Ration Books and Encyclopedia Annuals

Hat tip to the UpFront with NGS blog highlighting Illya D'Addezio's WW2 ration book collection at Genealogy Today. GT has a number of other offbeat but potentially very helpful sources to seek out.

And it reminded me of another source that you may need to be "a certain age" to remember: the encyclopedia "annual" or "Year Book" chronicling the events of the year just past. I picked up the 1944 Collier's Year Book, covering the events of 1943, at a used-book store years ago. It has a similar fascination to old gazetteers in that it tells the story as it looked when it was happening -- complete with political and sectional infighting -- not in the sentimental pastels of nostalgia. Here's Smith College historian Harold U. Faulkner on rationing during 1943:

On Jan. 2 the OPA [Office of Price Administration] banned all pleasure driving. . . . When pleasure driving was banned, the OPA continued to allow Eastern A-card holders three gallons a week for essential driving. Many car owners, nevertheless, criticized the ban on pleasure driving, insisting that if they were given oil, they should have the right to use it as they pleased. On March 22 the Government lifted the ban, but cut the Eastern A cards from three to one and a half gallons a week. This angered the East for the Middle West was getting four gallons. Black market buying increased and on May 20 the restriction on pleasure driving was renewed.

It wasn't always "all for one and one for all" even during the "good war."

This yearbook had articles from "accidents and accident prevention" to "zoology," plus photos, maps of war areas, and statistical tables, all from the point of view of sixty-eight years ago.

From front to back the annual was dominated by the world war. But even in time of total war there was still room for articles on college and professional football, which in 1943 were dominated by Notre Dame and the Chicago Bears respectively. Not all franchises were able to maintain a team: reportedly, "The Pittsburgh and Philadelphia clubs merged as the Steagles." I won't tell their present-day fans if you won't!



Harold Underwood Faulkner, "United States -- Rationing," p. 552, and Allison Danzig, "Football," pp. 187-88, in William W. Beardsley, ed., 1944 Collier's Year Book, Covering Events of the Year 1943 (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1944).


Harold Henderson, "Ration Books and Encyclopedia Annuals," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 28 October 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Not finding Frank Adams

Do you have what it takes to spend 40 years researching a missing grandfather? Don't miss Joseph F. Martin's wonderful story of his search in Michigan and Illinois and beyond, in the National Genealogical Society newsletter "Up Front."

This article is a form of "research travelogue," reviled by some genealogy journal editors for following chronology rather than logic. But it has its place in our literature, if only because it is closer to the actual experience of research and as such provides unique learning opportunities.

Methodology Monday with deeds instead of probate

You can find some interesting stuff in genealogy newsletters these days, premier among them being UpFront with NGS from the national Genealogical Society. The June issue has more than one interesting article, but I was riveted by Jane Atkinson Andrews' account of how she used deeds to figure out an inheritance situation in the 1840s and 1850s in Wayne County, Ohio (or at least that's where it started) and get her in-laws sorted out. She writes,

"One particular group of transactions piqued my interest: ten deeds from ten different grantors to the same grantee, recorded in consecutive order. (Wayne County, Ohio, Deed Book 44:540-46; Various grantors to John Q. Andrews, Quitclaim deeds recorded 10-12 Dec 1854; Wayne County Recorder, Wooster; FHL microfilm 420,936.)

"This was an estate property settlement, but for whom? How were the grantors related to each other and to the deceased? What was their connection to the grantee? Careful reading of the deeds provided answers to these questions and more."

If you can stop reading there and turn on the TV, you're not a genealogist.

Central Illinois research as it happens

Editors tend to resist publishing articles that provide a "research travelogue" -- "first I looked here, and then that led me to..." but for those of us still struggling to figure out how to do good research, a travelogue or two is most welcome. National Genealogical Society president Jan Alpert provides one involving the Neill families, possibly related, of Peoria and Schuyler counties, Illinois in the January issue of UpFront with NGS. There's no magical revelation or clear conclusion, but I find it interesting to see how someone else goes about a project starting with a clue or two from a Civil War pension file.

NGS in Peoria

The November 1 issue of the National Genealogical Society's email newsletter, UpFront with NGS, has a nice Midwestern-centric story by NGS president Jan Alpert, "How Two Planned Family History Projects Brought an Unanticipated Surprise." It seems that her parents met at an Illinois River picnic sponsored by the Bradley University music club . . . (Has "how-your-parents-and-grandparents-met" been a genealogy blogger carnival topic yet?)

Picturing southwest Michigan

National Genealogical Society president Jan Alpert writes in the NGS newsletter "UpFront with NGS" about picking up a pictorial history of Van Buren County, Michigan, to walk the streets of a town she's never been in search of the grandmother she never knew. Grandma's name isn't in the index, but she finds her anyway.