You want a desecrated cemetery? I'll show you a desecrated cemetery!

Thanks to Dick Eastman for picking up the ongoing saga of the casual burial and unburial of deceased paupers and mental patients on the northwest side of Chicago in the Dunning neighborhood.

Those looking for more details (and indications that Chicago's standards may have declined over the last 30 years) can find my lengthy article, "Grave Mistake," in the archives of the Chicago Reader, 21 September 1989.  At that time it was a housing development; now it's a school. A lot has happened since then, but you get the idea.

Census entries that have "DOOM" written all over them, and some good reading

Joseph M. Burdock [Burdick], 1870 U.S. census, Chicago, Cook Co., Ill., Ward 14, p. 582, dwelling 1455, family 1657: FIRE INS. AGENT.

Robert G. Turk, 1920 U.S. census, Binghamton, Broome Co., N.Y., Ward 3, Enum. Dist. 18, sheet 8B, dwelling 167, family 230: FOREMAN CITY STABLES.

What's your most doomed occupational find?

In other reading . . .

. . . the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society's blog takes a look at haunting forms of decease in old New York.

. . . those who appreciate the Napoleonic Era nautical-historical novels of Patrick O'Brian may want to check out a New-York-based novel set half a century earlier. One reviewer called Francis Spufford's Golden Hill "the best eighteenth-century novel since the eighteenth century."

. . . if you'd like to have a long leisurely dinner with a historian who knows all about what went on in the US between 1815 (end of the War of 1812) and 1848 (end of the Mexican War), you're out of luck. But you can read the book What Hath God Wrought by Daniel Walker Howe.

New Illinois books to look forward to!

It's not every day, or even every week, that I get to order two promising new books about Illinois -- one from an old friend, one from a new one:


James Krohe Jr., Corn Kings and One-Horse Thieves: A Plain-Spoken History of Mid-Illinois (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2017),  $29.50

Darcie Hind Posz, The Chicago Stones: A Genealogy of Acquisition, Influence and Scandal (lulu.com, 2017), $14.99


(And a hat tip to Barbara
Mathews for posting about
the Stones book on Facebook!)

Ephemeral migrants and Wisconsin vital record duplicates

Three lessons from long day trip for research in central Wisconsin:

(1) DEEDS ARE GOOD. I often see family members who move west, stay briefly, and then go back home or strike out in a whole different direction. These folks are hard to track. They constitute another reason to look at all the deeds created by other family members who we already know stayed longer. I have an original four-page 1847 letter from Thomas Mozley to his younger brother Edward, extolling Wisconsin's climate (he'd been there a whole year) and a particularly promising site for Edward's smithy. Since Edward does not seem to appear there in 1850 or 1855, I assumed he never showed up at all. But he was there long enough to witness at least one deed created by another family member.

(2) VITAL RECORDS CAN BE WEIRD, but pre-1907 Wisconsin vital records are still wonderful. In this same family there appear to be at least three separate records of a single 1873 marriage: one apparently contemporary with the wedding (of course that's the one I didn't get to see before time ran out), one submitted in the 1890s, and one submitted in the early 1900s. I viewed the last two. They are largely in agreement, but the later one contains a bit more information than the other. Huh. How reliable is that? (Informants are not named; the evidence suggests that nobody paid attention to the earlier entries. All weddings should get such coverage!)

(3) I LOVE CHICAGO, BUT NOT DRIVING AROUND IT. There is no rational way for me to get to Wisconsin without navigating either Chicago or some suburbs. Getting up at 5 a.m. is not early enough. One alternative would work only if the marvelous State Historical Society at Madison is the goal -- take the Indiana airport shuttle to O'Hare, and then take the Wisconsin airport shuttle to the University of Wisconsin campus. Has anybody actually done this?

(4) I ALREADY HAVE A FOLLOWUP LIST FOR WHEN I GET TO GO BACK. First item: Learn how to count. Second item: Avoid weather. I saw large trees that had been pulled out of the ground, roots and all, by storms the day before.

A Genealogy Christmas . . .

You didn't want to get anything done today, anyway! Good and potentially good things (I haven't looked at them all yet), moving from west to east . . .

* Chicago in Maps, cartographer Dennis McClendon's on-line collection of Chicago maps from 1834 to 2014.

* M. Susan Murnane's new book, Bankruptcy in an Industrial Society: A History of the Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Ohio (Akron: University of Akron Press, 2014), said to be "a social and institutional history of the Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Ohio. The work explains the development of the court and the story of the people who worked there and of those who sought refuge in the bankruptcy court, within the context of northern Ohio's changing economy."

