Autumn 2014 presentations! Bloomington, Kalamazoo, Terre Haute, Indianapolis

All four of my presentations this fall are in the Eastern time zone, even though I myself am in Central. Check your calendar and join in the fun if you get the chance!


Wednesday 15 October, 3 pm -- "Why We Don't Write and How We Can," Monroe County Public Library, 303 E. Kirkwood, Bloomington, Indiana (advance registration required before 5 pm 8 October: http://mcpl.info/calendar/2014-10). Plus a second hour of discussion and examples.

Short version: If we don't write, we won't need to wonder what will happen to our genealogy stuff when we're gone. New.


Monday 20 October, 7 pm -- "Probate Will Not Be the Death of You," Kalamazoo Valley Genealogical Society, Portage District Library, 300 Library Lane, Portage, Michigan. (I spoke on property records here last spring: these people ask good questions!)

Short version: Everybody dies. Most have probates. Few make wills. Good genealogists will not stop with wills. Previously given at 2013 Indiana Genealogical Society conference in Bloomington.


Monday 10 November, 6:30 pm -- "A Case Study: Are We There Yet?" Wabash Valley Genealogical Society, Vigo County Public Library, One Library Square, Terre Haute, Indiana.

Short version: Follow the Chilcote trail from the 1900 Chicago census to an unmarked Ohio grave – and decide when there’s enough evidence to prove that George and Edward are two men or one man with two names. Previously given at 2013 National Genealogical Society conference in Las Vegas.


Saturday 22 November, 10 am -- "How Hoosiers Got Hitched," Indiana Historical Society, Eugene and Marian Glick Indiana History Center, 315 West Ohio, Indianapolis, Indiana (registration and entry fee: http://www.indianahistory.org/events/how-hoosiers-got-hitched).

Short version: Indiana marriage records have changed over the years. Between 1880 and 1930 in some counties more than one record was created for each marriage – some with different information than the others. A new naming system can help us tell them apart. New, based on the article of the same title that appeared in the Fall/Winter 2013 issue of The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections.





Harold Henderson, "Autumn 2014 presentations! Bloomington, Kalamazoo, Terre Haute, Indianapolis," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 4 September 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Understanding and classifying Indiana marriage records

Have you squeezed out all possible information about your ancestors' Indiana marriages? Probably not if you haven't checked for sources beyond the license and return.

Beginning in the early 1880s, Indiana marriage records provided increasing amounts of information. They also caused increasing confusion, because both the information and the forms it was recorded on changed and were inconsistently named. At times different records were called by the same name, and the same records were called by different names.

Records were created under the auspices of the state Board of Health decades before the informative marriage applications were made mandatory in 1905. Some counties cooperated in creating these earlier records; some have preserved them; some continued to use them even after 1905, giving lucky genealogists a chance to glean additional information by comparing the records. The story is spelled out in my new article in the Indiana Historical Society's twice-yearly The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections.

If you have Indiana people, you need this magazine.



Harold Henderson, "How Hoosiers Got Hitched," The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections vol. 53, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2013), 13-24.



Harold Henderson, "Understanding and classifying Indiana marriage records," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 3 April 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Civilian Conservation Corps info and pictures

The Indiana Historical Society has added 150 photographs to its collection, depicting Civilian Conservation Corps camps in Jackson, Jennings, Lawrence, and Orange counties 1934-1936. The photo here is from North Vernon camp no. 1514, where the men built structures in Muskatuck State Park.

The society's web site is not terribly transparent, but more materials are available with a site search, digital image search, or library catalog search.

Many more official records of the government jobs program are at the National Archives and Record Administration, Record Group 35, with two on-line films playable here.




:Photo credit: Indiana Historical Society, CCA Photo Album collection, "Kitchen Force"; digital image
http://images.indianahistory.org/cdm/ref/collection/V0002/id/1547 viewed 20 January 2014.

"New in Collections and Library," INPerspective, January/February 2014, p. 13.

