also has the latest on Sam Fink's index, and if that's an unfamiliar name to you, check out the post.

From the University of South Carolina Libraries Digital Collections via the Scout Report, an indexed and mapped version of the Spring 1956 edition of Victor H. Green's The Negro Traveler's Green Book -- a necessary guide for safe travels in the Midwest and everywhere else during the later days of Jim Crow.

From Southwest Michigan Genealogy and Local History, a print resource available only in person at the Van Buren District Library in Decatur, Michigan: a seven-year run of the Tri-County Telephone Company's Sales News, published from South Haven 1932-1939, complete with employee biographies and more.

Two of the Best Genealogy Blogs Going

2011-11-10T06:54:00.000-08:00

The Demanding Genealogist by Barbara J. Mathews of Connecticut (methodology) -- for instance, "Playing Dominos: The Illumination of the Non-Authoritative."

Deb's Delvings by Debbie Parker Wayne of Texas (specializing in law and genetics) -- for instance, "Research, Proof Standards, and DNA Testing" -- also her posts on these topics on the Transitional Genealogists Forum.

Both blogs are by Certified Genealogists, but the reason they're both high up on my home page is that I never read them without learning something.

Midwesterners aplenty in September NGSQ

2011-11-04T01:58:00.000-07:00

Three of the five main articles in the current National Genealogical Society Quarterly feature Midwesterners.

* The issue's premier logical puzzle -- "Finding a Man's Past Through His Children: Four Wives of John C. Fawkner of Kentucky and Indiana" -- is J. H. Fonkert's 20-page romp through indirect evidence tracking Fawkner through four marriages from Orange County, Virginia, to Kentucky and finally to Hendricks County, Indiana.

* Lynne Fisher correlates incomplete records to identify the Baden origins of Ludwig Fischer (1809-1875) of Wayne County, Michigan, and Cook County, Illinois.

* Ruth Randall tracks escaped slaves Washington and Lewis Giboney from Cape Girardeau County, Missouri, to Berrien County, Michigan . . . and back again.

3 lectures

2011-10-27T02:52:00.000-07:00

I'll be speaking at the Lake County (Illinois) Genealogical Society's 19th annual workshop November 5 -- check it out if you're within range!

New England landscapes

2011-10-22T02:09:00.000-07:00

Genealogists seeking historical context and information about New England's 19th- and 20th-century landscapes may want to check out a new book with 20 chapters from 20 different authors, A Landscape History of New England, edited by Blake Harrison and Richard W. Judd, geographer and historian. The transformation of essentially the same physical landscape from "failed farms" to a mecca for leaf-peepers is alone worth the price of admission.

Fall 2011 Ohio Genealogy News and NARA M850!

2011-10-15T03:37:00.000-07:00

There's always more than you expect in Ohio Genealogy News. The current issue has a lead article by Dan Reigle explaining the Veterans Administration Pension Payment Cards, 1907-1933, National Archives microfilm publication M850. A collaboration between the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne and Internet Archive has digitized these cards. They are browseable, not searchable, but there is a finding aid posted on the Warren County, Ohio, GenWeb project. If you've read this far, you need to join the Ohio Genealogical Society, get a copy of OGN, and peruse Dan's detailed case study of how to use this underpublicized on-line resource.

If you've been on the fence . . .

2011-10-11T10:39:00.000-07:00

This might be a good time to jump-start your genealogy education in Salt Lake City and start blogging as well! The Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy is having a blogging contest -- say why you want to attend in January of 2012 and get a chance to win tuition!

Attention All Midwesterners from New York

2011-10-08T03:25:00.000-07:00

Many of our Midwestern ancestors came from, or through, New York state. In the fall 2011 issue of the New York Researcher, co-editors Laura Murphy DeGrazia, CG, and Karen Mauer Green, CG, of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record invite article submissions for the nation's second-oldest genealogical journal:

You need not be an experienced writer to submit your manuscript for consideration. If your work contains the basic building blocks -- thorough research, precise documentation, sound methodology, and carefully formulated arguments -- the editorial team will help you develop the material. . . . Not every submission is accepted for publication, of course, but articles are never returned without some suggestions for improvement.

New York research offers (how shall I say this?) unique challenges. There is no better way to find out how solid your research is than to write it up and get feedback from knowledgeable people.

And how better to memorialize your New York family than to publish its story in a prestigious, lasting, and easily located form? More details at the above link.

Every township, every county, every state

2011-10-01T01:23:00.000-07:00

No excuses for not knowing which township in Defiance County backs up on which township in Williams County! Free PDF format uncopyrighted maps from our own Census Bureau for Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Look up the others yourself ;-)

Sports Illustrated!

2011-09-24T10:10:00.000-07:00

I'm making no promises, but those who have late-20th-century ancestors may want to be aware that Sports Illustrated has its entire archive back into the 1950s on line and apparently every word searchable. Advanced search options are available, and results can be refined by decade or by date.

Property records are the superheroes of genealogy

2011-09-16T04:54:00.000-07:00

Over at Archives.com, I have a bunch of examples of the powers of deeds, mortgages, and similar documents that can seem intimidating but are widely available and easy to use. Since I wrote it up, I attended an ancestral certificate ceremony where several of the awardees used deeds to prove their ancestors' residence in the county at an early date.

As for intimidating, once you have a basic idea of how the clerk's or recorder's office works, they are wonderful places to work: the office folks don't hover, let you go about your business, but can offer help if needed.

Midwesterners in the new NYGBR

2011-09-09T03:54:00.000-07:00

Indiana has an author in the new July 2011 issue of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record. Dawne Slater-Putt, CG, of the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center, chronicles John and Elizabeth (Halbert) Blair of Ontario and Yates Counties, New York. John was a Massachusetts minuteman and quite possibly was also involved in Shays' rebellion prior to his move to western New York.

This article is only the first installment, but already Blair descendants with various surnames are traced into Ohio (Crawford, Defiance, Geauga, Richland, and Williams counties), Indiana (Allen and La Porte counties), Michigan (Hillsdale and Monroe counties), Iowa (Allamakee, Clayton, and Decatur counties); and Kansas (Osage County).

New NGS Magazine

2011-09-04T01:53:00.000-07:00

Some of my favorites from the July-September issue of NGS Magazine:

* Southern Illinois University-Carbondale anthropologist Dawn C. Stricklin on locating scholarly and academic publications.

* John Philip Colletta's context for the life of Carl Ludwig Richter in and out of New York City's 19th-century "Little Germany." If you've heard any of his talks, you'll hear his voice as you read.

* Denys Beaugrand-Champagne on something we rarely think of as a Midwestern genealogical resource: fur trade permits granted in the district of Montreal, 1721-1752, which include mentions of places now in Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Pennsylvania.

* Claire Prechtel-Kluskens' reconstruction of the lives of the "lightning brothers" -- Civil War soldiers from Licking County, Ohio, whose tent was struck by lightning on 15 February 1863.

There's more . . . as they say in blogger land, read the whole thing.

Indirect Evidence to the Rescue . . .

2011-08-25T13:22:00.000-07:00

. . . is the title of my article just published on Archives.com.

Most records genealogists deal with were not created to answer our questions. Vital records often come close, but common names can be a problem, and as we move back through the years such records become scarce or were never created in the first place. In general, the more distant the ancestors, the less likely we are to find direct answers to our questions about them, and the more we will need to think in terms of indirect evidence -- piling up clues from which we can prove a conclusion, or at least a probability.

This will also be the topic of one of my two talks at NGS 2012 in Cincinnati.

New on-line resources

2011-08-20T04:47:00.000-07:00

On the Porter County, Indiana, Genweb:

917 records from the Indiana Adjutant General's List of Porter County Civil War Soldiers

11,364 individuals residing in Lake Porter counties in 1916, with their addresses and credit ratings

From the St. Clair County, Illinois, mailing list:

Diane Walsh calls attention to the free online 1926 volumes by Isaac D. Rawlings in the Internet Archive, The Rise and Fall of Disease in Illinois, volume 1 and volume 2. Much of the book culls old medical journals for reports of diseases in specific places and times. With some effort it may be possible to retrieve copies of the original articles themselves for an unusual close-up on your location of interest. He covers the whole state and some adjacent counties as well if they happened to be written up by an Illinois physician.

Free learning opportunities

2011-08-14T04:40:00.000-07:00

Two of my important genealogy learning experiences are not part of any larger institution and don't do a lot of promotion, so I thought I should mention them here in case any studious and ambitious genealogists aren't aware of them. Of course your mileage may vary, and they may not suit your style or your needs at any given moment.

ProGen Study Group, 18-month mentored groups reading, discussing, and practicing skills described in the book Professional Genealogy, ed. Elizabeth Shown Mills

Transitional Genealogists Forum, "a mailing list for anyone who is on the road to becoming a professional Genealogist. It is a place to share experiences, problems, obstacles, downfalls and triumphs."

