New on Midwest Roots

I've added nine more free lookups at Midwest Roots for a total of sixteen.

LA PORTE COUNTY

* La Porte, Indiana, city directories for 1971, 1984, 1987.

* Index to the Justice of the Peace records for New Durham Township, La Porte County, Indiana,1879-1906. (Surnames listed on web site.)

* Harold Henderson, comp., In Court In La Porte: An Every-Name Index to the First Legal Proceedings in La Porte County, Indiana [prior to 1836] (La Porte: Blurb.com, 2011).

INDIANA

* DAR-transcribed St. Joseph County, Indiana, marriage records 1830-1855, 1886-1906 (not the originals).

* Eric Pumroy with Paul Brockman, A Guide to Manuscript Collections of the Indiana Historical Society and Indiana State Library (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1986).

* Charles Alexander Martin, ed., Alumnal Record DePauw University (Greencastle IN: DePauw, 1910).

* Dorothy L. Riker, comp., Genealogical Sources Reprinted from the Genealogy Section of Indiana Magazine of History (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1979).

* Ronald L. Baker and Marvin Carmony, Indiana Place Names (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975)

ILLINOIS

* Almost 100 Flint-Thrall family letters 1870-1898, mostly from, to, and about southern Illinois.

* 1931 yearbook of Tilden Technical High School, Chicago.

* Edward Callary, Place Names of Illinois (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009).

MICHIGAN

* Walter Romig, Michigan Place Names (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988).

BEYOND

* Margaret R. Waters, Dorothy Ruiker, and Doris Leistner, Abstracts of Obituaries in the Western Christian Advocate 1834-1850 (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1988).

* Karen Livsey, Western New York Land Transactions, 1804-1824, Extracted from the Archives of the Holland Land Company (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1991).


Harold Henderson, "New on Midwest Roots," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 27 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Mid-20th-century war resource

The St. Joseph County (Indiana) Public Library has an on-line "Service Notes" database indexing almost 40,000 newspaper mentions of local people "who were being drafted, entering the service, being promoted or sent to different locations" between 1941 and 1979. It's in two parts, one for WWII, the other for Korea and Vietnam. Each can be browsed if you specify how to sort the list and a particular branch of service. The results will give name and address, but any underlying newspaper items must be retrieved from either microfilm or clipping files in the library in South Bend.

Obviously this sort of database is just a start on research, and equally obviously it won't help if your person of interest came from somewhere else. But check your relevant library -- they may have a similar card file or index that hasn't made it on line yet!

Part of Berrien County, Michigan, is in Kalamazoo?

Recently I quoted a non-genealogist archives user on the value of consulting with the keepers of the records -- well, the other day the advice came to life when Sharon Carlson, the director of Western Michigan University's Archives and Regional History Collections in Kalamazoo, advised me to go beyond the newspaper research I had planned and consult the index created by former director Wayne C. Mann as part of his own research.

It's actually more what I would call a "living index," because he photocopied various newspaper articles and other items, and filed one copy each under each surname mentioned in the article. No brick walls collapsed, but I found information on friends and associates of my research target that I never could have in any other way.

It's been microfilmed (43 reels!) and the Family History Library calls it "The Southern Berrien County, Michigan Index" and notes that it tends to cover the townships on either side of the state line from Rolling Prairie to South Bend on the Indiana side and Berrien and St. Joseph counties on the Michigan side. So, depending on your geographical orientation, you may wish to consult this Berrien County resource either in Kalamazoo or Salt Lake City.

(And just FYI: if you're looking for Berrien County probate court records after 1838, you'll find them, not in Kalamazoo, but in Berrien Springs at the Berrien County Historical Association, which is an archive as well.)

Lost Schoolhouses in St. Joseph County

The feature article in the October South Bend Area Genealogical Society Quarterly Newsletter is by Sadie Stuck on "The Lost Schoolhouses of St. Joseph County." She enumerates every township, but not every school. It would appear that a lot of them have literally been forgotten -- as in, "The only other school known to have existed [in Union Township] is one of unknown name built in 1939 at 64500 Kenilworth Road." And this is not the only such case.

As the old play asks, "Are we so soon forgot?" Just seventy years ago and even its name is unremembered? Perhaps there is more information out there, but I found this to be a very sobering article. Forgetting is real, forgetting happens.

Genealogy in South Bend

The new (January) quarterly newsletter of the South Bend Area Genealogical Society is out. The big news is the annual one-day Michiana Genealogy Fair will be Saturday, March 14, at the Mishawaka-Penn-Harris Public Library in downtown Mishawaka (SB's twin city to the east), featuring Jeff Bockman from Illinois on "Using Maps for Genealogical Research" and "No Birth Certificat, No Problem." Exhibitors (including my local society from the next county west) will be hawking our wares and talking with visitors.

Meanwhile here's the other stuff in the newsletter:

Minutes of the 27 October and 24 November 2008 programs: Don Litzer of the Allen County Public Library on "Networking Genealogically," and Garry Harrington of the Rum Village Nature Center on the topographical-geographical-ecological early history of St. Joseph County, respectively.

"World War I and World War II Draft Registration Cards: A Genealogical Treasure Trove," by Eric Craig

"George Milburn, Captain of Industry," by Ken Reising -- an active businessman who helped fossster Studebaker and Oliver manufactureres "during critical periods, when they expanded from job shops to major manufacturers," but who is little known locally in part because he moved his wagon firm to Toledo, Ohio, in 1874.

