Genealogy for non-relatives

When people ask me about blogging, one point I make is that it helps to be dependable. If you can post every day fine, but if not try to be there once a week. Otherwise your reader(s) will lose touch. It's standard advice. 

But every rule has its exceptions. If you can blog as engagingly as Cynthia at ChicagoGenealogy, then I don't care. "RunKeeper to the Rescue: How I Found Mr. Janes' Grave" is her second post since April and I'm just fine with that. It's got everything: A cemetery, a story, a song, a research travelogue, technology, a town called "Onarga," and a recognition that we are related to people with whom we share no discernible blood tie.

Harold Henderson, "Genealogy for non-relatives," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 18 September 2014 (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.

Genealogy in the phone books Chicago-style

If you do Chicago, you should already be reading the blog ChicagoGenealogy. Today she takes up Chicago telephone books 1878-1971. You'll want to know about them if only because the city directories peter out in the 1920s.

Hard core Chicago research info

Today I will give belated thanks for Cynthia's authoritative explanation of the so-called Chicago Burial Index over at ChicagoGenealogy. If you already understood all this, you are my idea of a seasoned Chicago researcher.

Genealogy is everywhere

Cynthia doesn't post real often at ChicagoGenealogy, but when she does you can be sure it's a good one. Yesterday guest blogger Barbara offered a finding aid under the title, "Adoption Research: Using the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin to Find Birth Names." Check it out -- it looks like it will be more useful the closer you know the date.

During my years of actual employment on the near north side, I often saw bundles of the latest CDLB being wheeled hither and yon on the sidewalks, and occasionally browsed an issue. It never dawned on me what a useful resource it might be for adoption and other Chicago legal matters relating to genealogy. Do you have an item in your past, long taken for granted, that might be as useful as this one?

Methodology Monday with Cynthia at ChicagoGenealogy

The indispensable Cynthia of the Chicagogenealogy.com lookup site is also the blogger at ChicagoGenealogy. She doesn't post real often, but it's worth the wait.

9 June: how to find a Cook County marriage license with only a newspaper listing and not a number.

4 July: a post for anyone interested in unrecorded Cook County births, passport applications, or The Devil in the White City.

Insurance and Bankruptcy in Chicago

Cynthia has an intriguing post over at Chicago Genealogy -- "The Chicago Fire: Was Your Ancestor Insured?" about the possibilities of using insurance records to learn more about your research targets. Interestingly, most of the materials she's found are in the Minnesota Historical Society. (Hat tip to the Newberry Library blog.)

Locally the treasure trove is at the National Archives Great Lakes Region. Bankruptcy cases are federal cases, and most Illinois-based insurers were bankrupted by the Chicago Fire (and not just because it was a big one -- they had been conducting business recklessly as well). So one entry point to insurance matters is through bankruptcy cases in 1871, 1872, and thereabouts.

One of my research targets was in the insurance business, so I had occasion to pay a very pleasant visit to NARA Great Lakes, out on South Pulaski, last summer. (None of what I say below should in any way replace your calling an archivist there before showing up -- they are very helpful, and these records are not simple to deal with. I'm not blowing smoke; check out the on line info on Record Group 21, Records of the U.S. Circuit and District Courts, Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, Chicago. Learn from it, but this ain't DIY territory.)

The more you already know about your research target, the better. Using the historical index to the Chicago Tribune at ProQuest newspapers (in your better libraries) may help you latch on to a case or a company that your research target was mixed up with. Many of the bankruptcy files are not indexed. But I got good results -- YMMV -- by coming in through a side door and working my way through the early years of the Defendant's General Index to Equity & Law 1871-1911, in five volumes (so you have to look for each surname in up to five places) but on one microfilm. Many of these are bankruptcy cases, and if your luck holds you can learn a lot about your people if they're involved. But this is not an every-name index; your best shot may be to find a company that you know your people were connected with, and follow that lead.

One final repetitive caution: this is not the place to start if all you have is a name and a handful of census lookups. Get to know your people before you start in on this fascinating and rarely-taken research journey -- who they worked and lived with, who they associated with. As Tom Jones says, it's about identities, not names.

The above has to do largely with post-1871 Chicago research, but Martin Tuohy of NARA Great Lakes has a thorough and inspiring article, "Federal Court Records: Researching Hoosier Family History at the National Archives-Great Lakes Region, Chicago, 1817-1859," if you can lay hands on the Spring/Summer 2008 issue of The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections (volume 48 issue 1), published by the Indiana Historical Society.