Harold Henderson, "Civilian Conservation Corps info and pictures," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 24 January  2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [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.]

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.]

Indianapolis Research on Your Way to FGS in Fort Wayne

Besides containing one of the premier genealogy libraries -- the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center -- and hosting next year's Federation of Genealogical Societies conference, Fort Wayne is also surrounded in every direction by other useful repositories. The following (by me) was just posted on the FGS 2013 conference blog, second in a series of short posts on ways to pack in extra research on your way to or from the conference in Fort Wayne.

Indiana's capital city, a little over two hours southwest of Fort Wayne, is a great place for a quick strike
in libraries or archives on your way to the FGS conference. The downtown canals and state capitol make
for plenty of photo and recreational opportunities as well.

Indiana State Library, 315 West Ohio Street, http://www.in.gov/library/index.htm. The microfilm
room on the second floor houses the world's best collection of Indiana newspapers along with the
state's most complete collection of Indiana county records. On another wing of the second floor are the
manuscript collections, with finding aids and a card catalog.

Indiana Historical Society, 450 West Ohio Street, http://www.indianahistory.org. Investigate their
massive manuscript and visual holdings at http://www.indianahistory.org/our-collections/manuscript-
and-visual-collections. Their store and “Indiana Experience” shows may be just the thing for any non-
researchers on board.

These two buildings are across the street and less than a block apart. Bring quarters for IHS lockers,
ISL copiers, and street parking. If you haven't been to Indianapolis in a while, allocate some time to
adjust to the higher on-street parking fees and the computerized payment system. IHS parking is free
with library use; its downstairs cafe looks out on the canals.

Indiana State Archives, 6440 East 30th Street, http://www.in.gov/icpr/2358.htm, with an auxiliary
on-line digital archive at http://www.indianadigitalarchives.org. Seven miles east of downtown, this is
an archive, not a library, so figure out what records you're looking for and call ahead to arrange to see
them. Parking not a problem.

Crown Hill Cemetery, 700 West 38th Street, http://www.crownhill.org, makes a great out-of-the-
car break with a genealogical and historical flavor. The beautiful pictures on the site do not lie. Burial
locator at http://www.crownhill.org/locate.

Every city deserves a blogger who's old enough to know the secrets and young enough to tell them.
Check out Ron Darrah's IndyGenealogy blog at http://indygenealogy.blogspot.com.


Harold Henderson, "Indianapolis Research on Your Way to FGS in Fort Wayne," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 3 December 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.]

Indiana Genealogist and other Hoosier records on line

My favorite from the June issue of Indiana's online quarterly, Indiana Genealogist (IGS members only), is Ron Darrah's instructional article on the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s. It had never occurred to me that CCC workers' records would be at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis! The June issue also includes a delinquent tax list from Jasper County for the mid-1870s. Better that than no tax list at all...

Two other Indiana online sources are easy to miss but well worth finding:

Deep in the Indiana Historical Society web site are on-line companion articles and databases related to various articles that have appeared in their print semi-annual, The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections. These companions are basically well-annotated small databases grouped in three bunches under the heading "On-Line Connections":
Regional Sources and Stories with items from 27 counties including "Jasper County, Voters Listed in Poll Book for Fourth Precinct, Rensselaer, 1932 Primary"; 
Genealogy Across Indiana, with ten items including "Hoosier Baptist Records, 1809-2006"; and
Family Records, with ten items including "Family Genealogy Extracted and Compiled from the Kidd Family Papers, 1815-1887."
New items are to be added in September from La Porte, Hancock, and Switzerland counties, along with more Baptists and Armstrong family papers.

The Indiana Genealogical Society's blog brings word of a newly digitized resource, "Early Vincennes, 1732-1835."  It's hosted at Wabash Valley Visions and Voices, which has many other interesting sources as well, both pictures and text. "Early Vincennes" has 738 items, mostly court and probate cases, which are genealogically and historically valuable at any date, but especially from this early.

