New in the Archives and What You Can Do

The Indiana Historical Society processed 278 new collections in October and November, and mentioned 31 of them in the March/April issue of InPerspective. Here are half a dozen that caught my eye. For more information check out the online catalog.

• Civil War letters from James C. Stuart of Dearborn County, Erastus L. Pollett, and Samuel Sawyer.
• Scrapbooks, photos, and patient interviews from Billings General Hospital, Fort Benjamin Harrison (1941-1946), an orthopedic center for wounded soldiers.
• A 1916 "tour book" for Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin.
• 1968-1972 "hemodialysis scrapbooks" from Wallace S. Sims/Methodist Hospital.

Few of us have the time, proximity, or skill set to be involved with IHS acquisitions, but we can all help index the growing on-line collections at FamilySearch.org. Here are their indexing updates for the Midwest, with percentage arbitrated as of 9 March 2013:

Illinois, Chicago—Catholic Church Records, 1833–1910 [Part A], 20.00%

Indiana, Jefferson County Marriages, 1811-1959 [Part B], 28.87%
Indiana, Vermillion County Marriages, 1811–1959, 43.26%
Indiana, Vigo County Marriages,1811–1959, 3.73%
Indiana, Warrick County Marriages, 1811–1959, 46.26%
Indiana, Whitley County Marriages, 1811–1959, 21.72%

Ohio—County Births, 1856–1956 [Part C], 64.98%

Volunteer here.




Harold Henderson, "New in the Archives and What You Can Do," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 18  March 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Fun Things Picked Up Along the Way

Too short to be separate posts, too good to forget:

• You may have seen maps that shrink and squeeze the US Electoral College map in order to show states in sizes proportionate to their population rather than land area. (Here's a crude one.) Well, here's one that divides the existing map into 50 states of equal populations. The names are great too. (This may be the most interesting re-imagining of the Midwest since Jefferson's proposed states.) Thanks to Barbara Mathews for mentioning this on Facebook.

• Michigan State University has 42 Civil War collections on line, including letters, regimental records, sheet music, and more. In an illustration of the endless perversity of archiving, some records of Company A of the 4th Ohio are here. (Some "collections" consist of as little as one letter.) Surnames: Austin, Baker, Bostock, Carpenter, Cole, Davis, Eaegle, Farr, Fields, Foote, Goodale, Hardenburgh, Havens, Henson, Hoffman, Jewell, Kennedy, Kirk, Lickley, Lucas, McGowan, McLain, Miller, Nelson, Noble, Outwater, Parkhurst, Parsons, Peck, Pinckney, Porter, Shaw, Stoddard, Thompson, Tooker, Waldron, and Whitman. So the Big 10 is good at something besides basketball.

•  Three economists claim to have discovered "the first evidence that distinctively racialized names existed long before the Civil Rights Era," using death certificates and census records from Alabama, Illinois, and North Carolina.  

•  Find out what "petroliana" means.

Harold Henderson, "Fun Things Picked Up Along the Way," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 4 March 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Mark the Calendar: Amy Johnson Crow in South Bend April 13

Two talks by a highly qualified speaker will be handy to genealogists in northern Indiana and southern Michigan in April.

Saturday, April 13, at the Colfax Auditorium in the main St. Joseph County Public Library at 304 South Main Street in South Bend, Amy Johnson Crow will speak on researching our Civil War ancestors:

10 am: “Answering the Call: Researching Civil War Ancestors Before and During the
War,” and

11:30 am: “Discharged: Researching Civil War Ancestors After the War.”

The talks are co-sponsored by the library and the South Bend Area Genealogical Society.

Amy Johnson Crow, MLIS, CG, is a Genealogical Content Manager with Archives.com. She is a researcher, author, editor, and database developer. She is a former editor of the Ohio Civil War Genealogy Journal.

