The Gedney family of Illinois, and why writing is still compulsory for genealogists

Suddenly more than one-third of 2017 is history! Two other articles of mine have seen the light of day:

“Yes, Writing Is Compulsory! Here’s How to Make It Work,” Federation of Genealogical Societies Forum 29 (Spring 2017): 18-21.

I hope this will inspire others to turn their research into readable and documented stories, and not leave an indigestible lump of disorganized notes (which is generally what I start with!). It is not enough to leave a database or a stack of papers. Thanks to FGS's Julie Cahill Tarr for making sure I got it done.

“From Fens to Farms: William and Rebecca (Wright) Gedney of Cowbit, Lincolnshire and Lebanon, Illinois,” Illinois State Genealogical Society Quarterly (Spring 2017): 30-34.

Thanks to ISGSQ editor Terry Feinberg for helping nudge this into the right length and shape (William and Rebecca and their children), and for instituting footnotes instead of endnotes in the quarterly!

This is my maternal grandfather's mother's line; the bulk of the family came to the U.S. in 1842 (John Tyler was president), sailing from Liverpool to New Orleans and then traveling up the Mississippi to St. Clair County, Illinois, opposite St. Louis. Some children arrived earlier; it was a chain-like migration. William and Rebecca's twelve children, born 1805-1832, had a total of more than two dozen grandchildren. Seven of the twelve lived to have children, and married into families surnamed Green, Wilson, Flint (twice), Lord (twice), Sims, Frost, Eastwood, Barton, Thornton, and Sowers.

I need to figure out the best way(s) to publish the much longer four-generation story, as many family members spilled into Missouri and Kansas while others stayed rooted in Illinois.

Analyzing too much information with William Flint (1815-1878)

Often we have to eke out one precious fact at a time by analyzing and correlating terse and scattered records. But in the case of the agriculture schedules of the U.S. census (1850-1880), we have to find ways to  make sense of a cornucopia of information.

See how I did it for my great-great grandfather William Flint of St. Clair County, Illinois, in the new Illinois State Genealogical Society Quarterly (membership required). And if this puts you in mind of an Illinois topic you want to write about, managing editor Julie Cahill Tarr would love to hear from you.



Harold Henderson, "William Flint's Farm: Digging Deeper," Illinois State Genealogical Society Quarterly 46 (Spring 2014): 5-8.


Image: S.D. Fisher, ed., Transactions of the Department of Agriculture, State of Illinois, with Reports from County Agricultural Boards, for the Year 1879 (Springfield: Weber & Co., 1880), 66.


Harold Henderson, "Analyzing too much information with William Flint (1815-1878)," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 25 March 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

New on-line resources

On the Porter County, Indiana, Genweb:

917 records from the Indiana Adjutant General's List of Porter County Civil War Soldiers

11,364 individuals residing in Lake Porter counties in 1916, with their addresses and credit ratings

From the St. Clair County, Illinois, mailing list:

Diane Walsh calls attention to the free online 1926 volumes by Isaac D. Rawlings in the Internet Archive, The Rise and Fall of Disease in Illinois, volume 1 and volume 2. Much of the book culls old medical journals for reports of diseases in specific places and times. With some effort it may be possible to retrieve copies of the original articles themselves for an unusual close-up on your location of interest. He covers the whole state and some adjacent counties as well if they happened to be written up by an Illinois physician.

Unwrap this present BEFORE Christmas!

World Vital Records is offering free access to a number of 20th-century city and business directories -- too many to list here, and (I am told) ending on the 26th. For our area of interest, you're in luck if you need

Belleville, St. Clair County, Illinois
Kohler, Sheboygan/Ozaukee counties, Wisconsin
Plymouth, Sheboygan County, Wisconsin
Sheboygan, Sheboygan County, Wisconsin
Sheboygan Falls, Sheboygan County, Wisconsin

but there are plenty more. Check the whole list because not all the offerings for each place are together.

Hat tip to Diane Walsh on Rootsweb's St. Clair County list.

Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society!

The Internet Scout Project brings the welcome news that more than half a century of Illinois' quarterly historical journal (1950-2006) has been digitized and is browsable by issue. This may not be the ideal situation, but it's way better than having boxes full of the magazine around the house (as I did for years) and having to browse every issue manually, provided you could locate it.

There are many wonderful microhistorical sources in this archive. One of my favorites is in the Autumn 1982 issue, "Eight Weeks on a St. Clair County Farm in 1851: Letters by a Young German," but the link now has mysteriously quit working for me. Another goodie is in the winter issue of that year, when Edward R. Kantowicz wrote at length on the French Canadian settlements in Kankakee County.