What You Can Do When Ancestry Messes Up

2011-08-06T08:52:00.000-07:00

We all use Ancestry.com and value its services in making images of original records widely available. But even a profitable publicly-traded corporation makes mistakes.

My friend and colleague Michael Hait, CG, has started the Ancestry Errors Wiki as a place where genealogists can share their reports of cases where Ancestry.com has made errors of imaging, organization, or programming in placing records on line -- such as placing part of a census in the wrong jurisdiction. Simple errors of indexing or transcribing individual names can be dealt with on Ancestry's site, but these deeper errors are more difficult to detect, publicize, and correct. (This wiki can help with the first two items, anyway!)

In January 2009 I discovered one such error in the 1865 Illinois state census, in which townships in Kane county were mislabeled and one entire page image omitted. I wrote it up for the Illinois state quarterly. That was two years ago and it has yet to be corrected. In this case there are workarounds and Family History Library microfilms for comparison; in other cases there may be alternative on-line providers with better quality control. But first researchers need to help one another by making the problems known when they do occur.

So far the wiki has notations of errors in records involving seven states: Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and Texas. May you find few errors -- but send them in promptly when you do!

(I don't pay much attention to anniversaries, but if you're counting, this is post no. 801.)

Every name index to first La Porte County IN court records

2011-07-26T09:07:00.001-07:00

(cross-posted on La Porte County Genealogical Society blog)

UNUSUAL EARLY INDIANA COURT INDEX NOW AVAILABLE

In Court In La Porte is an every-name index to the first legal proceedings in La Porte County, Indiana, containing more than 800 distinct surnames. Compiled by Harold Henderson, it indexes every personal, business, and place name mentioned in Complete Record Book A (June 1833 to April 1837), Judgment Docket A (June 1833 to June 1838), and Minute Record A (June 1833 to October 1836). A very limited amount of relevant genealogical information is included, such as when an individual stood bail for someone else's payment or performance of a duty.

This book is a finding aid, not a substitute for the records themselves. The original handwritten books (with handwritten indexes of plaintiffs only) are in the office of the La Porte County Clerk and should be consulted for legal and genealogical information. Also in the clerk's office are microfilms of the “loose papers” for certain cases.

The legal proceedings offer glimpses of many aspects of life on the frontier more than 170 years ago: fights, liquor sales, gambling parties, road building, timber cutting, slander, divorce, death, murder, and – above all – debt and the repayment of debt. These proceedings may also provide unique information on the whereabouts of early settlers who do not appear in census or property records. It is hoped that this index will encourage genealogists to make court records a regular part of their research.

In Court In La Porte: An Every-Name Index to the First Legal Proceedings in La Porte County, Indiana (La Porte: compiler via blurb.com, 2011). 246 pages, soft cover, 5x8. $20, Indiana sales tax included; 25% donated to La Porte County Genealogical Society. Shipping & handling $5 if needed. Available from the compiler at hhsh@earthlink.net, or with slightly different pricing through blurb.com.

A professional writer since 1979 and professional genealogist since 2009, Harold Henderson has published genealogical articles in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Utah, and the National Genealogical Society Magazine. He maintains a blog, “Midwestern Microhistory.” He serves on the boards of the La Porte County Genealogical Society and the Association of Professional Genealogists; moderates the Transitional Genealogists Forum on-line discussion list; and is the Indiana Genealogical Society county genealogist for La Porte.

La Porte County Indiana commitment book

2011-07-26T08:51:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted on La Porte County Genealogical Society blog)

SEVENTY-TWO YEARS OF COMMITMENT RECORDS IN LA PORTE COUNTY

As government and society evolved in the 1800s, it was the thinking that government had a proper role in providing for the good of those who were out of the norm or from whom society needed protection. As a result, Indiana built prisons, insane asylums, and homes and schools for the feeble minded, the deaf, the blind, the epileptic, and the orphan. These governmental actions left a paper trail in the courthouses. A new book abstracts these records in La Porte County. The earliest entry of the 565 entries found was 13 October 1848. No records after 1920 were abstracted.

The compilers searched numerous records in the county clerk's office, including Court of Common Pleas Order books A-E and additional books covering 1869 to 1873; all Circuit Court Civil Order books from B to Z and 1 to 40; and Insanity Record Books 6, 7, 11, 12, and 13. Civil Order Book A and Insanity Record Books 1-5 and 8-10 are missing.

Pictures of pertinent Indiana institutions are included.

_________

La Porte County, Indiana, Commitments to Benevolent, Educational, and Reformatory Institutions and Related Guardianships, 1848-1920, compiled by Dorothy Palmer and Mary Wenzel (La Porte: La Porte County Genealogical Society, 2011). 98 pages, soft cover, comb bound, 8 1/2 x 11. $20 through http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~inlcigs/booksales.htm

Pearls from the past . . . week

2011-07-23T03:32:00.000-07:00

Miami County, Ohio, marriages 1807-1865

The Inner Life of Empires:An Eighteenth-Century History by Emma Rothschild -- the British Empire of the 1700s told through the Johnstone family. Bernard Bailyn says, "An extraordinary book, weaving back and forth between microhistory and the greater world..."

Kimberly Powell separates two Louis Volants -- one of them J. K. Rowling's great-grandfather -- in the most substantive and carefully argued blog post I've seen anywhere lately.

Do you feel a need to watch train wrecks? My favorite SW Michigan blog reviews a new book on Michigan train disasters 1900-1940, and draws a useful research lesson I had never heard of before.

Mid-20th-century war resource

2011-07-16T03:08:00.000-07:00

The St. Joseph County (Indiana) Public Library has an on-line "Service Notes" database indexing almost 40,000 newspaper mentions of local people "who were being drafted, entering the service, being promoted or sent to different locations" between 1941 and 1979. It's in two parts, one for WWII, the other for Korea and Vietnam. Each can be browsed if you specify how to sort the list and a particular branch of service. The results will give name and address, but any underlying newspaper items must be retrieved from either microfilm or clipping files in the library in South Bend.

Obviously this sort of database is just a start on research, and equally obviously it won't help if your person of interest came from somewhere else. But check your relevant library -- they may have a similar card file or index that hasn't made it on line yet!

Kansas Sanborn Maps!

2011-07-09T13:19:00.000-07:00

If you have Kansas people and have yet to discover what a window on the past Sanborn fire-insurance maps can be, you do have a treat coming! The KU library has put up 5,245 full-color map sheets, free on-line, from Abilene 1884 to Yates Spring 1912. Enjoy!

More information about on-line availabilities at my earlier posts on the subject -- just search on "Sanborn."

Hat tip: Internet Scout Project

State and Regional Genealogy Journals version 2.0 is up

2011-06-30T11:20:00.000-07:00

. . . at my site and soon if not already at Michael Hait's. We have included all the additions and corrections received so far; keep 'em coming!

Estivation

2011-06-26T02:17:00.000-07:00

In order to take care of business, this blog will be hibernating -- well, estivating -- for a few months, with postings only when I can't bear to keep my mouth shut. I commend you to Angela McGhie, Michael Hait, Kimberly Powell, and whoever they in turn recommend.

Indianapolis Orphan Asylum 1851-1940

2011-06-23T03:15:00.000-07:00

For those with an interest, my feature article about the Indianapolis Orphan Asylum, entitled "Early Midwestern Orphanage," has just been published in the Spring/Summer issue of The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections, published by the Indiana Historical Society. The society holds about three dozen volumes of detailed records from the asylum's 99-year history, which when incorporated into a planned database should be of great interest to many genealogists, some of whom may not even know it. (Children came mostly from central Indiana, but some were adopted as far away as Kansas.) Regular readers already know that this is one of two quality genealogy magazines published in the state.

From what I have seen, the asylum's records also contradict the historical stereotype of such institutions as primarily warehouses for children. In fact, most of its children were placed in new homes or back in their families. And the records sketching out why children arrived there in the 1890s and early 1900s document the terrible stories of ordinary people down on their luck in a society with a minimal safety net.

State and Regional Genealogy Journals: The List

2011-06-20T06:40:00.001-07:00

Michael Hait and I have compiled a list of state and regional genealogy journals, with writers' guidelines when available, and posted it on both of our web sites. We hope this will help in three ways:

* encourage writers to submit their family histories (or portions thereof) for publication.

* encourage editors to seek out, prefer, and prioritize histories that are backed up with good documentation from original sources.

* enhance general awareness of the importance of state-level publications in publishing and preserving these accounts.

Please let either or both of us know about potential additions to the list and additions to each listing. We have not been able to consult paper copies of every journal, so accurate information on additional journals' guidelines, standards, and future plans is especially welcome.

Slavery and emancipation resources in Illinois

2011-06-19T03:28:00.000-07:00

Dave Bakke, a columnist for the State Journal-Register newspaper in Springfield, Illinois (home of this September's FGS meeting), has called attention to the state archives' database of servitude and emancipation records (1722-1863). The database (not new) includes information from a variety of sources in nine southern Illinois counties on 1301 men and 929 women, and instructions on how to obtain the original records there indexed.