This digitization is a great boon to early Indiana researchers. It's now possible to view these images without driving for hours or days to the courthouse. The images are beautiful and clear and can be magnified. Each item is briefly described, and many have dates indicated.

Unfortunately, some information is lacking and organization erratic. I have found no overview explaining where the original papers came from, which makes it difficult to cite them properly. The items are in alphabetical order by the last name of the plaintiff or decedent (although some are inexplicably filed differently -- all but two pages of John Light's probate are listed under "evk"). The only way to learn what other names are contained in each item is to read the documents. Filed under "N" for Northwest Territory is a 271-page "minute book" for the Knox County Court of Common Pleas, 1796-1800. Another book for the same court covers the same years and is called by the same name, but a glance inside reveals that it provides a complete narrative of significant cases, as opposed to the day-by-day record of proceedings called a "minute book." Petitions are listed under P, and recognizance bonds under R, regardless of the names of those involved. Look for criminal cases under U, because the plaintiff was the United States. Bottom line: no researcher can casually say that so-and-so is "not found" in these records.

Navigation within the chosen CONTENTdm(R) system is no picnic either. The only way to view all of a page within the two multi-page books is to activate the thumbnail and move the red box around on it. In order to leave the court book and resume browsing the other 737 items, I had to leave the Vincennes collection altogether and start over from the main page. Once back in the Vincennes collection, even if I remembered that those books were on page 27 (doubtful!), there is no quick way to navigate from 1 to 27.

 All that said, it's still better than what was available before.



Ron Darrah, "Did Grandpa Serve in the 'Tree Army'?," Indiana Genealogist, vol. 15, no. 2 (June 2012):15-17 (http://www.indgensoc.org/membersonly/igs/quarterly/IndianaGenealogist_2012_06.pdf : accessed 11 August 2012).

1934 image from Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, National Archives and Records Administration; About.com 20th Century History (http://history1900s.about.com/library/photos/blygd12.htm : accessed 13 August 2012).

"Early Vincennes, 1732-1835," Wabash Valley Visions and Voices 
 (http://visions.indstate.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=/ving : accessed 11 August 2012).

Harold Henderson, "Indiana Genealogist and other Hoosier records on line," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 18 August 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Hidden in plain sight: Indiana Historical Society manuscripts

As a member of the Indiana Historical Society, every other month I get a newsletter, INPerspective, in the postal mail from the society. I always turn to the page near the back full of fine print that says, "New in Collections and Library," and look at the manuscript collections that have recently been "processed, cataloged and made available for research," as we say in archive world.

In the May/June issue, my eye fell on "Martindale Family Papers, 1839 to 1948," IHS collection M 1026. I went to the "Manuscripts and Visual Collections" page and then to the on-line finding aid for this collection. Hello, any researchers in Warren County? That was the home base for this family. The bulk of the collection is financial papers and accounts for their farm and business operations, but also some World War I information, including "a panoramic photograph of the all black 317th Trench Mortar Battalion, 92nd Division taken upon their return home."

At this point I took a look at a nearby collection in the M's: "Methodist Episcopal Church Cicero Circuit Records 1845-1861," IHS Collection SC 2553. Of course it helps to know stuff, like where Cicero is. This collection consists of just one notebook, about the circuit centered in Jackson Township, Hamilton County, Indiana: "Minutes are largely concerned with the licensing of preachers and exhorters. In other sections of the book are a list of members; marriages 1845-1849; baptisms 1847-1848; and genealogical records of the Bowman and Gipps (Kipps) families." Anybody got a mid-19th-century brick wall in Hamilton County?

The point? You never know until you look. It's true for books, web sites, and most of all archives.

Note: Many of the collections listed on the IHS web site don't have on-line finding aids. Do yourself a favor and stop by their actual building soon (Tuesday-Saturday). It's also the best parking deal in downtown Indy.


Harold Henderson, "Hidden in plain sight: Indiana Historical Society manuscripts," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 25 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Ohio Genealogy News with extended on-line versions!

