New Midwestern research resources

From Rootsweb's Cook County mailing list, a listing and map of current Chicago Catholic parishes. It's more than a year old and I didn't observe a source, but I may not have looked in all the right nooks and crannies.

From ChicagoGenealogy.com, Ancestry's new index for Chicago marriages 1912-1924, also apparently unsourced. Cynthia also has the latest on Sam Fink's index, and if that's an unfamiliar name to you, check out the post.

From the University of South Carolina Libraries Digital Collections via the Scout Report, an indexed and mapped version of the Spring 1956 edition of Victor H. Green's The Negro Traveler's Green Book -- a necessary guide for safe travels in the Midwest and everywhere else during the later days of Jim Crow.

From Southwest Michigan Genealogy and Local History, a print resource available only in person at the Van Buren District Library in Decatur, Michigan: a seven-year run of the Tri-County Telephone Company's Sales News, published from South Haven 1932-1939, complete with employee biographies and more.

Indiana county and township maps

I could have sworn I blogged about the free Indiana county and township maps at STATS Indiana from Indiana University's Kelley School of Business. But this handy resource may have gone direct to my home page without stopping here. The site has a downloadable map of each of Indiana's 92 counties, with township boundaries, and major highways and towns superimposed. So they allow you to be oriented to the fact (for instance) that Berne, Adams County, is split among three townships -- Hartford, French, and Monroe -- whereas the village of Monroe itself is just north in Washington and Kirkland townships. (Monroe County, meanwhile, is in a whole 'nother part of the state.)

The best feature for my money are the regional versions of these maps, which divide the state into sixths while retaining all township boundaries. This makes it easy to see when seemingly distant places may be adjacent. Of course I would prefer that all these maps include the congressional township lines (by survey) as well as the civil township lines, but you can't have everything.