Fort Wayne and Chicago digitized newspapers

When you ask to "browse collections" on Fold3.com these days, you can choose among the records of seven wars and -- "other records."

The site's new focus on on military records has many upsides, but one downside is that researchers might forget that the former Footnote.com has marvelous collections of city directories -- and digitized newspapers. For researchers working the Midwest, Fold3 has both the Chicago Tribune (1849-1923) and seven titles from Fort Wayne:

Daily Gazette 1882-1898

Gazette 1899

Journal Gazette 1899-1923

News 1874-1917

Sentinel 1870-1923

Weekly Journal 1890-1899

Weekly Journal Gazette 1899-1914

Put 'em together and that's more than half a century.

1890 census fragment backwards and inside out

Most of the newspaper squibs that people contribute to genealogy magazines are just colorful filler. Not Craig Pfannkuche's in the current Chicago Genealogist, Spring 2011, 43(3):94-98. He transcribed a Chicago Tribune article from 18 August 1890, listing 4 1/2 pages of names and addresses of Chicagoans who claimed to have been missed by census takers.

I suppose the moral is, always complain when you're missed. The record of your complaint may outlive the record you're complaining about being omitted from!

Midwestern Newspaper Indices

Joe Beine's Genealogy Roots Blog points to the updated Historical Newspapers and Indexes On The Internet - USA, which has useful listings for Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin.

But it's not complete. It refers to the Chicago Tribune 1870-1877 index on Footnote, but if you go directly to the Tribune's own archives you can search 1852-1984. (In both cases you have to pay to see more than a sentence or two.) Also, the Indiana State Library site is supposed to have limited indices for Logansport and New Albany (currently inoperative).