"Thomas McCartney 1809-1861 Biography," by John E. McCartney

"The Johnsons: The Swedish Connection," by Jack R. Newman

"New Books on the Shelf" at the St. Joseph County Public Library, including as well the bad news that the Indiana state legislature's ill-advised 2007 property tax cap will require the Local and Family History and microfilm rooms to close on Sundays when the rest of the library is open.

Hoosier Genealogist Spring/Summer

Contents of the Indiana Historical Society's consistently well-edited semi-yearly -- it's almost like getting a small book in the mail!:

"What Is History? Pulling Sources Together to Tell Meaningful Family Stories," by M. Teresa Baer

"Minister, Educator, and Historian: The Life of the Reverend Henry Bascom Hibben, 1826-1890," by George C. Hibben. A Methodist of the generation after the legendary circuit riders who became a Navy chaplain: "His sermons were prepared with great care, and were masterpieces of eloquence and power."

"Federal Court Records: Researching Hoosier Family History at the National Archives-Great Lakes Region, Chicago, 1817-1859," by Martin Tuohy, who has the gift of making you want to drop everything and head for his repository. "Tenant farmers...are often written out of history by genealogists who rely upon records about land ownership but overlook records about land occupation and use," such as federal ejectment suits.

"'Still with the Hoosiers': The Reminiscences of Solomon Ashley Dwinnell, St. Joseph County, 1835-1836," by Rachel M. Popma -- a Congregationalist who didn't fit in so well and ended up in Wisconsin.

"Legal Documents: Abstracts of the Hamilton County Legal Documents in the Barnes Manuscripts Collection, 1839, 1865-1871," transcribed by Wendy L. Adams and Rachel M. Popma

"State Centennial Celebration: Perry County Commemorates the Indiana State Centennial, 1916," by Bethany Natali

"Just a Country Girl: Stories from an Early Twentieth Century Hoosier Farm Family, Part 4," by Martha Brennan

"Online Publications: Digitized Images and Every-Name Index for the First Order Book of the U.S. District Court for the District of Indiana, 1817-1833," by Doria Lynch. Woo hoo -- go to indianahistory.org, and hit Family History, then Family History Publications, then Online Family History Publications.

"Elliott Family History: A 1908 History of the Elliott and Related Families of Jefferson County, Indiana," by David McClure Elliott, annotated by Ken Hixon

"Using City Directories for Genealogical Research," by Geneil Breeze

St. Joseph County Indiana library

The New England Historic Genealogical Society's e-News for 4 June (not up on their site yet but free signup even for nonmembers) has an appreciation of South Bend's St. Joseph County Public Library, including its digitized version of the 1875 county historical atlas, the 1936 plat book for the agricultural parts of the county, the county obituary index from 1913 forward, and a 1941-1979 database of local military service. (I can testify that the physical space is nice too.)

South Bend Quarterly

The quarterly newsletter of the South Bend Area Genealogical Society recently won honorable mention in the National Genealogical Society's local newsletter competition. Major articles in the April issue of the quarterly:

"Indiana Scandinavians: Urban Distribution According to 2000 Census Data," by Mika Roinila

"Abstracts of Title," by Eric Craig

"Magnificent Men in their Automobiles: American Simplex Motor Car Company, Mishawaka, Indiana," by Ken Reising

"Saint Patrick's Day 1897"

"California Obituaries of St. Joseph Co. natives," comp. Eleanor E. Borkenhagen

New books listings for Saint Joseph County Public Library and Mishawaka-Penn-Harris Public Library

South Bend in NYGBR

In the January 2008 issue of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record (contents not on line), Stefani Evans, CG, finds circumstantial evidence of the identity of Nathan MacCorkle's wife Catherine that might satisfy a hobbyist. She pursues the case to find an unusual piece of direct contemporary evidence confirming Catherine's Dodge parentage. Nathan and Catherine lived in New York and Pennsylvania; their youngest two children wound up in South Bend (St. Joseph County), Indiana -- Emma Elizabeth (MacCorkle) Housekeeper 1850-1918, and James Monroe MacCorkle 1853-1925.

The article doesn't carry them forward, so of course I had to go look. The 1900 census enumerated J. M. and Anna (____) "McCorkle" and six children in the city's First Ward, and "Nick" and Emma Housekeeper with one child present (out of a total of four) in the Second Ward. J.M. was a clerk, and Nick a blacksmith.

South Bend Area genealogy

Highlights of the Jan 2008 Quarterly Newsletter of the South Bend Area Genealogical Society:

"Leopold Pokagon, Potawatomi Chief: A historical and biographical sketch," by Ken Reising

"Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Byerley Observes Anniversary" (1906 South Bend Tribune)

"Ask the Retoucher" column, by Eric Curtis M. Basir

"Revolutionary War Soldiers Buried in St. Joseph County with details," by Richard Berkheiser, transcribed from Schuyler Colfax Chapter DAR files

"New Books on the Shelf," St. Joseph County Public Library and Mishawaka-Penn-Harris Public Library

"Marriages at St. Paul's German Lutheran Church in South Bend, 1879-1903," transcribed by Karen Bond