Review of "The Art of Creative Research"

Those fortunate (or wise) enough to be members of the Association of Professional Genealogists and now read the December issue of the APG Quarterly, which includes numerous relevant articles for serious genealogists, as well as my review of Philip Gerard's The Art of Creative Research: A Field Guide for Writers. The general title is correct -- the book has applications well beyond genealogy -- and my misgivings about some passages don't change the fact that there is a lot to learn here and a lot of good stories as well.

For those who have occasion to look online for the complete list of my genealogy articles, the best way is to look here.

Miscellaneous Monday with APG PMC, Jeanne Larzalere Bloom, and technical writing tips

Getting ready to speak in Terre Haute on " 'Are We There Yet?' Proof and the Genealogy Police," so here's what's news in my world:

* This is the last week to get the early-bird price for the Association of Professional Genealogists' Professional Management Conference at the Salt Lake City Hilton January 8-9. It features presentations, workshops, and chances to meet people that you will not normally find at the big conferences -- not to mention the world's greatest genealogy library within walking distance.

Don't let APG's middle name fool you: anyone who's ramping up their genealogy but isn't necessarily interested in the business end will find plenty of value here. Those under the age of 30 will also find a discounted registration fee!

* The increasingly active BCG blog "Springboard" has a quotable visit with newly elected president Jeanne Larzalere Bloom, CG. "My journey with BCG began in the 'dark ages,' in the late 1990s . . . During the process I realized I had overestimated how 'good' I was and there was much that I needed to learn. Assembling the portfolio focused my genealogy education."

* The ever-diligent Scout Report has assembled a bouquet of items on technical writing. They tend to be focused on science, but the one that I did read through ("Sentence Structure of Technical Writing") was almost entirely appropriate for genealogy technical writing, as in the BCG portfolio requirement of a complex-evidence case study, or in the top journals in the field, or any time we're trying just to lay out our own evidence and reasoning clearly enough that we will be able to understand it when we pick up that project a few months from now. "Budget adequate time to write, review, revise and edit."



Harold Henderson, "Miscellaneous Monday with APG PMC, Jeanne Larzalere Bloom, and technical writing tips," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 10 November 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Two events to fit into your Salt Lake City plans!

Midwestern genealogists have two new reasons to wish that their ancestors had been more tolerant of the Mormon settlers in Nauvoo in western Illinois in the 1840s. If they had, then two big genealogy opportunities coming up in Salt Lake City might have been a lot closer!

On Saturday October 11, the Board for Certification of Genealogists will present six lectures from top genealogists Elissa Scalise Powell, Judy G. Russell, Stefani Evans, and Elizabeth Shown Mills -- free and open to the public at the Family History Library.

And this coming January 8-9, the Association of Professional Genealogists will hold its annual star-studded Professional Management Conference, with talks and workshops focused on professionalism both in the business and the expertise senses, at the downtown Hilton Hotel.

Both are open to anyone, not only to members of any particular group. APG is offering a discount to young (under-25) genealogists.



Harold Henderson, "Two events to fit into your Salt Lake City plans!," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 2 October 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

What I would have liked to know as a newbie

I did a lot of genealogy before I had any idea that there were such things as standards, national conferences, an Association of Professional Genealogists, or a Board for the Certification of Genealogists. These things all dawned on me once I got more serious -- and as my previous job, career, and occupation started dissolving.

I love being in genealogy as a business and as a profession. But there are still a few things that I would be happy to have learned sooner:

(1) Most professional genealogists do not rely exclusively on genealogy-based income to support themselves and their families.

(2) Aside from Utah, which is a special case, it helps to be farther east. Pennsylvania has more decades of researchable genealogy than Indiana, just as Indiana has more than Wyoming.

(3) Not all specialties are created equal. Some make better business models than others.

(4) A professional -- whether in terms of standards or doing work for money -- needs to be prepared for some bumps. We don't always know what we don't know; I sure didn't. The process is more fun for those who can take some correction, and who can enjoy both learning new things and un-learning some old ones. (And if you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that I think genealogy's problem is that people don't criticize one another enough or in the right ways.)

(5) It helps to have some family background or comfort level with running a business. I did not.



Harold Henderson, "What I would have liked to know as a newbie," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 19 June 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Ten top genealogists in the best venue . . .

DNA, business, branding, writing, working for entertainment and corporate clients, and more: it's not too late to sign up at the early-bird rates for the Association of Professional Genealogists' biggest-ever Professional Management Conference, January 10-11 in downtown Salt Lake City, featuring D. Joshua Taylor, Judy G. Russell, J. Mark Lowe, and a supporting cast of seven (including me)!