The excellent genealogy newsmagazine Ohio Genealogy News has made an improvement: in addition to its print publication, it now provides on-line extended versions of two articles in the current issue, one on the Western Reserve and the other on Geauga County.

I know that the Indiana Historical Society's twice-yearly The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections publishes supplemental data on-line, coordinated with articles published in the hard copy.

I wonder why none of the top-line genealogy journals -- all seriously constrained for space by the cost of paper -- have not chosen this route. Is there a downside?

Where I'll be speaking this spring

My spring talks are all in Ohio! There's plenty of time yet to register for these conferences, but beware: do not under any circumstances confuse April with May, or confuse the city beginning with "C" in the upper-right-hand corner of the state with the one in the lower-left-hand corner.

Friday, April 13, 1 pm, at the Ohio Genealogical Society meeting in Cleveland, on "The Other Midwestern Archives." Some less well-known places to research once you've exhausted the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center, the Newberry Library, and the Wisconsin State Historical Society, or they've exhausted you.

Friday, May 11, 9:30 am, at the National Genealogical Society meeting in Cincinnati, on the records of the Indianapolis Orphan Asylum (1851-1941) held at the Indiana Historical Society. If you're missing a Hoosier in this time period who might have been orphaned, or just had a family living on the edge, these records may be just what you're looking for. And the stories alone would break a stone's heart.

Saturday, May 12, 9:30 am, NGS again, on "Indirect Evidence: What To Do When You Don't Have Perry Mason on Your Side." Nine relatively simple cases show what indirect evidence can do for us if we look for it with the right attitude. If you are hungering for complex cases, take that hour off and read the latest NGSQ instead ;-)

Compared to Rootstech, I would say that these two conferences overall offer more meat for intermediate and advanced genealogists (and better quality control), and less for developers and advanced techies. YMMV.

Hoosier Genealogist: Connections Fall/Winter 2011

Indiana's semi-annual genealogy magazine The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections, from the state historical society, has a number of articles:

Rick Bell, "Below the Falls," a story of early New Albany and other Ohio River towns, tied into the new IHS collection of essays, Full Steam Ahead: Reflections on the Impact of the First Steamboat on the Ohio River, 1811-2011.

Jennie Regan-Dinius, "SHAARD," describing a database of historic properties and cemeteries across the state. Searchable categories are theaters, ISSHI (Indiana Historic Structures and Sites Inventory), cemetery registry, bridges, and National Register [of Historic Places]. Begun in 2009 with federal government support, it remains a work in progress as information both new and old continues to be added.

Geneil Breeze, "Early Settler: Thomas Kirby Warner...," on an early settler of Kosciusko County. I was struck by how various siblings reacted to the deprivations of pioneer life, and came and went accordingly.

Karen M. Wood, "Constructing a Biography," on William S. Hall of Rush County and his role in early stages of school consolidation, beginning in 1873.

Joyce Baggerly, "Family Poetry," with extensive quotations from Margaret Bruner's poems and the Baggerly family.

Glenda Thompson and Judy Ditzler, "The Indiana Boys' School." The Indiana State Archives holds letters and files of the school and a database of boys committed to the institution 1868-1930 is in the works. In the meantime, a visitor to ISA in Indianapolis can view bound volumes of commitment records in chronological order. (Always call first before visiting an archive!)

Indianapolis Orphan Asylum 1851-1940

For those with an interest, my feature article about the Indianapolis Orphan Asylum, entitled "Early Midwestern Orphanage," has just been published in the Spring/Summer issue of The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections, published by the Indiana Historical Society. The society holds about three dozen volumes of detailed records from the asylum's 99-year history, which when incorporated into a planned database should be of great interest to many genealogists, some of whom may not even know it. (Children came mostly from central Indiana, but some were adopted as far away as Kansas.) Regular readers already know that this is one of two quality genealogy magazines published in the state.

