Metro Midwestern Aerial Views

Need a way to while away the long weekend?

Shirl Kennedy at The Resource Shelf alerts us to HistoricAerials.com, which offers the ability to compare aerial photos from different years. In the Midwest, Iowa has the best coverage; elsewhere earlier years are available mainly in metropolitan areas: Milwaukee, Green Bay, Chicago, Indianapolis, Detroit, Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati. The other non-metropolitan Midwestern area with deeper time coverage is the scenic southern part of Illinois. Of course, those who want to see the landscape from the air prior to the 1930s are out of luck!

A helping hand from north of the border

Anyone who's working in Wisconsin and Michigan knows how often Canadians pop up and need to be traced back across the border. I'm not going to pretend to any expertise whatever, just thank the Resource Shelf for including a pointer to Library and Archives Canada and its selection of online genealogical databases, some of them including original images. Resources include censuses, marriage and divorce records, as well as immigration and naturalization, land, military, and directory records.