APG membership is not required -- but if that is an option on your 2014 menu, this is a good place to meet folks and find out if it's for you. I understand there's a famous library nearby, too, and a famous institute the following week. See you there?


Harold Henderson, "Ten top genealogists in the best venue...," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 2 January 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Fall 2013 speaking engagements

So far my plans to do more writing and less talking have not borne fruit. But I'm happy to be speaking in three places this fall:

• Wednesday September 11, 6:30 pm CDT, at the on-line meeting of the Indiana chapter of the Association of Professional Genealogists on "Three Ways to Improve Your Speaking Ideas," a shorter version of the talk I gave at FGS with the sponsorship of the Genealogical Speakers Guild. Check the IChap web site at the above link for information on joining or being a guest that evening. 
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• Monday September 23, 7:00 pm  EDT at the Van Buren Regional Genealogical Society of Southwest Michigan, Webster Public Library, 200 N. Phelps, Decatur, Michigan, on “Beyond Fort Wayne, Madison, and the Newberry: Welcome to the Other Midwestern Archives."
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• Saturday October 19, 11:45 am and 1 pm Eastern time at the Indiana African American Genealogy Group conference, "Putting the Pieces Together," in Indianapolis, on "Indirect Evidence: What To Do When Perry Mason Isn't On Your Side," and "Beyond Fort Wayne, Madison, and the Newberry: Welcome to the Other Midwestern Archives."

Harold Henderson, "Fall 2013 speaking engagements," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 4 September 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Getting serious about genealogy

Where to go when you need to find people who take genealogy as seriously as you do?

As befits a volunteer-driven community with little formal, economic, or academic infrastructure, genealogy offers a variety of places, but they are not obvious to the newcomer -- nor to the long-time hobbyist becoming aware of additional dimensions and higher standards in this fascinating pursuit.

I've been involved in many of these, and I list them in a rough order beginning with the least demanding, costly, and formal. It's quite possible that I've omitted some. (Obviously it helps to be exposed to books, blogs, lectures, and webinars by the best genealogists, but I'm focusing on real and virtual places to meet others with the same interest.)

* Transitional Genealogists Forum, lurking or participating.

* Evidence Explained: Historical Analysis, Citation and Source Usage, the web site or ongoing symposium conducted by Elizabeth Shown Mills.

* volunteers in your area who are directly involved in transcribing, indexing, abstracting, or digitizing original records.

* the ProGen Study Group -- and its offspring, the Gen Proof Groups studying Tom Jones's new book Mastering Genealogical Proof. In general, any group(s) devoted to studying good genealogy texts, including NGSQ Articles Online Study Groups. and Dear Myrtle's MGP Study Groups.

* the Association of Professional Genealogists -- benefits of membership include local and virtual chapters, the members-only list, continuing education opportunities in business and genealogy, quarterly journal, monthly newsletter, webinars, and regular gatherings at national conferences.

* intensive institutes (usually lasting about a week, but not to be confused with genealogy conferences), notably the Institute of Genealogy & Historical Research (Samford University Library, Birmingham, June), Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy (Utah Genealogical Association, January); Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh (July); National Institute on Genealogical Research (National Archives, Washington DC, July); and the Forensic Genealogy Institute (Council for the Advancement of Forensic Genealogy, Dallas, April?).

* the Genealogical Research Program through Boston University's Center for Professional Education.

* the two genealogy credentialing bodies, BCG and ICAPGen. Unlike all of the above, these are not membership bodies open to all comers, but even those who don't choose to seek credentials can learn from their web sites and occasional public events.

Nobody designed this network of opportunities, and some will suit you better than others. Enjoy what you can!



Harold Henderson, "Getting serious about genealogy," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 3 June 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Ask Not What Your Professional Organization Can Do For You...

Last week Barbara Mathews made a detailed post to the Association of Professional Genealogists' members-only list explaining the many issues with Ancestry's rendition of Massachusetts town records and how to deal with it and get around at least some of the problems.

For me that post alone was almost worth the $65 annual dues. While few posts there are as thorough and authoritative, there's lots of help requested and received on the list.

 (Full disclosure: I'm on the list a lot, and I'm a member of the APG board. Even fuller disclosure: these are my own unofficial opinions and the 2500 or so other APGers may disagree!)

But while we all have to decide what to do with our limited supply of money, APG is not just a consumer product. We decide whether to subscribe to Ancestry.com or Scotland's People based on whether the benefits to us (including intangibles) will exceed the costs. Same as buying a bag of gummi worms. And that's as it should be.

