Illinois Newspaper Indexes at ALPL

One benefit of showing up at a conference is learning about resources that are new to me. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum in downtown Springfield has a printed list of newspaper indexes that it has in its collection. They are not complete for the referenced localities, and not on line as far as I know. Until the day that all newspapers have been well digitized these resources remain precious. (Heck, just knowing that they exist helps!) They include some newspapers in the following counties:

Bond (Greenville)
Bureau (Buda, La Moille)
Cook (Chicago, Franklin Park; also Defender, Denni Hlaslatel, Dziennik Chicagoski)
Dekalb (Shabbona)
Dewitt (Farmer City)
Franklin (Benton)
Gallatin
Grundy
Hardin
Jackson (Carbondale)
Jo Daviess (Galena)
Kendall
Knox (Galesburg)
La Salle
Macon (Decatur)
Macoupin (Bunker Hill, Carlinville, Staunton, Virden)
Madison (Alton)
Massac (Metropolis)
Peoria
Rock Island (Moline)
St. Clair (Millstadt)
Saline
Sangamon (Springfield)
Stark (Toulon)
Tazewell (Tremont)
Union (Jonesboro)
Washington (Nashville)
Will (Lockport, etc.)

Another kind of finding aid is on their website, an "obituary finder" of citations to obituaries found by researchers at the library, organized by surname. You can browse as well by searching a blank entry.



Harold Henderson, "Illinois Newspaper Indexes at ALPL," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 21 October 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Genealogy disasters, a new record type for me

You know how birders have "life lists"? Well, I just added a record type to my genealogy "life list."

I was examining a manuscript collection left by a descendant of a prominent Gibson County, Indiana, politician to whom I am not related (but who is in the FAN club of a mysterious collateral). He was evidently an attorney for my great-great-grandfather's sister-in-law's sister, Mary [Balentine] Taylor. How else would some correspondence about her $54 premium note no. 2699 to the Illinois Mutual Fire Insurance Company show up in his papers?

I do not yet understand all the details of how a mutual insurance company worked in the mid-1800s, but it was such that the company sent out an annual list of the fire losses its policyholders had suffered and then assessed others (such as Mary) for an amount calculated to keep the company afloat. In any case they did send her and others a list of several dozen fire losses they suffered between April 1851 and March 1852 -- including the names of policyholders, locations, kinds of property lost, and the dollar amount of each loss.

Googling revealed a much shorter 1842 list of fires they insured, and WorldCat shows that the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library holds several annual reports (but not this one), including one that apparently lists all their losses from 1839 to 1868!

In the past I had used my grandfather's insurance-policy applications for research, but I love the idea that another kind of insurance company record could be good for another purpose: to serve as a kind of statewide dragnet for locating and learning more about people, including additional information published in local newspapers in the aftermath of the fires. (I also love the idea that a key record from an Illinois company headquartered in Alton, Madison County -- near St. Louis -- shows up in an archive in Indianapolis.)

In a perfect world I would now jump whole hog into "insurance disaster genealogy":
* study how such companies worked;
* look for formal or informal histories of the company;
* investigate its fate following the Great Chicago Fire (which destroyed many an overextended insurance company without ever touching their offices);
* visit Springfield and consider indexing that 1839-1868 list, and
* look for more records or similar companies in other states and other archives. (If you get to do any of these things, let us know!)

But in this world I have impending deadlines, so for now I leave you with the wonderful list.

Illinois Mutual Fire Insurance Company, schedule of losses, fiscal year 1851-1852; Box 4, Folder 1, Lucius C. Embree collection L52, Indiana State Library, Indianapolis.


Harold Henderson, "Genealogy disasters, a new record type for me," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 18 June 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Did your ancestor keep quiet in study hall?

When in doubt, read everything. There's not usually a lot of genealogical meat in Midwestern newspapers as old as 1855, but you just never know.

C. B. Smith was teaching school in Sterling, Whiteside County, Illinois, that spring, and he told his students that he would publish in the local newspaper "the names of all those who would not whisper in study hours for ten weeks; also the names of those who should whisper but once, or twice, or three times during the same period." And he did, in a "Communication" to the editor of the Sterling Times and Whiteside County Advertiser, 29 March 1855, page 3, column 2 (microfilm via interlibrary loan from the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library).

No school census for Whiteside County that year? No problem:

NOT AT ALL

John Aumont
Isaac Bryson
Marian Fassett
Catharine Price
Ellen Colder
Emma Wilson
Ruth Brink
Amos Miller
Alonzo Colder
Kate Wallace
Emma Colder [hmm, these names could be Golder]
Emily Worthington
Ann E. Wilson
Angie Stebbins
Sarah King

BUT ONCE
Jacob Bryson
Caroline Sackett
Josephine Worthington
Sarah Stebbins
J. G. Manahan
Mary Worthington
Frances Galt
Josephine Galt

BUT TWICE
William Penrose
Frances Fassett

BUT THREE TIMES

Robt Penrose

Concluded Smith, "The evil is in great measure eradicated."

Civil War medicine, if you can take it

The Springfield-based weekly Illinois Times has a brace of articles on Civil War medicine by Tara McClellan McAndrew: an extended notice of Glenna Schroeder-Lein's new Encyclopedia of Civil War Medicine (211 short articles in 419 pages, $95), and an account of how medicine was practiced at Springfield's training-ground-cum-prison Camp Butler. For the second story she used some archival material from the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, as the camp's records were destroyed in an 1865 fire. Lein is manuscripts librarian at ALPL, and describes herself as someone who "feel faint at the sight of blood," but who wished she'd had a comprehensive medical resource like the encyclopedia when she was writing her dissertation. I think this is likely to be either a must-have or a reason for frequent library visits for those of us with Civil War research targets.

Book budget maxed out? WorldCat shows it in 46 libraries so far...