Analyzing too much information with William Flint (1815-1878)

Often we have to eke out one precious fact at a time by analyzing and correlating terse and scattered records. But in the case of the agriculture schedules of the U.S. census (1850-1880), we have to find ways to  make sense of a cornucopia of information.

See how I did it for my great-great grandfather William Flint of St. Clair County, Illinois, in the new Illinois State Genealogical Society Quarterly (membership required). And if this puts you in mind of an Illinois topic you want to write about, managing editor Julie Cahill Tarr would love to hear from you.



Harold Henderson, "William Flint's Farm: Digging Deeper," Illinois State Genealogical Society Quarterly 46 (Spring 2014): 5-8.


Image: S.D. Fisher, ed., Transactions of the Department of Agriculture, State of Illinois, with Reports from County Agricultural Boards, for the Year 1879 (Springfield: Weber & Co., 1880), 66.


Harold Henderson, "Analyzing too much information with William Flint (1815-1878)," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 25 March 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

It's not too late to be a charter member . . .

. . . of the Association of Graveyard Rabbits, a group of bloggers with a special interest in cemeteries. Already founder Terry Thornton of Mississippi has accumulated a number of associates, including Jessica Oswalt of rural Michigan, Amy Crow of central Ohio, Julie Cahill Tarr of Chicagoland and Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, Minda Powers-Douglas of the Quad Cities, Illinois and Iowa, and Chuck C. of Christian County, Illinois.

I look forward to learning from their hard-won experience (I'm thinking rain and snow and scorching sun and poison ivy) and hope that being association members will help the bloggers involved to persevere. I see that Julie has already created an interactive map of cemeteries in Bloomington-Normal.