The sheriff's granddaughters

My step-grandmother's grandfather Samuel James Lowe (1798-1851), an immigrant from England, was sheriff of Cook County in the 1840s. He had two wives and thirteen children.

In the September issue of Indiana Genealogist, I tell the story of his two youngest daughters -- Mary Alice (Lowe) Amerman 1848-1943 and Kate (Lowe) Gilbert 1850-1928. They grew up in Onarga, Iroquois County, Illinois, and spent most of their adult years in and near East Chicago, Lake County, Indiana.

They were among the pioneers there: Kate's husband published the first newspaper and was the first postmaster, and was involved in a real-estate boom that somehow passed them by. Northwest Indiana was a lightly settled frontier 117 years ago, but a frontier with a difference: it was just a train ride away from Chicago's Loop.

This family has a lot more stories but they won't fit into an article!


“Pioneering in Chicago, Onarga, and Northwest Indiana: Lowe, Amerman, and Gilbert Families,” Indiana Genealogist 28 (September 2017): 5-16.

December Indiana Genealogist

The December issue of the Indiana Genealogical Society's all-virtual quarterly, Indiana Genealogist, is just out and has the usual collection of short items from all around the state, as well as two longer ones:

* John J. Weidner of Lake County explains his research into his ancestral Kolling family, who were early settlers in the county, and

* I describe some time-machine-like land records for Gibson County (and other counties) that are available in the National Archives branch in Chicago (near Midway Airport).

If you have Indiana people, do consider writing them up for this publication.

Census Dates of Record

Thanks to the Region Roots blog from Lake County (Indiana) Public Library for posting this handy reference guide to the official census dates of record for the fifteen US censuses currently publicly available (1790-1930). For a quick handy bookmark you can't beat it.

These dates are more important than the date when the census taker showed up at your ancestor's household. If the census taker and the informant understood the census instructions and followed them, each census entry should reflect the household composition as of the date of record, not the date the census taker was actually there.

Of course not everyone followed the instructions, but in figuring out what a record means, the first step (ideally) is to know the rules under which it was created. If you want to know all about the rules involved in the creation of what may be the #1 most used genealogy source, one useful reference is the Census Bureau's 2002 publication Measuring America, available for free on line in Part 1 and Part 2 in PDF format.

Learn more about Indiana vital records

Did you know that the Genealogy Center at the Allen County Public Library has a blog in addition to the monthly e-zine "Genealogy Gems"? Well, it does, and the most recent post, by John, advances our knowledge of how to work with Indiana vital records sources, especially in Lake and Allen counties, two of the most populous in the state.

One thing we almost always learn from such careful examinations is that the popular derivative sources (in this case the typescript WPA indexes and the Ancestry.com database derived from them) are not always complete, or as simple to use as one might think. There's more going on here than the usual problem of derivative sources being copied at several removes from the original records. Check it out!

Guardians and Nurses in Northwest Indiana

The seemingly indefatigable Northwest Indiana Genealogical Society has just put up two new 20th-century databases in its online archives section:

Guardian Bond Books, Lake County (1919-1934)

Register of Trained Nurses, Lake County

Each database is prefaced by a full explanation of how it came to be, how the original records were created, and where they can be found.

Department of Minutely Detailed Information in NW Indiana

Few things are more annoying to the time-challenged genealogist than a batch of big heavy index books in sequence with no dates on them. If that happens to be your predicament in the Lake County, Indiana, Recorder's office, and you're looking for a mortgage, I can help. The deed indexes are all nicely labeled, but mortgages are another matter. In the General Index of Mortgages there, roughly speaking,

Book 2 = 1878-1889
Book 3 = 1889-1896
Book 4 = 1896-1901
Book 5 = 1901-1905
Book 6 = 1906-1909
Book 7 = 1909-1911
Book 8 = 1911-1913
Book 9 = 1913-1915
Book 10 = 1915-1916
Book 11 = 1916-1918
Book 12 = 1918-1919
Book 13 = 1919-1920

(Book 1 was wedged so tightly into its slot that I didn't even try to dislodge it. Fortunately my research targets were post-1878.) I was mostly looking at the mortgagor books, not mortgagees, but Lake seems to like to keep the two sets of index books in similar date ranges.

September's Indiana Genealogist

"The Indenture of Harriett 'Hattie' Moss Dunihoo," by Randi Richardson.