* Friend and colleague Amy E. K. Arner's new book, Abstracts of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, Tax Records 1815 (Berwyn Heights, MD: Heritage Books, 2014).

* Not new at all: Historian Thomas Bender's Community and Social Change in America (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1978): "There were apparently two populations in nineteenth-century towns, an economically successful permanent group who shaped the values and direction of social life in the town, and a floating, largely unsuccessful group. We know little about those who left nineteenth-century towns." By contrast, in his view, "in contemporary America, men and women do not so much move from one town to another as follow an advantageous career path that may take them to a number of basically incidental locations." {93} Now the successful are the floaters?!





Harold Henderson, "A Genealogy Christmas . . . ," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 14 December 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Is your down-and-out Chicago ancestor in this database?

"Forty-four-year-old Adam Huber of 2026 N. Paulina became a 'social cipher' around midnight Saturday, March 17, 1894. According to the Sunday Tribune, the immigrant German carpenter had been beating his wife, Katherine. Then his son George intervened, shooting his father in the chest and killing him instantly.

"Huber's death certificate, prepared the next day by Cook County Coroner James McHale, bears the laconic notation: 'Co. Undertaker. Dunning.' Perhaps because the family was left without resources, Huber was buried at taxpayers' expense in Dunning Cemetery, the county cemetery on the semirural far northwest side of the city.

"There may have been a grave marker--but if there was, it did not last long. Huber's remains vanished into the cemetery, along with those of thousands of other people--the poor, the insane, the tubercular, the stillborn, the vagrants--whose only crime had been to die in Cook County without friends and without money." (Harold Henderson, "Grave Mistake," Chicago Reader 21 September 1989)

Barry A. Fleig is doing what many genealogists dream of -- making sure that no one is forgotten. Over more than 25 years of diligent activity he has collected many records of those buried in the "potter's field" on Chicago's northwest side. Now his work (in an on-line database) and much more information chronicling these forgotten and abandoned burials is on line at Cook County Cemetery at Dunning, Chicago, Illinois. The database contains about 7800 names but Fleig estimates more than 38,000 were buried there over the years beginning in 1854.

UPDATE 21-22 October: Board for the Certification of Genealogists president Jeanne Larzalere Bloom was quoted in the Chicago Tribune story on this subject earlier this afternoon. See http://bcgcertification.org/blog/2014/10/bcg-helps-explain-chicagos-poorest-burials/



Harold Henderson, "Is your down-and-out Chicago ancestor in this database?," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 20 October 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Organized crime, Blackfoot redemption, and illicit Puritan sex: history books for genealogists

Books I'd like to read, as reviewed in the American Historical Review 119(1) February 2014:

Robert M. Lombardo (Loyola University Chicago), Organized Crime in Chicago: Beyond the Mafia (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013). According to reviewer Robert C. Donnelly of Gonzaga, this book treats a sensational subject sensibly. It "deflates the theory that organized crime in the United States was imported from Italy, and . . . provides ample evidence to prove that organized crime in the city evolved from social structure, frontier immorality, and political corruption." (p. 195)

William E. Farr (University of Montana, Missoula), Blackfoot Redemption: A Blood Indian's Story of Murder, Confinement, and Imperfect Justice (Norman: University of Oklahoma Pres, 2012). Convicted in 1880 Montana for a murder in Canada, Spopee (Turtle) spent more than three decades in an insane asylum in Washington, DC, before being discovered by a Sioux delegation and pardoned. The story and its context are grim (Spopee could not communicate at all with his lawyers); reviewer Blanca Tovias of the University of Sydney describes the writing as "knowledgeable, attentive to detail, and vivid." (p. 187)

M. Michelle Jarrett Morris (University of Missouri), Under Household Government: Sex and Family in Puritan Massachusetts (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013). This book draws on 500 court cases in Suffolk and Middlesex counties between 1660 and 1700. According to reviewer Gloria Main (University of Colorado, Boulder) it is also distinguished from its predecessors by "using genealogical means to uncover the kinship relations of the principals and witnesses in criminal trials involving illicit sex." Main also has a genealogical complaint: "Genealogical research succeeds only when individuals can actually be traced, but surviving records favor those owning land, paying taxes, joining a church, and baptizing children. Morris has combed local archives, but among those she left undisturbed, regrettably, are church records." (p. 169)



Harold Henderson, "Organized crime, Blackfoot redemption, and illicit Puritan sex," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 6 March 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

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.]

