Indiana Genealogist March 2010

The new quarterly issue of Indiana Genealogist has some treats -- a nice going-away present from editor Annette Harper, who has acquired a job.

Judy Lee transcribed a Civil War journal of unknown origin and has found evidence to attribute it to Gillis J. McBain (1829-1914), a Canadian who died in Idaho. In between, he served as sergeant and sergeant major in Company G of Indiana's 73rd infantry. Like most 19th-century diaristsm McBain is laconic and rarely tells us what we most want to know. Nevertheless he still conveys the soldier's unique mixture of boredom, discomfort, and terror. As a postscript, there' s a shorter journal of his train travel west in 1882.

James R. Miller offers an introduction to philatelic genealogy in Indiana, which consists of using stamps and envelopes as evidence, not trying to determine the family tree of a given stamp. It reminded me uneasily of the old envelopes we destroyed as children in the name of "collecting" the stamps stuck to them.

Jay B. Wright does a clear and concise job of distinguishing between the related but distinct sins of plagiarism and copyright violation. You can do both, or neither, and you can also commit either one without committing the other. Read it, don't try it!

Catching up with Indiana Genealogist

The June issue of Indiana Genealogist features:

* Editor Annette Harper on census mortality schedules 1850-1880, including a table of those on line for Indiana counties.

* Mary Kraeszig on the General Nathan Bedford Forrest Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. This is the Indiana chapter of the UDC, named for a man who rose all the way through the ranks, and who before that became "one of the wealthiest men inthe South as a planter and slave trader." Although the state (obviously) did not secede, Indiana does have Confederate veterans and descendants thereof.

* "Indiana Civil War Surgeons"

* "Profiles of Indiana Congressmen 1897"

Indiana is especially diligent about publishing "regional items" from all corners of the state --20 of them this month. Many are biographies of Civil War soldiers (Daniel F. Hamman, Joseph Patterson, Isaac S. Collings, James M. Moore, Tavner Bowen, Americus Hedden, Isaac P. Hopewell, Jacob Grow, Ira Lynch, John A. McCoy, and William McCammon). Also a listing of South Bend Central High School students.

Indiana Genealogist for March

Thanks to the St. Joseph County Public Library in South Bend, here are the feature stories in the March issue of Indiana Genealogical Society Quarterly:

"The Sultana Explosion," by Ron Hamilton, recounting a disaster in the Mississippi River north of Memphis 27 Apr 1865 that killed about 1900 people, many of them Union veterans -- more deaths than the Titanic.

"John Jansen, Redux," a followup to the December 2007 article, from reader Don Ebbeler

"Profiles of Indiana Congressmen 1897," compiled by Sandy Thompson from Biographical Sketches of the Members of the Sixtieth General Assembly of the State of Indiana (Indianapolis: M.R. Hyman Co., 1897), surnames A through L.

"Deaths of Spanish-American War Veterans," compiled by Ron Darrah from material in the Indiana State Archives.

The issue also includes 20 short regional items, and new editor Annette Harper on "The Rectangular Survey System in Indiana."