Records and Methods in NGS Magazine

There's nothing I don't like in the NGS Magazine (that is actually a high standard for any publication to meet!) but in the current fall issue I did especially enjoy two items:

* Claire Prechtel-Kluskens explained something I had just begun to notice as a thing in itself, and not just a random additional item in a Civil War pension file: the "family data circulars" of 1898 and 1915. They are valuable to us for much the same reason they were valuable to the Pension Bureau -- as first-hand evidence of relationships.

* Sharon Tate Moody gave an extended law-enforcement perspective on methodology: "Those investigating the life of Samuel Maddox Jr. in Monroe County, Georgia, drew the conclusion that since he had been in the 1830 census but was not in the 1840 census, he must have died. Had they followed sound investigative techniques they would have conducted an exhaustive search of local records," which reveal that he wasn't dead -- merely "serving time in the state penitentiary for attempting to murder his wife."

In brief: the real past is always more interesting than the assumed past.


H Claire Prechtel-Kluskens, "Family data circulars of 1898 and 1915," NGS Magazine, volume 38, no. 4 (October-December 2012): 28-31.

Sharon Tate Moody, "If living were a crime...evidence your ancestor left at the scene," NGS Magazine, volume 38, no. 4 (October-December 2012): 32-36.



Harold Henderson, "Records and Methods in NGS Magazine," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 20 December 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.]

New Books and Old Manuscripts

The Indiana Historical Society acquired many items in June and July. Three that caught my eye:

* James Joseph Buss, Winning the West with Words: Language and Conquest in the Lower Great Lakes. One chapter reportedly focuses on squatters in the Michigan City and La Porte area of Indiana, but the large theme has to do with the erasure of the "wrong people" from popular history.

* Civil War and other letters and papers of James H. Guy, who served in the 35th Indiana Volunteers (organized in Indianapolis in 1864).

* Civil war diary and documents of Selar Mead, who served in the 93rd Indiana (organized in Indianapolis, Madison, and New Albany in 1862).

Reviewed in the current American Historical Review:

* Peter C. Baldwin, In the Watches of the Night: Life in the Nocturnal City, 1820-1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012). "Among the topics woven into the argument are the impact of variations in daytime workers' quitting times; bad behavior on trolleys or 'owl cars'; the growth of countercyclical nocturnal labor for sanitation, industrial, bakery, dock, and newspaper workers; the effect of crime-ridden early taxis, known as 'night hawks'; and efforts by reformers to combat delinquency after ark with boys' clubs." (p. 1236)

* James W. Feldman, A Storied Wilderness: Rewilding the Apostle Islands (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012). "The author argues that officialdom would do better to recognize that 'wilderness' contains human stories" that do not need to be erased. "In the early nineteenth century, productive uses were not assumed to be incompatible with tourism, and . . . fishermen provided summer tourists with food, and local landowners augmented their incomes by building tourist lodgings and restaurants." (pp. 1265-66)



"New in Collections and Library," Indiana Historical Society INPerspective, vol. 19, no. 2 (November-December 2012): 13.

Harold Henderson, "New Books and Old Manuscripts," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 29 October 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Indiana Resources and Events

Back from a trip, and a lot of genealogy has been happening "back home in Indiana":

* The September issue of Indiana Genealogist is out! This may be the only state quarterly published exclusively online, available to Indiana Genealogical Society members. The color image potential of the web is being used well. More than half the issue is devoted to David C. Bailey Sr.'s intriguing listing of Indiana Civil War veterans who were members of California posts of the Grand Army of the Republic organization in 1886, based in part on a published source. Clearly there's still room for those with Indiana relatives to write their family histories for publication.

* The Indiana Historical Society has unveiled its collection of 495 documents totaling 3910 pages in its digital "Civil War Military Front" collection (scroll down to 5th item). The collection uses CONTENTdm, not a very user-friendly interface in my experience, but I was able to access seven soldiers' diaries without much trouble using the advanced-search feature. They are James M. Witt (39th Indiana Infantry), Lancelot C. Ewbank (31st Infantry), Andrew Jackson Smith (2nd Cavalry), Albert S. Underwood (9th Light Artillery), James F. Elliott (8th Infantry), David H. Reynolds (43rd Infantry), and Alva C. Griest (72nd Infantry).