Genealogy problems can grow, shrink, or metastasize

Often genealogy problems grow. What I once described as a "small genealogy article" has now metamorphosed into a draft in three parts, each of which is (at the moment) well above the normal size.

Sometimes genealogy problems shrink. At one point I was trying to answer an identity question: whether same-name men in eastern New York, western New York, and central Illinois were the same or different. The problem seemed fiendishly difficult, but it turned out to be quite simple to solve (land and probate records were the keys, of course). "Problem shrinkage" can be a real problem for someone trying to locate suitable cases for a BCG portfolio: what looks difficult going in may turn out to be easy after all.

To some extent, problem-spotting is a skill in itself that develops over time, as we read more advanced articles, encounter more situations, and get to know the relevant record sets and ways to use them. But sometimes it's just a matter of luck.

There are also problems that grow laterally, also known as "rabbit holes." Usually they involve collaterals rather than ancestors. An upstate New York cousin of my wife's great-grandfather married into a wealthy Chicago clan (wealthy in the sense of paying lawyers tens of thousands of dollars in order to avoid spending too much money on lawsuits, a full century ago). Some of the ensuing probates and lawsuits name and locate many relatives and associates -- much as the will of a bachelor uncle or spinster aunt can do. So much data -- now I need to identify a question that it answers!



Harold Henderson, "Genealogy problems can grow, shrink, or metastasize," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 2 December 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Chicago's City Council from the Civil War to the Cold War

The Newberry Library and Internet Archive now have almost all the Chicago City Council minutes from 1865 to 1963 on line and searchable. If your Chicagoan might have had anything to do with the city -- such as getting paid for a contract or claiming damages -- you can search  individual volumes.

Unfortunately it's not always easy to tell which years are covered in which volumes, or how to get to the ones you want. Below are links to each of the volumes, from which you can browse page by page, search for surnames or agency names or any other useful word, or just download and work offline. Should be great for political history and microhistory as well as genealogy!

* = missing pages as described on the site
missing volume numbers = volumes the Newberry does not have

Volume 1, 1865-1866
Volume 2, 1866-1867
Volume 4, 1868-1869
Volume 5, 1869-1870

Volume 6, 1870-1871
Volume 7, 1871-1872
Volume 10, 7 December 1874-1 May 1876
Volume 11, 8 May 1876-23 April 1877
Volume 13, 1878-1879
Volume 14, 1879-1880

Volume 15, 1880-1881
Volume 16, 1881-1882
Volume 17, 8 May 1882-11 May 1883
Volume 18, 1883-1884
Volume 19, 1884-1885
Volume 20, 8 June 1885-8 April 1886
Volume 21, 1886-1887
Volume 22, 1887-1888
Volume 23, 9 April 1888-12 April 1889
Volume 24, 15 April 1889-8 April 1890

Volume 25, 8 April 1890-29 September 1890
Volume 26, 6 October 1890-20 April 1891
Volume 27, 27 April 1891-26 October 1891
Volume 28, 2 November 1891-11 April 1892
Volume 29, 18 April 1892-10 October 1892
Volume 30, 17 October 1892-10 April 1893
Volume 31, 17 April 1893-16 November 1893
Volume 32, 20 November 1893-4 April 1894
Volume 33, 9 April 1894-24 September 1894
Volume 34, 1 October 1894-3 April 1895
Volume 35, 8 April 1895-September 1895
Volume 36, 7 October 1895-10 April 1896
Volume 37, 13 April 1896-27 July 1896
Volume 38, 14 September 1896-12 April 1897
Volume 39, 15 April 1897-15 November 1897
Volume 40, 22 November 1897-6 April 1898
Volume 41, 11 April 1898-14 November 1898
Volume 42, 21 November 1898-5 April 1899
Volume 43, 10 April 1899-18 September 1899
Volume 44, 25 September 1899-4 April 1900

Volume 45, 9 April 1900-24 September 1900
Volume 46, 1 October 1900-25 March 1901
Volume 47, 8 April 1901-4 November 1901
Volume 48, 11 November 1901-2 April 1902
Volume 49, 7 April 1902-20 October 1902
Volume 50, 10 November 1902-9 April 1903
Volume 51, 20 April 1903-28 September 1903
Volume 52, 5 October 1903-6 April 1904
Volume 53, 11 April 1904-17 October 1904
Volume 54, 24 October 1904-6 April 1905
Volume 55, 10 April 1905-20 November 1905
Volume 56, 27 November 1905-7 April 1906
Volume 57, 7 April 1906-15 October 1906
Volume 58, 22 October 1906-4 April 1907
Volume 61, 17 June 1908-November 1908
Volume 62, 7 December 1908-29 March 1909
Volume 63, 12 April 1909-29 November 1909
Volume 64, 6 December 1909-16 April 1910

