Good and bad genealogy news in Ohio

Second installment on the fall issue of the Ohio Genealogical Society's Ohio Genealogy News, which comes bearing both good news and bad:

* The Preble County District Library has scanned and indexed county marriage records 1808-1996 and various other historical records.

* Bowling Green State University's Center for Archival Collections includes manuscripts with online finding aids; local government records including hunting and fishing licenses, poll books, tax lists, and peddlers licenses, plus online indexes for Henry County 1853 plat books and Wood County probate estate case files 1820-1870; and online databases of Great Lakes vessels including photographs.

* OGS will sponsor its third annual writing contest (750-5000 words), accepting entries in January and February 2010. This is a great place to jump-start your genealogy writing career and get some critiques. If you're doing a lot of work in Ohio, you can submit up to two entries in each of four categories -- eight total.

Bad news: the Ohio Historical Society's archives and library will be open only on Thursdays during 2010 and the first quarter of 2011. Library hours will be reduced at the Hayes Presidential Center and at Columbus Metropolitan as well.

Ohio Civil War Genealogy Journal #4

The last OCWGJ of 2008 is, as usual, packed -- but to me the big news was underplayed. Two new indexes of northwest Ohio Civil War newspaper letters and articles are now available on line!

From Bowling Green University's Center for Archival Collections (which has other Civil War stuff too), there's a "Civil War Newspaper Correspondence Index," listing letters from soldiers published in newspapers in the counties of Allen, Crawford, Darke, Defiance, Hancock, Henry, Huron, Lorain, Lucas, Ottawa, Paulding, Putnam, Sandusky, Seneca, Williams, Wood, and Wyandot. The index includes names of the letter-writers, but it's organized by military unit. Not all newspapers indexed are available at BGSU.

From the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center (which also has more CW material), there's an "Index to Civil War Letters and Related Articles Published in Northwest Ohio Newspapers, 1861-1865." Three newspapers are indexed -- the Fremont Journal (Sandusky County), Norwalk Reflector (Huron County), and the Sandusky Register (Erie County). All are at RBHPC. I think there's some overlap, but in general it appears that the Hayes index goes deeper into a smaller number of newspapers.

And if you've had enough of indexes for a while, the articles this quarter include many actual letters:

"Letters from the Homefront to a Soldier: The Letters of George W. Tope," by Linda Lee Tope Trent. (There's material here even if you're no Civil War buff: when George says he bought his wife a dress, he means that he bought her the proper amount of cloth with which she made the dress.)

"Henry H. Melick, 32nd OVI: The Pensioner's Tale," by Mari M. McLean.

"Letters from Cap. A. N. Goldwood, 64th OVI & 31st USCI," by Gerald Boone.

"Ask the Experts" includes a lengthy and necessarily-but-unfortunately-inconclusive discussion of the fate of Thomas Hemings, 175th OVI.

"Amanda Township, Fairfield County OH: Volunteers of 1863," by Thomas Stephen Neel.

"1883 Census of Pensioners, Stark County, Ohio," by Michael Elliott.