Volunteer for the 1940 census indexing!

What Kimberly Powell says about helping index the 1940 census.

I would add two things:

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

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

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

She's Everywhere! She's Everywhere!

News item #1: The new Hoosier Genealogist (September, volume 21, issue 3) -- available in good genealogy libraries everywhere, and in the members-only section of the Indiana Genealogical Society along with over 300 databases -- includes "The Jeffries-Robinson/Roberson Family, Allen & Whitley Counties, Indiana," a heavily documented seventeen-page account of four generations of this mixed-race family from the 1780s into the 1900s. (Note that aside from its other merits, the article is titled to maximize the information indexed in PERSI.)

News item #2: The Genealogy Center at the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne has just announced an online database of information on Indiana deaths prior to 1882 (when the state started public registration of deaths). Much of the underlying information is available at the center. (The database allows fuzzy, exact, or Soundex matching. It does not allow wild cards, browsing, or searching by anything besides first and last names. It does have this interesting property: if you type in any combination of one or more letters in either name box, it will produce up to 1,000 listings of death records for people whose names contain those letters next to each other in that sequence anywhere within it. Think about it.)

Genealogy Center librarian Dawne Slater-Putt, CG, is the author of #1 and compiler of #2. What will she think of next?

Learn more about Indiana vital records

Did you know that the Genealogy Center at the Allen County Public Library has a blog in addition to the monthly e-zine "Genealogy Gems"? Well, it does, and the most recent post, by John, advances our knowledge of how to work with Indiana vital records sources, especially in Lake and Allen counties, two of the most populous in the state.

One thing we almost always learn from such careful examinations is that the popular derivative sources (in this case the typescript WPA indexes and the Ancestry.com database derived from them) are not always complete, or as simple to use as one might think. There's more going on here than the usual problem of derivative sources being copied at several removes from the original records. Check it out!

Genealogy in South Bend

The new (January) quarterly newsletter of the South Bend Area Genealogical Society is out. The big news is the annual one-day Michiana Genealogy Fair will be Saturday, March 14, at the Mishawaka-Penn-Harris Public Library in downtown Mishawaka (SB's twin city to the east), featuring Jeff Bockman from Illinois on "Using Maps for Genealogical Research" and "No Birth Certificat, No Problem." Exhibitors (including my local society from the next county west) will be hawking our wares and talking with visitors.

Meanwhile here's the other stuff in the newsletter:

Minutes of the 27 October and 24 November 2008 programs: Don Litzer of the Allen County Public Library on "Networking Genealogically," and Garry Harrington of the Rum Village Nature Center on the topographical-geographical-ecological early history of St. Joseph County, respectively.

"World War I and World War II Draft Registration Cards: A Genealogical Treasure Trove," by Eric Craig

"George Milburn, Captain of Industry," by Ken Reising -- an active businessman who helped fossster Studebaker and Oliver manufactureres "during critical periods, when they expanded from job shops to major manufacturers," but who is little known locally in part because he moved his wagon firm to Toledo, Ohio, in 1874.

"Thomas McCartney 1809-1861 Biography," by John E. McCartney

"The Johnsons: The Swedish Connection," by Jack R. Newman

"New Books on the Shelf" at the St. Joseph County Public Library, including as well the bad news that the Indiana state legislature's ill-advised 2007 property tax cap will require the Local and Family History and microfilm rooms to close on Sundays when the rest of the library is open.

Illinois and Indiana county histories on line at BYU

Since some folks think I'm draining their purses by mentioning books that have to be purchased, I'll continue my BYU county history series with a list of those on line from Illinois and Indiana:

ILLINOIS: Champaign, Coles, Fulton, Jo Daviess, Knox, Lake, La Salle (3), Lake, Macon, Marion, McDonough, McLean, Morgan, Will

INDIANA: Adams, Allen, Bartholomew, Clark, Clay, Clinton, Delaware, Elkhart, Gibson, Grant, Henry, Jay, Kosciusko, LaPorte, Miami, Putnam, Randolph, St. Joseph (2), Shelby (2), Steuben, Tippecanoe, Vanderburgh, Wabash (2), Wayne (2)

Unfortunately, it's not a simple matter to reach their advanced search interface. A direct link doesn't work, so here's my route: first go to the Harold B. Lee Library Online Collections. Even though you want ultimately to search all collections, select the left-hand tab for "Multimedia and Images" in order to get a search box. Don't type anything into the search box, just hit "go." In the resulting window, ignore any actual results. Instead, click on "advanced search" in the newly apparent menu at the top. Then, in the advanced search window, type in "Michigan county" or whatever you want to search for in more sophisticated ways.

Indiana Genealogist for December

The current issue of the quarterly publication of the Indiana Genealogical Society runs heavily to military and religious sources:

"The True Story of Arthur Andrews, A Soldier of the Revolution," by F. W. (Bill) Farnsworth -- a fascinating disambiguation of two (or three?) same-name patriots.

"Introduction of DePauw University's United Methodist Archives," by Wesley W. Wilson

"Hoosier Soldiers in 29th Infantry Division, WWI, Part II," by Thomas P. Jones

"Case Study: The Travels of John Jansen," by Ron Darrah

"Researching Your Family History at the Indiana State Library: An Overview," by Autumn C. Gonzalez

"Lineage Societies: The SAR," by Robert D. Howell, Sr.

I can't think of a state magazine so careful to distribute the shorter articles equitably: eight of the nine districts of Indiana has a few short items like "Dubois County Court Cases, 1898," and "Danville Woman Dies Three Times." The two most significant list Earlham College faculty 1859-1922, and Allen County veterans of the Spanish-American War.

Calling All Klopfensteins

And, speaking of Allen County, Indiana, a worldwide reunion of the descendants of Elmer and Lois Klopfenstein and allied families (including other Klopfenstein branches) is set for 20-21 June in tiny Grabill, Indiana, ten miles northeast of Fort Wayne and about the same distance west of the Ohio state line. "Not just a family meal" but a "planned program" is promised.

I'm impressed that Rootsweb's Worldconnect project shows 9495 entries under the surname. Even allowing for many duplications, there surely could be enough Ks around to multiply the normal population of Grabill by several times.

Genealogy Gems (not a blog)

It's the email newsletter of the second biggest genealogy library in the country, the Genealogy Center in the spanking new Allen County Public Library in downtown Fort Wayne. Subscribe at their website; it's a quick read with useful information (including a new orientation video in Quicktime format) even if you can't physically visit this Midwestern genealogical mecca. The January 31 edition of "Genealogy Gems" has a couple of articles on a source type close to my heart -- directories.

The library's online presence is growing and pleasantly idiosyncratic: so far it offers three searchable Indiana statewide databases: Indiana artists, Indiana WWI deaths, and the mortality lists for the Indiana Farm Colony for the Feeble-Minded (AKA Muscatuck Colony, in Jennings County), 1924-1937.