Speaking in Cincinnati and Bloomington

FYI -- hope to see you there!

Next Friday (the 26th) I'll be speaking at the Ohio Genealogical Society conference in Cincinnati on "First Steps in Indiana Research." (Tom Jones keynotes the day before.)

On Saturday the 27th I'll be speaking at the Indiana Genealogical Society conference in Bloomington on "Land and Property: The Records No Genealogist Can Do Without" and "Probate Will Not Be the Death of You." (Josh Taylor is the featured speaker.)





Harold Henderson, "Speaking in Cincinnati and Bloomington," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 19 April 2013 (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.]

NGS Day One (Wednesday the 9th)

Some folks sleep through the opening plenary session; today they missed the amazing story of the 1848 Cincinnati panoramic daguerreotype and the details of everyday life it captured -- now that it can be digitally and microscopically examined. Check it out.

Later on . . .

. . . Jeanne Bloom explained proof arguments. “If you want to break through a brick wall, write down what you know and it will reveal the holes in your argument." In an interesting analogy she also compared the elements of a proof argument to the loom, warp, and woof that go together to make up a tapestry.

. . . Marie Melchiori gave an always-helpful introduction and review of ways of accessing military medial records in the National Archives, followed by a series of examples that left us wanting to camp in the National Archives for a year or two. "You don't ever use one set of records as an end result, you use them as a stepping-stone to others." Thus the file of a US medical officer who later served for the Confederacy included a postwar request for amnesty, opening up a new record set for investigation.

. . . The annual writing contest of the International Society of Family History Writers and Editors (ISFHWE, nevertheless frequently pronounced "Ifshwee") remains open until June 3. Visit ISFHWE for more information and to download the PDF informational package.

. . . I haven't heard and haven't asked about the conference attendance this year. But at the two booths where I'm volunteering, the Indiana Genealogical Society and the Association of Professional Genealogists both had successful days making new friends and acquiring new members too.

. . . in my continuing series of scheduling train wrecks, the Ancestry "VIP Reception" came at the same time as the Geneabloggers' meetup. I finally ended up at Ancestry, where I heard that they now have 10 billion records on line. Their $99 autosomal DNA program is coordinated with Ancestry trees, so the results may (for example) actually name your (alleged) fourth cousin. Their new semantic index for city directories is a major improvement over OCR in that the computers can now understand which words are names, which occupations, etc. Among newly added collections is a 1798 London land tax never microfilmed or digitized. They're emphasizing mobile devices more and more. Their 1940 census indexing reportedly continues to involve "select offshore vendors" who are indexing "almost every field."



Harold Henderson, "NGS Day One (Wednesday the 9th)," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 10 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Travel in time 162 years back

Learn about a fantastic photographic panorama of the Cincinnati waterfront in 1848 in -- Wired magazine?! We can look forward to seeing the whole thing on the web site of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County in a few months. A little more information from their web site.

Hat tip to colleague Rondina Muncy on the Transitional Genealogists Forum.

Ohio online!

The winter issue of Ohio Genealogy News contains good news for researchers (as well as a full program for the 22-24 April OGS conference in Toledo and glimpses of the Big Three Repositories in that northwesern quadrant of the state):

(1) Via the University of Cincinnati Libraries, the city's birth records (1874-1908) and death records (1865-1908) will be digitized and available on the web beginning in August 2010.

(2) The Archives and Rare Books Library at the U of C has posted indexes to information from two compilations by Lois Hughes: Wills Filed in Probate Court, Hamilton County, Ohio, 1791-1901, and Hamilton County, Ohio Citizenship Records, 1837-1916. Original copies can then be ordered.

(3) Via the Ohio Historical Society, issues of thirteen selected Ohio newspapers published between 1880 and 1920 are being digitized and uploaded to the Library of Congress Chronicling America web site. Check the site as they become available. Locations to be included are Canfield, Perrysburg, Marion, Akron, Canton, Mount Vernon, Springfield, Hillsboro, Logan, and Marietta.