The same column brings news that University of Iowa law professor Lea VanderVelde is working on a book about slaves in the Land of Lincoln, and in the process helping upgrade the database. She'd like to see it include, for instance, material documenting the role of African-Americans in the lead mining district that includes Jo Daviess County in the state's far northwestern corner.

In her background reading, it sounds like VanderVelde is learning what genealogists should already know: that the late-19th and early-20th-century county histories are far from inclusive. "Many of the frontier histories have been whitewashed, creating an ‘amnesia’ about the slaves and indentured servants in free states.” While culling them for clues and additional sources, we would be ill advised to rely on them for information on anyone who wasn't prominent or conventional, or on the outline of the history they tell.

IGHR Samford Day Four: states' opportunity

2011-06-16T23:19:00.000-07:00

One highlight of Thursday:

Tom Jones observed that in his view, state-level genealogy journals have an opportunity to fill a big gap in the genealogy literature, by publishing well-documented portions of family histories that are not difficult enough to be of interest to national publications.

This strikes me as a good idea for several reasons:

(1) For the author, it's a lower-cost method of publication than in book format. Publication is a method of preservation.

(2) For the author, it doesn't take as long to see results if you write up two or three generations than if you have to wait until you have done them all.

(3) If the article's title mentions the most relevant surnames, the article will be picked up in the periodical search index PERSI (which does not index every name within a journal) and thus will be much more accessible to future genealogists, perhaps more accessible even than a book.

(4) For the readers, well-researched and documented accounts of other families are likely to be of more interest than abstracts of local records -- which are better placed on line anyway, where they will be more accessible.

I know that the supply of such writings can be a problem. But the genealogical public is growing and genealogical education opportunities are expanding. (See, for instance, Angela McGhie's blog, Adventures in Genealogical Education, and many of Kimberly Powell's posts at About.com). So there ought to be more people out there who can do this.

The potential writers need to make writing a priority. And the state editors have to ask, and be willing to select wisely.

IGHR Samford Day Three

2011-06-15T21:07:00.000-07:00

The homework for Course Five is mounting up. Highlights of Wednesday:

Elissa Powell introduced us to the existence of the website MagCloud.com, for self-publishing your own printed magazine.

You cannot be considered a genealogy geek unless you know the meaning of the superscript "b-2" when used as a generation indicator.

IGHR Samford Day Two

2011-06-14T23:58:00.000-07:00

Highlights (both of my readers have probably surmised that I'm taking Tom Jones's writing class this year):

As a rule, articles submitted to the National Genealogical Society Quarterly can be made one-quarter shorter just by trimming fat (without substantive revision).

The following book dedication constitutes the strongest case for the serial comma: "I dedicate this book to my parents, Mother Teresa and the Pope."

IGHR Samford Day One

2011-06-14T00:01:00.000-07:00

I can't begin to list all the friends and discussions and plans -- not if I want to get my homework done. So my posts about this week at the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research will be verrry selective.

Fact of the Day, from Tom Jones: The Family History Library has two copies of the 1820 census, one microfilmed by the Census Bureau back in the day, the other filmed by the National Archives. So far as he knows, nobody has compared the two.

Quote of the Day, from Strunk and White's Elements of Style, p. 17, per Tom's syllabus (I can't find my copy!): "Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences . . . . This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell."

Required reading for those who don't use deeds

2011-06-12T03:42:00.000-07:00

Among its many other offerings, the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center has a blog. Recently librarian Dawne Slater-Putt, CG, contributed a two-part post, "Digging into Deed Records," full of examples of genealogical information of all kinds that can be found in deeds -- and in some cases can only be found there.

IMO -- she didn't put it this way at all! -- genealogists who don't use this readily available record type are cheating themselves, and quite possibly creating their own brick walls.

passing along Midwestern topics for FGS

2011-06-10T03:52:00.000-07:00

Even though I just registered to attend it, I've been delinquent in mentioning that we have a national genealogy conference coming to the Midwest -- the Federation of Genealogical Societies in Springfield, Sangamon County, Illinois, September 7-10. Now Paula Stuart-Warren has given me a prompt in her conference news blog, listing the fifteen presentations with Midwestern content!

Compulsory reading for Michigan researchers

2011-06-08T03:13:00.000-07:00

I don't know why it took me so long to notice the Van Buren District Library Local History Collection's blog, Southwest Michigan Genealogy & Local History. The current series, "My Great-Grandfather Had Three Death Certificates!" is enough to justify the cost of admission (time only, of course) all by itself. This blog focuses on the southwest quadrant of the state but contains information of value to all Michigan researchers. Enjoy!

Noir in Lawrence County Pennsylvania

2011-06-06T03:21:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Kerry Scott for mentioning Diarmid Mogg's Small Town Noir blog on Facebook for us slowpokes to notice. It focuses on small-time criminals, complete with mug shots, from the small Rust Belt city of New Castle, Lawrence County, Pennsylvania -- northwest of Pittsburgh and right next to Ohio, so I hereby nominate it as an honorary portion of the Midwest. But it goes beyond the rap sheet to chronicle what he finds about "the rest of the story."

Needless to say, this is not your grandmother's genealogy (unless she was picked up for forging checks). But it's a real and little-noticed part of history. I'm not aware of comparable blogs from other places, although the Chicago Homicide database (blogged here in 2009) has some similar qualities.

Spring 2011 American Ancestors: SDBs, methods, and more

2011-06-05T03:28:00.000-07:00

The current (spring 2011) issue of the New England Historic Genealogical Society's popular publication, American Ancestors: New England, New York, and Beyond, heralds the addition of back issues of the Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine to the NEHGS web site. Inside are numerous articles. I was struck by two with Midwestern angles, and one of methodological interest:

Shellee A. Morehead provides "A Genealogist's Guide to Seventh Day Baptists," a branch of the Baptists from Rhode Island founded in 1671. Many members settled in or near Milton, Rock County, Wisconsin as they moved west from New York and New Jersey; today their historical center is in Janesville. Although never large, this sect was exceptionally cohesive and generated good records. Those who stuck to their conviction that worship should be held on Saturday also found it convenient to live in clusters. So there was a good deal of intermarriage as well as an early well-developed system of national newspaper communication. You could have SDBs in your tree without knowing it, and Morehead provides a table of surnames and locations (although at least one later location in North Loup, Nebraska, is absent).

Sherill Baldwin outlines the hard-to discover life of Rev. E. W. Dunbar (1823-1893), an effective preacher and popular hymn author, who also did time in Minnesota for bigamy.

Even those without Huguenot ancestry will find methodological interest in Oliver Popenoe's research chronology explaining how he managed to break a brick wall and add generations of prosperous French ancestors to his tree. Two intertwined strategies are noteworthy: he spent a lot of time researching the papers of an unrelated patron of his known ancestor; and early on in his research push he established a web site to document it. Together the classic broaden-the-search strategy and the 21st-century approach got the job done.

Free biographies from National Academies Press

2011-06-03T09:21:00.000-07:00

I'm still on the National Academies Press mailing list -- relic of a former life -- and today received this email. Anything that's free is worth a look, right?

As of June 2, 2011, all PDF versions of books [URL added by me] published by the National Academies Press (NAP) will be downloadable free of charge to anyone. This includes our current catalog of more than 4,000 books plus future reports published by NAP.*

Free access to our online content supports the mission of NAP--publisher for the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council--to improve government decision making and public policy, increase public education and understanding, and promote the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge in matters involving science, engineering, technology, and health. In 1994, we began offering free content online. Before today's announcement, all PDFs were free to download in developing countries, and 65 percent of them were available for free to any user.

And it turns out that they have a section of "Biographical Memoirs" -- more than 90 volumes. I sampled George Ledyard Stebbins (who shares a surname with a distant ancestor of my wife) in Volume 85 (2004). His biography included useful mention of his parents. It was one of 20 in that volume. The description of the series is also hopeful:

Biographical Memoirs is series of essays containing the life histories and selected bibliographies of deceased members of the National Academy of Sciences. The series provides a record of the life and work of some of the most distinguished leaders in the sciences, as witnessed and interpreted by their colleagues and peers. They form a biographical history of science in the United States.

Even if NAP has nothing else for genealogists and historians (which I doubt -- happy hunting!), this looks like a resource for people with accomplished ancestors or relatives.

NGS magazine

2011-06-02T03:27:00.000-07:00

The Midwestern items in the current NGS Magazine include some examples in my evidence article and Carol Cooke Darrow's "Why was Joseph Gosling buried in Ann Arbor?" which reveals an unusual Michigan source for researchers.

Some other articles of methodological interest in this issue:

Jessica Albert's "Using OCR to search city directories by address" (applicable only to on-line images);

John P. Deeben on using unit records of combat organizations to overcome WWI veterans' record loss;

Claire Prechtel-Kluskens on innovative ways of using Soundex codes in searching; and

Robert Erland's case study of researching an unknown frequent witness on known relatives' records.