Deciding to join APG involves more than that calculation. It's also a decision to identify with and support a profession. And a profession, if it's worth anything, is not just a group of people who sell a product or service -- it's also a group of people who uphold the profession's standards.

To take an obvious example: A merchant may sell those books with fancy covers and vaporous language inside that purport to be a "history of your surname." No professional genealogist worthy of the name would have anything to do with that. Of course professionals often seek to earn money, but there are also things they won't do for money.

As Michael Hait wisely pointed out in a recent blog post, APG and the profession (as well as other genealogy societies) are in part what we put into them. So I wouldn't want anyone to join simply because of great posts like Barbara's. We need members; we need volunteers; we need folks who take genealogy seriously and will help build up the profession in innovative ways. But if you're all about getting the most for the cheapest, please look elsewhere.




Harold Henderson, "Ask Not What Your Professional Organization Can Do for You...," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 25 January 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Genealogy Education on the Cheap

Sometimes you have to spend money to save money -- that would be the case if you're perplexed about how to learn more about genealogy and are not already a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists. The new (December) issue of the APG Quarterly -- a member benefit, not available in stores -- includes my article enumerating more than a dozen ways to learn without spending too much. (I do serve on the board, but do not receive a commission on new memberships.)

I can mention two ongoing good places to look. One is Angela McGhie's blog, Adventures in Genealogical Education. The other -- which I somehow neglected to mention in the APGQ article -- is Archives.com's free "Expert Series" with short articles with all kinds of advice and information. My latest contribution over there is on "Resolving the Paradox of Research Planning."



Harold Henderson, "Genealogy Education on the Cheap," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 10 January 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

FGS Day Zero (Tuesday August 28): Save The Records!

If you sit down at a table near the Federation of Genealogical Societies registration booth in the Birmingham convention center, eventually everyone in the (genealogy) world will come by. In the course of the day I learned about certain early Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, probate records that are stored inaccessibly somewhere in "the mines" (presumably old coal mines), and about lumber companies in Mississippi tearing up whole cemeteries without a peep from cowed legislators.

Which pretty well set the stage for the Association of Professional Genealogists' usual Tuesday-night pre-conference roundtable on access to records and the "art of advocacy." Organized by Diane Gravel (New England) and chaired by Thomas MacEntee (Illinois), four knowledgeable panelists discussed how genealogists can deal with rampant misinformation about open records and then go on to advocate for:
(1) the preservation of records,
(2) open access to them, and
(3) adequate funding for the repositories that manage and maintain them.

Panelists were Alvie Davidson, CG (sm) (Florida), Teri Flack (Texas), Polly Kimmitt, CG (sm) (Massachusetts) and Kelvin L. Meyers (Texas).

The panelists took turns answering pre-set questions from the chair. Teri added a note of cheer in telling the tale of a Texas Court Records Task Force that led to a great improvement in record preservation and openness in the state (not spearheaded by genealogists but by judges, if I remember right). The panelists agreed that in the year 2017 genealogists will still be fighting over these three records issues -- and if we aren't, the results will be not be good. APG will be doing more work along these lines -- meaning ultimately that its members will be.

And in doing so we'll need to make friends and alliances with other groups that have similar interests, and find ways to dramatize their importance. Librarians have "Banned Books Week." What could we do to put "No Records Week" in the headlines? A visual representation of the 55 million Texas records unprocessed and unidentified for lack of funding? A story of a family of siblings reunited because Illinois recently opened its adoption records? Your idea here . . .



Harold Henderson, "FGS Day Zero (Tuesday August 28): Save the Records!," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 29 August 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Honesty is the best policy

"Promote the trust and security of genealogical consumers" is the third of eight items in the code of ethics every member of the Association of Professional Genealogists signs on joining. I think it offers a relatively quick and easy answer to many ethical dilemmas we experience as genealogists, whether professional or not.

Item 3 does not say, do what's right. It says, do whatever will make it easier for people to trust a genealogist. Or, more dramatically, treat every person in such a way that they will not run screaming for the hills the next time they meet a genealogist!

This is actually prudence, just as honesty and treating-others-as-you-would-like-to-be-treated are usually good policies as well. Dorm-room bull sessions and philosophical journals do not linger long at this point, because it's not very entertaining or hard to figure out. By contrast, you can really get into an argument over eight people in a seven-person lifeboat, or -- back in the day -- whether to let a neighbor into your fallout shelter when the bombs are falling.

