A week to remember

Genealogy institutes are a hybrid between national conferences (lasting a few days with something new every hour or two and attendance in the thousands) and regular college courses (lasting a semester or so). At institutes (attendance in the dozens or hundreds), several courses are offered but genealogists spend five days in just one of their choice. Compared to conferences, there's more time to focus, and more opportunities to find like-minded friends, but not as many topics covered. I've been a fan ever since I first discovered them in 2009 in Salt Lake City and Birmingham.

At the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh (GRIP) last week, Kimberly Powell and I taught the third iteration of the course "From Confusion to Conclusion" on writing proof arguments -- with great help from William Litchman, Karen Stanbary, and Melissa Johnson, plus a cameo appearance by retiring New York Genealogical and Biographical Record editor Karen Jones.

 Our students were outstandingly inquisitive. Two of them -- Pam Anderson and Shannon Green -- will soon have articles published in the June National Genealogical Society Quarterly, and so were obliged to host the traditional GRIP Thursday night party. (This is Pittsburgh -- we don't do banquets.)

It's a small and intense world but big news still percolates in: this was the week FamilySearch announced the end of microfilm loans. Meanwhile GRIP keeps rolling along, with three separate week-long sessions and several new courses on tap for 2018, including various levels of DNA studies.

Underhill, Chittenden County, Vermont, on FamilySearch -- and other odd partial indexes

In order to use the relevant part of the FamilySearch collection of Vermont town records -- specifically those from Underhill, Chittenden County -- I have ascertained where the various volumes begin. This collection is browse-only, not indexed. But finding where individual volumes begin and end can make the browsing process far more efficient.

Volume 1, page 1 = image 13 of 649. It is preceded by some handwritten notes, and followed by a table of contents covering the first 64 pages of volume 1. This includes minutes of the first town meeting in 1795.

Either volume 2 is continuously paginated with volume 1, or it is missing.

Volume 3, cover = image 193 of 649. Reportedly 1805-1810.

Volume 4, cover page = image 286 of 649. Reportedly 1808-1814.

Volume 5, page 1 = image 476 of 649. Reportedly 1815-1820. Last entry is February 1820.

Several other off-the-beaten-path indexes are on Midwest Roots: a FamilySearch file of Allegany County, New York, probates; the 1857 assessor's list for Porter County, Indiana; and microfilmed small-town directories from Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

Since there are no in-book indexes, this is all browsing all the time. I have so many relatives here that I'm just working backwards from the end of volume 5 and have already found some goodies. It appears that most items are deeds. (Volume 1 may be more variable.) There is at least one tax list.

Someday no doubt there will be an every-name index to this collection, but I don't think it would be wise to wait!

Three ways to get your genealogy material out there without actually publishing

A recent discussion on the Transitional Genealogists Forum got into the question of how we can get our research findings "out there" without actually publishing them. I myself am a big advocate of getting stuff published, but it's worth knowing that there are alternatives. The first two came up in the discussion, and the third didn't occur to me until it was over.

(1) FamilySearch accepts various kinds of record donations.

(2) The Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center has a "photocopy exchange" program, where if you send them a manuscript, they'll bind one copy for you and one for their shelves.

(3) National Genealogical Society writing contest winner gets published in the NGS Quarterly, but other entries can end up in the NGS book loan collection at the St. Louis County Public Library. I was surprised and mostly pleased when I heard from someone who had located and read my non-winning submission on a Wisconsin family from back in 2008. "Mostly" pleased because that work had some deficiencies that I've always intended to fix . . .

The good thing about publishing in journals, instead of the above, is that some of them have editors who will help us improve our reasoning and writing. (And all of them need more material!) So I'm still a big advocate of that; the only way I'll become a lesser advocate would be if I went on a diet.

What all these options require is that we Actually. Write. Something. Do it! It's the best method of preservation.

Good news for Ohio researchers!

Twentieth-century researchers will be especially pleased to learn that the Ohio History Connection now has an index on line for Ohio death certificates 1954-1963. To see the originals -- what we really need -- we must either travel to 800 E. 17th Avenue in Columbus (a great place to research the many materials still confined to paper or microfilm), or order them from the Ohio History Store.