Volume 65, 13 April 1910-28 November 1910
Volume 66, 10 December 1910-17 April 1911
Volume 67, 17 April 1911-27 November 1911
Volume 68, 4 December 1911-22 April 1912
Volume 69, 22 April 1912-22 July 1912*
Volume 70, 14 August 1912-30 December 1912*
Volume 71, 2 March 1913-31 March 1913
Volume 72, 28 April 1913-30 June 1913*
Volume 73, 3 July 1913-29 December 1913
Volume 74, 5 January 1914-27 April 1914
Volume 75, 27 April 1914-24 August 1914
Volume 76, 10 September 1914-December 1914
Volume 77, 2 January 1915-26 April 1915
Volume 78, 26 April 1915-July 1915
Volume 79, 4 October 1915-December 1915
Volume 80, 10 January 1916-26 April 1916
Volume 81, 26 April 1916-10 July 1916
Volume 82, August-December 1916
Volume 83, 11 January 1917-23 April 1917
Volume 84, 23 April 1917-29 October 1917
Volume 85, 5 November 1917-22 April 1918
Volume 86, 22 April 1918-22 July 1918
Volume 87, 5 August 1918-28 March 1919
Volume 88, 18 April 1919-24 November 1919
Volume 89, 1 December 1919-31 March 1920

Volume 90, 27 April 1920-24 November 1920*
Volume 91, 1 December 1920-11 April 1921*
Volume 92, 20 April 1921-30 November 1921*
Volume 93, 7 December 1921-12 April 1922
Volume 94, 19 April 1922-18 October 1922
Volume 95, 1 November 1922-5 April 1923*
Volume 96, 16 April 1923-23 November 1923
Volume 97, 12 December 1923-23 November 1923
Volume 98, 25 April 1924-31 October 1924
Volume 99, 12 November 1924-April 1925
Volume 100, 14 April 1925-September 1925
Volume 101, 28 October 1925-31 March 1926
Volume 102, 7 April 1926-15 September 1926
Volume 103, 3 November 1926-6 April 1927
Volume 104, 1927-1928
Volume 105, 18 April 1928-17 October 1928
Volume 106, 31 October 1928-30 March 1929
Volume 107, 5 April 1929-31 October 1929
Volume 108, 6 November 1929-31 March 1930

Volume 109, 9 April 1930-30 October 1930
Volume 110, 5 November 1930-18 March 1931
Volume 111, 9 April 1931-4 November 1931
Volume 112, 5 November 1931-23 March 1932
Volume 113, 14 April 1932-31 March 1933
Volume 114, 13 April 1933-28 November 1933
Volume 115, 6 December 1933-11 July 1934
Volume 116, 13 August 1934-27 March 1935
Volume 117, April 1935-January 1936
Volume 118, March 1936-November 1936
Volume 119, December 1936-May 1937
Volume 120, June 1937-December 1937
Volume 121, January 1938-May 1938
Volume 122, June 1938-4 January 1939
Volume 123, January-March 1939
Volume 124, April 1939-October 1939
Volume 125, November 1939-April 1940

Volume 126, April-October 1940
Volume 127, November 1940-April 1941
Volume 128, April 1941-November 1941
Volume 129, December 1941-June 1942
Volume 130, July 1942-March 1943
Volume 131, April 1943-January 1944
Volume 132, February 1944-December 1944
Volume 133, January 1945- June 1945
Volume 134, July 1945-December 1945
Volume 135, January 1946-May 1946
Volume 136, June 1946-December 1946
Volume 137, January 1947-March 1947
Volume 138, April 1947-July 1947
Volume 139, August 1947-December 1947
Volume 140, January 1948-June 1948
Volume 141, July 1948-December 1948
Volume 142, January 1949-June 1949
Volume 143, July 1949-December 1949

