Was Your Ancestor Entered in a Better Baby Contest?

The Ultimate History Project has a brief interesting article on the mixed heritage and results of Better Baby Contests that were all the rage just about a century ago. Babies were weighed and scored on a number of supposedly scientific criteria; often there was an anti-immigrant or anti-black subtext to the movement at a time when eugenics had not yet become a dirty word.

But genealogists devour everything. These contests are another potential source of information, as contestants and winners were sometimes pictured and identified in local newspapers. The above article about a Missouri contest appeared in the Quincy (Illinois) Daily Journal in 1915 -- thanks to the Quincy Public Library's awesome newspaper archive. I have seen BBCs with pictures spread across an entire page of a small-town newspaper.



Rachel Louise Moran, "Making Perfect Children," The Ultimate History Project (http://www.ultimatehistoryproject.com/better-babies.html : accessed 25 March 2013).

"Additional Awards in Palmyra Round-Up," Quincy Daily Journal, (Quincy, Illinois), Thursday 23 December 1915, p. 8; digital image, Quincy Public Library Newspaper Archive (http://www.quincylibrary.org/library_resources/newspaperArchive.asp : accessed 26 March 2013).

Harold Henderson, "Was Your Ancestor Entered in a Better Baby Contest?," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 28 March 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Western Illinois books digitized

from Illinois Harvest, with individual links:

I remember you, or, Quincy men who are Quincy doers for the good..., by J. St. Bernard (~1912).

Portrait and biographical record of Adams County, Illinois... (Chicago: Chapman Brothers, 1892)

Quincy and Adams County, history and representative men, in 2 volumes continuously paginated (Chicago and New York: Lewis Publishing Co., 1919)

and, moving south down between the Mississippi and the Illinois rivers:

Portrait and biographical album of Pike and Calhoun counties, Illinois... (Chicago: Biographical Publishing Company, 1891)

History of Pike County, Illinois... (Chicago: Chas. C. Chapman & Co., 1880)

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).

Old newspapers in Quincy and on your desktop

I'm a big fan of Michael John Neill, not because he's from western Illinois too, but because he weaves genealogy lessons so neatly into the stories of his own ongoing research. In this recent post on his rootdig.com site, he points out that while many big-name pay-for-view genealogy sources have collected old newspapers and made them searchable, they aren't the only place to look.

All genealogy is local. Neill reports that the Quincy Public Library in Adams County, Illinois, has "scanned old Quincy area newspapers from the microfilm, and created a digital database that can be searched."

And all genealogy is global: if you're lucky enough to have research targets in western Illinois between 1835 and 1890, you can search for them here. (Oops, "Please note that the Archive may not function properly using Mozilla Firefox.") FYI, the first paper they have for this old river town is the 17 Apr 1835 issue of the Illinois Bounty Land Register.