Methdology Monday with a reminder about unusual sources

Sally Phillips gave a presentation on "little used sources" at the Northwest Indiana Genealogical Society meeting this weekend, with lots of sprightly examples. Have you used yearbooks? Newspapers for more than just vital records? Censuses for more than just the obvious questions in the population schedule, including the fantastically detailed agricultural schedules for 1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880? Letters, diaries, and journals? Newsletters? City directories? (You may be surprised at how small a place supported the occasional city directory.)

In this vein I also call to mind Paula Stuart Warren's presentation at FGS on school records, of which there are more kinds than you ever dreamed.

With the exception of some digitized newspapers and city directories and letters, these sources are not as easy to locate, and not always as easy to use, as the more familiar ones. But they are worth the trouble. I once encountered an entire page that my grandmother had written about the value of studying mathematics, when she was a young woman teaching it in high school in northern Illinois.