Maps without copyright

2011-05-31T03:34:00.000-07:00

For those who worry about copyright issues with the many wonderful maps available on the internet, I know of two good recourses that do not involve delving into the arcana of either the general rules on fair use of maps or a particular source's claims of rights. These are maps produced by the federal government, making good use of our tax dollars:

the National Atlas, and especially the mapmaker part, which deserves an extended discussion in itself but won't get it here; and

the Census Bureau, which has individual state maps of counties in outline, as well as a map of the whole country with counties in outline. That last comes in especially handy when your research targets thoughtfully lived next to the state line. (Thanks to Kathy Lenerz.)

Just because these are not copyrighted does not mean you can claim you made them yourself! Stay calm and cite your source.

Common Law in Colonial America

2011-05-29T09:23:00.000-07:00

I picked up a copy of William E. Nelson's slim volume, The Common Law in Colonial America, volume 1, The Cheseapeake and New England, 1607-1660 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), at an online Oxford University Press sale.

It's of interest to those trying to track the role of common law in American laws. I also found it an interesting quick overview of the New England and Chesapeake colonial societies, how different they were, and how they both used the English common law in shaping their different legal traditions. Virginia and New England remain interestingly different places even after centuries of change and homogenization.

Here's a taste from the introduction:

As it functioned after 1625 in Virginia, the rule of law mattered not because the law had a particular content, but because its content was known, fixed, and not subject to arbitrary change [allowing lenders to count on being able to collect debts]. In contrast, the content of the law mattered enormously in colonial New England, where . . . a key issue was the discretion of magistrates. The magistrates wanted to rule by the law of God, but most of the people in the towns found God's law too ambiguous. {9}

Spring Ohio Genealogical Society Quarterly!

2011-05-27T05:46:00.000-07:00

The new issue of the largest state genealogical society's flagship publication boasts a handsome new format and four articles with citations:

"Researching the Family of Samuel B. Kates," by Darlene F. Weaver

"Stephen and Mary Senko of Lorain and Lakewood, Ohio," by Marianne Szabo

"Notes from William Hogan (1836-1936) of Marion Ohio," by N. James Pruitt and Kate De Wein

"Out of the Unity of Friends: The Remarkable Legacy of Abner and Mercy Heston," by Jane Dempsey Gramlich, which was the first-place winner of the 2010 OGS writing contest

Two new features of note -- a Lighton family Bible record both transcribed and fully imaged, and new editor Margaret Arnold kicks off what one hopes will become a regular series with a "Locality Guide" to twelve Delaware County repositories.

1890 census fragment backwards and inside out

2011-05-25T02:20:00.000-07:00

Most of the newspaper squibs that people contribute to genealogy magazines are just colorful filler. Not Craig Pfannkuche's in the current Chicago Genealogist, Spring 2011, 43(3):94-98. He transcribed a Chicago Tribune article from 18 August 1890, listing 4 1/2 pages of names and addresses of Chicagoans who claimed to have been missed by census takers.

I suppose the moral is, always complain when you're missed. The record of your complaint may outlive the record you're complaining about being omitted from!

New online records from Joe Beine

2011-05-24T13:00:00.000-07:00

If you don't know this resource, you should. If you do, you shouldn't be reading this ;-) Midwestern marriage additions to Joe Beine's "Online Birth & Marriage Records Indexes for the USA":

Illinois: Champaign County

Indiana: Statewide Marriage Index 1993-2004 (years added)

Michigan: Charlevoix, Clinton, and Emmet counties

Ohio: Cuyahoga, Hamilton, and Lake counties

Wisconsin: Langlade and Milwaukee counties

Michael Hait's new blog

2011-05-23T03:26:00.000-07:00

Michael Hait's home base is Delaware and Maryland, so our actual research paths don't cross too often. His new blog, "Planting the Seeds," focuses on professional genealogy -- meaning that it has solid information for anyone who takes their genealogy seriously, even if they never do it for money and never attend an institute or a state or national conference. His posts are longer and more substantive than most genealogy blogs, including this one. My recent favorites include a careful dissection of FamilySearch's inadequate citation practices for their many new on-line offerings, and "Do You Have a Genealogical Project?":

By fully exploring the family and other relationships within a single community, we are able to gain insight into that community, and our ancestor’s relative place within it. But more importantly, it is through broad community projects of this nature that we are able to break down even the toughest brick walls.

Check it out.

More on endangered libraries

2011-05-21T03:16:00.000-07:00

David Morris of the Institute for Self-Reliance:

"The word 'public' has been removed from the name of the Fort Worth Library.
Why? Simply put, to keep up with the times."
From the Media release on the rebranding of the Fort Worth Library
Fort Worth, you leave me speechless. You’re certainly correct about one thing. The public library is indeed an institution that has not kept up with the times. But given what has happened to our times, why do you see that as unhealthy? In an age of greed and selfishness, the public library stands as an enduring monument to the values of cooperation and sharing. In an age where global corporations stride the earth, the public library remains firmly rooted in the local community.

Morris has much more to say. (I was interested to learn that no public library closed its doors during the Great Depression.) He points to an alleged villain I had not heard of, the library privatization firm Library Systems & Services (LSSI).

In genealogy, we have gained useful access to a lot of information via some forms of privatization. Those who did research before Ancestry.com existed can tell stories, and do. I think most would agree that Ancestry has been a net benefit to the field, even though there are aspects of its work that do not meet professional standards. With that rather general comparison in mind, are there librarians or library users out there who have a good word for LSSI?

(Hat tip to Sam Smith's "Undernews" newsletter.)

Midwest in major journals

2011-05-19T01:15:00.000-07:00

This is the blog post where we pick up top genealogical journals, in which skilled genealogists scrupulously apply recondite methodologies to obscure records -- and ask only whether they discuss anyone from the Midwest.

Fortunately for this post, they do. (And all deal with people from the difficult pre-1850 period.) In the March 2011 National Genealogical Society Quarterly, Judy G. Russell's account of Josias Baker (1787-1870) includes his lengthy sojourn in Monroe County, Indiana, en route from North Carolina to Texas. Indiana's being a free state helped create one piece of evidence connecting Josias to his home, in that he chose to sell a slave in Burke County, North Carolina, in 1835, rather than in nearby Kentucky. And B. Darrell Jackson applies both DNA and documentary evidence to the ancestry of George Craig (1782/3-1868) of Howard County, Missouri.

In the April 2011 New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, Perry Streeter concludes his article, "Streeter Immigrants of Greene and Steuben Counties," with a genealogical summary that documents Ann "Nancy" Streeter (1814-early 1860s), child of Thomas and Louisa, who was born in Steuben County, New York; married Michael Buchanan; and later lived in Tuscola, Saginaw, and Genesee counties, Michigan.

Yeah, the marriage license is on line. What about the other stuff?

2011-05-17T01:43:00.000-07:00

Kim's post on courthouse research at her blog "Ancestors of mine from Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and Beyond" has many useful tips. This one struck me because it's an interesting kind of error we're all prone to:

Despite the growing amount of materials appearing on the internet, some records (or at least the complete file of those records) can only be accessed at the courthouse of origination. I have learned over time that I may find a copy of the "original record" online only to learn later that there are 4 or 5 other papers that go with that marriage record that had I not spent some time digging in the county I would never had known and would have missed some very important clues.

Read the whole thing.

Why do you do genealogy?

2011-05-15T01:52:00.000-07:00

If you don't keep track of where you found your genealogy evidence, you lose.

In the editors' introduction to the March 2011 issue of the National Genealogical Society Quarterly, Melinde Lutz Byrne and Thomas W. Jones fire a shot across the bow of those who say their genealogy is just a hobby, so they don't need to document anything:

"Beyond amusing themselves, how do genealogists succeed? . . . Genealogists who bypass documentation self-indulge and self-delude. They leave undependable work, requiring others to redo it to test its results. Their research might as well have been cast out like an old toy. That is not success."

Subscribe and read the whole thing.

Live at NGS Charleston: Day 3

2011-05-14T00:38:00.000-07:00

Today's report is truncated because I spent most of the day involved with the Association of Professional Genealogists -- meeting, luncheon, and booth duty. Strategic planning is the order of the day there, and the process is NOT intended or expected to last forever, or to languish unimplemented.

I was able to attend Richard Sayre's lecture on the various systems of veterans' homes, mainly established once it became apparent that Civil War amputations and other injuries were overwhelming both private resources and the pension system. Aside from the many underlying individual tragedies of the war, he also noted the destruction of many case files in 1930, although samples do remain, as do indexes to register books that Ancestry.com has digitized. The records of these homes remain a remarkable resource.

I did finally break down and purchased the second edition of Gordon Remington's book on New York state probates, and the Jamb Inc. CD of Tom Jones's afternoon talk on the Genealogical Proof Standard. The talk reportedly succeeded in addressing both those who have barely heard of this kind of GPS and those who know it by heart. The late line at the Jamb table included folks on their way home who were ordering CDs for Saturday talks not yet delivered, as the exodus from Conference World begins.

