Fall 2015 talks

In between the sloth of summer and the hibernation of winter are the seasons where it's actually fun to get things done. This fall I have five speaking engagements coming up.

Tuesday evening September 8, La Porte County Genealogical Society, La Porte, Indiana:
"Probate Will Not Be the Death of You" (digest version).

Saturday September 19, Willard Library, Evansville, Indiana:
"Why We Don't Write and How We Can"
"Indirect Evidence: When Perry Mason Isn't on Your Side"
"Probate Will Not Be the Death of You"
" 'Are We There Yet?' Proof and the Genealogy Police," a case study

Saturday October 17, Northwest Indiana Genealogical Society, Valparaiso, Indiana:
"Land and Property: The Records No Genealogist Can Do Without"

Tuesday evening October 20, Marshall County Genealogical Society, Plymouth, Indiana:
"Ten Commandments for Being a Good Genealogy Client"

Tuesday evening November 17, Board for Certification of Genealogists public online webinar:
"Do You Have the Reflexes You Need to Become Certified? Fifteen Things Your Grandfather Would Tell You . . . If I Were Your Grandfather"

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La Porte County Indiana Early Probate Records 1833-1850

Everybody dies. Many have probates. A few leave wills. Therefore, all serious genealogists consult probate records in their research. Now it will be easier for those whose research takes them to La Porte County, Indiana.

Almost four years ago, Dorothy Germain Palmer, Mary Leahy Wenzel, and I divided up the county's earliest probate records and started abstracting them. Dorothy took Probate Order Book A, which recorded the daily activities of the local probate court from the founding of the county up to about 1842. Mary took Probate Complete Record Book A, which recorded the larger probates in detail from the founding of the county up to 1848. I took the first microfilm reel of loose papers (AKA estate packets), which run from 1836 up to 1850.

Once we had abstracted them, we indexed every name excepting judges, clerks, and attorneys in the bound volumes; in the loose papers we indexed all decedents, heirs, administrators, buyers at estate sales, those providing security (bail), and those who signed decipherable names (on receipts, for instance). Since almost all individuals connected with every probate are included, researchers can use this book to place many people in early La Porte County who did not themselves die during the 1830s and 1840s.

Some probates appear in all three records (the county's first will book starts about 1850). Some appear in only one. This book allows the researcher to get an overview of where any given individual appears, and to find him or her readily in the original records in the county clerk's office. The original records may contain additional information; in a few cases, diligent administrators compiled what amount to credit ratings for those who owed the estate money. (The consolidated approach is unusual, and it would be difficult to use in any projects covering later years, as the bound volumes and the loose papers all become more out of sync with each other.)

The resulting book is 290 pages long and sells for $29.95. All royalties will go to the La Porte County Genealogical Society. Copies can be purchased either via the society website or from the publisher, Genealogical.com, whose people were very helpful in getting the book properly formatted.

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.]

Now up to eleven mostly Midwestern indexes and finding aids

In addition to the nine links posted last year, two additional research aids are available on my web site:

Wisconsin Small City Directories 1903-1936 -- four rolls of microfilm published by City Directories of the United States, containing 29 directories for various years for more than 24 different towns and 7 different counties -- but labeled neither on the boxes nor at the beginning of the films themselves!

In order to make this resource useable I have spooled through the four films and listed title and publisher (when available) and date, and posted the lists and indexed them. This Wisconsin listing joins similar listings for Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. I have included CDUS's numbers as well as the numbers assigned to them at the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center, where I consulted them.

Few of these towns were able to support annual or even biennial directories, but it's a good bet that diligent researchers who visit local libraries and archives will find directories for more years than were microfilmed here. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries each of these towns had their own confident local business community.

Indiana private laws relating to La Porte County 1843-1847 and 1850, abstracted from Google Books. This is an experiment in making this relatively obscure resource more available. These are drawn from "session law" books describing the laws passed relating to particular people and organizations in each legislative session. Are your people mentioned?



Harold Henderson, "Now up to eleven mostly Midwestern indexes and finding aids," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 24 April 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Halls of Justice, New Durham Township, La Porte County, Indiana

The stories genealogists miss by not looking at court records:

Theodore Hagaman sued Lucas and Arthur Hixon for killing his dog and making his wife very ill (23 December 1879).

Davidson Brothers (dry goods and clothing) sued Mary Gutath for money she owed them (3 April 1880).

Lana Heiden sued Henry Bogue for bastardy (15 October 1881 -- before birth records were kept).