The death certificate index is part of the Select Ohio Public Records Index, which includes some material now on FamilySearch, and some you may not have thought to look at, such as records of the Boys' and Girls' "industrial schools" 1858-1944.



Harold Henderson, "Good news for Ohio researchers!," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 8 October 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Wisconsin Probates On Line at FamilySearch

As of 13 February 2014, nine Wisconsin counties had probate materials on line at FamilySearch.org. These are all browseable but not searchable. When I say they're indexed, I mean that a handwritten or typed index has been scanned for part or all of them. Please note that FamilySearch's own list of what's on line is inaccurate on several points, including the claim to have Burnett County.

This is a supplement to the syllabus for my 18 February 2014 webinar, "Probate Will Not Be the Death of You," for the Wisconsin State Genealogical Society. Even if you're scared of courthouses or allergic to them, you can learn plenty about probate from browsing these images.

Bayfield County 1874-1919 loose papers, no index

Fond du Lac County 1866-1932 loose papers (incomplete, starts late), index for 1918-1948

Green County 1848-1923 loose papers, no index

Jackson County 1878-1931 loose papers (incomplete, starts late), no index

La Crosse County 1874-1910 loose papers (incomplete, starts late), no index

Outagamie County 1872-1912 will and administration books, indexes 1894-1980

Pepin County, 1900-1935 loose papers (incomplete, starts late), index? 1869-1950

Shawano County, 1861-1933 loose papers, no index

Trempealeau County, 1889-1920 loose papers (incomplete, starts late), no index

Outagamie County is in its own collection, "Wisconsin, Outagamie County Records, 1825-1980 -- Probate." The other eight counties are in the collection "Wisconsin, Probate Estate Files, 1848-1948."




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

FamilySearch Books reality check

On Monday the FamilySearch blog announced that "more than 100,000 books have now been scanned and published online" at their book search site. As the result of a partnership among eight libraries, "Family History Books are available to search and use on the FamilySearch.org website and can be viewed by clicking Search and then clicking Books."

I thought, I've neglected this resource too long, and promptly searched for the exact phrase "Joseph Wilkinson." There were 39 hits, sorted by relevance.

The first and presumably most relevant hit was not available: "You do not have sufficient rights to view requested object. This book is restricted; it can only be used in the Family History Library, a family history center, or one of the listed partner libraries."

The second most relevant book was so poorly digitized as to be barely readable. Evidently the search function felt the same, as it was not possible to search within the book at all.

Fortunately I live near one of the partner libraries and will be able to consult both books in the old-fashioned way.

Make that 99,998.






Harold Henderson, "FamilySearch Books reality check," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 7 August 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Not everything burned -- partitions and mortgages in Licking County, Ohio

I'm fond of Licking County, Ohio, not only because of its unique name, but because I have many ancestors and relatives there. It is one of Ohio's burned counties, having suffered a courthouse fire in 1875.

Fortunately, the property records survived intact. Court and marriage and probate records, not so much. But there are substitutes. One potential substitute is partition records -- court records of those cases where heirs agree on (or dispute) the partition or sale of land they inherited jointly. Sometimes these records include cute little maps of the divided-up property; very often they list all the heirs.

The situation in Licking County is complex and somewhat obscure, and you may find similar tangled webs in your burned county of choice. The county's partition records escaped the fire, and in fact have been not just microfilmed but recently digitized by FamilySearch in the "Ohio Probate Records 1789-1996" collection, totaling 7 million images. Like many such collections, there is no volunteer-created index (yet), and the digitized the in-book indexes fail the Mills Index Test: they do not cover all the cases in their own books.

Meanwhile, at some point the Licking County Clerk had the original partition records retyped, surely a huge job (and judging from the falling-apart character of the microfilmed originals, necessary). Apparently about this same time the clerk created an every-name index to these partition cases, including maiden and married names for the women. It occupies three heavy volumes now slumbering in the courthouse basement in Newark. (I almost missed them but the kind and helpful clerks found them.)