From what I have seen, the asylum's records also contradict the historical stereotype of such institutions as primarily warehouses for children. In fact, most of its children were placed in new homes or back in their families. And the records sketching out why children arrived there in the 1890s and early 1900s document the terrible stories of ordinary people down on their luck in a society with a minimal safety net.

working in Indianapolis

Indianapolis is not my native habitat -- it's farther away than Chicago, and the only reasonable way to get there is to drive -- but nevertheless I wind up there at least once a month. It contains three of the four premier genealogical repositories in the state, and two of them are just across Ohio Street from each other: the Indiana State Library with its arsenal of microfilmed Indiana newspapers and county records (including many FHL films on permanent loan), and the Indiana Historical Society with its own living history presentations for the public (complete with a clock that runs backwards) and an archive of primary source collections. Just being able to cross the street from one to the other is somewhat intoxicating.

Hopefully some day the third member of this research trinity, the Indiana State Archives -- currently relegated to a leaky warehouse on the east side of town -- will return to its original downtown neighborhood and a facility worthy of its own remarkable and irreplaceable holdings.

Northwest Territory papers on line

Apparently the best way to browse the 551 items in the Indiana Historical Society's Northwest Territory collection is to go to their main web site, click on collections, and from the drop-down menu pick "digital image collections." On that page, click on the link in the sentence "You can search across all collections here."

Then select "Northwest Territory Collection, 1791-1825" and click add. If you want to browse, type "northwest" in the top bar of the search and your result will be 551 documents with tidy descriptions off to the right. There's a lot of military stuff, because the resident Indian tribes were not yet willing to give up their land.

There's also useful information if you're a Vertner or Kilgore researcher in the area: an order from a not clearly identified court for the sheriff of Ross County in the Ohio territory to seize "Nathan" (I read the name as Mathew) Kilgore's goods in order to collect a debt he owed Daniel Vertner, originally of $47 but now with interest and court costs ballooned to $65.

(You won't find these people in the census. There's little useful census information in Ohio for another twenty years.)

There doesn't seem to be a lot of context here, and I looked in vain for an overall description of the collection, or why it is labeled as it is, since it contains at least one document from 1764. More diligent visitors should feel free to enlighten me in the comments!

Hat tip to Region Roots from the Lake County (IN) Public Library.

History and Genealogy in Indiana with THG: Connections

The new issue of the semi-annual The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections (Spring-Summer 2010) is out, with a focus on the interconnections between genealogy and history. Robert W. White reflects on "Hoosier Genealogy and Indiana History: Using Each to Inform the Other." Tanya D. Marsh shows how it's done in "Following the Bee Line," an account of the Scherman/Sherman family who came to Indianapolis to work for the railroad and stayed to do many more things.

Other articles include a mysterious general store ledger from Bond County, Illinois, in 1888; a calendar of musical performances in Marion (Grant County), 1897-1898; abstracts of Montgomery County court papers; and letters from a not altogether appreciative itinerant bookseller, S. Harper Crawford, who attempted to sell books in Dearborn, Ripley, and Decatur counties in 1855.

Crawford didn't care for the wet lands in southeastern Indiana: "Their mode of building houses is as follows -- They select the driest spot they can find -- saw off oak logs about 5 feet in length [,] set them up on end and thereon erect their hut. I noticed a number of them with water enough under them to float a small boat."

White co-authors the second and final installment of the White-Eggleston family in Decatur County, Indianapolis, and points west. Timothy Mohon has a second very thorough installment on Baptist records, this involving two almost identically named Baptist organizations who covered the same western Indiana territory. (If you have Indiana Baptists, you need this resource!) And Autumn Gonzalez gets us started on federal documents.

And speaking of history, this issue begins the 50th year of the state historical society's publishing a genealogical magazine. Don't forget to visit its virtual companion, "Online Connections" as well, once it gets installed on the new IHS web site.

Context Files: Indiana Sheet Music on line

What were your ancestors singing?

