Just another day at the office . . .

What you can learn by spending a day on actual printed materials at the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center . . .

. . . there are worse things than surname-only indexes, but not many. (In another couple of generations "indexes" may be as little understood as cursive writing.)

. . . a genealogical periodical from Omaha is called "Remains To Be Found."

. . . the father-in-law of the son of a main character in a forthcoming article died of unnatural causes in 1835 in Canton, Fulton County, Illinois: a tornado drove a wagon-wheel spoke through his groin. This unexpected death information appeared in an abstract of an 1892 newspaper article.

. . . Walsh County, North Dakota, published four volumes of cemetery readings labeled as volumes 25, 26, 27, and 28.

. . . the charmingly titled book Forty Years of Funerals did not include the funeral I was looking for.

. . . the first case heard by the (traveling) Supreme Court in Greene County, Ohio, was the first-degree murder of an Indian (Billy George AKA Kenawa Tuckans) by two white men in 1804.

. . . when you're J. P. Morgan's son and you die in 1943, you get an obituary that names seven generations of ancestors. (OK, it was in the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, but still . . . )




Harold Henderson, "Just another day at the office . . .," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 8 November 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Places you wish your ancestors were born in

Daniel Downs' Xenia Ohio Citizen Journal blog gives a pointer to Xenia's Greene County (Ohio) Public Library's genealogy resources. Wow. Working with the Greene County Records Center and Archives, OHIONET, and OCLC Preservation Services, the library digitized four volumes of birth records kept by the local probate court from 1869 to 1909. After that local health departments took over the job in Ohio.

"The birth records are arranged chronologically by the date the birth was recorded. The record contains the child's full name, date of birth, place of birth (city/township/county), sex, legitimacy, race, parents and their residence." Searchable and browseable, the digital images I viewed were clear -- actually better than microfilm because of the zooming capabilities -- and the library provides ample information to cite them properly in your notes. What a wonderful service!