Fortunately, the original handwritten partition records were microfilmed. Unfortunately, the every-name indexes were not. That's a resource that court researchers would commit serious mayhem to have in THEIR county.

So while the partitions themselves are on line in their original form via FamilySearch, there is no decent index to them UNLESS you go to Newark on a weekday and ask at the clerk's office for the index books to be brought up from the basement so that you can tell which record book you need. (FYI the indexes do not give dates, but I can tell you that Partition Book C covers 1844-1851, E 1861-1865, and G 1869-1873.) This is the best substitute for the burned probates that I have seen yet -- provided that your family had real estate to partition!

Licking County does have its own Records and Archives Department. Its lists of old records and their whereabouts were indispensable in this quest, and then I learned about their new online catalog, still a work in progress. Their knowledge was also indispensable when I needed to consult mortgage indexes and mortgage books from before 1892 (the earliest index available in the recorder's office). They located the earlier indexes (still in the inventorying process) and the two actual mortgage volumes I needed, on short notice.

Apparently these are an extremely underused resource. I was happy to be (apparently) the first person to ask for them in decades, but hopefully others will follow much sooner. They add a dimension, especially in cases where the trail of deeds grows cold.



Photo credit: Licking County Courthouse, banukab's photostream, IMG 7587, flickr.com, per Creative Commons


Harold Henderson, "Not everything burned -- partitions and mortgages in Licking County, Ohio," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 1 July 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Good news for Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Missouri researchers!

Five new or expanded Midwestern collections on FamilySearch in the last 2 days:

Illinois -- Lee County

Missouri -- Cole County

Ohio -- Trumbull County and Cleveland

Wisconsin -- 1865 state census

Does genealogy have a future? Don't ask a journalist.

"The eternal search for our ancestors is reaching its end game," claims the two-year-old on-line magazine The Verge, which covers "the intersection of technology, science, art, and culture."

Senior features editor Laura June dropped in on RootsTech and concluded that, between on-line records and DNA advances, genealogy and genealogists can only go downhill from here. "In the next five to 10 years, it will become increasingly simple to find out who your ancestors were even several generations back, with relatively little effort . . . . It’s not hard to imagine a future where the mysteries most of us have in our ancestral past will simply no longer exist." Uh huh. And when I was a kid it wasn't hard to imagine a future when we would all have personal flying cars.

It's a good article in that it is well-written and long enough to convey multiple points of view. Unfortunately, its length was not put to that use. Instead, it confirmed the author's (and no doubt the magazine's) preconceived view. (Hat tip to Stephanie Hoover, who sparked an ongoing LinkedIn discussion on the subject in the group Genealogical and Historical Research, with the somewhat different headline "Another nail in the coffin of professional genealogists...:?")

June did not quote or mention any of the top genealogists now working -- people who might have challenged her assumption that everything Ancestry.com executives say is gospel. She noticed that the Family History Library is built in the architectural fashion known as modernism, with straight lines and planes and glass and stone. She wants to think that genealogy is about to become equally shiny and clean and well-defined, no more dusty attics or dank basements or old paper that shatters when you touch it. I say, dream on.

The part of genealogy that is going away is the lookup. (The article makes some sense if you think lookups = genealogy.) I recently was hired to go to a remote county in Indiana where the property records had not been microfilmed. That's an anomaly and it will go away. I got my first glimpse of genealogy from my mom's first cousin back in the 1980s, who spent much time sending letters to relatives and typing her results on multiple carbon paper copies in typewriters. She did valuable work but at the end of the day it was a good-sized journal article, nothing more. That world is gone, and few of us miss it.

Genealogy is changing and will change a lot more, but will it become so easy to find any ancestor that genealogy will be as outdated and trivial as a printed table of logarithms? Not likely, for at least five reasons, none of which got any hearing in The Verge:

(1) Most records useful to genealogists are not microfilmed, not digitized, and not indexed. (More records are useful to genealogists than even we can imagine.)

(2) Even if everything were digitized tomorrow, genealogists still need to know how to find the relevant records. One genealogical fact Laura June didn't disclose: often key records in a proof do not name the person of interest.

(3) Much of the "information" Ancestry makes available is in the form of user-supplied family trees, which are notoriously unsourced and error-prone.