But most everyday ethical decisions (including decisions we don't even realize we're making) rest on the firm foundation of simple prudence. If I were to use client reports without getting the clients' OK, and they found out, they would have reason to badmouth genealogists ever after. If a relative gave me information in confidence and I used it or published it, ditto. So this isn't just about professionals.

In a former life I was a journalist, and I was always very conscious that my livelihood depended greatly on the willingness of strangers to talk to me. Genealogists are not in quite as dire a situation, but we do depend on the goodwill (or tolerance) of record custodians, and of one another, in order to do our research well. So prudence plays a big part.

Don't get me wrong. It's important to think about right and wrong, and there are really hard cases that require us to do so. But most of the time simply being prudent will lead us in the right paths.



Harold Henderson, "Honesty is the best policy," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 1 June 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

NGS Day One (Wednesday the 9th)

Some folks sleep through the opening plenary session; today they missed the amazing story of the 1848 Cincinnati panoramic daguerreotype and the details of everyday life it captured -- now that it can be digitally and microscopically examined. Check it out.

Later on . . .

. . . Jeanne Bloom explained proof arguments. “If you want to break through a brick wall, write down what you know and it will reveal the holes in your argument." In an interesting analogy she also compared the elements of a proof argument to the loom, warp, and woof that go together to make up a tapestry.

. . . Marie Melchiori gave an always-helpful introduction and review of ways of accessing military medial records in the National Archives, followed by a series of examples that left us wanting to camp in the National Archives for a year or two. "You don't ever use one set of records as an end result, you use them as a stepping-stone to others." Thus the file of a US medical officer who later served for the Confederacy included a postwar request for amnesty, opening up a new record set for investigation.

. . . The annual writing contest of the International Society of Family History Writers and Editors (ISFHWE, nevertheless frequently pronounced "Ifshwee") remains open until June 3. Visit ISFHWE for more information and to download the PDF informational package.

. . . I haven't heard and haven't asked about the conference attendance this year. But at the two booths where I'm volunteering, the Indiana Genealogical Society and the Association of Professional Genealogists both had successful days making new friends and acquiring new members too.

. . . in my continuing series of scheduling train wrecks, the Ancestry "VIP Reception" came at the same time as the Geneabloggers' meetup. I finally ended up at Ancestry, where I heard that they now have 10 billion records on line. Their $99 autosomal DNA program is coordinated with Ancestry trees, so the results may (for example) actually name your (alleged) fourth cousin. Their new semantic index for city directories is a major improvement over OCR in that the computers can now understand which words are names, which occupations, etc. Among newly added collections is a 1798 London land tax never microfilmed or digitized. They're emphasizing mobile devices more and more. Their 1940 census indexing reportedly continues to involve "select offshore vendors" who are indexing "almost every field."



Harold Henderson, "NGS Day One (Wednesday the 9th)," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 10 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Historic Pathways

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.

Genealogy Research Options after Ancestry ExpertConnect

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.)

Association of Professional Genealogists

A big thank-you to those readers who are members of the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG) and who, in a pre-Thanksgiving surprise, elected me to a two-year term on the organization's board. (And I hope that any reader who is not a member will consider becoming one.) I expect to learn a lot, but here is where I started (from my pre-election statement):

Over the past three years I have benefited from listening and participating on APG's email list, from reading the quarterly, from attending the Professional Management Conference, from involvement in the Great Lakes Chapter -- and from working the table at conferences! I'd like to put my experience to work, and build on past volunteers' accomplishments, by helping APG become both more inclusive and more professional.

Inclusive: by making transparency a priority, including prompt publication of board and EC minutes.

Professional: by encouraging, recognizing, and eventually requiring continuing education among members -- or in some other appropriate way acting on Tom Jones's critique published in the December 2007 APG Quarterly. His point was that for genealogy to mature, its professional organization needs to ask more of its members than just to pay dues and subscribe to a code of ethics.

Wednesday in Little Rock at the APG PMC

People can and do complain about the Association of Professional Genealogists, but I'd have to say that today's Professional Management Conference alone justified the $65 annual dues. I attended five of the nine presentations. All were thought-provoking and worthwhile, and two were truly outstanding:

* New Mexico genealogist Mary Penner combined hard-core FAN club genealogical research on Henry O'Neill, a seemingly isolated, hard-to-research bachelor in 1850s Santa Fe, with advice on how to conceive and use an in-depth research project in several revenue- and reputation-enhancing ways.

* MBA Natasha Crain crunched the data on a few thousand customers her company has had in the last four years and outlined ten very different kinds of genealogy customers, from "dabblers" and "avid hobbyists" to attorneys and the "affluently curious." For those struggling to define their business and marketing plans, it was a godsend, because it's hard hit what you don't aim at, and it's hard to know what to aim at if you don't know how the universe of potential clients is divided up. Times, places, and media that will attract avid hobbyists will never be seen by attorneys or gift-givers.