In informal conversation I learned where and how to look for information on the Holland Land Company -- a must-know for those with interest in early western New York.

Live at NGS Charleston: Day 2

2011-05-13T14:35:00.000-07:00

[During Blogger's lengthy outage this was first posted on Facebook.]

One of the best and least communicable things about a conference is meeting old friends and making new ones, starting with the folks chowing down on the free breakfast at my out-of-the-way motel. We recognized each other from the new FamilySearch t-shirts.

Living legend Helen Leary spoke on the early (1790-1840) censuses and demonstrated how to wring the maximum information out of them, spiking the instruction with deadpan humor. After showing how one can often estimate many things from ultra-minimal 1790 census, she made an interesting distinction between evidence for proof and evidence for use: "We know that 'close enough' in genealogy is not close enough, but this estimate will help you look for the record you want to look for."

Elizabeth Shown Mills packed several decades of real problems into an unreal will and deed, and took the audience through them line by line. "No skill is as important to a genealogist than the ability to analyze a document."

Laura Murphy de Grazia gave a stunning example of the kind of mistake you can make if you stop researching too soon, in the course of explaining as much as can be explained of the requirement that a genealogical proof include (among other things) a "reasonably exhaustive search."

Engineer Tim Cross of FamilySearch thought out loud with his audience about what is about to happen as cloud computing, mobile applications, geospatial computing, and social media converge -- and genealogical information begins to flow as easily and uniformly as electricity, regardless of its web site of origin. The audience was not entirely on board -- "You don't know if they're right." He surmised that ultimately in the genealogy cloud, there would be both fluid collaborative information changing with new contributions, and a well-document "historic" portion that would remain stable. "It's important to know what's right and can be audited," i.e. the path of evidence and reasoning to conclusion can be followed, "and to know what's false and why. We're still figuring that out." It does sound like documentation and good research practices will continue to be indispensable in the forthcoming faster, mobile-app-intensive, crowd-sourced, geotagged, and Google-Goggled world.

Live at NGS Charleston: Day 1

2011-05-11T18:49:00.000-07:00

Like public radio, the National Genealogical Society's 2011 conference in Charleston SC, "Where the Past is Still Present," has sponsors. One of them got to give his pitch just ahead of the Archivist of the US at Wednesday morning's opening ceremony. Archives.com has big things in mind and we'll clearly be seeing more of their digitized records.

The US archivist (that's archives.gov) reported an attendance of over 5,000 at their genealogy fair last month in DC, and in general NARA is getting with the digital program -- not just with a redesigned web site but with eleven blogs, 29 Facebook pages, and its own YouTube site.

Elizabeth Shown Mills held forth on "Finding Fathers" in her traditional talk in the first regular session of the first day. Suspecting that her audience already knew her advocacy of FAN Club research by heart, she emphasized the importance of also getting to know the problem person's community -- its history and then-current concerns -- by reading the local newspaper. I think this would be a good CD purchase, although some points definitely gained from being illustrated. NGS members can check out the underlying article in NGSQ 91:19-30 on the National Genealogical Society site.

The lunch meeting of mentors, alumni, and current students in the ProGen Study Group educational program drew 15 to Jim & Nick's Bar-B-Q, enough to produce three or four separate lively conversation centers at our long table, following initial introductions all around. I was amazed that Group 12 has started (and that a member of it shares Licking County, Ohio, ancestry with me). When we had the first group we had no idea that it would produce additional groups, or that they would start having numbers!

After lunch, NGSQ co-editor Tom Jones gave a characteristically precise and systematic account of how evidence conflicts, why, and what what to do about it it in practice and in writing. Especially illuminating for me were his tables itemizing the disagreements and sources on each specific point, so that you can see potential patterns and analyze better how to resolve the contradiction insofar as possible.

NEHGR editor Henry Hoff's talk on errors took a closer-to-the-ground approach but also included Hoff's Theory of the Perversity of Ancestors, according to which same-name people are likely not only to settle in the same place, but also to interact! Among many other things, be advised that not all baptismal sponsors actually showed up in person.

In the evening, NGS Magazine editor Elizabeth Kelley Kerstens dramatized the difficulties and potentials of documenting women's activities even in the Civil War era with a case study from southeastern Michigan. Names are rarely found, but she did find records of exactly what supplies volunteers from now-disappeared hamlets sent to needy soldiers at the front (not only clothing that the women sewed, but also casks and barrels of food and "1 lb. of rags"). And some counties have records of aid given to destitute soldiers' families.

Evidence in NGS Magazine

2011-05-11T03:12:00.000-07:00

My short article on evidence, "Will You Answer When Genealogical Opportunity Knocks?" is in the new (April/May/June 2011) issue of the NGS Magazine. You can read it on line if you're a member. (What? You haven't joined yet?) In brief:

Few of the records we use were created with genealogy in mind. They exist to protect health, record ownership, secure a debt, punish an offender, save a soul, or send young people to war. We are already using the records for other purposes. So why allow them to put their questions, and only their questions, into our minds?

I plugged this magazine before I was in it, and I will continue to do so. It's readable and relevant and facts not common knowledge are specifically cited. More on the rest of this issue in a later post.

"Christianity, American Indians, and the Doctrine of Discovery"

2011-05-09T03:33:00.000-07:00

Robert Miller of Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon, has posted a useful paper on line for those who need a quick review (or refresher course) of one reason why few Europeans had a problem with taking the land of the aboriginal inhabitants of Australasia and the Western Hemisphere. It's called "Christianity, American Indians, and the Doctrine of Discovery," (free download PDF) and he carries its history from the Crusades through the era of Columbus and up through Manifest Destiny. (The paper was part of an anthology, Remembering Jamestown: Hard Questions About Christian Mission, Amos Yong, Barbara Brown Zikmund, eds., Pickwick Publications, 2010.)

The analysis is detailed, and different stages of the doctrine are distinguished as it grew and became incorporated in American law. Miller ultimately identifies ten components, one of them being the notion (my paraphrase) that it was OK to take Indians' land because they weren't really using it. Interestingly, many versions did include some limitations on what the superior Europeans were allowed to do -- the doctrine was not always supposed to be a blank check.

Miller notes that the doctrine (and the laws and judicial decisions growing out of it) are firmly based on the idea that Christianity is the only true religion (which at least makes it plausible that natives should be forced to give up their land and independence in return for being converted). I gather from his final paragraph that some Christians nowadays would like to see the doctrine repudiated. The main issue for genealogists and historians is to understand it and to realize how deep it runs.

(Hat tip to the Legal History Blog.)

Advice for Illinois researchers

2011-05-06T03:17:00.000-07:00

The other day I needed a Cook County death certificate from the 1940s. It appeared in the online database of Illinois death certificates 1916-1950, but not in the online database of death certificates in Cook County at the County Clerk's genealogy site.

I thought I had only three options: pay the Clerk $15 to look for it, pay the Illinois Department of Public Health $10 to look for it, or visit the Illinois State Archives in person.

I paid the clerk and waited 6 weeks, when I received a form letter to "valued customer" referring me to public health without explaining why they couldn't find a death certificate in their own jurisdiction. When I called to ask, I was referred to another number which rang 20 times without being answered.

The state Department of Public Health asserts (as if it were an ontological truth rather than an irrational quirk of state law) that death certificates are "not public records" and hence are available only to a few. It does acknowledge that it will make "genealogy" death certificates available for deaths more than 20 years ago -- and then offers only application forms that exclude the genealogy possibility.

The state archives are many hours away by car in a direction I rarely have occasion to travel.

The best option? None of the above. I logged on to Genlighten.com, looked for lookups in Springfield, Illinois, hired Molly Kennedy for less than any of the above figures, and received the desired death certificate within 1 (that's one) business day. What ever possessed me to do anything else in the first place?

A thought on what we publish and what we don't

2011-05-03T03:06:00.000-07:00

Actually, it's a joke with a thought-provoking punchline. Those who will be offended by a little profanity should not click on this link to Crooked Timber, one of my favorite non-genealogy blogs.

What is happening to libraries -- Michigan and Indiana

2011-04-30T03:28:00.000-07:00

The spring issue of the Michigan Genealogical Counci l newsletter chronicles the ongoing process.

On the positive side, state census films are being indexed by Ancestry, and are expected on SeekingMichigan.org by this fall. Naturalization records from at least 59 of the state's 83 counties are expected on SeekingMichigan.org within a a year. After that, look for "survey notes, plat maps and land state patents." (Note also information on GenealogyWise's Michigan discussion group about changing URLs for some Michigan resources, including cemeteries.)

On the other side, the Library of Michigan now staffs only three service desks 10am-5pm. "If additional information is needed feel free to call the reference desk phone line at 517-373-1300 and they will return your call as time allows." (The Archives of Michigan is already open from just 1-5 weekdays.) And draconian cuts in state help for local libraries will cause the Troy library to close May 1st and Detroit Public to reduce staff by 20 percent.