* IHS has also published M. Teresa Baer's Indianapolis: A City of Immigrants. An earlier publication, Herman B. Wells: The Promise of the American University by James H. Capshew, got a quizzical review at History News Network, which got me thinking about how a certain kind of Midwesterner just likes to be nice . . . and opaque.

* The September Indiana Magazine of History has features on black women workers in WW2 jobs, and concrete houses in Gary a century ago, and a review of Murder in Their Hearts: The Fall Creek Massacre, that makes me think I'd better read about the 1825 Madison County case where three white men were -- unusually for the times -- hanged for premeditated murder of nine friendly Indians (two men, three women, and four children).

* On a lighter note, the Summer 2012 issue of Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History (also from IHS -- do these people sleep?) includes an article about old-time cartoonist Bill Holman and his "screwball comic strip Smokey Stover." New to me was the claim that Crawfordsville (Montgomery County) and Nappanee (Elkhart County) were especially productive of 20th-century comic-strip authors. Holman was born near Crawfordsville and reared in Nappanee, so there you are.

* Upcoming: Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center has daily events in honor of Family History Month during October. Also, Geneabloggers get together there October 13. (I've been trying for 13 years and I still haven't used that library up.)


Harold Henderson, "Indiana Resources and Events," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 25 September 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

IGHR Samford Day 4

The penultimate day of Course 6 was a smorgasbord. In the morning, Patricia Walls Stamm served up heaping portions of government documents tied to the settling and mapping of the US as it grew. Did you know that maps are an under-appreciated portion of the U.S. Serial Set? We learned the key to the secret code "ASP035-08 (24-1) Pub.land 1349, map 1."

After lunch, Ruth Ann Hager of the St. Louis County Public Library gave an exquisitely organized and timed presentation on four key resources for research in the Civil War era:
* states' slavery laws,  
* The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (1861-65),
* War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, and
* Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion.

All have varying degrees of off-line and on-line availability. Key insight: these last three items have more to say about civilians and fugitive slaves than one might expect.

And after all that we had an hour and a half to do instructive "homework" on both phases. A major point of the whole day, if not the whole course, was to temper our genealogical inclination to search only for names.

With just the banquet and a half-day to go, it's time for class photos, preliminary farewells, and preliminary packing. Even Craig Scott's mobile bookstore is boxed back up.



Harold Henderson, "IGHR Samford Day 4," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 14 June 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Fall 2011 Ohio Genealogy News and NARA M850!

There's always more than you expect in Ohio Genealogy News. The current issue has a lead article by Dan Reigle explaining the Veterans Administration Pension Payment Cards, 1907-1933, National Archives microfilm publication M850. A collaboration between the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne and Internet Archive has digitized these cards. They are browseable, not searchable, but there is a finding aid posted on the Warren County, Ohio, GenWeb project. If you've read this far, you need to join the Ohio Genealogical Society, get a copy of OGN, and peruse Dan's detailed case study of how to use this underpublicized on-line resource.

A new angle on the Civil War

One of the few mailing lists that I find just about as useful in genealogy as in my earlier life is that of the National Bureau of Economic Research. That's how I ran across the work of UCLA economist Dora L. Costa, coauthor with Matthew E. Kahn of Heroes and Cowards: The Social Face of War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008). From Chapter 1:

This book is about the heroes and cowards of the Civil War. It is about tests of adversity on the battlefield and on long marches and in the POW camps where so many soldiers died. It tells of glory and shame after the war, and of how former slaves made the transition to being free men. What do stories of deserters, POWs, returning veterans, and men throwing off the bonds of slavery have in common? While seemingly unrelated, these stories are connected by a common thread: how men interacted with their comrades, and how these interactions affected their decisions and their outcomes. . . .

Our analytical approach, like that of the authors of The American Soldier, is statistical. An advantage of this approach is that it permits us to weigh the relative importance of different motives in men’s decisions.