Sanborn maps in Cincinnati!

I blogged about Sanborn fire insurance maps, a great resource for buildings up close and personal, in May and June. Now the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County has digitized two volumes with more to come. They're in color, 1904-1917 and 1904-1930. Even if they cover the same area (not a given), the distinction is important because these were working maps and often changes were pasted right over the original version.

While you're there, enjoy their excellent collection of Cincinnati city directories, beginning in 1819 and covering pretty much every year 1849-1895. That kind of close coverage is what researchers need.

OGS Quarterly for fall

Three families are featured in articles in the fall 2009 Ohio Genealogical Society Quarterly:

"Newstedt Family -- Syke, Hannover, Germany to Cincinnati, Ohio," by Charles Knighton -- a true story about three teenage immigrant brothers.

"The Legacy of Lewis Seitz, Ohio Pioneer," by Karl Seitz. Lewis was involved in a migration from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Fairfield County, Ohio, based on his church's strong disapproval of slavery and their determination to have no "communion or visible fellowship" with slaveholders.

"The Mystery of Abraham Tope," by Eric E. Johnson, a War of 1812 soldier from Jefferson County who supposedly died in the war, but apparently didn't. The mystery is clarified but not fully solved -- will more records do the trick?

Bookends Friday: Frontier cities

Fifty years ago historian Richard Wade published The Urban Frontier: The Rise of Western Cities 1790-1830, in which he argued that "The towns were the spearheads of the frontier" in the 19th century US, not the isolated coonskin-capped frontiersmen. Specifically he wrote about how Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, Lexington, and St. Louis were key to the settlement of the Ohio River valley and farther west. This month the Indiana Magazine of History commemorates the book with five essays from later generations of historians about Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, and Indianapolis -- commending, critiquing, and extending Wade's thesis. "Rarely," writes David S. Stradling, "does a single book so quickly and thoroughly change the way historians think."

Ahem. I like to think of myself as a history buff (it's what I should have majored in) and an advocate for genealogists to be more historically aware. I think I had heard of Wade's, er, trailblazing book before, but I have never read it. And, frankly, when I'm not paying attention, I find it hard to remember that those five cities were laid out before their hinterlands were settled. We all have a lot of dubious history to unlearn. I'm adding this fifty-year-old book to my list; its high time for it to "quickly and thoroughly change" the way genealogists think too.

Watchdog Wednesday with Genealogy Bank in Cincinnati

[A series dedicated to keeping up with the quirks of the indispensable big indexing companies, and suggesting workarounds or even actual changes to deal with them...]

Late last month I searched for a man who might well have been mentioned in a Cincinnati newspaper during 1856. I examined the list of six Cincinnati newspapers at Genealogy Bank's Historical Newspapers, and found two with the right coverage -- "Cincinnati Daily Gazette (1835-1883)" and the "Whig (1802-1882)." (Since the coverage varies between the library subscription and the individual subscription, I'm not sure you'll find the same listings on the library version.)

No results for his surname, no results for common surnames, and no results when I left all the search terms blank and hit the search key. I had been prepared not to find him, but I had not been prepared to find nobody at all. Hmmm...

Eventually I found that a blank search on these two papers for the years 1845-1866 yielded 77 hits, and a blank search for the years 1846-1867 yielded 29,074 hits. But a blank search of 1846-1866 yielded -- nothing.

Am I doing something wrong? Or is GenealogyBank claiming to index 20 years' worth of two newspapers when they don't have a single issue up?

I posted the above on a mailing list earlier, and received two helpful suggestions but no answers to the main question. The Library of Congress's newspaper directory suggests that GB may suffer in part from a typo problem, as there doesn't seem to be any Whig paper of those dates in Cincinnati (and in fact since the Whig Party disintegrated in the 1850s we shouldn't expect there to be one).

Meanwhile, it looks like I should follow this trail the old-fashioned way: my Indiana State Library appears to have relevant issues of the Cincinnati Daily Gazette, and their account of what they hold appears to be much more specific, showing the gaps.