(4) Some of the "mysteries we all have in our past" can be solved by better search engines and DNA and shared documentation. But not all. The unchanged facts of genealogy are that records are scarce; they can be hard to understand; they contradict each other; and they confuse each other (common names). It takes first analyzing individual records and then correlating multiple conflicting records. If Laura June talked to anyone who knows this, such as the author of Mastering Genealogical Proof, she kept it out of the article.

(5) As for the fate of professional genealogy, the possibility of doing it yourself (DIY) in any field rarely translates into the universality of DIY. There are plenty of tools on sale to help anyone grow their own garden, or maintain a vast lawn, but last I checked plenty of professional gardeners were working.

None of the above is meant to disparage or minimize the enormous value that FamilySearch, Ancestry.com, and other on-line repositories and search engines have brought to genealogy. (Just ask those of us who were around when they weren't!) It is meant to disparage and minimize popular articles that move straight from preconception to conclusion without finding more than one point of view.



Laura June, "Who am I? Data and DNA answer one of Life's Big Questions," The Verge, 7 May 2013 (http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/7/4258094/who-am-i-data-and-dna-solve-one-of-lifes-big-questions : accessed 10 June 2013).


Harold Henderson, "Does genealogy have a future? Don't ask a journalist," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 12 June 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.] 

Specific good news for Illinois and Indiana researchers

FamilySearch announced on the 16th increases in two online collections of great interest to those with Midwestern ancestors. But the official information about the collections is somewhat incomplete and inaccurate.

"Indiana, Marriages, 1811-1959," is reported to be 82% complete, with material from all counties except Scott, Shelby, Spencer, Starke, Switzerland, Tipton, and Vermillion.

In fact, there are substantial numbers of indexed marriages in all 92 Indiana counties. All appear to offer images, but some were unavailable when I clicked them.

"Illinois, County Marriages, 1820-1934," is reported to include both index and images, 63% complete, with no names of counties covered (earlier iterations had named them).

I did not see any images. Counties with index entries are

Adams, Alexander,
Bond, Boone, Brown,
Champaign, Christian, Clark, Clay, Clinton, Coles, Crawford,
DeWitt, Douglas,
Edgar, Edwards, Effingham,
Ford, Franklin,
Gallatin, Grundy,
Hancock, Henderson, Henry,
Iroquois,
Jackson, Jefferson, Jo Daviess,
Kane, Kankakee, Kendall, Knox,
Livingston,
Marion, Massac, McHenry, Monroe, Montgomery, Morgan, Moultrie,
Ogle,
Pike,
Randolph, Rock Island,
Shelby,
Warren, White, and Williamson.

Notably missing at this point are the big ones including Cook, DuPage, Lake, Will, Peoria, and Winnebago. Where the two overlap, it would be interesting to compare the coverage of this new index to that of the Illinois State Archives' venerable "Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, 1763-1900" (also a volunteer project), but I haven't done that. If you do post such a thing on your blog, kindly add a comment with the link!



Harold Henderson, "Specific good news for Illinois and Indiana researchers," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 18 May 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.] 

Good news for Michigan researchers!

Yesterday (Monday) FamilySearch posted a new collection, "Michigan, Death Certificates, 1921-1952." The official description says it includes images, but at this time it's just an index. Still a big help . . .

For the immediately prior period (1897-1920) the go-to source, index plus images of the original records, is at Seeking Michigan (use the "Advanced Search" button).

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.

67 Allegany County NY decedents

FamilySearch's uploading of more than 14 million New York probate images from 1629 to1971 is an immeasurable boon to genealogists with research targets in the Empire State. It can, however, be immeasurably frustrating to find any particular person in the browse-only collection! It's divided by counties, and within counties by type of record and within that by volume or box. The boxed loose papers, organized by decedent, are among the most valuable probate records, and they don't even have page numbers!