We begin with the stories of nine men who fought in the Civil War. They were ordinary men. They merit no mention in history books. But despite their anonymity, we can reconstruct their lives and the lives of their comrades from administrative and other official records. Their lives can suggest why some communities work while others do not, and why the distinction matters.

Costa's web page, linked above, includes the full text of some papers that went into the making of the book. I haven't read it yet, but it looks like valuable context for those who research Civil War participants on a regular basis.

Indiana Genealogist March 2010

The new quarterly issue of Indiana Genealogist has some treats -- a nice going-away present from editor Annette Harper, who has acquired a job.

Judy Lee transcribed a Civil War journal of unknown origin and has found evidence to attribute it to Gillis J. McBain (1829-1914), a Canadian who died in Idaho. In between, he served as sergeant and sergeant major in Company G of Indiana's 73rd infantry. Like most 19th-century diaristsm McBain is laconic and rarely tells us what we most want to know. Nevertheless he still conveys the soldier's unique mixture of boredom, discomfort, and terror. As a postscript, there' s a shorter journal of his train travel west in 1882.

James R. Miller offers an introduction to philatelic genealogy in Indiana, which consists of using stamps and envelopes as evidence, not trying to determine the family tree of a given stamp. It reminded me uneasily of the old envelopes we destroyed as children in the name of "collecting" the stamps stuck to them.

Jay B. Wright does a clear and concise job of distinguishing between the related but distinct sins of plagiarism and copyright violation. You can do both, or neither, and you can also commit either one without committing the other. Read it, don't try it!

Death and the American Civil War

That's the subtitle of Drew Gilpin Faust's acclaimed 2008 book This Republic of Suffering. (And yes, I know I've already posted on it once!) For genealogists in particular it is interesting to know that the war began without any systematic plan for reporting casualties and deaths.

Today it's taken for granted that a warmaking government is responsible to account for the dead to their survivors. "But in 1861, neither the Union nor the Confederate government recognized this as a responsibility." {103} And in practice the plans that were improvised left many thousands of dead never specifically accounted for. Faust writes, "It was in some sense information as much as individuals that was 'missing' in Civil War America." Read the whole thing.

More Ohio Civil War Genealogy

Contents of the third 2009 issue of the Ohio Civil War Genealogy Journal:

"The 15th Ohio and the Copperheads," by Robert Bundy

"Henry Louis Fuller, 10th OVC," by Margaret Lance Cheney

"Noah McMullin, 122nd OVI, by Daniel R. Fickes

"Leonard Lauer, 163rd OVI, Mansfield OH," by Dan Reigle & Nadine Muth

"John Alexander Harper, 73rd OVI," by Alyssa Daugherty & Tyler Kimmet

"John Harper, 73rd OVI and The Good Hope Quilt," by Dennis Allen & Shannon Meehan

"Ohioans in the XV Corps' Volunteer Storming Party at Vicksburg," by Dan Reigle

"Clearcreek Twp., Fairfield Co. OH, Volunteers as of 1863," by Tom Neel and Dan Reigle

"Edward & Lewis Obenauf, 61st OVI," by Jocelyn Wilms

"Ask the Experts," with questions on C. W. Grimes, 52nd OVI; James M. C. Black, Monroe County, OH; Calvin Baker, 1st OVC; Andrew J. Fair, 194th OVI; Stephen Liles, 8th OVI; and William Young, 39th Ovi. Even if you're not specifically interested, you can read these answers for methodology -- can you do any better than the experts?

"1883 Census of Pensioners, Warren County, Ohio," by Michael Elliott

Ohio Civil War Genealogy Journal #2 of 2009

Contents of the second issue of volume 13, more proof if any was needed of the inexhaustibility of just one period of one state's genealogy and history:

Harryette Mullen, "'Freedom for All': Sgt. William Wallace Strange"

Gwendolyn Mayer and Michael Elliott, "Marcus C. Horton Post #515, GAR, Garrettsville OH"

Leslie Korenko, "Jacob Rush: 3rd OVC at Munfordville KY"

Rev. David J. Endres, "An Ohio 'Holy Joe': Chaplain William T. O'Higgins," with letters*

Sheri Taylor Bockelman, "First, They Were Men: My Ancestors in the Civil War"*

"Ask the Experts," including discussions of Ohio casualties and the 47th, 101st, and 6th OVI

Dorene Paul, "General Henry A. Axline, Father of the National Guard of Ohio"

Michael Elliott, comp., "1883 Census of Pensioners, Auglaize County, Ohio"

*footnoted

Kitchen Cabinets and War: Indiana Magazine of History for March 2009

If these two articles aren't to your taste, the first 102 years of the Indiana Magazine of History are on line.