"Juror Lists, Marion County, 1835," submitted by Ron Darrah from "numerous Marion County Circuit Court materials processed recently by volunteers at the Indiana State Archives."

[continued] "New History of the 99th Indiana Infantry," submitted by Meredith Thompson.

"Lake County Jurors, 1837," submitted by Marlene Polster.

"In-Genious: Finding Luther Martin's Grandfather: Valuable Clues in Newspaper Article," by Annette Harper. Census entries and newspaper articles make the case that he was George Martin; "land transfers were not searched, but might reveal a transfer to Nelson from his father."

The little archive that could -- Calumet Regional Archives, Indiana

The lone archivist of the Calumet Regional Archives, Steve McShane, spoke to my local (La Porte County) genealogical society earlier this week. CRA is housed in the library at Indiana University Northwest, just off I-94 on Broadway in Gary. Its holdings focus on Lake and Porter counties (with spillover into Michigan City on the east and South Chicago on the west), and on the 20th century because that's when heavy development and population came to the area.

Almost any records can be of genealogical interest, but McShane highlighted employment records for Gary Screw & Bolt and for Pullman-Standard, as well as some land and mortgage records for 19th-century Lake County.

NW Indiana naturalizations in 3 area codes

Check out the Region Roots blog from the Lake County (Indiana) Public Library in Merrillville for the quick version of where to look for naturalizations of people in the county. Short version: they could be next door, on the south side of Chicago (Great Lakes branch of the National Archives), or on the east side of Indianapolis (state archives). I have a feeling that in some cases this handy outline may be just the beginning of an even longer and more convoluted story . . .

Lake County Indiana resource

The occasional Region Roots blog from the Lake County Public Library in Merrillville points out an old but good index resource that was a 1938 doctoral thesis at the University of Chicago: "Sources & History for the History of Lake County, Indiana," by Minnie Margaret Ravenscroft. It's a cumulative index to 15 sources.

The thesis is not on line. And it's not in many physical libraries either. Besides Lake County, worldcat reveals that the following libraries hold copies: Hammond Public, University of Chicago, and the ever-reliable Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne.

33,000 Marriages in Lake County, Indiana

That's the gift to researchers from the Northwest Indiana Genealogical Society. The index is unusually comprehensive, including the name of the marrying official (and religious denomination when available), and of course a link to order the original document to be sure everything is well transcribed. Indexing, a major volunteer project coordinated by Marlene Polster, is ongoing, as they are up to book 23 (which includes marriages from 1914) but aiming for 1920 (books 40-41). Hat tip to the Indiana Genealogical Society blog, which keeps up with lots of local events and queries that I don't, so you should go there!

Indiana's Marriage Mill and more

The Northwest Indiana Genealogical Society (Lake and Porter counties in the upper left-hand corner of the state) has published two new books:

Crown Point Justices of the Peace Marriages. Crown Point is the county seat of Lake County, but don't click away just because you think you have no research targets there. NWIGS volunteers were surprised to find that they indexed more marriages of people from Illinois than from Indiana here between 1935 and 1946. All amorous couples needed was a marriage license from wherever they lived, and until 1940 Lake County required no waiting period. 1100 pages. (Hat tip to the Indiana Genealogical Society blog.)

An Index of Land Transfer Records for Crown Point, Lake Co., Indiana, for the Years 1928-1940 -- including the key numbers you'll need at the Recorder's office for 1936-1940 deeds if you find something promising.

These books look like solid work and they're priced accordingly. You may want to recommend that your own library consider purchasing them.

Remembering the Lincoln Highway

Arcadia Publishing has published Cynthia Ogorek's The Lincoln Highway around Chicago, and she'll be talking about it Saturday, May 10, at a meeting of the Indiana Lincoln Highway Association in Schererville (Lake County), Indiana. Details at Region Roots: Northwest Indiana Genealogy, a blog from the Lake County Public Library in Merrillville.

Region Roots blog from Lake County, Indiana

"Indiana Librarian" blogs once or twice a week from the Lake County Public Library in Merrillville, covering a mix of local resources (such as the Calumet Regional Archives), national resources (Clifford Neal Smith's Federal Land Series), beginner information (getting started with online genealogy), and local meetings (on 2 Feb Lake County Genealogist Marlene Polster will give a slide show on publishing your genealogy).