Hopefully we'll be hearing more from these folks in the months and years to come.

Is Arkansas in the Midwest?

Not hardly, but that's where I'll be this week so the blog will look a little different. At least I get to drive the full length of Illinois, Chicago to Cairo (is this a reward or a punishment?!), and hopefully bring you a different kind of blog take on the Association of Professional Genealogists gatherings (late Tuesday and Wednesday) and then the Federation of Genealogical Societies (Thursday-Saturday), all in downtown Little Rock, Arkansas -- more the mid-South than the Midwest in my regional book.

Still more confusing Chicago City Directories!

Back in April I blogged about the many books hiding under the simple guise of "Chicago City Directory for [year]." Besides the free sites Newberry Library's Chicago Ancestors, Chicago History Museum, and Illinois Harvest, Footnote.com is also in the fray.

Key new information here: what Footnote.com calls the 1871 Chicago City Directory is apparently identical to Illinois Harvest's Edwards' ... annual directory ... of Chicago. v.14 I say "apparently" because the Footnote.com version includes two additional title pages, one characterizing it as a "Fire Edition" and claiming that its information has been carried up to December 12, 1871, but so far the pages I have viewed contain the same information in the same format as before.

Each of these online sources has its good points, and each has directories the others lack.

The Newberry's site is linked with other very useful resources for Chicago research, including a mapping function and the Chicago History Museum's book documenting the 1911 street renumbering in PDF format. It also breaks the directories up into units by letter so that you don't have to download the whole thing. It has directories designated as 1866, 1870, Edwards' Census 1871, 1875, 1880, 1885, 1892, and 1900. (Check my earlier post for more detailed citation proposals, especially for the confusing 1870-1872 period.)

Illinois Harvest requires you to download the whole thing, but it prints up very nicely and it preserves the original page order, which is no small matter if you've struggled with Footnote.com. As far as I know IH has only two directories, Edwards' volume 12 (1869-1870), and Edwards' volume 14 (1871, not the same as "Edwards' Census" displayed at the Newberry site).

Footnote.com, the only pay site discussed here, has more directories than anyone -- 1843-1849, 1851-1889, 1902-1903, and 1908-1909. You can search across years and save wanted pages in a "gallery." But. The last three years are incomplete as of midday 27 July 2008. And many of the complete directories have their pages out of order. Each directory's unpaginated front matter is dumped at the back, making it an adventure to find the title page for proper citation, and the variously paginated portions of the directory are usually presented, not in their original sequence (which heaven knows was arbitrary enough), but by page number. For example, the residential directory's page 21 is followed by the business directory's page 21, and so forth. Also, Footnote.com has taken the liberty of renaming the 1874-5 directory as "1874," 1875-6 as "1875," and so forth through 1878-9. The print quality is a bit below the Newberry and Illinois Harvest standard. (Some related discussion on Michael John Neill's Rootdig blog and on the Association of Professional Genealogists' listserv, both of which are free and should be lurked on by any wannabe genealogist.)

Lest we forget, the Chicago History Museum has the 1928 "criss-cross" Chicago directory on line (and many other on and off line resources). But you will need to know the street on which your research target lived in order to find him or her, as (from my point of view) the directory only has the criss and not the cross. I found it a little touchy to get loaded but it would probably help to have the latest PDF reader.

The fact is that Chicago researchers who don't live next door to a major genealogy library can't do without any of these four sites. And we can't afford to call "1871 Chicago City Directory" an adequate citation, either.

United States Sanitary Commission

And speaking of the Civil War, a contributor to the Association of Professional Genealogists list APG-L points to an unusual record held at the New York Public Library (PDF) with plenty of Midwestern relevance: the records of the Washington Hospital Directory Archives of the United States Sanitary Commission, including more than 9,000 files documenting friends' and families' inquiries about the condition and location of injured soldiers, and the Commission's replies.

According to the collection's scope and content note (PDF),

"The records of the Washington Hospital Directory Archives, particularly the Letters of Inquiry, are rich in content, and will support research in genealogy, military history, medical history, social welfare history, political history, and studies in race, gender, class, ethnicity, and religious culture. The records also illustrate patterns of emigration, migration, language and communication. Inquiries were sent by men, women and even older children from all stations of life," and may amplify or correct other records on the soldiers concerned.

NYPL has an database of these soldiers on line, but the files themselves are not digitized.