Randolph County (Indiana) Relatives: Ina (Smith) Burdick

In the March National Genealogical Society Quarterly I traced a Smith family from central Iowa in 1870 back to eastern Indiana in 1850. It turned out that the parents of Ina (Smith) Burdick (1862-1932) were John Smith of Wayne County and Elizabeth (Smith) Smith of Randolph County, who were near neighbors.

(Ina married in Kansas City, Missouri, my wife's maternal grandfather's second cousin, Frank Burdick. He was one of the focus persons in the first portfolio I submitted to BCG for certification. So for those who are working on their own portfolios, remember that you may be able to reuse this material later on!)

Ina's relatives on both sides were crucial to identifying her parents and making a convincing case for their relationship, but it's in the nature of proof arguments that they only get mentioned, not described. The new (June) Indiana Genealogist fills in the picture by telling some of the stories of Ina's mother's extended Randolph County family, starting with Temple (1806-1885) and Priscilla (Crossley) Smith (1808-1890), who came up from Adair County, Kentucky, in the early days. Next issue will describe John's somewhat smaller family.

Together their descendants married into more than forty families:
Adams, Addington, Bias, Brake, Burdick, Chapman, Cox, Elliott, Engle (twice), Escher, Fetters, Getter, Hathaway, Hiatt, Hicks, Hildreth, Hill, Jennings, Johnson, Kinert, King, Kolp, Martin, Mason, McCurdy, Miller, Mundhenk, Newman, Pearson, Phillips, Piper, Ramsey, Ranson, Schwepe, Smith (again!), Summers, Swangle, Weaver, West, and Woodcock.

Members of the Indiana Genealogical Society can read it on line.



“Randolph County Relatives: Ina (Smith) Burdick’s Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins, Part One,” Indiana Genealogist 26(2) (June 2015): 5-29.

“Crossing the Continent with Common Names: Indiana Natives John and Elizabeth (Smith) Smith,” National Genealogical Society Quarterly 105 (March 2015): 29-35.

Genealogy resources for La Porte County, Indiana -- work in progress

Some of the northwest district Indiana county genealogists will be getting together today in La Porte, so I finally got serious about starting to put together a list of research resources for this medium-sized county. (You can either follow the link or go to midwestroots.net and click on "La Porte County Indiana" in the lower right-hand corner of the page.)

It's amazing what local genealogists have accomplished over the years. Except for the obituary indexes, where I got overwhelmed, I have tried to credit the authors/compilers when I could identify them.

The guide at present comes in four unequal-sized sections:

• Local Repositories and Societies (courthouse; libraries, archives, and museums; and on-line)

• Periodicals (two county newsletters and the two state periodicals)

• Indexes and Abstracts (70 and counting: for births, cemeteries, court records, deaths, divorces, funeral homes, land, marriages, military, naturalizations, newspapers, obituaries, periodicals, probates, professionals, and schools)

• Other Guides (the FamilySearch Wiki, the Indiana Genealogical Society's research page, the 1939 WPA Inventory of County Archives, and Linkpendium).

So far it's up to eight pages printed out, and as you can see I've stuck pretty much to indexes and the like, without yet starting to describe the actual records! It is a work in progress, so corrections and additions are welcome.

Harold Henderson, "Genealogy resources for La Porte County, Indiana -- work in progress," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 7 June 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Indiana divorce laws guide!

 Meredith Thompson in the December 2013 Indiana Genealogist: "When railroads began to connect Indiana with the rest of the country in the 1840s, the state developed a reputation as a 'divorce mill,' with people coming from outside the state to file for divorce. Indianapolis was an especially popular destination; in 1858 two-thirds of Marion County divorce cases were filed by out-of-state petitioners."

Want more? Do you need the lowdown on Indiana's divorce laws? Waste no time in scrounging the internet: join the Indiana Genealogical Society and read Thompson's thorough source-cited explanation as just the first of your member benefits. Do it now and get your money's worth, as all annual memberships expire at the end of the calendar year.





Meredith Thompson, "Indiana's Pre-1940 Divorce Laws," Indiana Genealogist 24(4):13-20, December 2013.

