Good news for Chicago-area manuscript researchers

The Chicago Collections Consortium is not news and I'm not up to date on its current status, but its every-word-searchable listing of 4660 brief descriptions of publicly available archival collections held by eleven Chicago institutions may be just what your research project needs. The other day I delved into one collection at the Newberry Library, and when I later happened onto the CCC web site I discovered a related collection at the Chicago History Museum. The CCC aspires to a full-fledged portal but this interface is simple, straightforward, and not duplicated elsewhere.

It's not clear exactly what portion of the members' collections are listed on this site, and the listings are less detailed than the institution's own finding aids. But sites like this make reasonably exhaustive searches less exhausting. Besides TNL and CHM, the web site lists current members Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Public Library, and seven schools: Columbia College Chicago, DePaul University, Illinois Institute of Technology, Loyola University Chicago, Northwestern University, University of Illinois at Chicago, and the University of Chicago. (A 2011 Sun-Times article included the Chicago Park District, Northeastern Illinois University, and Roosevelt University as members, but they are not present on the web site roster.)

And this is all about Chicago. The collection's scope is "Chicago-related collections held by CCC member institutions containing subject matter related to the Chicago metropolitan area. This area includes Cook, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Lake, McHenry, and Will counties in Illinois and Lake and Porter counties in Indiana." If you're curious about what these institutions might have on Alaska or Greenwich Village -- or even La Porte County, Indiana; Kenosha County, Wisconsin; or Berrien County, Michigan -- you're on your own.


Map credit: Adapted from United States Census Bureau, "Counties and Statistically Equivalent Areas of the United States, Puerto Rico and the Island Areas," 2003 PDF download (https://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/maps/county_wall.html : viewed 29 November 2013).

Harold Henderson, "Good news for Chicago-area manuscript researchers," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 6 December 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Chicago Research En Route to FGS 2013

Besides containing one of the premier genealogy libraries -- the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center -- and hosting next year's Federation of Genealogical Societies conference, Fort Wayne is also surrounded in every direction by other useful repositories. The following (by me) was just posted on the FGS 2013 conference blog, first in a series of short posts on ways to pack in extra research on your way to or from the conference in Fort Wayne.

* Chicago, the de facto capital of the Midwest, a little over three hours west of Fort Wayne, has ample entertaining destinations for any non-genealogists in your group. Travelers can consider parking at an edge location (such as O'Hare or Midway airports) and taking transit into one or more repositories.

* The Newberry Library, 60 West Walton Street, http://www.newberry.org. Mammoth historical collections, national and international in scope, with very knowledgeable genealogy and local history librarians. Quality in-house bookstore. If you can only visit one location, this is the one.

* National Archives at Chicago, 7358 South Pulaski Road, http://www.archives.gov/chicago. Federal records for six states, both microfilm and physical archives. Call ahead.

* Chicago Public Library, 400 S. State (Harold Washington Library Center), http://www.chipublib.org. A public library with significant genealogy and local history holdings. Note special and neighborhood collections at Woodson Regional, 9325 S. Halsted, http://www.chipublib.org/branch/details/library/woodson-regional, and Sulzer Regional, 4455 N. Lincoln, http://www.chipublib.org/branch/details/library/sulzer-regional.

* Chicago Historical Museum, 1601 N. Clark, http://www.chicagohistory.org/research. Entry fee. The ultimate for specifically Chicago research – old phone books, newspapers, manuscripts. Note that the research center has shorter hours than the museum.



Harold Henderson, "Chicago Research En Route to FGS 2013," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 9 November 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Remembering Rail Records -- How To Get On Track

Imagine an industry so huge that it had an office in every town of any size; that was a hub of techological innovation; that was indispensable to travel and commerce everywhere; that employed and maintained records nationwide -- some kind of hybrid of the internet and the automobile and computer industries.

That was the railroads a century ago, the grimy metallic heart of the nation. One reason we don't consult their records often is a failure of imagination -- these days trains are at best a sideshow in our lives. Another reason is that the records are scattered and in many cases have been destroyed, especially employment records. But it's still worth looking, as a recent discussion on the APG email list reminded me. (Also a hat tip to Paula Stuart Warren's blog post about the Minnesota Historical Society's good work.)

Best overviews (not necessarily best as to current record locations, all URLs as of 29 July 2012):

Wendy L. Elliott, CG(sm), "Railroad Records for Genealogical Research," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 75(4): 271-77 (available free on line to NGS members). As an overview, more thorough and authoritative than anything else linked to in this post.