It's not just Michigan. The Indiana State Archives, although dreadfully understaffed, has put up a number of useful databases on line as the Indiana State Digital Archives, and volunteers there are working on more. But the physical state archives (the vast majority of which are unique records that are not microfilmed or digitized) are located in an old warehouse that would not stand up to a tornado and whose roof leaks. As Indiana librarians and county genealogists were informed at their April seminar, the governor isn't interested in fixing that situation until he can find private contributions for the project.

Just to be clear: this is what's happening, read it as you will.

Personally, I do not think that the expansion of virtual libraries justifies or compensates for the short-sighted cuts being made to physical ones. A library that you can get to easily is a ladder that even a bad student, a nonconformist, an outsider can climb. Cutting and closing them takes rungs off the ladder. No one rung is essential. You can usually find a workaround. But when enough rungs are gone, it's not a ladder any more. It's just some sticks on the ground.

Midwesternness

2011-04-27T03:32:00.000-07:00

Charles Baxter, whose short stories and novels I have yet to read, is quoted in the April 28 New York Review of Books about the Midwest -- "the blandness of the landscape and the ways in which people here don't always talk about what's on their minds."

(It took a few days for that to come around and hit me in the back of the head.)

The late Kurt Vonnegut Jr., an Indianapolis native, doesn't seem to have had this problem. He once characterized his home town as "the 500-mile Speedway Race, and then 364 days of miniature golf, and then the 500-mile Speedway Race again." ("Address to Graduating Class at Bennington College, 1970," p. 161 in Wampeters, Foma, and Granfaloons)

What are your favorite Midwesternisms?

Ghost counties?

2011-04-24T03:14:00.000-07:00

This report identifies the ten US counties (containing more than 10,000 homes) that have housing vacancy rates over 50 percent. Five are in the Midwest. If you research there, show 'em some love! (Or some money!) And if you're planning to research there, do it soon, as the tax crunch will hit them hard if it hasn't already.

Lake County, Michigan
Vilas County, Wisconsin
Sawyer County, Wisconsin
Burnett County, Wisconsin
Aitkin County, Minnesota

Illinois quarterly spring issue

2011-04-21T03:23:00.000-07:00

The Illinois State Genealogical Society Quarterly (Spring, volume 43 number 1) features documented articles about two professional men. Neither has known living descendants.

Banker William Moody Dustin (1828-1917) of Lincoln, Logan County, Illinois, had troubles both financial and marital. (You'll feel better about your taxes.)

Physician Carl Clement Lawry (1876-1953) of Freedom Township and the tiny town of Harding in La Salle County, was the more successful. And for researchers in that area, he left us a valuable resource -- his 1911-1916 account book, with well over a thousand entries alphabetized and transcribed in the magazine. The article includes a well-deserved shout-out to the La Salle County Genealogy Guild.

Illinois and Wisconsin additions to FamilySearch

2011-04-18T03:52:00.000-07:00

Recent additions to FamilySearch's increasingly impressive collection of free on-line record indexes and/or original images:

Marriages 1810-1934 -- searchable but no images -- in the Illinois counties of Adams, Alexander, Bond, Boone, Brown, Champaign, Christian, Clark, and Clay. This is an extra three-plus decades over the coverage of the venerable Illinois Statewide Marriage Index. I would be interested to see a comparison sample of the coverage between the two where they do overlap.

Probate estate files for various date ranges -- browseable images only -- in the Wisconsin counties of Green, Pepin, Shawano, and Trempeleau.

Scroll down the whole list looking for the little asterisks on the right to see what's new lately. I don't promise to be able to keep up even with just the Midwestern portion of this enterprise.

Thanks to Michael John Neill for the heads-up.

Thanks to Michael John Neill for the heads-up.

Puzzles and proof

2011-04-15T03:11:00.000-07:00

Most researchers have trouble with the idea that you can prove an identity or relationship even if you never find a piece of paper that says it. Even those of us who know that it's true have trouble applying it to our real-life genealogy problems.

Industrious Ohio researcher and blogger Chris Staats comes out of the recent Ohio Genealogical Society conference and in his blog takes up Tom Jones's favorite puzzle analogy for genealogical "proof," which was discussed there.

This point needs to be made more often at the grass-roots level where we all start. For the full dose, pick up a CD of Jones's lecture "Inferential Genealogy" from JAMB Productions, (it's F-95 in the Philadelphia 2008 FGS listing, and no, I don't get a commission!) or read the underlying National Genealogical Society Quarterly article, “Uncovering Ancestors by Deduction: The Husbands and Parents of Eleanor (nee Medley) (Tureman) (Crow) Overton,” NGSQ 94 (December 2006): 287-304 -- (available in good genealogical libraries or free to NGS members on the web site). And of course, you can find the Genealogical Proof Standard in all its non-metaphorical glory at the BCG web site.

When the dead gain power

2011-04-12T03:14:00.000-07:00

Recently I heard from genealogist/researcher Barry Fleig, who I hadn't talked to in 22 years. Back then he was an indispensable source when I wrote an article about the unanticipated exhumation of people buried in anonymous graves on the former grounds of a Chicago mental health facility in the Dunning neighborhood. (It was a genealogy article, but I was comprehensively ignorant of the subject then.) He had just seen report of a similar situation developing in Lexington, Kentucky, at the Eastern States Hospital. More on that story here. More on the general topic in several February posts at Graveyards of Illinois.

In both cases it's in the interest of powerful individuals, businesses, and bureaucracies to deny the existence of these poorly documented graveyards and the people in them, and to withhold any records that survive. (Some preposterous provisions of HIPAA and even more preposterous misunderstandings of it now make the situation even worse.)

But the people buried in these forgotten places -- usually unsuccessful, unappealing, and unlucky in life -- have a surprising power in death. Living people (the majority without a vested interest) might well have scorned them in life -- but we do not want their remains randomly dug up and tossed about.

One obvious thing that Barry and I both missed at the time is that pretty much every site of an old asylum or mental hospital is also going to be the site of extensive and poorly documented burials from the 1800s and at least the first half of the 1900s.

Mis-understanding history

2011-04-09T03:01:00.000-07:00

How many genealogists are better off than these poor students? A lot, I hope.

Two good free resources via Scout Report

2011-04-06T03:22:00.000-07:00

The Internet Scout Project dates back to the DOS and maybe even the green-screen Apple era, and they're still at it. Recently they highlighted two genealogically useful resources:

From the Iowa Digital Library, a collection on African American Women in Iowa. There are a variety of resources here, with more scope than the title makes it sound. Being a text guy, I gravitated to the typewritten 27 June 1963 newsletter of the Fort Madison NAACP. It is (I must say) rather like a blog, with lots of specific news entries: "Freesmeier's Dairy has hired one of our number, Thomas Humburd," calling off the boycott and encouraging patronage. And it is searchable!

And completely searchable images of "every known issue" of Chicago's Hyde Park Herald, covering most of the 1880s and then everything since 1926 -- a primo resource right into the 21st century!

Lillian update

2011-04-04T11:30:00.000-07:00

Volume 2 of Lillian's Diaries (blogged here) is now available on Amazon.

Sundown towns in NE Illinois 1950s

2011-04-03T02:02:00.000-07:00

The Historical Society has an interesting first-person reminiscence by Jeremy Bangs of the white racist custom of "sundown towns" as manifested in northeastern Illinois in the 1950s. This, too, was part of our ancestors' world.

I think I grew up in such a town. At least one of the "tough" kids in the neighborhood made some such statement, but then he was an admirer of Hitler and may have just been stating his opinion. I was too young and naive to have one -- kids can take amazing things for granted -- and I have never investigated the facts of the case.

Midwesterners in NGS Magazine January-March issue

2011-03-31T03:17:00.000-07:00

If you're hungry for Midwestern genealogy, the current issue of the National Genealogical Society's NGS Magazine has four treats for you:

(1) Jennifer Holik-Urban's story on her WWI great-great uncle Michael Kokoska, who died in France but was eventually laid to rest in his family's plot in Bohemian National Cemetery in Chicago;

(2) Nancy Neils Wehner's story on tracing her WWII Navy grandfather, who enlisted in Omaha, trained near Chicago, and was finally assigned to Tank Ship LST-599 in Evansville (Indiana);

(3) Cari A. Taplin on her northwestern Ohio Sly family's "relationship" to the southern Ohio Slye family of TV cowboy Roy Rogers; and

(4) a bouquet of identity-determination case studies ranging over several states from Minnesota's J. H. Fonkert, CG.

Ohio Genealogy News Spring 2011

2011-03-28T03:59:00.000-07:00

The Ohio Genealogy News -- the genealogy newsmagazine that outdoes some other states' quarterlies -- focuses on Civil War genealogy research this quarter. But I'd say the whole issue is worth it for explaining where to find the Cleveland District Round Table's index to the Cuyahoga County probate record images that FamilySearch has posted only in browseable form.

In other news, Ohio Genealogical Society's 50th annual conference begins later this week in Columbus. See you there!

Lillian is back!