Nancy Hiller, "A History of Hoosier Cabinets." A New Castle, Indiana, firm attempts to ease the heavy labor of housework around the turn of the last century -- excerpted from a forthcoming book. "What differentiated the Hoosier cabinet most markedly from its predecessors . . . was its meticulously organized interior storage, a testament to the late nineteenth-century preoccupation with functional design." Or, as the magazine ads put it, "A kitchen without a cabinet is like a farm without a plow."

Frank Carroll, tr., "The 1863 Diary of William H. Carroll, Mess No. 2, Company D, 24th Indiana Volunteers." Carroll, of Daviess County, was one of five brothers who joined up. He saw action and was wounded in the attack on Vicksburg. His entry for 26 May 1863 reads in part, "Firing commenced at daylight This morning & Was kep up Stediley all day Some Rebals deserting occasionley & coming over to our Side holding a bunch of coton in their hand for a flag of peace deserters Report that Scoars of Women & children are Being kild in the citty."

In the book review section, Darrel E. Bigham of the University of Southern Indiana finds more to criticize in A Little More Freedom: African Americans Enter the Urban Midwest, 1860-1930, than the review previously blogged.

A New Year of Ohio Civil War Genealogy

The first quarter 2009 issue of the Ohio Civil War Genealogy Journal starts off with the top three finishers in the Civil War division of OGS's 2008 writing contest:

"Had They Stood Their Ground, We Would Have Cleaned Them Out: Ohioans in the Battle of Lewisburg in Western Virginia," by Jan Rader*

"Isaac Lyle of the 53rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry and His Brothers," by Jean M. Hoffman*

"When Frank Came Marching Home: Frank Elliott, 135th OVI," by Harold Henderson*

"Lincoln's Brother-in-Law in Fayette County?" by Mike Williams and Washington Senior High Research History Class

"Update: Significance of the Dove on Lewis Tuttle's Gravestone at Andersonville GA," by Kevin Frye and Mary Metzinger Nunneley

"DVD Announcement: Andersonville: View Behind the Valor, A Narrated Photographic Tour of the Prison Grounds and National Cemetery," by Kevin Frye

"Ask the Experts"

"Commodity Price Indexes, 1860 to Present," by Dan Reigle -- applying John J. McCusker's How Much Is That In Real Money? A Historical Commodity Price Index to Civil War pay figures.

"Isaac Shumaker Diary for 1863-1865, 81st OVI, Galion, Ohio," by Mike Hocker

"Book Review: The Fighting McCooks by Charles & Barbara Whalen," by Dan Reigle

"John William Eckert and his Red Badge of Courage," by Eric Johnson

"1883 Census of Pensioners, Erie County, Ohio," comp. Michael Elliott

*footnoted

Wisconsin Goes To War

Hey, it's Presidents' Day, and one thing presidents have a way of doing is sending people to war, whether they like the idea or not. Thanks to the Scout Report for flashing its searchlight on "Wisconsin Goes to War: Our Civil War Experience," one small part of the unfathomably large University of Wisconsin Digital Collections. At present this collection has both original and transcribed letters from Wisconsin residents involved in the Civil War, from Green County, Madison, Woodlawn, Appleton, Stoughton, Fond du Lac, Milwaukee, Racine, Waupun, Whitewater, Neosho, and more.

If you think I should have listed surnames instead of places, you're missing the point. Most of our Civil War ancestors either wrote nothing or nothing that survived. The trick is to find someone whose writings did survive, who shared their service in the same regiment or company, which often means they came from the same area.