Harold Henderson, "Indiana divorce laws guide!," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 26 February 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

You can have any lecture format as long as it lasts an hour

The NGS conference in Las Vegas was a big success from my viewpoint as speaker and participant, and I anticipate great things from the upcoming FGS conference 21-24 August in Fort Wayne (yes, I am on the publicity committee). But they both could be better, and within the past few months I have heard almost the same sentiment from two genealogy leaders, a veteran and a new one, who to my knowledge are not acquainted: stop relying exclusively on the one-hour lecture format!

Tina Lyons is vice-president of the Indiana Genealogical Society and publicity chair for the aforementioned FGS, where she will also be speaking. She'd like to see some 20-minute sessions, perhaps modeled on the TED talks. She notes that her on-line Coursera classes come in 5- to 15-minute segments. And she may work an interactive game into her one-hour FGS talk.

Last Wednesday at NGS, Melinde Lutz Byrne -- who is, among other things, Fellow and President of the American Society of Genealogists, director of the Genealogical Research Program at Boston University's Center for Professional Studies, and co-editor of the National Genealogical Society Quarterly -- said that her talk that day (on advocacy and privacy) would be her last one-hour presentation. She gave similar reasons, and urged more panel discussions and workshops, as well as "poster sessions" like one she found worked well at the New England conference and lasted no more than 20 minutes, with everybody standing.

Just as many professional-development programs grew up outside of the umbrella of the Association of Professional Genealogists when it was slow to adapt, the major national and regional conferences might find themselves playing catch-up if they don't consider a more diverse format. Just sayin'.




Harold Henderson, "You can have any lecture format as long as it lasts an hour," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 13 May 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Milton maintains his mystery

Last year I wrote all around the subject of Milton Reynolds, documented resident of Jefferson County, Indiana, in 1850, but not found since, in the Indiana Genealogist. Since the article won the Elaine Spires Smith writing award at the 2013 Indiana Genealogical Society conference last week, I get one more chance to pass on the message to anyone who might catch sight of a hint of him: HELP!

I called this article "the world's longest query" because a close look at the main Reynolds families in the county didn't find a definite place for him. Previous blog post here, or you can find the article in the members-only section of the IGS web site.





Harold Henderson, "Milton maintains his mystery," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 3 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.] 

Harold Henderson, "The Mystery of Milton Reynolds in Jefferson County," Indiana Genealogist vol. 23, no. 4 (December 2012):5-32; http://www.indgensoc.org/membersonly/igs/quarterly/index.php : accessed 23 December 2012.

Speaking at NGS in Las Vegas

After a hectic but very enjoyable time at both the Ohio and Indiana genealogical societies' conferences this past weekend, I will be speaking twice at the National Genealogical Society gathering in Las Vegas, "Building New Bridges," next week:

Wednesday, 8 May -- APG luncheon talk on some ways to be advocates and still be genealogists.

Friday,10 May, 4 pm -- A case study, " 'Are We There Yet?' Proof and the Genealogy Police," in the Board for the Certification of Genealogists' BCG Skillbuilding track (go here and then do a search) on a not-too-difficult name-changing ancestor and the lessons we can learn from it for our own research. Is there a place in genealogical methods for the term "flying leap"?

Hope to see y'all there!



Harold Henderson, "Speaking at NGS in Las Vegas," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 29 April 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

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.]

What's Old in Indiana This Month?

Some new and not-so-new things I've learned about Indiana lately:

Eva Mendieta writes about Mexican-American mutual aid societies in Indiana Harbor (now part of East Chicago). Their records are not always well preserved -- the records of the Benito Juarez Society, founded in 1924, were retrieved from the basement of a bar and are now in the Latino Collection of the Calumet Regional Archives at Indiana University Northwest -- and the stories they tell are not always happy. When many Mexicans were forced out of the area during the Depression, the societies fell on hard times.

Ron Darrah describes the history and records of the Citizens' Military Training Camp Program that took place between the World Wars.