2011-03-25T03:18:00.000-07:00

It's time for a second peek into the daily life of 90-some years ago in the rural northwestern corner of Illinois, in the second volume of Lillian's Diaries: Whispers from Galena's Past, Volume 2, 1920-1925. So far I have only been able to find volume 1 on Amazon; volume 2 should be there soon. My review of volume 1, with some thoughts on what diaries do and don't give us, was published in the Utah Genealogical Association's Crossroads quarterly in December (available here to members).

According to Lillian's editor and cousin Sheryl Trudgian Jones, this volume has more researcher-friendly appendages than the first, including a map of Jo Daviess County, Ilinois; a glossary; and hundreds of surnames from the diaries. Excerpts from the diaries also appear in Jones's blog, "Leaves on the Trudgian Tree," as I noted in an earlier post.

Old times in new media

2011-03-23T10:18:00.000-07:00

Check out the blog-linked tweets quoted from original historical documents of the Civil War, as described in Salon. Hat tip to ResearchBuzz.

Our Savage Neighbors

2011-03-21T03:23:00.000-07:00

I can't think of many nonfiction books that were so gruesome and depressing that I deliberately quit reading them, but I almost did that halfway through Peter Silver's Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America (New York: W.W. Norton, 2008). So it's not for everyone.

Most of the book is a close and careful reading of what people wrote and said about the ongoing Indian guerrilla wars in Pennsylvania and nearby colonies from about 1750 to 1785 -- so it will be of interest to anyone with ancestors or relatives in that unprecedentedly diverse and turbulent society of English, Germans, Irish, Indians, and other groups.

Silver draws many interesting and provocative ideas from this material, among them:

Diversity itself, he finds, did not lead to mutual tolerance and understanding -- indeed, often the opposite as people reacted against their neighbors. However, having an outside enemy sometimes did. {xviii-xix}

Even a few people who were willing to use violence had inordinate power to shape events. Their actions often set off a chain of revenge that led to major changes and wars, as in the case of the Paxton boys and the 1782 genocidal massacre of pacifist Christian Indians by white Americans at Gnadenhütten in what is now Tuscarawas County, Ohio. {xxv-xxvi, 265ff.}

Racial prejudice as we know it played very little role on the white side of the Indian wars of the 1700s (racism as we know it was not invented until the following century). {294ff.} More important were fear and greed for land.

"Somehow, out of such unpromising beginnings, one of history's most self-consciously tolerant societies was made. The idea of 'the white people' may have helped some people to feel greater sympathetic identification with other Europeans -- even as it made a few, like the Quakers, into cultural villains, and drove up negative feelings toward all Indians." {xxiii}

Nineteenth-century credit reports

2011-03-18T03:04:00.000-07:00

You'll never get to eyeball these records unless you can convince the gatekeepers at Hahvahd (Business School, Baker Library) that you're a "scholar," a word they use in opposition to "genealogist."

So you might as well learn what you can from historian Dan Alosso's critical examination of this original source that seems to resemble death certificates in that it contains a mix of primary and secondary information -- or to put it another way, a mix of first-hand knowledge and gossip, with the power to make or to ruin local businesspeople who depended on out-of-town credit.

Peoria Public Library genealogy

2011-03-15T03:23:00.000-07:00

One of our family's iconic photographs shows my three sisters sitting on the steps of the old Peoria (Illinois) Public Library building with their books. It was our go-to library when growing up (usually we had way more books than this), even after the old building was demolished and replaced with a plain-vanilla modernist structure. When our own children were young we lived within walking distance.

All of this to explain why I'm especially interested to learn that the library's new genealogy section is opening (at a time when many libraries are retrenching).

1895 Civil War Atlas

2011-03-13T03:07:00.000-07:00

The Internet Scout Project alerts us to Baylor University's digitization of a beautiful resource on an often less than beautiful event. It's the 1895 War of the Rebellion Atlas, with 175 plates and designed to accompany the complete textual record of the armies on both sides (available in libraries with large collections and strong shelving, also via Cornell University).

March 19 in Valparaiso

2011-03-10T03:58:00.000-08:00

I'll be on the program in nine days at the Northwest Indiana Genealogical Society meeting at the public library. C'mon down and say hello if you're within a few hundred miles ;-)

Saturday, March 19, 2011
The March meeting will take place at 10:00 am at the Porter County Public Library, Valparaiso Branch, located at 103 Jefferson Street, Valparaiso, Indiana [map]. Join us as Harold Henderson, professional genealogist, will speak on "Proving Stubborn Name Changing Ancestors."

It's a case study about when we can consider that something is proved -- original title "Are We There Yet?"

An outsider's critical view of genealogy

2011-03-07T03:39:00.000-08:00

My old friend and former colleague Jim Krohe holds forth on a regular basis at Illinois Times in Springfield (soon to be host of the annual Federation of Genealogical Societies meeting in September). Last month his column had some provocative words and thoughts on genealogy as currently practiced. They aren't mine, but sometimes it's instructive to learn what an outsider sees when he takes a look:

Most family “histories” aren’t, having very little history in them. They are genealogies, family trees that focus (often obsessively) on the who and the when, not the where the why and the how. . . . At best, genealogies are to the family history what the road map is to the Michelin guide. Genuine family histories – that is, an objective rendering of facts, scrupulously verified and placed in the context of broader social and economic realities of respective eras – are rare.

Read the whole thing at the above link.

Genealogy Research Options after Ancestry ExpertConnect

2011-03-04T15:48:00.000-08:00

Ancestry.com showed its power 24 January by announcing the closure of its popular online marketplace for genealogy research, ExpertConnect. No explanation was offered; the shutdown will be complete on 18 March.

In the six weeks since, everybody has been scrambling, especially those seeking professional genealogy help. I hope to write elsewhere about the professional angle, but here's the landscape for genealogists who are looking for research help or who think they might be in the future, with the readily accessible Ancestry ExpertConnect marketplace gone.

By far the biggest list of professional researchers and their qualifications is at the Association of Professional Genealogists. Currently, however, the site offers no place for people seeking help to post their needs and invite bidders. The same can be said on the local and regional level, where many state organizations maintain lists of researchers (such as Ohio and Indiana), as do many repositories (such as the Newberry Library and the National Archives).

But the marketplace idea is not dead, and Ancestry ExpertConnect showed that it can work if a sufficient number of buyers and sellers can be brought together. A number of smaller sites, some in existence prior to Ancestry ExpertConnect and some new, do list professionals and offer seekers the ability to post their wants and needs and receive bids on them:

Genealogy Freelancers

Genlighten (lookups only at this point)

GenealogyPro

Geneaxchange

Hire-A-Genealogist

Directory of Genealogists

I won't go all Consumer Reports on you and try to describe or rank the above; the web sites will tell you a lot. Obviously each of them (and some even newer counterparts in the UK) faces the same challenge in making a market as APG does -- trying to generate even a significant fraction of the traffic that naturally passed ExpertConnect's doors at Ancestry.

(Full disclosure: I am a professional, and an APG member and board member; I was on ExpertConnect for more than a year, and I am signed up on most of the above sites as well.)

The Revolution in LaGrange County, Indiana

2011-03-03T03:05:00.000-08:00

The following message appeared on Rootsweb mailing lists recently:

The LaGrange de Lafayette Chapter of the DAR will honor Revolutionary War soldier DAVID COWAN with a grave marker presentation and ceremony in 2011. Seeking descendants of David and Esther Smith Cowan to invite them to the grave marking ceremony and reception.
David and Esther Cowan moved to LaGrange County, Indiana in 1835. They had the following children: Smith who married Sarah Teft; Esther who married an Aldrich; Celinda who married a Pray; Elisha who married Elmina Tucker; John who married Sarah Harding; Jonathan; Phoebe who married Enoch Leighton; Lucy; Amy Angel who married Curtis Harding; and Marenus. Also the McClaskey, Crampton and Cook families can be counted as descendants along with Aldrich, Pray, Harding and Leighton.
David Cowan was born 1765 and died July 24, 1851. Esther Smith Cowan was born 1767 and died March 22, 1848. They are buried in Eagley Cemetery, Van Buren Twp, LaGrange County, IN along with children Phoebe & Enoch Leighton and John Cowan.
DAR chapter is also seeking any Cowan family history, stories and anecdotes about the family. Please contact Barbara Yurs at 260-562-3375 or bayurs@embarqmail.com or Sharon at sharonboyerbates@aol.com for further details.

A check of the DAR Genealogical Research System shows him with the surname Cowing and a birth year of 1764, but these are small differences and the other information tallies. Evidently he was a New Englander.

"Ghost Signs" -- another resource?

2011-02-28T03:38:00.000-08:00

Hat tip to the COOK-CO-IL Rootsweb mailing list for alerting me to another category of potential historical information: Ghost Signs.

This site is a work in progress by Nicole Donohoe, MS candidate in Historic Preservation at the School of the Art Institute, Chicago. By a rough estimate there about 170 ghost Chicago signs listed with addresses, and about 70 are linked to pictures. I like the very faded "Daily News" signs, among the last public relics of a great newspaper. But the cartage and boarding stable is a keeper too.