The Civil War at Notre Dame

Writing in the Fall 2008 (#93) issue of Access: News from the Hesburgh Libraries of Notre Dame, special collections curator George Rugg highlights a new group of 123 Civil War manuscript letters recently donated to the university -- the Barrier family letters from Cabarrus County, North Carolina. Until recently ND's Civil War collections have come mostly from the Northern side.

But you don't have to come to South Bend to sample ND's Civil War manuscripts. Many are on line -- both original images and transcriptions, with introductory notes and further reading suggestions -- at the Special Collections website. Among those items now online are

the diary of Grant County, Wisconsin, lead miner David B. Arthur (20th Wisconsin Infantry);

the diary of Pike County, Ohio, blacksmith William Cline (73rd Ohio Infantry, including Gettysburg);

29 letters from Lake County, Ohio, farm worker Charles C. Caley (105th Ohio Infantry); and

a 10 July 1864 battle report from Lt. Col. Edward Bloodgood on the march to Atlanta (22nd Wisconsin Infantry).

There are plenty more where these came from, both on and off line, and they're from all over -- I just cherry-picked those from my area of interest.

It's repositories like this that make a mockery of this blog's premise -- when you "specialize in the Midwest," do you also specialize in all the non-Midwestern items held, and meticulously transcribed and annotated (as these are) in a Midwestern repository? (Yes.) More importantly, it's a lesson in how much digging you need to do to find relevant manuscript collections on any subject. They could literally be anywhere, but Notre Dame is an interesting place to start.

(Full disclosure: these days my straight job is in an entirely different part of the university.)

December 2008 Indiana Genealogist

I don't know how they shoehorn all this stuff into the Indiana state genealogical quarterly! But here's the December crop. (That link is also good if you want to check out the every-name index to the 2008 issues.)

"Is My Other Family Out There? Case Study of an Adoption Search," by Betty L. Warren

"Indiana University Board of Trustees 1820-1890," tr. Meredith Thompson from Indiana University: Its History from 1820, when Founded, to 1890," by Theophilus A. Wylie (Indianapolis: Wm. B. Burford, 1890) [Woops! If you can use the whole thing, it's on Google Book Search.]

"Sisters of St. Francis," by Marjorie Weiler-Powell

"Items from Marion County Mail," tr. Elizabeth Hague from 3 January 1913

"Indiana Expert Riflemen," tr. Meredith Thompson, from Report of the Adjutant-General of the State of Indiana for the Fiscal Year ending December 31, 1907 (Indianapolis: Wm. B. Burford, 1910)

"Indiana Civil War Soldier Lorenzo Judkins," by Annette Harper

"Indiana Civil War Surgeons, 6th Cavalry, 7th Cavalry, 8th Cavalry," tr. Wayne C. Klusman from Alphabetical List of Battles and Roster of Regimental Surgeons and Assistant Surgeons during the War of the Rebellion (Washington, DC: GM Van Buren, 1883)

"Commission on Public Records," by Shirley Fields

Indiana Genealogist for September

Contents of the fall issue of the Indiana Genealogical Society's quarterly include:

"An Index Is a Treasure Map -- Do You Dig?" by Harold Henderson, that's me, on how even useful indexes may lead you into error if you don't look at the original documents they point to.

"Military Resources in the Early Republic," by the prolific Ron Darrah, who identifies no fewer than 38 document-generating wars between 1781 and 1859.

"Thomas Jefferson Riley: Native Hoosier and Confederate Soldier," by his great-great granddaughter Mary Kraeszig.

Regional items include "Starke County History Items" (submitted by Peg Bretten); "Indiana Civil War Soldier Adam Record" by Kathy Anne Coppola; "Indiana Civil War Soldiers John Lafayette White and William M. White" [twins], by Keith Rott; "Marriage and Death Notices, Indiana Journal, January-December, 1832," submitted by Ron Darrah (see above), "Items from the Batesville Budget," "Indiana Civil War Soldier James E. English" by Annette Harper, and more.