The Indiana Historical Society has added a digital collection of photos from Whitley County a century ago -- the Oliver Frank Kelly Glass Plate Collection -- including some shop interiors. Also new are several collections of Civil War letters (in addition to the 500 or so it already holds), from Lawrence N. Cox (21st Indiana), Francis M. Kalley (14th), Franklin J. Moore (43rd), John E. Moore (115th), and Tillman Moore (31st) -- as well as papers of Zenas Harrison Bliss, who first seved in the 9th Vermont Infantry and then captained Company K of the 28th United States Colored Troops, an Indiana regiment that served in Texas 1864-1865.

Not exactly news, but still true: the Indiana Genealogical Society will hold its annual conference Saturday, April 27, in Bloomington, with feature speaker Joshua Taylor and auxiliary speakers Lou Malcomb, Curt Witcher, and yours truly on "Probate Will Not Be the Death of You" and "Land and Property: The Records No Genealogist Can Do Without."



Eva Mendieta, "Celebrating Mexican Culturre and Lending a Helping Hand: Indiana Harbor's Sociedad Mutualista Benito Juarez, 1924-1957," Indiana Magazine of History, vol. 108, no.4 (December 2012):311-44. 

Ron Darrah, "Did Grandpa March in the CMTC?," Indiana Genealogist, vol. 23, no. 4 (December 2012):32-34, http://www.indgensoc.org/membersonly/igs/quarterly/2012/IndianaGenealogist_2012_12.pdf : accessed 29 December 2012.


Harold Henderson, "What's Old in Indiana This Month?," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 7 January 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

The World's Longest Query (Reynolds Family)

My article on Milton Reynolds, husband of Nancy Wise and an inhabitant of North Madison, Jefferson County, Indiana, in 1850, and who knows where thereafter, is in the new (December) issue of Indiana Genealogist, just posted in the members-only portion of the Indiana Genealogical Society web site. IG is a digital-only quarterly and a benefit of membership. (If you have Indiana folks, or think you might, there are almost 1,000 other reasons to join, which are the other databases available on the site, some free to the public and some members-only.)

Some will say I shouldn't have published it, since I still don't know who Milton was, where he came from, or when and where he died. I like to call it "the world's longest query." I review the slim available evidence on Milton as well as various negative searches, and document the three main Reynolds families in Jefferson County to see where he might possibly fit in. There is no conclusion and there's plenty more work to be done in order even to reach the threshold of a "reasonably exhaustive search," let alone to draw any conclusions. But this way at least other Reynolds researchers have a better chance of seeing whether this piece belongs in their puzzle or not.

Thanks to Rachel Popma for editing and for finding that beautiful panorama of Madison in 1866!


Harold Henderson, "The Worlds' Longest Query (Reynolds Family)," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 23 December 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.] 


Harold Henderson, "The Mystery of Milton Reynolds in Jefferson County," Indiana Genealogist vol. 23, no. 4 (December 2012):5-32; http://www.indgensoc.org/membersonly/igs/quarterly/index.php : accessed 23 December 2012.

Halfway home: map of the 46 Indiana counties with marriages indexed on FamilySearch

Hat tip to the Indiana Genealogical Society blog.

Volunteer to help index: even on line, just spending time with original records is a learning experience.


Harold Henderson, "Halfway home: map of the 46 Indiana counties with marriages indexed on FamilySearch," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 25 August 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Be Kind to the Newbies

It can be hard for us to remember what it was like to be a stranger in the strange land of genealogy. We may think that because we've talked about "abstracting records" 100 times, that the 101st person knows what we're talking about.

And by "us" I mean everybody, from active professionals to those whose main involvement is to attend their local society meetings.

Many local societies are composed of old friends. I once attended a small society meeting with another newcomer. We were invited to introduce ourselves and did so; no one else did, and the meeting went on. It wasn't being mean, just oblivious.

After one talk that I thought had been carefully pitched to beginners, an attendee asked, "What is this DAR you were talking about?"

Professionals can be annoyed or annoying in their own ways. I'm always a bit surprised that some Hoosiers aren't acquainted with the Indiana Genealogical Society's wonderful county-by-county research information pages. Another pet peeve is hearing from folks who want to resolve conflicting information about an ancestor's birth or death date -- without saying where either piece of information came from!