Although this site has no index of its own, it can be searched via Google, using first site:http://dig.lib.niu.edu/ISHS/ as the search term, and then at the bottom of the resulting search page, clicking on "search within results" and inserting what you actually want to find.

Bookends Friday: letters from St. Clair County, Illinois

From the September issue of the St. Clair County (Illinois) Genealogical Society Newsletter, two new books by Stephen W. Reiss. I have not seen these but how could anyone with southwestern Illinois connections go far wrong?

It Takes a Matriarch: 780 Family Letters from 1852 to 1888 Including Civil War, Farming in Illinois, Life in St. Louis, Life in Sacramento, Life in the Theater, Wagon Making in Davenport, and the Lost Family Fortune -- letters to Margaret Basler Reiss Ebert.

Quilter, Granger, Grandma, Matriarch: Life on the Reiss Family Farm 1949-1953 St,. Clair County, Illinois -- diaries of Catherine "Katie" Reiss.

More information at the publisher's web site.

Transactions of the Illinois State Historical Society!

Thanks to the St. Clair County (IL) Genealogical Society Quarterly for this alert:

Approximately 30 volunes of Transactions of the Illinois State Historical Society are available online at The Internet Archive (www.archive.org). Among the published articles are transcriptions of pioneer letters [and] historical essays on a variety of subjects.

I own a few of these volumes -- collections of papers from ISHS annual meetings early in the 20th century -- and they can have cool old stuff. Trouble is they weren't well indexed before.

The new (volume 32, number 2) issue of this quarterly includes 1888 death register extracts, 1825 plats of Illinois City and Belleville, 1858 Belleville tax list, and part of a 1913 marriage index.

St. Clair County (Illinois) Quarterly

As is often the case in local publications, most of the space in the first 2009 issue of the St. Clair County Genealogical Society Quarterly is filled with valuable record transcriptions that don't make terribly good reading: "Extracts from Death Register book II 10 July 1886-31 December 1887," "Marriage Index 1912," and "Funeral Card Collection Additions."

But this issue of the quarterly also has some connected text. Society newsletter editor Tom Pearson wrote one-page digests of two recent programs at the society's monthly meetings. In February, Lillian E. Nolan, Headquarters Air Mobility Command Historian at Scott Air Force Base, noted among other things that base newspapers are an often-overlooked source of information on rank and file personnel, and bound volumes of past issues are kept in the Historian's office for those who call with questions. The March speaker, Gerald Perschbacher ("Researching Your Roots in Germany") recommended books by Dan C. Heinemeier, including A Social History of Hesse: Roman Times to 1900.

St. Clair County Illinois Quarterly #4 of 2008

Like most ambitious state and regional publications, the St. Clair County Genealogical Society Quarterly welcomes actual articles, but still subsists largely on a diet of transcribed records. Why not write up your southwestern Illinois ancestors for them?

In issue #4 of 2008:

"Extracts from Death Register Book II, 2 January 1886 - 6 July 1886, tr. Melinda Cahill and Diane Walsh

"Marriage Index 1911," tr. Judy Phelps

"Document Conservation," an information-packed one-page summary of a recent society meeting where former Belleville Public Library archivist Patricia Hamilton spoke.

"Military Discharges 'L'," tr. Art Rubeck and Sheila Kronenberger

"Plan, Analyze, Begin Again: A Davis Family Example," by Diane Walsh. At the Salt Lake Institute last month I complained a bit about the lack of information about how to do research planning beyond the stage of brainstorming and list-making; this article is the beginning of an answer, as the quarterly editor takes us through an actual research situation and shows how to respond to new information, when to focus on the task at hand and when to draw back and make a note of an alternative path to perhaps be followed later.

East St. Louis City Directories

Don't get me started about the wonders of city directories. Illinois Harvest has somewhat revamped its interface -- it has colors but the search function is still idiosyncratic -- and its thematic collections include East St. Louis City Directories. (This is great, but why single out ESL and Champaign County only?) These are not transcriptions, they're full PDF (or text) images for 1900, 1905, 1906, 1907, 1912, 1916, 1924, and 1926. I was able to quickly find my mother's father's second cousin, the contractor Jesse Gedney, at 1717 Illinois, in 1900.

And if you are or would like to become a city directory nut, the most thorough article I've seen is "Effective Use of City Directories," by Kory L. Meyerink, AG, FUGA, at ProGenealogists. Let me know if you've seen better.

