Peoria Public Library genealogy

One of our family's iconic photographs shows my three sisters sitting on the steps of the old Peoria (Illinois) Public Library building with their books. It was our go-to library when growing up (usually we had way more books than this), even after the old building was demolished and replaced with a plain-vanilla modernist structure. When our own children were young we lived within walking distance.

All of this to explain why I'm especially interested to learn that the library's new genealogy section is opening (at a time when many libraries are retrenching).

Midwestern genealogy in Utah

The Utah Genealogical Association's quarterly Crossroads (December 2009, volume 5, no. 1) has two articles featuring Midwesterners:

"An Illinois Farmer in Utah Territory and Subsequent Return of the Native," by Gerald M. Haslam, who uses a diary and other sources to reconstruct the gritty lives of ordinary people in the coal-mining area of Peoria County, Illinois, (the Edwards and Hanna City area) in the 1890s, when A. J. Rynearson returned to proselytize among his neighbors and relations for his Mormon faith. In retrospect the author acknowledges that Rynearson was more successful as a historian/genealogist than as an evangelist. If you have research targets in this area, you know that candid descriptions of daily life in communities like this are hard to come by -- don't miss these! Even allowing for the fact of Rynearson's being present during the worst depression before the 1930s, it still sounds pretty rough.

"When the Name's Not the Same," by yours truly, focusing on the intertwined problems of identity, relationship, and nomenclature in the family of Lorson/Larson/Lawson/Lewis Barnum, of DuPage, Whiteside, and Cook counties in Illinois.

Central Illinois research as it happens

Editors tend to resist publishing articles that provide a "research travelogue" -- "first I looked here, and then that led me to..." but for those of us still struggling to figure out how to do good research, a travelogue or two is most welcome. National Genealogical Society president Jan Alpert provides one involving the Neill families, possibly related, of Peoria and Schuyler counties, Illinois in the January issue of UpFront with NGS. There's no magical revelation or clear conclusion, but I find it interesting to see how someone else goes about a project starting with a clue or two from a Civil War pension file.

Illinois Harvest -- still more digitized local histories, post 2

History of Woodford County, by Roy L. Moore (Eureka: Woodford County Republican, 1910).

The Woodford County History, by the Book Committee (1968). Each individual township gets its own history here. I'm no expert on this county, but the preface speaks of updating the 1878 history, not the 1910 one. What's up with that?

The Pekin Centenary 1849-1949: A Souvenir Book..., by Thomas H. Harris.

Sesquicentennial History Book, 1824-1874 [my reading of the title is Pekin Sesquicentennial, A History, 1824-1974] (Pekin: Pekin Chamber of Commerce, 1974). Clearly there is some disagreement as to the point of origin of this Tazewell County town.

The History of Peoria, Illinois, by Charles Ballance (Peoria: N.C. Nason, 1870).

History of Quincy and Its Men of Mark, by Pat H. Redmond (Quincy: Heirs & Russell, 1869).