As if I needed more ways to waste time, I find that on Flickr a search on "ghost signs" produced 15,272 results. A group photo pool with that title has 14,819 images and claims 1,667 members. Clearly I'm a bit late to the party, but in a sense that's the whole point (we're not collecting current signs, for heaven's sake!).

No, I don't know how to cite them, but if I ever need to I'll check Evidence Explained and find a way. Certainly the address and date of viewing would be essential elements, and a quick digital photo would be a memory-enhancer.

Aerial photo books from the 1950s

2011-02-25T03:37:00.000-08:00

Those who do 20th-century Midwestern genealogy may already know about this series of county histories whose most desirable feature at this distance in time is their aerial photographs of named farms in a couple dozen Illinois counties and a few in Iowa, Indiana, and Wisconsin. A larger list is available on WorldCat, where I searched on "american aerial history county series." Many are available on line at Internet Archive (first link above) and other locations.

The Abominable Snowman of Genealogy

2011-02-22T12:13:00.000-08:00

If I can believe recent blog posts, there are four kinds of people involved in genealogy (organized from the largest to the smallest in numbers, as I suspect):

(1) Those who don't care about keeping track of how they know what they know about their ancestors (AKA citing their sources);

(2) Those who do care, but claim to be constantly annoyed by "genealogy police" or citation cultists who abuse them for misplacing commas or other trivial offenses;

(3) Those who do care and who don't mind learning more, even if the teacher were to have an attitude; and

(4) The Abominable Snowmen of Genealogy, i.e., the aforementioned "genealogy police" or citation cultists who berate members of the other three groups in uncivil ways, and actually may drive members of group #2 in the direction of group #1.

I know that group #1 exists because they have blogged and commented. I know that group #2 exists because they have blogged, and because people I respect and trust have talked to a bunch of them. And I know that group #3 exists because I'm a member of it.

I am in search of evidence that group #4 exists. I have never met such a person, and in more than three years of participation on the listservs of the Association of Professional Genealogists and the Transitional Genealogists Forum, I don't recall having seen one in operation. (My memory could be faulty, hence this post.) No blog or commenter that I have linked to above offers any quotation, or names any name; only one claims to have been contacted by a member of group #4.

Please feel free to educate me by offering actual evidence of the existence of group #4 by citing examples of their obnoxious behavior. My primary purpose is selfish: as a member of group #3, I would like to behave in such a way as not to be mistaken for group #4. My secondary purpose is social history research: I have an alternative hypothesis as to why people might think there is a group #4 even if there isn't.

If you name names, I won't pass them along. If you don't want to comment in the comments, email me at hhsh AT earthlink DOT net. I do aim to report in a generic way later on, whatever the results may be. Thanks!

Oh yes -- and if I should be strangled later today by an Abominable Snowman, feel free to draw your own conclusions ;-)

Meta-resources

2011-02-15T03:11:00.000-08:00

Today's topic is "records about records" -- how cool is that?

Midwestern researchers should be familiar with the WPA county records inventories from the late 1930s. They do not exist for all counties but are valuable when they do -- at least you know what was available then and where it was. (If you're not familiar, the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center has the Allen County inventory on line.)

For those who have New York forebears, one of the assets that state has is a set of county-level inventories done out of Cornell University in the 1980s. The generic title is "Guide to Historical Resources in Generic County, New York, Repositories." They are funny-shaped books with an idiosyncratic format, but your time with them will not be wasted. Really good genealogical libraries such as Allen County and the Wisconsin State Historical Society have them, but be careful how you search on WorldCat, as sometimes they are catalogued without the commas.

Clue Wagon!

2011-02-13T03:58:00.000-08:00

I don't think I've said enough about Milwaukee-based blogger Kerry Scott's "Clue Wagon." If I may paraphrase my mom on a different subject, Scott is old enough to know what needs to be said, and young enough to go ahead and say it. Unlike me, she doesn't cheap out with a quick reference to some other good site. You get a good read, good advice, an occasional ancestor profile, and a full dose of attitude. If you haven't read this recent selection of my favorites, you should:

"Why It Doesn't Matter Which Genealogy Software You Use" (7 February)

"Why The Facebook Cartoon Pictures Make Me Want To Poke My Eye Out with a Fork" (10 December)

"In Which I Pretty Much Piss Off the Entire Genealogy Establishment" (20 October)

"5 Reasons I Wish I Could Travel Back in Time and Smack My 1995-Self" (28 September)

I don't read anybody's blog faithfully any more, so I've probably missed some good ones. I will betray my age if I say that Scott has a bright future in print venues as well, but I certainly hope she does. If she doesn't, the days of print are numbered.

More on line records from Michael Hait

2011-02-10T03:24:00.000-08:00

My friend Michael Hait has just published the first edition of his PDF book, Online State Resources for Genealogy, an ambitious undertaking devoted to materials brought on line by states, counties, towns, organizations, and individuals. It has many sites you could easily miss, including vital records but with much more specialized information. Indianapolis or Milwaukee Sanborn Maps, anyone? Inmate case records from the boys' industrial school in Lancaster, Ohio? Poor farm records from Morgan County, Illinois? The WPA index of land and buildings in Hillsdale County, Michigan, 1936-1942? These can be brick-wall breakers if you know about them and know how to use them.

Listings are organized by state and by repository within each state; there is also an index. The book does not include any of the national-level web sites like Ancestry, Footnote, Findagrave, or FamilySearch. It does include many databases not covered in specialized free sites like Joe Beine's or Miriam Midkiff's city directory reference site.

The first edition of Online State Resources runs to 310 pages, and a second edition is anticipated around midyear. I'll be surprised if it isn't twice the size. And I'll be astonished if you don't learn several new things from the current version. In my opinion it's well worth the $15 download, and that price includes the second edition too if you register.

More on -line death records from Joe Beine

2011-02-08T05:04:00.001-08:00

The vast majority of records of interest to genealogists are not on line, and may never be. Few genealogical problems can be solved using only on-line resources. But there are always more places to get started using on-line indexes and images of original documents.

Joe Beine has updated his Online Searchable Death Indexes & Records site, including material for more than twenty Midwestern counties: three in Illinois (Champaign, DuPage, and St. Clair), eight in Indiana (Carroll, Cass, Elkhart, Howard, Marshall, St. Joseph, Starke, and Switzerland), three in Michigan (Berrien, Charlevoix, and Oakland), five in Ohio (Columbiana, Cuyahoga, Greene, Lake, and Wayne), and two in Wisconsin (Eau Claire and Portage).

The problem of diaries

2011-02-04T03:01:00.000-08:00

Diaries are original sources from an eyewitness. Why aren't they always as illuminating as we would like? Maybe they lack that thing we call "perspective" . . . or context. I was provoked to think about them when I reviewed Lillian's Diaries: Whispers from Galena's Past, which recounts seven years in northwestern Illinois' Jo Daviess County from the point of view of Lillian Trudgian, a young farm woman. The review is just out in the December 2010 issue of Crossroads, the ambitious quarterly of the Utah Genealogical Association. (More on the issue later.)

Then I was provoked to think some more when reading Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory. He called two war diarists to witness the problematic nature of their creations (pages 310-311). Playwright Lillian Hellman hoped to preserve important experiences in her 1944 diary, but later found that they had somehow omitted "what had been most important to me, or what the passing years have made important." And RAF flyer Robert Kee later reflected on his own diary: "From all the quite detailed evidence of these diary entries I can't add up a very coherent picture of how it really was to be on a bomber squadron in those days."

Sometimes up close and personal can be too close -- or it needs to be supplemented with more.

The best-laid plans . . .

2011-01-31T03:40:00.000-08:00

Any time you're headed for a faraway repository, a phone call ahead of time is a good idea. Archives are never as well described on their web sites as libraries are. Some places that function as archives are called libraries. And even libraries have taken up the peculiar custom of closing down entirely on random days for "staff training."

But as I learned last week, you can't really call ahead and ask some busy attendant if everything on the long list of books and films you want to see is actually on the shelf, and not in some back room being revamped, repaired, or reboxed. So just be sure you have plenty of different things to do.

"Primary Sources"

2011-01-28T10:29:00.001-08:00

If you haven't already, check out Dan Alosso's "Reading Primary Sources" posts at The Historical Society -- one on estate inventories, the other on bank notes. If you can get beyond the historian's entrenched and hopelessly imprecise terminology of "primary source," they're quite interesting, especially the one on bank notes. Inventories have tended to fall between the chairs of history and genealogy (some published will compilations purposely omitted them).

Upgrading Illinois

2011-01-19T03:49:00.000-08:00

Two recent announcements of upgrades to already valuable resources. I'll let the announcers speak for themselves:

The Newberry Library's ChicagoAncestors.org, where mappable items from local publications are now appearing.

The Illinois State Genealogical Society's web site, including online databases. ISGS of course will be hosting the Federation of Genealogical Societies annual meeting in Springfield this fall.