But we all had to learn that sometime; now it's our turn to teach in a friendly way -- forever. Showing irritation is ungracious, bad business practice (for professionals), and just plain counterproductive for the good of genealogy. Just as we are committed to our own continuing education, we have to be committed to providing accessible education for the never-ending stream of hopeful newcomers who may kindly reply "Bless you!" when you first speak the word "Ahenentafel."


Harold Henderson, "Be Kind to the Newbies," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 12 July 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.]

Why We Don't Write

Last week at the Indiana Genealogical Society gatherings, newsletter editor Linda Herrick Swisher and quarterly editor Rachel Popma made multiple pleas for additional contributions, so that they can publish news and articles -- rather than indexes and the like that were once staples of genealogy publication, but now belong in on-line databases. When I got home, the spring issue of the Ohio Genealogical Society Quarterly had arrived, containing a similar request from editor Susan Dunlap Lee.

Why do they even have to ask?

Writing is one of the best ways to think through a tough problem, or to see what research options we've overlooked. It's also the best way to explain our research to others and to preserve its results, with both on-line and print options. The Board for the Certification of Genealogists specifies that no genealogical statement can be considered proven without "a soundly reasoned, coherently written conclusion," although obviously some will be longer than others.

So why do they even have to ask?

Partly it's because we're perfectionists -- there's always one more resource, one more road trip that might make our narrative tree even better.

Partly it's because we enjoy starting new projects more than the endless detail work required to actually complete the old ones.

Partly it's because writing is rarely as well or thoroughly taught as dribbling a round ball or throwing a pointy one. It's easier to go to extremes -- pretending either that anything put on paper is a valuable self-expression on one hand, or that it's important to follow all the rules (including bogus ones like never splitting an infinitive or ending a sentence with a preposition) on the other.

Partly it's because writing does force us to think about what we have done, and whether it really makes sense. (Just as I suspect that folks are reluctant to cite their sources,not out of fear of the comma police, but because citation requires us to understand the source we're looking at instead of briskly moving on to the next one.)

In order to fulfill our potential as genealogists, we have to overcome these obstacles, some of them larger than others for different ones of us, but all present to some degree. There's no substitute for practice and coaching, whether by a group of peers or by a stern but compassionate editor. And there's no substitute for reading good writing either.

But mainly, even if you're only writing blog posts, there's no substitute for thinking. Cogent thoughts poorly expressed are relatively easy to fix. Confused thoughts, no matter how elegantly expressed, are more difficult to deal with. Of course, writing them out in plain language will help de-confuse them, so it's all good.

And our state editors are going to be so happy to see us!


Susan Dunlap Lee, "Immediate Need for Articles," Ohio Genealogical Society Quarterly 52, no. 1 (Spring 2012): 52.




Harold Henderson, "Why We Don't Write," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 6 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]  

Words from IGS Conference Day

Several admonitions are echoing in my mind from the Indiana Genealogical Society's day-long conference in Fort Wayne; other attendees' mileage may vary.

More than half of the 111 attendees also attended the business meeting, where we heard that our 76 volunteers had helped index 100% of Indiana's portion of the 1940 census in less than a month, far ahead of all neighboring states.

* Speaker Michael Hall, deputy chief genealogical officer of FamilySearch: “Every one of you should be writing in the FamilySearch Wiki [page about your county] about your libraries and resources,” thus helping draw genealogical tourism.

* Speaker Debra Mieszala, who works in the genealogical part of the process of identifying and returning remains of US soldiers long lost in action: The military now uses all three kinds of DNA -- Y-DNA, mitochondrial DNA, and autosomal DNA, so relatives of missing soldiers may have new opportunities to provide reference samples. Of the 88,000 missing, 78,000 are from WWII.

* IGS president Michael Maben, who asked for volunteers for an advocacy committee and identified the State Archives (long relegated to an outdated warehouse) as a problem to be addressed: “We need to press our legislature to replace that facility."

