Illinois Civil War, Kalamazoo, Route 66, and more -- what's not to like?

Has anybody out there still not subscribed to the smart, knowledgeable, uncluttered weekly collection of links from the University of Wisconsin's Internet Scout Report?

If so, this would be a good week to take a look. It's almost as if Midwestern Microhistory had a secret agent there! Starting at the center of this blog's geographic interest and working out:

Digitized Civil War letters from Illinois (Northern Illinois University)

Photos from Kalamazoo College (Kalamazoo College)

Oral histories of Route 66 in Missouri (Missouri State University)

Central Pennsylvania landscape, landscape architecture, and architecture (Penn State University)

Old New Hampshire maps and atlases (University of New Hampshire)

Archive of Early American Images, 1600s-early 1800s (Brown University)

Even when we want to, it's not always easy for genealogists to find their way to the resources of academia. This outlet -- either as weekly newsletter or as web site -- is worth the time for that reason alone.



Harold Henderson, "Illinois Civil War, Kalamazoo, Route 66, and more -- what's not to like?," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 16 May 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Kansas Sanborn Maps!

If you have Kansas people and have yet to discover what a window on the past Sanborn fire-insurance maps can be, you do have a treat coming! The KU library has put up 5,245 full-color map sheets, free on-line, from Abilene 1884 to Yates Spring 1912. Enjoy!

More information about on-line availabilities at my earlier posts on the subject -- just search on "Sanborn."

Hat tip: Internet Scout Project

Two good free resources via Scout Report

The Internet Scout Project dates back to the DOS and maybe even the green-screen Apple era, and they're still at it. Recently they highlighted two genealogically useful resources:

From the Iowa Digital Library, a collection on African American Women in Iowa. There are a variety of resources here, with more scope than the title makes it sound. Being a text guy, I gravitated to the typewritten 27 June 1963 newsletter of the Fort Madison NAACP. It is (I must say) rather like a blog, with lots of specific news entries: "Freesmeier's Dairy has hired one of our number, Thomas Humburd," calling off the boycott and encouraging patronage. And it is searchable!

And completely searchable images of "every known issue" of Chicago's Hyde Park Herald, covering most of the 1880s and then everything since 1926 -- a primo resource right into the 21st century!

1895 Civil War Atlas

The Internet Scout Project alerts us to Baylor University's digitization of a beautiful resource on an often less than beautiful event. It's the 1895 War of the Rebellion Atlas, with 175 plates and designed to accompany the complete textual record of the armies on both sides (available in libraries with large collections and strong shelving, also via Cornell University).

The war between the states that didn't happen

Thanks to the Wisconsin-based Internet Scout Project, I took a look for Midwestern articles at "The Nineteenth Century in Print: The Making of America in Periodicals." Here's one from The New-England Magazine from November 1835 about the militaristic-sounding border dispute between Ohio and Michigan. (FYI this is just one collection of over 100 in the Library of Congress's American Memory.)

Twenty-three periodicals are represented, from The American Missionary to The United States Democratic Review. The longest run is 1815-1900 for the North American Review. I believe three are still in existence.

Note the difference between search options. You can search full-text, but only in uncorrected OCR, which is barely readable. The main search, on the other hand, is only for authors, titles, and other bibliographic information: it doesn't capture every word. So you could well miss a mention of an ancestral name if that person wasn't an author, title, or subject, and if their name was wrongly read by the OCR automaton.