On Line State Resources for Genealogy 3.0

There's an old saying, "When you're tired of London, you're tired of life." Well, when you get tired of browsing this book, you're tired of genealogy.

Earlier this month my friend and colleague Michael Hait released the third edition of his On Line State Resources for Genealogy. It's up to 1140 pages and more than 9000 resources -- hosted at a bewildering variety of web sites, with a much deeper and different reach than the popular free and subscription mega-sites.

Contrary to the title, the book includes on-line resources at the national level including the National Archives. Some sites require sign-in. "Resources" include images of original records; derivative records (such as transcriptions and abstracts); authored works; and finding aids and indexes. As stated in the introductory material, use the finding aids and indexes and derivative sources to lead to the original records when possible.

The table of contents is arranged by state and then by repository in apparently random order within each state. A click on any entry in the table of contents takes you directly to the repository's listings, and a click on the specific repository's link takes you there.

Midwestern researchers will be interested to know that Indiana listings occupy 92 pages, Illinois 61, Ohio 46, and Michigan and Wisconsin each 14.

This undertaking is nothing less than gargantuan. And it includes resources I did not know about but should have. Still it doesn't have everything: absent are La Crosse, Wisconsin, city directories; the Monroe County, Wisconsin, Local History Room; and several name indexes available at the Chicago branch of NARA.

But as the numbers mount up this enterprise faces a deeper problem -- how to organize the resources. Not only are they proliferating daily (the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center just announced eleven new ones). Often the originating agency may be different, or in a different place, than the record itself (such as county records created and listed under the name of a state agency). Equally bothersome, it is also often difficult to discern where one repository ends and another begins, since the same collection may be reached through more than one portal. It certainly helps that this book is searchable and not in print form, but part of its value is that the resources also be rationally browseable.

This compilation is itself an essential part of a "reasonably exhaustive search" as prescribed by BCG's Genealogy Standards, but other searches need to be made both within and outside of it.

Another form of browsing is to follow the compiler's new blog featuring a resource every few days.






Michael Hait, comp., On Line State Resources for Genealogy, third edition (PDF/ebook, privately printed, 2013).


Harold Henderson, "On Line State Resources for Genealogy 3.0," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 18 December 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]







Harold Henderson, "On Line State Records for Genealogy 3.0," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 18 December 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Online Plat Book Indexes, an idea whose time has come?

If your research targets lived in Monroe County, Wisconsin, the Local History and Genealogy Room allows you to search for them in the county's 1877, 1897, 1915, and 1948 plat books. More counties should get on this bandwagon, reminding on-line folks of the importance of land records (few of which are digitized or indexed on line), and of geography itself as a part of genealogy.

The good folks at Census Finder have state maps with counties and links to online maps of some of them, including plat maps. You can check out your favorite state either by scrolling halfway down the main page and picking a state to see its county map and list -- or by simply typing http://www.censusfinder.com/mapxy.htm into your browser's address bar, substituting the state's two-letter postal abbreviation for "xy."

I found many Midwestern counties with beautiful graphic displays of one or more plat books, but only two others with actual indexes: Eau Claire County, Wisconsin for 1910, and Lee County, Illinois, for (hold your breath) 1863, 1872, 1900, 1921, 1935, and 1941. Lee County may be small but it's mighty in genealogy. My great-grandparents lived there for many years but owned no land.

Ironically, censusfinder.com doesn't have Monroe County's plat book indexes listed yet.

Monroe County Local History Room grows online

I'm late with this, but if you have western Wisconsin research targets, the Monroe County Local History Room is worth waiting for. Early last month they reported expanded online indexes of local newspapers (Sparta, Norwalk, Cashton), business directories (Sparta, Tomah, and countywide), and a 1948 plat book. Believe me, it's even better in person.

FYI for those who are counting, this blog is one year (342 posts) old today.

Wisconsin genealogy: focus on records

The contents of the current (October) Wisconsin State Genealogical Society Newsletter reflect in part the view of editor David McDonald, CG, that "it's great fun to see an article come forward that explores a hidden or largely unknown source":

"World War I 'Slacker' Lists"

"Wisconsinites on the Federal Payroll, 1880"

"Burials of Indigent Soldiers -- Sauk County, 1891-1902"

"Roster of Lodges, Knights of Pythias, 1899"

"The Woman's Club of Madison, 1895-96"

"Waupaca County, Saint Patrick's Cemetery, Lebanon Township"

"Rock County, Saint Joseph's Cemetery, Edgerton"

Places you wish your relatives lived: Monroe County, Wisconsin

Ideally your relatives lived in a place small enough to create accessible individual records (such as obituaries) and large enough to know how to preserve them. Monroe County, Wisconsin, on Interstate 90 between Madison and La Crosse, is such a place. Its local history room is housed in half of the first floor of an old Masonic hall in downtown Sparta, the county seat -- conveniently across the street from the local library and county offices.

Don't let its small size deceive you. The MCLHR has a useful online presence including indices of local newspapers, court records, censuses, burials, and biographies -- which made my two half-days of research there far more productive than they would have been otherwise. A crew of volunteers overseen by Jarrod Roll continue adding to them. Off-line physical resources include plat books, yearbooks, church records, Sparta city directories going back (at intervals) as far as 1897, and an index to the Monroe County portion of Wisconsin's 1905 state census. For my money the jewel of the collection is a photocopy of the handwritten record of Sparta's Woodlawn Cemetery.

While you dig for ancestral gold, less document-oriented members of your party can explore the rest of the first floor, which houses a nicely designed local history museum, and then the upstairs, where the Deke Slayton Memorial Space & Bike Museum honors local astronaut and famous son Donald Kent Slayton.

(One warning: if you have a tracphone it will be useless until you drive about an hour east or west.)