Volume 144, January 1950-June 1950
Volume 145, July 1950-November 1950
Volume 146, December 1950-March 1951
Volume 147, April 1951-September 1951
Volume 148, October 1951-March 1952
Volume 149, April 1952-September 1952
Volume 150, October 1952-March 1953
Volume 151, April 1952-September 1953
Volume 152, October 1953- March 1954
Volume 153, April 1954-November 1954
Volume 154, December 1954-March 1955
Volume 155, April 1955-September 1955
Volume 156, October 1955-March 1956
Volume 157, April 1956- September 1956
Volume 158, October 1956-March 1957
Volume 159, April 1957-October 1957
Volume 160, November 1957-March 1958
Volume 161, April 1958-October 1958
Volume 162, November 1958-9 December 1958
Volume 163, 22 December 1958-March 1959
Volume 164, April 1959-November 1959
Volume 165, December 1959-March 1960

Volume 166, April 1960-September 1960
Volume 167, October 1960-March 1961
Volume 168, April 1961-October 1961
Volume 169, October 1961-March 1962
Volume 170, April 1962-October 1962
Volume 171, November 1962-March 1963


Harold Henderson, "Chicago's City Council from the Civil War to the Cold War," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 19 November 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Good news for Chicago researchers!

Cynthia doesn't step up to the plate often enough, but when she does blog it's a home run! Check out her new guide to Chicago death record indexes.

Good news for Midwestern researchers!

Admit it -- you turned your back on FamilySearch for a few minutes, just to do your taxes or watch the snow fall. And now you find that they've put up browseable images of:

• Chicago Catholic Churches 1833-1925, and 
• Ohio Probates 1789-1996.

Most Viewed MWM Posts January 2013

Once again it's time for the monthly popularity contest, listing the most-viewed blog posts made here during January.

And once again the top finisher ran well ahead of the pack, my unsolicited advice to would-be revolutionizers of genealogy: "Practice first, preach later. Lay off the endless theorizing and pontificating (at least in public). SHOW US how your new approach is different and better by applying it to a specific family or problem, writing up the results, and publishing them -- in one way or another -- for others to analyze and evaluate."

1. So You Want to Re-Invent Genealogy? Here's How (January 11)

2. A Sad Day for Chicago Researchers (January 28)

3. More on the Toughest Genealogy Course (January 19)

4.  Some Good Words for Ancestry in General and Ancestry Trees in Particular (January 4)

5.  2013 Updated List of Paid Writing Opportunities (January 3)


Least viewed:

Illinois Probates, Indianapolis Courts, and the Hoosier Genealogist (January 30)




Harold Henderson, "Most Viewed MWM Posts January 2013," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 8 March 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

A Sad Day for Chicago Researchers

The Cook County birth, marriage, and death records on FamilySearch no longer have images available. I noticed this in passing on Sunday, wondered if it was a glitch. Sadly, it's not. Cynthia has a good explanation and links at ChicagoGenealogy.

Those of us in the trenches rarely have the opportunity or occasion to notice this, but digitization is not a process free of negotiation, politics, secrecy, and spin. For obvious reasons the powerful parties involved rarely disclose exactly what's going on or what was traded off. The note on FamilySearch Wiki to which Cynthia links is opaque, referring only to "provisions and guidelines of a newly revised contract" and the promise of "an additional 4.7 million records for FamilySearch patrons." What records? Will those images be available? (And, most alarmingly, did this change in contract have anything to do with the widely held but false view that open records promote fraud?)

Cynthia is ever optimistic. It's very hard for me to see this as a win for genealogy, but then we don't know what the alternatives were. And we probably never will. Gather ye images while ye may!




Harold Henderson, "A Sad Day for Chicago Researchers," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 28 January 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access 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.]

The Back Door to Chicago

Most genealogy societies have been around long enough that they have a significant amount of history, including a written trail of published research results, queries, and transcriptions. Many local periodicals are not indexed. Many are indexed by surname only (making researchers of names like Smith or Jones apoplectic). Many are indexed one issue, or one year, at a time. And then you have to find those indexes.

Fortunately there is a trend to digitize these potential clue factories. Thanks to the Newberry Library and the Chicago Genealogical Society, the Chicago Genealogist now has volumes 1 through 39 (1969-2007) on line and searchable.

Anyone who might have Chicago people should check it out (and then you'll be happier, but as far behind on your day as I am!). But if you're looking for my piece on a Civil War letter from Samuel Lowe, son of Cook County's first sheriff, it's still too recent, but you can read it here.

And speaking of urban research, the front door is open in Pittsburgh, where Historic Pittsburgh has an impressive run of early directories. They are not fully covered in my usual go-to reference, United States On Line Historical Directories.