David A. Pfeiffer, "Riding the Rails Up Paper Mountain: Researching Railroad Records in the National Archives," Prologue vol. 29, no. 1 (Spring 1997)

David Pfeiffer, Records Relating to North American Railroads, Reference Information Paper 91 (Washington DC: NARA, 2001)

Current information on Railroad Retirement Board records (for long-term employees post-1936):
RRB's two-year-old statement
NARA Record Group 184
The pension claims series within that record group

Union records such as this premier African-American union can cut across company lines:
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Chicago Division, 1925-1969, at the Chicago History Museum

The more information you can gather ahead of time on your railroad research target person, the better. It's often key to figure out which line he worked for. The sites below vary greatly and are not a substitute for Cyndi's List on railroad records. or the historical society list at RailroadData.com. The libraries and archives below often have great finding aids. The railroad historical societies often cater to modelers (the re-enactors of the train world) more than to historical research.

A good place to start is the railroad-related holdings of Chicago's Newberry Library.

Baltimore & Ohio

Burlington
Friends of BN genealogy referrals
Newberry Library holdings on this line are in process, but you can check out their blog "Everywhere West" and a photo collection. Actually I really like that blog, especially as a way to wade into the records gradually!

Chicago & Eastern Illinois 

Chicago & Northwestern Historical Society

Erie Railroad 

Great Northern records at the Minnesota Historical Society.

Illinois Central at the Newberry Library
Illinois Central Historical Society

Missouri Pacific

Monon workers index

Northern Pacific at the Minnesota Historical Society

Pennsylvania Railroad at Temple University


Harold Henderson, "Remembering Rail Records -- How To Get On Track," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 1 August 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]















a combo of GM/Toyota and Microsoft back in the day

Chicago in the 1890s, all the details

Indiana-born writer George Ade (1866-1944) wrote "stories of the streets and the town" in the Chicago Record between 1893 and 1900. The back-cover blurb for a published selection of them pays tribute to four key aspects of his work: "his keen eye for the absurd and sublime moments of daily urban life, his ear for the vernacular of late-nineteenth-century Chicago, his shrewd understanding of the midwestern character, and above all his firm belief that all of human life was worthy literary subject matter."

Acclaimed in his lifetime and largely forgotten since, Ade interested me particularly because he arrived in Chicago about the same time as my paternal grandfather and his father, brothers, and sister. The scenes he painted are those that Alexander Henderson lived: "Small Shops of the City," "Old Days on the Canal," "With the Market-Gardeners," "Little Billy as a Committeeman," "The Junk-Shops of Canal Street," "Vehicles Out of the Ordinary," "Sidewalk Merchants and Their Wares," "The Glory of Being a Coachman," "Life on a River Tug," and "Clark Street Chinamen." Ade also did mild social commentary on art, manners, and slang.

In these pieces there is no trace of sensationalism or self-promotion; Ade himself remains entirely in the background. Many of these pieces give no names or precise locations; others may use concocted names or are composites. But at least one is a real person. Ade visited with English-born Mrs. Sarah Barrington, then a widow taking in boarders and selling cigars at the historic Green Tree Inn, built in 1833 and later relocated onto Milwaukee Avenue.

She has the curtains drawn and the door chained. The visitor must pull vigorously at the bell-knob and she will inspect him through an inch or two of opened door before admitting him. She has one big room and a little kitchen. A portrait of the duke of Wellington hangs over her arm-chair. ... In the saloon and cigar store, as well as in Mrs. Barrington's private apartments, the floor is hilly and the widows have warped to an angle, the ceilings are low, the wainscoting narrow and the doorways cramped.... but in its general aspect the oldest building in Chicago is not sufficiently picturesque to attract attention on its merits.... [Mrs. Barrington] only hoped she could sell the place for enough money to take her back to England and keep her there.

This portrait of Ade's can be quickly filled out with a sketchy first search of indexes and records available on line: Sarah Murray and Alfred Barrington were reportedly married in Cook County 17 February 1872. In 1880 she was the 60-year-old wife of Alfred, a cigar dealer aged 70, on Milwaukee Avenue. In 1890 she was living at 35 Milwaukee Avenue, her business "cigars." The easily available records also show that her dream was not realized. Eighty-two-year old Sarah Barrington died 19 January 1902  of mitral disease of the heart and chronic rheumatism at the "Chicago Home for Incurables" and is buried at Rose Hill Cemetery.