Ohio summer quarterly

Contents of the Ohio Genealogical Society Quarterly for Summer 2009 (volume 49, number 2, if you're counting). If you can't find something to your taste in this varied issue, maybe you need a tastebud transplant!

"Locating Kingdom of Hannover Records for 19th Century German Immigrants in Ohio," by Verna Forbes Willson -- first prize winner in this year's OGS writing contest: "My first and often repeated advice to other researchers is to not put too much faith in what others have told you but try as hard as possible to find the truth and preserve it."

"2008 First Families of Ohio Roster," by Karen Miller Bennett, CG(SM)

"The Reverend Henry Miller Herman," by Kathryn Young Ellis

"1904 Deaths in Cincinnati, Ohio, with Burials Outside of Hamilton County," tr. Kenny R. Burck and Doris Thomson

"Mining for Historical and Genealogical Gems," by Patricia Donaldson-Mills, with an extended transcript from an 1831 Brown County case, James Taylor vs. Duncan McArthur, including depositions from surveyors in the area in the 1790s.

"Elizabeth Scranton," obituary transcribed from the Alliance Review by Lois Adams Bender

"Ohioans on the Move: Portrait and Biographical Album, Sedgwick County, Kansas, Part 2," tr. Dan Spellman

"Lemuel C. Scholfield, Debtor or Deadbeat?" by Mari M. McLean *

"Yearbooks and Reunion Books: Genealogical Windfalls from Former Veterans' Societies," by Eric Johnson

"A Monthly Time Book, Wabash and Erie Canal, 1838-1840," tr. Terri Gorney

"Identification of an Old Soldier: Ira B. Sawyer," by Sandra Sawyer Lawrence: "Ira's story was
so intriguing I sent for his Civil War pension records.... What a surprise I had when I received nearly a ream of paper from the National Archives," most of it about Ora, "a woman I knew nothing about."

* Footnoted.

112 pages, including about 29 pages of written text (stories or articles) as opposed to transcriptions and lists.

Cincinnati city directories online

I don't get to Cincinnati nearly often enough. But now their well-reputed library is coming to me...and to those of you lucky enough to have ancestors in the lower left-hand corner of Ohio. The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County has PDF images of Cincy city directories 1819-1894 in their Digital Library. As far as I can tell, they have done everything right: reproduced a steady run of directories so that researchers can cross-correlate finds from one to the next; made images rather than transcriptions; and carefully distinguished between different directory publishers and date styles.

December's OGSQ

In the December 2008 Ohio Genealogical Society Quarterly:

"The Family of William H. Fyffe of Champaign County," by Martha Orsborn Gerdeman*

"Society of Civil War Families of Ohio Roster 2008"

"Ohio Genealogical Society 2008 Writing Competition" [closing 28 February 2009]

"Nathan L. Glover, Akron's Premier Music Educator," by Rena Glover Goss

"1903 Deaths in Cincinnati, Ohio, with Burials Outside of Hamilton County," comp. Kenny R. Burck and Doris Thomson

"Rose's Research," by Mary Alice Austermiller Betley

"The Smiths of Champaign County, Ohio, with connections to Epps, Hall, Stoddard" by Nancy Wright Brennan, CG*

"Decennial Tax Valuation, Cincinnati Real Estate 1892," comp. Jean Overmeier Nathan

"Hulda Emilie (King) Richholt Harris Otterbach," by Joanne Richholt Allison

*Footnoted.

Ohio City Directories before 1850

I've blogged before about the Morgan Bibliography of Ohio Imprints, but their ongoing project of indexing all 16 city directories from the five Ohio cities that published before 1850 -- Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton, and Steubenville -- deserves its own mention. These are indexes, not images. The unique advantage here is that you can search across all directories.

Online Directories at EveNDon

Thanks to a poster on rootsweb's Cook County, Illinois, mailing list, I have learned that the free and ad-free site EveNDon has images (not transcripts!) of city and county directories well beyond their Pittsburgh home base. (Also some other materials I haven't had time to check out.) They accept donations for this great service and offer fee-based lookups and copying services if you have needs in western Pennsylvania.