Harold Henderson, "The Back Door to Chicago," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 5 November 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Past Prophecies

Morris Sleight, writing in his diary, probably on 30 June 1834:

"Chicago is thought by the Inhabiters is to be[come] the Largest city in the world. I think it is entirely overrated . . . it is a Low Muddy Place and no country within 30 miles to Back it."

He wrote letters (transcribed here) and settled in Napervville.


Morris Sleight papers (1834-1837 & 1850-1854; 1953), diaries, folder 9 of 11, book no. 2, entry preceding 3 July 1834; Chicago History Museum, Chicago.

Harold Henderson, "Past Prophecies," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 7 October 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Are We Reading Too Fast? And a Chicago Antidote

University of Wisconsin historian William Cronon worries about some aspects of today:

I embrace and celebrate the digital age. I believe historians should use blogs and tweets, Wikipedia entries and YouTube videos, web pages and Facebook postings, and any number of other new media tools to share our knowledge with the wider world. But I also celebrate complicated arguments that need space to develop and patience to understand. And I love long stories that can only unfold across hundreds of pages or screens. What I most fear about this new age is its impatience and its distractedness. If history as we know it is to survive, it is these we most need to resist as we practice and defend long, slow, thoughtful reading.

Perhaps there will be room to maneuver a bit even within those confines. Cronon asserts that "the most effective blogs are typically one to three paragraphs in length," but the most popular post by far in the last month on this blog was a full six paragraphs long.

Meanwhile, anyone with the slightest interest in Chicago or Midwestern history can dig into Cronon's masterpiece, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. In another life, I had the privilege of reviewing it: "Cronon's research is so thorough, his explanations so deep, his sprinkling of evocative details so apt that the reader sees the 'obvious' with new eyes." Cronon's colleague Kenneth Jackson put it more straightforwardly: "No one has ever written a better book about a city."



William Cronon, "How Long Will People Read History Books?," Perspectives on History, vol. 50, no. 7 (October 2012), http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2012/1210/index.cfm : accessed 5 October 2012.

William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991).


Harold Henderson, "Past Prophecies," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 6 October 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Records in Unpredictable Places

One more thing probate records do: make unexpected connections between unexpected places in unexpected ways.

The largest county in the Midwest -- Cook County, Illinois -- is also a burned county. While abstracting probates three counties away in Indiana, I came across three pages copied from pre-Fire Cook County probate court records from the 1840s. The originals turned to ash in the Great Chicago Fire 141 years ago.

These records connect two early Midwestern movers and shakers. Micajah Terrell Williams -- an Ohio politician-entrepreneur with an interest in improved transportation and a founder of Milwaukee, Wisconsin -- had died in Cincinnati. William B. Ogden, Chicago's first mayor and a transportation leader cut from much the same cloth, was making a claim on Williams's estate. Following Williams's death, Ogden had been involved with land Williams had owned in (among other places) La Porte and Porter Counties in Indiana. Williams's probate appears to have been a tangled and lengthy affair, and there may be more to the story.

Only because a wealthy Cincinnatian invested in some Indiana farmland did a bit of long-gone Chicago history survive the fire in this courthouse 60 miles away. This piece of history will be a lot easier to find once we get these probates abstracted and indexed!


Micajah T. Williams estate no. 336, loose papers, La Porte County, Indiana; microfilm E-1, County Clerk, La Porte.

Harold Henderson, "Records in Unpredictable Places," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 2 October 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

See the Mid-20th Century in Cushman Color

Hat tip to colleague Malissa Ruffner on Facebook for alerting us to Indiana University Archives' on-line collection of the photography of Charles Weever Cushman. The collection is easy to view and well categorized -- the heart is the more than 14,000 color slides from 1938 to 1969. Most-photographed years? 1965, 1952, and 1955. Most-photographed places: the US (11,374), United Kingdom (759), and Austria. Among the states, there are 4723 photographs of California, 2484 of Illinois, and 943 of Arizona. Cushman graduated from Indiana University and had some genealogical interests, so Indiana got 350, but Wisconsin (83), Ohio (20), and Michigan (6) don't get much attention. Thematically, landscape, architecture, and cityscapes are his commonest themes.

Few photos have names; many of the cityscapes, especially of Chicago, have addresses. There are some great "then and now" shots to be taken. If you want to see circuses from the 1940s, you're in luck. If you're bewildered, check out the highlights.


Harold Henderson, "See the Mid-20th Century in Cushman Color," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 29 September 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]