Four institutions have partnered to produce the web site IN Harmony: Sheet Music from Indiana, with about 10,000 items of sheet music from 1800 to 1990. Indiana University's Lilly Library, the Indiana State Library, the Indiana Historical Society, and the Indiana State Museum between them hold close to 200,000 pieces of sheet music. The items on line are searchable and browseable. For the decade 1820-1829 there are seven items, and for the decate 1910-1919 there are over 5,000. Selections include "Ah Grammachree Molly" from 200 years ago to the "11th Indiana Quickstep" from 1863. The title refers to a military unit, not to ten previous iterations of the dance.

Hat tip to the University of Wisconsin's Scout Report.

Summer Hoosier Genealogist

Lots of good stuff in the Spring/Summer 2009 issue of The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections, from the Indiana Historical Society:

"Research Serendipity," by Sharon Ogzewalla

"A Popular Outlet for Spare Time," by Mary Owen, on Indiana women's clubs from about a century ago

"'To Make Up a Soldier's Life," by Rachel M. Popma -- letters to the Tipton Times from Spanish-American War soldiers

"Court Papers: Abstracts of the Delaware County Legal Documents in the Barnes Manuscripts collection, 1864-1892," by Wendy L. Adams and Melinda Moore Weaver

"Prescriptions, Poetry, and Prose: The William Daviess Hutchings Papers, Scott and Jefferson Counties, 1855-1914," by Geneil Breeze

"Hoosier Baptists, Part 1: Anti-slavery Associations, 1826-18302 and African American Associations and Death Notices from Annual Minutes, 1848-1912", by Timothy Mohon

"The Crooks Family" by Constantina Lyla Spath (Delaware County)

"The Indianapolis Gardeners Benefit Society," by Cathy Born

The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections Fall/Winter 2008

If you can't find some new inspiration and new records to investigate from reading the fall/winter 2008 issue of The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections, the semiannual from the Indiana Historical Society, you probably aren't paying attention. The well-written and well-edited articles include:

"After the War: Billy Yank Comes Home to Small-Town America," by Mary Blair Immel, focusing on Civil War veterans in and around Covington, including the unpleasant parts.

"Census Records: Federal Non-Population Schedules," by Curt B. Witcher of the Allen County Public Library. These lesser-known and lesser-used schedules include agricultural, manufactures, social statistics, and mortality. They're all worthy of genealogical attention -- sometimes for basic genealogical information, sometimes to point the way to additional genealogical sources, and sometimes to enlarge our understanding of how our ancestors lived in their place and time.

"'C'est La Guerre': The World War I Correspondence of Kenton Craig Emerson, Steuben County, 1917-1919," by Geneil Breeze

"History in Church Minutes: The Rise and Fall of the Lick Creek Baptist Church, Henry County, 1835-1848," by James B. Cash

"Bank Crash: Legal Papers Gathered in Wake of Bank Failure Tell Stories of Elisha and Martha Hyatt Family and Neighbors in Daviess County, 1885-1896," by Rachel M. Popma

"Servant Cries Foul: Open Letter from Runaway in Indiana Sentinel September 1819, Offers Flavor of Frontier Life," by M. Teresa Baer

"The 'Raintree County' Project: Annotated Transcriptions, Biographical Database and History Compiled through Research of Letters in Grandparents' Attic," by James B. Cash

"The 'Jefferson Chronicles': Statewide Articles from a Nineteenth-Century Indiana Newspaper Correspondent," by George C. Hibben. Rev. William W. Hibben's work as a special correspondent of the Indianapolis Sentinel.

"Civil War Pension File: Some Genealogical Data and Other Gleanings Found in My Great-Great Grandfather's Pension File," by Robert D. Hennon

"Citizens' Petitions: Official Requests to the Governor of Indiana in the Indiana State Archives," by Kurt Jung

"Spanish-American War: United Spanish War Veterans Collection at the Indiana State Archives," by Ron Darrah. A few months of war, a century of records.

Relevant additional material will be posted at Online Connections later this month.