In our area they have the following directories on line:

ILLINOIS: statewide, Cass County, Christian County, Coles County, Shelbyville, Springfield, and Chicago (12 directories 1844-1900)

INDIANA: Fort Wayne (4 directories 1860-1917), Indianapolis (9 directories 1858-1896), Jay County

MICHIGAN: Detroit, Saginaw

OHIO: statewide, Cincinnati (29 directories 1819-1875), Cleveland

WISCONSIN: Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Wood County

FYI if your Midwestern roots stretch back to Pittsburgh, they also have 41 Pittsburgh directories 1761-1951.

As a directory aficionado, I would add that if you're in pursuit of everything about a research target, you may need to resort to travel, hired research, or pay sites (such as Footnote.com) that can offer every-year coverage. Working people's residences and relationships and business ties change very often, and you could easily miss an all-important clue by skipping even one year of the relevant time period in a directory. This also applies to non-appearances; people randomly disappear and reappear sometimes.

Ohio Civil War Genealogy Journal #1

For some reason, my subscription to Ohio's excellent Civil War genealogy journal has arrived in a huge gulp of the first three magazines of 2008 all at once! We'll take 'em one at a time. The journal's home page on the Ohio Genealogy Society web site includes the current table of contents and a PDF of a full sample issue from 2006. OGS also has online Civil War databases, including two big ones available to nonmembers . . . although why anyone interested enough in Ohio to be reading this wouldn't want to join the nation's largest state genealogical society, I can't imagine.

Volume 12, No. 1, 2008:

"Ohio's Bounty System, Bounty Jumpers, & Brokers," by Darrell Helton. Lucid, detailed, and of value to those of us researching non-Ohio soldiers, especially those who enlisted later in the war. Relies heavily on Eugene Murdock's Ohio's Bounty System in the Civil War.

"Irish Catholic Civil War Veterans and the St. Colman of Cloyne Cemetery, Washington Court House, Ohio," by 2006-2007 Senior Research History Class, Washiongton Senior High School, comp. and ed. Anna Bryant. Teacher Paul LaRue. Read these and imagine how your life would have been different if you'd had a high-school history class -- any high-school class -- like this.

"The Willich and Hecker Posts, Grand Army of the Republic, in Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine," by Jack Simon. Includes 1898 listo f members including units and 1898 addresses.

"Ask the Experts." OCWGJ has a "Panel of Experts" who answer written questions from subscribers -- in substance and detail. I don't know of any other genealogy journal anywhere that does this.

"Surname Index for OCWGJ, Volume XI, 2007," comp. Beckie Lee Petty and Susan Dunlap Lee

"Ohio Association of Ex-Prisoners of War," submitted by Betty Lloyd.

"Civil War Flags at Ohio Historical Society."

"The Search for James Andrew Monroe Clymer, Company I, 21st Ohio Volunteer Infantry," by Brad Quinlin

"1883 Census of Pensioners, Henry County, Ohio," by Michael Elliott -- amplified from the original 1883 Pensioners Report.

What NEHGS Knows That You Don't

The New England Historical and Genealogical Society is making major moves into New York research, and extending little pseudopods even farther west. Here are Midwestern resources highlighted by Valerie Beaudrault in recent issues of their email newsletter:

Hamilton County, Ohio, Genealogical Society -- that's Cincinnati and suburbs to ordinary folks -- with online Cincinnati Newspaper Obituary Index (seven newspapers, some in German) and Cincinnati Marriage Indexes from several sources. The society also offers a transcription of the 1894 History of Cincinnati and Hamilton Co. Ohio.

Cook Memorial Public Library District in Libertyville, Lake County, Illinois (confusingly, the county just north of Cook County), with a local newspaper obituary index from 1894, and images of local telephone books from 1913 and most years 1924-1959. The library also has an online genealogy newsletter, and if you go there, offers access to the premier resource for original records from Sweden, Genline.