Albert Tuley sued William Tuley over a bay horse (15 December 1881).

William Webber bought two stoves -- a Loyal Acorn and a Black Acorn -- from Rathbone Sard and Co. in Chicago . . . and didn't pay (12 September 1882).

Polish workers Steppen Aushinsky and Josef Kusz (their names mangled in the record) sued Samuel Davis for their pay for cutting wood (14 May 1883).

Charley Brown failed to work on the road (6 July 1897).

Rosebell Livingston found a stray year-old heifer (4 April 1899).

Not many of Indiana's Justice of the Peace court records have survived; they may perhaps have been regarded as personal property rather than public property. One beat-up book ended up in the county clerk's office. Sometimes legible, it recorded cases heard by various justices between 1879 and 1906, most of them in New Durham Township (around Westville) in La Porte County.

I abstracted the cases and wrote the introduction, Callie McCune proofread them, and the Indiana Historical Society has published them as "La Porte County, New Durham Township Justice of the Peace Court Record Book Records, 1879-1906," part of Online Connections, the digital counterpart to their twice-yearly The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections published on paper. They're free to browse and search -- for those with New Durham research targets, or just for those with an interest in grass-roots litigation more than a century ago.






Harold Henderson and Callie McCune,  “La Porte County, New Durham Justice of the Peace Court Record Book Records, 1879-1906,″ Indiana Historical Society On-Line Connections, 2013 (http://www.indianahistory.org/our-services/books-publications/magazines/online-connections/regional/LaPorteCoNewDurhamJPRecs.pdf : viewed 13 October 2013).

Harold Henderson, "Halls of Justice, New Durham Township, La Porte County, Indiana," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 22 October 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Genealogy of the Rich and Famous -- Not

While engaged in another project altogether, I discovered some unanticipated vital records -- in minutes of the La Porte County, Indiana, commissioners:

• January 1836: The commissioners ordered that Anthony Torbert be paid 50 cents "for hauling the corpse of Solomon Pates, Deceased Pauper, to the grave."¹
• 4 January 1838: The commissioners ordered that May and Jewell be paid $20.25 “for coffin and sundries furnished for George S. Small a Pauper who died in Michigan City.”
• 4 January 1838: The commissioners ordered that Haynes Denton be paid $86.50 “for keeping and attending Arthur M. Cauley [McCauley?] procuring coffin and c. for same a pauper in Michigan Township.”²
• September 1838: The commissioners ordered that various individuals each be paid $2 “for Guarding the Jail on the night of the 14th June before David Scott was executed.”³ More information on the murder Scott committed in Jasper Packard's history of La Porte County.⁴
• 5 September 1838: The commissioners ordered that Rodney B. Field be paid “six dollars for coffin for John Scott pauper in Michigan Township.”⁵
• November 1838: The commissioners ordered that several people be paid for professional services “furnished John Wells and family, paupers in New Durham Township,” including $3.75 to Benjamin Underwood for “three coffins.”⁶
• 6 November 1838: The commissioners ordered that Church and Dodge be paid $2 for “horses and waggon to convey the corpse of John Forley to the Grave a pauper of Michigan Township.”⁷
• 7 March 1839: The commissioners ordered that Geo. W. Allen be paid $90 for keeping Jacob Deerduff for ten weeks, plus doctor bills and funeral expenses in Scipio Township.⁸

Never assume you've looked "everywhere"! Sometimes the best-documented people are at one extreme or the other of the social spectrum. And sometimes the only record we can find of an event is actually a record of its "fiscal shadow." If the county had not paid for these burials etc. there might well be no record of them.

 

1 La Porte County, Indiana, Commissioners' Record A:266; Recorder, La Porte.

2 Ibid., A:499.

3 La Porte County, Indiana, Commissioners' Record B:5; Recorder, La Porte.

4 Jasper Packard, History of La Porte County (La Porte: S. E. Taylor & Co.), 47; digital image, Internet Archive (http://archive.org/stream/historyoflaporte01pack#page/n27/mode/2up/search/packard).

5 Ibid., B:11.

6 Ibid., B:18.

7 Ibid., B:21.

8 Ibid., B:52.

Photo credit: spodzone's photostream at flickr.com, http://www.flickr.com/photos/spodzone/1289057202, per Creative Commons.

Harold Henderson, "Genealogy of the rich and famous -- not," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 14 October 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Sixteen lookups on the web site

It's a famous midsummer holiday, and what better to celebrate than free? Midwestroots.net now offers free lookups in 16 resources (actual indexes and finding aids in the next post).