Since I had to root through one of these virtual boxes anyway, in order to find my wife's ancestor William Berry, I kept track of all the other decedents whose estate papers had lodged in Box #2 from rugged Allegany County. The list of 67, with initial image number for each, is now on my web site. They are in order of appearance; if you don't have time to read all the names, use control-F to search them. They appeared to me to all be in the 1830s-1860s time range, where such records are most valuable. There are way plenty more materials in this one collection that would benefit from any sort of finding aid.

Here's a May 1845 summons to the next of kin of the late Gideon Hayward. James Hayward was living in Vigo County, Indiana, and Jane Davis nearby in Clay County. These are not just "New York records."

Gideon Hayward estate, Estate Papers 1807-1930, Box 2, Allegany County, New York; image 755 of 770, “New York, Probate Records, 1629-1972,” FamilySearch (http://www.familysearch.org : accessed 10 April 2013), citing FHL microfilm 594,806.

Harold Henderson, "67 Allegany County NY decedents," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 12 April 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

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.]

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.]

It's Gone! Now What?

Someone asked a good question following my citations webinar last week (still listenable here if you're an Illinois State Genealogical Society member): how do you deal with a situation where the image you have cited is no longer on line?

For me, and I'm sure many others, it's not an academic question. Thanks to a typically non-transparent Chicago contract negotiation, FamilySearch no longer provides images for many Cook County, Illinois, records, including this one which figures in my talk coming up in May at the National Genealogical Society conference in Las Vegas:

City of Chicago, Department of Health, Record of Death no. 2510, George Edw. Chilcote 1914; digital image, “Illinois, Cook County Deaths, 1878-1922,” FamilySearch (http://www.familysearch.org : accessed 28 September 2011), citing Family History Library microfilm 1,239,982.

Technically the citation is still accurate, as the image was there on the date of access. But it's no longer available. The index remains, but relying exclusively on indexes is no fun and bad genealogy.

I still have almost three months to make up my mind, but three -- make that four -- courses of action seem appropriate:

(1) At a minimum, add a note saying that the image is no longer available on the site, and possibly not on the internet at all.

(2) Refer to an alternative. In this case, the obvious alternative is the Cook County Clerk's site. This site does have an index and a reasonable open-records policy, but charges $15 per copy and has a notoriously incomplete index. Mr. Chilcote's 1914 death is not indexed there, so at best ordering it will be an adventure.

(3) In my case, since I downloaded the image when the opportunity was there, I can cite it as an item in my own possession, much as I would a family quilt.

(4) If you didn't download the image when the opportunity was there, you could order the microfilm and view and cite that, or view it somewhere that has the microfilm on indefinite loan, or hire someone to do so for you.

Other thoughts welcome . . .


Harold Henderson, "It's Gone! Now What?," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 20 February 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

 

1855 New York State Census on Family Search!

FamilySearch has just posted the wonderful 1855 New York State Census with 84,000+ images from 46 of 62 counties, and it's searchable!

Illinois Probates, Indianapolis Courts, and the Hoosier Genealogist

Included in the new Hoosier Genealogist: Connections (Fall/Winter 2012), published twice a year by the Indiana Historical Society, are Randy Mills on writing memoirs ("Give yourself permission to write that lousy first draft"), Christina R. Bunting on the old French Lick resort, more on John Wooden's boyhood, and Cathy Callen on mysterious relative (or is it relatives?) Allen H. Neff.

The Neff article is interesting in that the author still has questions about the fellow's identity, and a new on-line index from the Indiana State Digital Archives might help by making Marion County court records more accessible.

Meanwhile, west of the Wabash, FamilySearch now has on line more than 1.1 million images of probate records from 44 Illinois counties (none of the big ones unless you count Rock Island and Champaign)! These are browseable and include the print indexes, but the images themselves are not indexed, so it takes some work to get to the original images.



Harold Henderson, "Illinois Probates, Indianapolis Courts, and the Hoosier Genealogist," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 30 January 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.]

They're from the Government and They're Here to Help Us

It's a great time to be a genealogist, with FamilySearch continually unrolling newly digitized records. I am so tickled that they have more than eight million images of New York State land records up!

But don't forget that other great digitizing machine, the National Archives. Keep up with them here.




Harold Henderson, "They're from the Government and They're Here to Help Us," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 11 December 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]