Mostly Midwestern genealogy finds on and off the web

* The summer issue of the Illinois State Genealogical Society Quarterly includes a well-cited article by Charlene Preston Mundy, "Five Ferguson Brothers from Scotland."A bonus for me: ISGSQ is using footnotes instead of the dreaded endnotes.


* As usual, the Ohio Genealogy News is packed with instructional articles of interest. For Summer 2012, I particularly enjoyed:

Chris Staats' "Deed Anatomy 101" with a clever graphic;

Joyce Quigley's "Online Cemetery Research" (interment records!); and

Delores Jones's "My Last Name is Jones (Success with a Common Surname)": "The only way I found my Jones family in the 1930 U.S. census for Mississippi was by reading my late aunt's papers again."


* Whenever you're in a law library, take the opportunity to snoop around. During IGHR at Samford, some sharp-eyed Pennsylvania researchers found an unlikely treasure: county-level court case reports for several counties in Pennsylvania, mostly from the 20th century. Who knew?


* Joe Beine has updated his wonderful index to on-line indexes of death records of various kinds, including indexes for ten Midwestern counties:

in Illinois -- DeKalb, McDonough, Sangamon, and Will;

in Michigan -- Menominee, Oakland, and Wayne;

in Ohio -- Montgomery; and

in Wisconsin -- Barron and Eau Claire.





Charlene Preston Mundy, "Five Ferguson Brothers from Scotland,"Illinois State Genealogical Society Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 2 (Summer 2012): 74-91.

Ohio Genealogy News, vol 43, no. 2 (Summer 2012).

Harold Henderson, "Midwestern genealogy finds on and off the web," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 26 June 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

IGHR Samford Day Two

Highlights (both of my readers have probably surmised that I'm taking Tom Jones's writing class this year):

As a rule, articles submitted to the National Genealogical Society Quarterly can be made one-quarter shorter just by trimming fat (without substantive revision).

The following book dedication constitutes the strongest case for the serial comma: "I dedicate this book to my parents, Mother Teresa and the Pope."

IGHR Samford Day One

I can't begin to list all the friends and discussions and plans -- not if I want to get my homework done. So my posts about this week at the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research will be verrry selective.

Fact of the Day, from Tom Jones: The Family History Library has two copies of the 1820 census, one microfilmed by the Census Bureau back in the day, the other filmed by the National Archives. So far as he knows, nobody has compared the two.

Quote of the Day, from Strunk and White's Elements of Style, p. 17, per Tom's syllabus (I can't find my copy!): "Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences . . . . This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell."

Methodology Monday with IGHR record

Samford University Library's Institute of Genealogical and Historical Research, a one-week intensive premier genealogical learning opportunity, reports on Facebook that it will have a record 306 students and faculty next month.

Six states make up just over half the group: Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Maryland, Florida, and California. Thirty Midwesterners are expected: 12 from Illinois, 10 Ohio, 4 Indiana, 4 Wisconsin, 0 Michigan.

If you think this might be a possibility for you in future years, click on the individual courses for details.