* Mieszala again (part of an informative talk on finding the patent filings of inventive ancestors): The Great Lakes Regional Branch of NARA has a Facebook page, and we should "friend" it. Among the many great examples they post from their holdings, one is a patent infringement case.

Lots of good people and good laughs, all in a day's genealogy work . . . the April 2013 conference in Bloomington will feature Josh Taylor.


Harold Henderson, “Words from IGS Conference Day,” Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 29 April 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.] 

Indiana Genealogical Society seminar

Things I wouldn't know about if I hadn't attended the annual IGS seminar in Fort Wayne Friday the 27th:

* the pros, cons, and potentials of Vu-Point and Flip-Pal scanners;

* the latest thinking (from ACPLGC's Curt Witcher and others) on how best to publish indexes and abstracts when paper publication is way expensive (do it digitally while granting libraries permission to print a copy if they see a need);

* newly available on-line indexes for Grant County and newspaper pages for Putnam County;

* how to (and how NOT to) use social media to attract new members to your genealogical society (Tina Lyons).

* a cache of World War I documents including some results of a Women's War Census taken in April 1918 for the Indiana State Council of Defense Women's Committee.


Harold Henderson, “Indiana Genealogical Society seminar,” Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 28 April 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]  

Volunteer for the 1940 census indexing!

What Kimberly Powell says about helping index the 1940 census.

I would add two things:

(1) Indiana has started indexing; I joined the FamilySearch indexing under the auspices of the Indiana Genealogical Society. Here's how to get started.

(2) Any kind of volunteering that exposes us to the original records will make us better researchers (almost without trying) because we will get better acquainted with the records and all their little quirks.

I've already encountered one enumerator in Allen County who wrote "Indiana" in the column for the city in which the family had lived in 1935! If the FamilySearch index allows us to search by city of residence in 1935, there will be some strange entries . . . hopefully the researchers will look into the original record and figure out what was going on.

Michigan county clerks and archival blog

I've long been a grateful consumer of the Indiana Genealogical Society's very thorough county research address list. Now I learn that Michigan is growing the same thing (despite its disadvantage of not having a strong statewide organization) at the Archives of Michigan web site, a GoogleMap of county clerks. (I'm a little suspicious of that link; if it doesn't work, go here and follow.)

And if you've been keeping up with The Anecdotal Archivist blog byMark Harvey, you knew this.

State organization databases

Indiana has never been as large, as populous, or as old as Ohio, but that doesn't stop us from trying. Last week I surveyed the online databases provided by the two societies: Ohio has 73, and the Indiana Genealogical Society has well over twice that many. In both states a few teasers are free, but the good stuff is reserved for members . . . which you too can be.

These are great ways to jump-start your research and plan research trips, but most are indexes and transcriptions with all their potential for human error, and to leave out the little tidbit that may be the clue you need. Check the original!

Flying trip to eastern Indiana

Things I wish I had known a week ago:

* Indiana Genealogical Society has the useful collection of local addresses, URLs, and phone numbers for preparing your on-site visits.

* Quick no-nonsense overview of Wayne County resources here
For more in-depth information, Arnold L. Dean's advice. (Grantee indexes only up to 1869!)

* Wayne County Clerk's office (that's in Richmond if you're new around here) has a simple digital index to its marriage licenses, currently stretching from 1811 through 1903.

* The Morrison-Reeves Library has a database (converted from cards) indexing some portions of area newspapers. Their holdings include some indexes only found locally, others you may find closer to home via WorldCat.

Indiana conference and databases

Members of the Indiana Genealogical Society have a conference Saturday in Indianapolis, featuring military records and Pamela K. Boyer. The stay-at-homes have four new members-only databases on the website to explore, three of them offering leads to military records (these are not images of the records themselves and should not be cited as such):

Revolutionary War Veterans Living in Indiana Who Received Pensions (1835)

Students of Earlham College, Richmond (1859)

Roster of 79th Indiana Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War (1861-1865)

Public Service Company of Indiana Employees Serving in World War II (1944), list from the Danville Republican newspaper

Three cemetery indexes from Noble and Wabash counties are newly available to all visitors.