Ade's papers are at the Newberry Library; the Chicago History Museum appears to hold copies of the eight early books that collected his columns. The edition I'm reading, cited below, is selected, and does not provide the dates when the originals were published.



George Ade, "At the Green Tree Inn," in Franklin J. Meine, ed., Stories of Chicago (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003), reprint of the Caxton Club 1941 edition, pp. 70-74.


Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, 1763-1900, Barrington-Murray 1872, citing Cook County vol. 76, license 1804; http://www.ilsos.gov/isavital/marriagesrch.jsp : accessed 28 June 2012.


1880 US Census, Cook County, Illinois, population schedule, Chicago, enumeration district 101, p. 433D (stamped), p. 28 (penned), dwelling 195, family 238, Alfred Barrington household for Sarah Barrington; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 28 June 2012).

The Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago 1890, p. 234, col. 2, Mrs. Sarah Barrington; digital image, Fold3.com (http://www.footnote.com/image/#85257109 : accessed 27 June 2012).

City of Chicago, Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Report of Death no. 967, Sarah Barrington, 1902; digital image,"Illinois, Cook County Deaths, 1878-1922," FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-266-11671-83719-94?cc=1463134 : accessed 27 June 2012).

Harold Henderson, "Chicago in the 1890s, all the details," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 28 June 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

 

Chicago History, vol. 38, no. 1(Spring 2012):

"Sanborns" in Chicago

Last week I had a good three-stage learning process at the Chicago History Museum's Research Center [formerly the Chicago Historical Society's library] about what detailed fire-insurance-type maps (AKA "Sanborns") are available and where. Do note CHMRC's hours (not extensive) and admission fee ($5 a day or $15 a year).

First, I was introduced to a 1916 map -- black and white, copied from microfilm -- available on computers there and useful for orientation.

Second, there is Robinson's Atlas of the City of Chicago, Illinois, from 1886, which has been republished in full, free and online, in the Encyclopedia of Chicago. This is not the most user-friendly interface but it's manageable. Use the little slider bar verrry carefully.

Start with the Atlas Map close to the extreme left end. Magnify that map (you'll want to magnify everything) to ascertain which section, township, and range of the 1886 city includes your address. (Mine was Section 7, Township 39, Range 11, AKA 7-39-11, lying south of Chicago, north of Madison, east of Western, and west of Ashland, AKA 0 to 1200 North and 1600 to 2400 West in today's numbering scheme, which was not in use in 1886 but it helps to know it.)

Then return to the slider bar and slide it along until you get to the volume associated with your desired neighborhood or address. (Mine was volume 4.) At this point you may find that for no particular reason the map has rotated 90 degrees so that the east-west streets are going up and down. Use the rotator function to get the city headed in the right direction for a change. Then magnify magnify magnify and find the large-type plate number for your subarea. (Mine was 19.)
Continue along the slider to your desired plate number and magnify it as far as you can to see your chosen neighborhood, building by building.

Third, having done this, you can tell plenty but not as much as a full-dress fire insurance map can tell you. For that, visit CHM in person and use their on-table looseleaf binder of indexes to figure out which of their hard-copy atlases are available for which areas and which dates. (Not all areas and dates are covered by a long shot, but most areas seem to get some coverage for at least one date.) These are full-color, with notations on the type of roofing, the size of the water mains, the nature of construction (wood, brick, stone), the number of stories, and on and on. (EOC also has a nice short article by Richard Harris on some more sophisticated ways to "read" the maps.)

If you're the kind that wants icing on your cake, review the looseleaf binder again and then ask for the file folders of readily available images sorted by street name, church name, etc., in hopes of getting a ground-level view of your neighborhood back in the day. I didn't luck out but it's well worth trying.

Was that old photograph taken in Chicago?

If it was professionally done, you may be able to date it using the Chicago History Museum's nifty tool, Chicago Photographers, 1847 through 1900, as Listed in Chicago City Directories (Chicago: Chicago Historical Society Print Department, 1958). The roughly 80-page typescript runs from Abbey to Zolk, includes ambrotypists and daguerrotypists, and is now on line in your choice of formats at the American Libraries part of the Internet Archive. (For some fun, search on your favorite research counties from their home page.)

Note: these listings, reasonably enough, were taken from the classified business sections of the annual directories. If you have a photo with a name not contained in this book, bear in mind that not every individual listed with a given occupation or business showed up in the classifieds. Search for them yourself, either at the CHM or the Newberry in person, or on line (Footnote.com has by far the best coverage, although its presentation is sometimes lacking).

Hat tip to the always-concise Newberry Library genealogy news blog.

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.