SCCGSQ, southwestern Illinois' voice

The third 2008 issue of the St. Clair County Genealogy Society Quarterly cements its standing as one of the meatiest local genealogy publication I've seen around the Midwest:

"Preston Women in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Illinois," by Thomas W. Davis.

"Extracts from Death Register Book II, 12 November 1884-24 December 1885," by Melinda Cahill, Diane Walsh, and Linda Osterdock.

"Marriage Index 1910," Paul Mueller.

"Eisenhauer-Mauer [Maurer] Letters," by Robert Donnell and Recs Jenkins.

"Old Age Pension for 127 Local Residents approved for Payment," 1936, by Nancy Giles.

"Ray Family Bible"

"Belleville Saengerbund and Library Society," by Linda Osterdock.

"Shiloh Valley Township Cemeteries ALERT," which is a warning that the society's publication of that name doesn't seem to square with the relevant parish records now being transcribed from the Holy Childhood Catholic death register.

St. Clair County IL GS Quarterly

SCCGSQ's second issue of 2008:

"Extracts from Death Register book II," 1883-1884, by Melinda Cahill and Diane Walsh

"Marriage Index 1909," by Audrey Cannady Massingill

"Military Discharges 'K'" by Annette Weber and Edith Hock

"Walnut Hill Cemetery: A Memorial Tribute to Our Forebears: New Project"

"Unindexed Bounty Land Applications," by Diane Walsh

"Vital Statistics Extracted from the Belleville Daily Advocate 1927-1954," comp. Nancy Giles

"Milwaukee Area Research," by Mike Ackley

St. Clair County, Illinois, Harvest

Southwestern Illinois' hub, St. Clair County, has a number of relevant books available on line through Illinois Harvest:

Prairie Farmer's Reliable Directory of Farmers and Breeders of St. Clair and Monroe Counties, Illinois. Evansville, IN: Unigraphic, 1978. 323 pages. This is a republication of the 1919 edition, published by Prairie Farmer, and it promises unique genealogical (or microhistorical) data: it includes a tractor owners' directory including the make of each tractor.

The Birthplace of the Midwest, Cahokia, Illinois. [250th anniversary celebration souvenir program.] N.p.: The Association, 1949. 28 pages.

Nebelsick, Alvin Louis. A History of Belleville. Belleville: Township High School and Junior College, 1951? 272 pages.

O'Fallon Centennial Celebration, 1854-1954. O'Fallon: n.p., 1954. 89 pages.

Reflections of the Belleville, Illinois, Sesquicentennial, 1814-1964. Belleville: Belleville Sesquicentennial Commission, 1964. 32 pages.

Tired of your own genealogy? Puzzle along with Craig Manson at Geneablogie, as he digs through records in Latin, French, and English along the Illinois-Missouri line in search of his Micheau/Mischeaux families.

Expected and Unexpected Resources from SW Illinois

The first 2008 issue of the St. Clair County (Illinois) Genealogical Society Quarterly has enough material to make some state publications jealous. Contents include:

the second of two parts of a county marriage index for 1908 (alphabetical by bridal surname, from Lizzie Crowder to Helena Zubrawski).

"E. St. Louis Gazette: Some Vital Stats, 1866, Tidbits 1872."

"Extracts from Death Register Book 1, 8 March 1882-28 April 1883," by Melinda Cahill and Diane Walsh

"Biography of James Bissell 'J.B.' Davis," by Thomas W. Davis, Jr.

"Belleville Public Library Website Adds Features," including a glimpse of a genealogical source I'd never dreamed of: an archival document in German, listing books checked out, the individual patrons' names, and the due dates, 1863-1866. What was your ancestor reading?

Announcement of a new SCCGS project and a first installment of its index: a Funeral Card Collection.

St. Clair County, Illinois -- where you hope your ancestors lived

One of the most active local societies in Illinois, with a sizeable web presence, is in the southwest, right across the river from St. Louis: St. Clair County. I'm a member, so don't take my word for it -- check out their stuff.

They've just announced a new free newspaper database: "Vital Statistics Extracted from the Belleville (Ill.) Daily Advocate, 1927-1954," the gift of Nancy Giles. For those of us who have ancestors after the 1930 census (!) and who are twentieth-century impaired, this is a wonderful thing. My own Flint and Thrall lines converged in St. Clair, so it's already done my database some good and I look forward to zeroing in on the original articles the next time I'm over that way.