Winneconne Cemetery, Winnecone, Winnebago County, Wisconsin, with online indexes by name and section, and a cemetery map.

June issue of OGSQ

Articles and resources in the June issue of the Ohio Genealogical Society Quarterly (info here):

"My Own Story," by William H. Hannum

"2007 First Families of Ohio Roster," by Karen Miller Bennett, CG

"The Brook Buxton Family," by James H. Edge

"Registry of Births, Salem, Shelby Co., Ohio"

"Ohio School for the Deaf"

"1902 Deaths in Cincinnati, Ohio, with Burials Outside of Hamilton County,"

"Extracts from Manumission Record of Freed Slaves 1834-1857, Logan County Clerk of Courts." These records are most interesting, and not all are manumissions. Many appear to be legal registrations of black people who were born free; some are from Logan County, and some appear to have been made in slave states and re-filed in Logan County. A brief and incomplete web search suggests that these records would benefit from some historical and legal context: the registrants may have been complying with Ohio's 1804 "Black Code," if indeed it was still in effect. Ohio Black Laws has the text, and historian Douglas Harper offers some context at "Slavery in the North." If someone can point to a more thorough discussion on or off line, I would appreciate it.

"World War I Memorial, Dayton, Ohio," by Beryl Unger

"Pigeon Run School, Amanda Township, Allen County, Ohio," by Dwane Grace

"1977-2008, Our Past, Our Present, and Looking Forward, Wood County Chapter OGS," by Eileen Aufdencamp

March OGSQ

By the table of contents, the new issue of the Ohio Genealogical Society Quarterly has 20 articles! Here are some of the more substantial ones:

"Ohio Hospital for Epileptics, Gallipolis, Gallia County," by Jean Overmeier Nathan [access to its records at the Ohio Historical Society are extremely limited, but at least the 1900 census of its residents is public]

"William Justice Burgenmeyer, Butler County," by Calvin Burgenmeyer

"1900 and 1901 Deaths in Cincinnati, Ohio, with Burials Outside of Hamilton County," by Kenny R. Burck, Doris Thomason, and Kay M. Ryan

"The Perrysburg Journal 1855 Extractions," by Lolita Thayer Guthrie [Wood County]

"Paulding County Soldiers," by Terri Gorney [clippings from the Paulding Democrat in 1918]

"A Section of the Rural Directory of Sandusky County, Ohio," by Jean Overmeier Nathan

"Ohioans on the Move: Biographical Record and Portrait Album of Tippecanoe County, Indiana Part II," by Jean Overmeier Nathan

December OGSQ!

Contents of the December 2007 Ohio Genealogical Society Quarterly,published by the largest state genealogical society in the US:

"The Lambert Family of Ohio," by Jan Trent Perna (Knox and Licking counties)

"Society of Civil War Families of Ohio Roster 2007," by Brent Dean Morgan

"Biographical Sketch of the Sloan Family," by Lettie Kuster (1910, Henry County)

"Understanding Your Ancestors' Autographs," by Linda Jean Limes Ellis

"Knox County: Some Facts and Figures" (1915)

"History of the Boyce Family" (1904) (Richland County)

"1884 Deaths in Cincinnati," transcribed by Kenny R. Burck and Doris Thomson

"Placing the West and Edwards Families in Kentucky and Ohio," by Jeanne Stella

"Genealogical Data Relating to Women in the Western Reserve Before 1850," by Jean Overmeier Nathan. This information, mostly from the late 1800s, includes this passage on Betsey Shaw Quiggle of Hambden Town[ship], Geauga County: "She raised eight children to maturity, and all their clothing and bedding was woven by her own hands. When out of thread, she manufactured some from the bark of soft wood trees."

"City Directory of Bryan, Ohio" (1932) (Williams County)

"Ohioans on the Move: Portrait and Biographical Album, Sedgwick County, Kansas," transcribed by Dan Spelman