Michigan -- another reason to attend FGS 2013 in Fort Wayne

[Reposted from the FGS 2013 conference blog.]

Is Michigan on your way to or from the 2013 FGS conference in Fort Wayne? Well, if it's not, you may need to consider making a cooling northward detour. Your trip begins . . . at these libraries and archives.

Van Buren District Library
200 North Phelps, Decatur
http://www.vbrgs.org/LocalHistoryDepartment.html
A lot of library in a small package.

Western Michigan University Archives and Regional History Collections
East Hall #111, Kalamazoo
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/libraryarchives/
Library AND archives for southwestern counties.

Archives of Michigan
702 West Kalamazoo, Lansing
http://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,1607,7-153-54463_19313---,00.html
Their circulars alone are worth a virtual trip:
http://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,4570,7-153-54463_54475_20992---,00.html

Library of Michigan
702 West Kalamazoo, Lansing
http://www.michigan.gov/libraryofmichigan/0,2351,7-160-18635---,00.html
Multiple resources for your Michigan research even if you don't get beyond their web page.

Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library
5201 Woodward, Detroit
http://www.detroit.lib.mi.us/featuredcollection/burton-historical-collection
Over 4,000 manuscript collections, plus maps and photographs extending outward from Detroit and
deep into its multicultural past.

The Kind of Blog Every County Needs

Sonja Hunter at Bushwhacking Genealogy digs into the details of researching in Kalamazoo County, Michigan.




Harold Henderson, "The Kind of Blog Every County Needs," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 30 October 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

So many sources, so little time

I'm going to use this heading to accumulate sources that I run across when I'm supposed to be doing something else -- and because I kept on doing that something else, I can't tell you anything more about the sources than where they exist.

As far as I know, like most sources, they aren't on line. Some are immediately useful; some I have no idea what I would do with them, it's just wonderful that they're out there.

At Western Michigan University's Archives & Regional History Collections: microfilm, "Kalamazoo Airport Register, 1920-1941."

At the La Porte County (Indiana) Historical Museum, in a binder on the library shelves: Fern Eddy Schultz's 1987 map series of changing La Porte County and township boundaries, from the legal descriptions at the time. So far I have not found anything comparable on line (that is, a full series of documented maps showing a particular county's township boundaries and their changes), although this handsome Bay County, Michigan, site comes close.



"Kalamazoo Airport Register, 1920-1941," microfilm, Western Michigan University Archives & Regional History Collections, Kalamazoo.


Fern Eddy Schultz, historical boundary maps of La Porte County, Indiana, townships, 1987 binder; La Porte County Historical Museum, La Porte.


Marvin Kusmierz, "Michigan Map History Relevant to Bay County, Michigan," updated October 2005, Bay-Journal: Portal to the Past and Present of Michigan's Great Lakes Bay Region (http://www.bay-journal.com : accessed 23 April 2012).


Harold Henderson, “So many sources, so little time,” Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 5 May  2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you mention it on line.]

Blogs to watch

For researchers with western Michigan targets, Sonja Hunter is blogging about Kalamazoo-area records and repositories including one of my own faves, the Western Michigan University Archives and Regional History Collections. She's at Bushwhacking Genealogy.

For researchers who know you can't do real genealogy without property records, but are still hesitating to jump into the pool, Donna Moughty's blog, Donna Moughty's Genealogical Resources, has some recent posts to help those getting started. Here's her introductory post on federal-land states, which includes all the states regularly covered in this blog.

Indiana resources in Michigan

(Please forgive the cross-posting.)

If you had a genealogical problem in La Porte County, Indiana, the first place you'd look would be Kalamazoo, Michigan, right? No, but it should be somewhere on your list.

The Western Michigan University Archives & Regional History Collections' on-line catalog reveals two resources for "LaPorte":

* LaPorte County News Collection, 1902-1908, collection no. A1274, three reels of microfilm of the Union Mills La Porte County News from Union Mills. The Indiana State Library's excellent collection holds only one issue of this newspaper.

* Minnesota Historical Society Collection, 1834-1926, no collection number, containing papers of James Mandigo 1834-1891,with a scrapbook that at least mentions his attendance at Indiana Medical College in La Porte.

In this index as in many others, the search term "LaPorte" brings up different results from "La Porte." It's all part of our incompletely digested French heritage.

Methodology Monday with multiple records

Midwestern newspapers in the 1850s were a sorry lot, genealogically speaking: weekly, four pages, half ads (few of which changed from week to week), the other half mostly boilerplate copied from other newspapers or the federal government. Local news was mainly court-required publications of notice of pending cases.

Thus the Niles (Michigan) Enquirer for November and December 1856, which I had occasion to read last week. In its last eight issues of that year, it took note of a grand total of six marriages. One involved a former resident who got married in Tennessee; another involved a couple from Racine, Wisconsin. The other four marriages were local:

16 November, R. J. H. Beall and Eleanor A. Weever (27 November issue, p. 3 col. 2)
23 November, Alfred L. Wood and Rhoda J. Fowler (27 November issue, p. 3 col. 2)
7 December, E. R. Griswold and C. Chapman (18 December issue, p. 3 col. 1)
16 December, Francis J. Hadlock and Mary Snorf (18 December issue, p. 3 col. 1)

Of course, the marriage I was actually looking for wasn't there, even though I had obtained the original record of it from the holdings of the Berrien County Historical Association a while back. How about these folks?

To my amazement, not one of these four marriages is in the BCHA collection, and only one of them (Beall-Weaver) is in the Family History Library's microfilm of the records of the County Clerk. Unless they appear in ministerial or church records, this scrap of ancient newspaper looks to be the only record of these marriages. I never would have found them at all without some sleuthing help from Sharon Carlson, director of the Western Michigan University Archives and Regional History collection in Kalamazoo. She found two years of the Enquirer, unlabeled, at the back of a microfilm there.

Don't imagine, as I did, that those newspaper marriage notes are merely a subset of the official marriage records that might contain an extra tidbit of information. They may just be your last best hope.

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.)