Indiana divorce laws guide!

 Meredith Thompson in the December 2013 Indiana Genealogist: "When railroads began to connect Indiana with the rest of the country in the 1840s, the state developed a reputation as a 'divorce mill,' with people coming from outside the state to file for divorce. Indianapolis was an especially popular destination; in 1858 two-thirds of Marion County divorce cases were filed by out-of-state petitioners."

Want more? Do you need the lowdown on Indiana's divorce laws? Waste no time in scrounging the internet: join the Indiana Genealogical Society and read Thompson's thorough source-cited explanation as just the first of your member benefits. Do it now and get your money's worth, as all annual memberships expire at the end of the calendar year.





Meredith Thompson, "Indiana's Pre-1940 Divorce Laws," Indiana Genealogist 24(4):13-20, December 2013.

Harold Henderson, "Indiana divorce laws guide!," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 26 February 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Good news for Indiana genealogists!

Fall brings a cornucopia for Hoosier-minded genealogists:

* Thanks to cooperation between two librarians and the county historian, old issues of the following Carroll County, Indiana, newspapers will make the leap from microfilm to digital: Camden newspapers, Delphi Journal, Carroll County Citizen, Carroll County Citizen-Times, Delphi Citizen, Delphi Times, Hoosier Democrat, Delphi Journal-Citizen and the Carroll County Comet. (Hat tip to ResearchBuzz.)

* The September issue of the Indiana Genealogist, including three solid articles that might well inspire similar contributions to other state periodicals:

• Ron Darrah on records of a fraternal benefits society, the Knights of Honor. (Why were such things needed? In 1884, the average age of deceased members was 39 years, 6 months, and 29 days.)
• Meredith Thompson on Indiana bastardy laws from 1818 forward, including how to search for the cases. (Hint: more than one court can be involved, especially between 1853 and 1873.)
• Sue Caldwell on a de facto women's census conducted in connection with World War I. The question remains: are Jasper County's card records of this enumeration the only ones in existence?

This magazine is digital-only and available as a benefit to members of the Indiana Genealogical Society (a bargain at $30 per calendar year, considering it also comes with access to hundreds of members-only databases relevant to the state).

* The September issue of the Indiana Magazine of History, including a thorough article by historian Jay M. Perry explaining that the "Irish Wars" on the Indiana canals and railroads in the 1830s were not just an occasion for canal workers to beat each other over the head for the fun of it.

* Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center's a-class-a-day-every-day observance of Family History Month, but I won't mention that since I just did so on Tuesday.




Ron Darrah, "Records of the Knights of Honor in Indiana," Indiana Genealogist, vol. 24, no. 3 (September 2013):17-18.

Meredith Thompson, "Providing for Illegitimate Children: Indiana's Bastardy Law," Indiana Genealogist, vol. 24, no. 3 (September 2013):20-23.

Sue Caldwell, "The 1918 National Council of Defense War Registration of Women in Jasper County,"  Indiana Genealogist, vol. 24, no. 3 (September 2013):25-28.

Jay M. Perry, "Laborer Conflicts on Indiana's Canals and Railroads," Indiana Magazine of History, vol 109, no. 3 (September 2013):224-56.


Harold Henderson, "Good news for Indiana genealogists!," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 3 October 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

June 2010 Indiana Genealogist

The latest issue of Indiana's genealogical quarterly, under new editor Laura Pinhey of Bloomington, has two records-based articles by Meredith Thompson, one on delayed birth records (a potential resource for births 1860-1930) with a list of counties whose records have been microfilmed and identifiably labeled by the Family History Library, the other on using probate records as a good substitute for vital records. Dawne Slater-Putt offers some clippings from Kokomo newspapers 1919-1941 on the city's minor-league offerings in the old Negro Leagues of baseball. The issue is available on line in PDF format to members.

Twenty of the issue's fifty-four pages are devoted to lists: members of the Indiana State Teachers Association attending the 1882 annual meeting in Indianapolis, and male inhabitants of Liberty (1937) and Morgan (1943) townships in Porter County. Of course, back in the day it was essential for state and local publications to print these sorts of lists, but they look like dinosaurs in the age of online databases. The Indiana society is a national leader in posting databases on its web site, now up to 288 (with more quite possibly added since this was written); these would have fit there perfectly well.

If more of us Indiana members had produced articles about our research, they could have occupied that space in the quarterly, added to its value, and been eligible for a $500 prize. Can we crowd the editor's mailbox?

June Indiana Genealogist

Three big articles in the new issue of Indiana Genealogist, flagship publication of the Indiana Genealogical Society:

"Who Was Not Jessie's Father?" by Dawne Slater-Putt. The author, who is a Certified Genealogist, takes on puzzle of the parentage of Jessie Armentha Fordyce, daughter of Martha A. Saxon and, as it turns out, neither of the two men she married. Jessie was born 15 January 1883 in Miami County, and was five months old when her mother married Melchior Elsenhans.

"New History of the 99th Indiana Infantry," compiled by Meredith Thompson from the 1900 book of that title. In addition to a quick summary, the article reunites the sketches and photographs of some of the 942 men in the company. Company members came from the NW quadrant of the state.

In the regular "In-Genious" section, Marjorie Weiler-Powell distinguishes indexing, abstracting, extracting, transcribing, and translating.

In the latest news, a man from Danville, Illinois, is the first person to have three certified ancestors who served from Indiana in the Civil War, making him the first "triple" member of the Society of Civil War Families of Indiana.