 INDIANA
1830s La Porte County court records every-name index
1830-1855, 1886-1906 St. Joseph County marriage index
1910 DePauw University Alumnal Record
1971, 1986, 1987, 1990 La Porte directories
1975 Indiana Place Names
Pre-1979 Genealogy Articles in the Indiana Magazine of History
1986 Manuscript Collections in Indiana Historical Society and Indiana State Library

ILLINOIS
1931 Chicago Tilden Tech yearbook
2009 Illinois Place Names

MICHIGAN
1986 Michigan Place Names

NEW YORK
1804-1823 Western New York Land Transactions

THE SOUTH
1949 Gulf Coast pilot's guide, Key West to Rio Grande
1949-1950 Southern Baptist Theological Seminary directories

METHODISTS
1834-1850 Obituary Abstracts from the Western Christian Advocate

FAMILIES
1870-1898 Flint-Thrall letters (southern Illinois)
1976 Thrall genealogy

Please do not abuse this offer. If you use any of these regularly and it is purchasable, support the author and publisher and buy your own.



Harold Henderson, "Sixteen lookups on the web site," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 3 July 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.] 

Loyal Acorn: A Day in the Life

Curiosity killed the cat, but it only slows down the genealogist. Our first wood-burning stove (1974) was a quasi-antique with the quaint name "Umpire Estate," I presumed some company's attempt to sound like the nickname for New York. The other day I was checking transcribed court cases for a township in La Porte County, Indiana. In 1882, a man was being sued for unpaid bills; he had purchased two stoves, one called "Loyal Acorn."

I went right down that rabbit hole and searched on "loyal acorn" and stove. Up came an informative ad. And the excursion was actually relevant, because the printed ad revealed that I had mis-transcribed the surname of a company owner: it was Sard, not Lord.

But one mystery always leads to another: for some reason, Google thinks that the magazine containing this advertisement was volume 11 of Sanitary and Heating Age. In fact, as I paged back, it was the 29 March 1879 issue -- volume 11, yes, but of The Metal Worker: A Weekly Journal of the Stove, Tin, Plumbing, and House Furnishing Trades. Just one more reason to triple-check what we're citing.




"The 'Acorn' Line of Wood Cook Stoves," advertisement for Rathbone, Sard & Company, The Metal Worker: A Weekly Journal of the Stove, Tin, Plumbing, and House Furnishing Trades vol. 11 [number illegible], Sat. 29 March 1879, p. 5; digital image, Google Books (http://www.books.google.com : accessed 16 February 2013).

Harold Henderson, "Loyal Acorn: A Day in the Life," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 27 February 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Not All History Is Created Equal

World War II brought 20,000 jobs to rural La Porte County, where the county seat had a total population of only 16,000. Workers commuted up to 90 miles round trip per day to assemble explosive shells. The Kingsbury ordnance plant did hire black workers, largely from Gary, but it segregated them in lowly jobs (and separate bomb shelters!) and discriminated against them in workplace discipline. Nor were they allowed to live in the "new town" of Kingsford Heights near the plant.

Historian Katherine Turk has documented the situation in the new issue of the Indiana Magazine of History, drawing among other sources on files of employee letters to President and Mrs. Roosevelt and the Fair Employment Practices Commission, held at the National Archives in Chicago. It's not a pretty picture, and not one you'll hear much about in La Porte County today.

Turk's research interest is in documenting that the African American women's logic involved both equality and fairness, whereas later anti-discrimination laws tended to leave out the fairness part. My interest is in the power of local forgetting: how little is remembered of the virulent white racism that led the government bureaucrats and the contracting company alike to discriminate against black workers and lie to them about it. (Most responses to complaints were pro forma; one woman was turned away because the company doctor said she had high blood pressure, which her own doctor documented was not the case.) The plant would recruit as far away as North Dakota and Georgia rather than allow a black person to work in a job designated for whites.

Placing our ancestors in historical context involves being aware of uncomfortable issues and situations that now go unmentioned. Sometimes it takes an outside historian to pay attention to a part of the picture that local historians turn away from.



Katherine Turk, "'A Fair Chance To Do My Part of Work': Black Women, War Work, and Rights Claims at the Kingsbury Ordnance Plant," Indiana Magazine of Hisotry, vol. 108, no. 3 (September 2012): 209-44.

Harold Henderson, "Not All History Is Created Equal," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 27 October 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]