Ohio Genealogy News with extended on-line versions!

The excellent genealogy newsmagazine Ohio Genealogy News has made an improvement: in addition to its print publication, it now provides on-line extended versions of two articles in the current issue, one on the Western Reserve and the other on Geauga County.

I know that the Indiana Historical Society's twice-yearly The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections publishes supplemental data on-line, coordinated with articles published in the hard copy.

I wonder why none of the top-line genealogy journals -- all seriously constrained for space by the cost of paper -- have not chosen this route. Is there a downside?

Women's mug books!

The current Illinois State Genealogical Society Quarterly's cover story, "'The Grandmothers' of Aurora" by Michael R. Fichtel, describes an obscure book he found in the Aurora [Kane County] Historical Society: Reminiscences Prepared From Written and Verbal Recitals of the Personal Experience of "The Grandmothers" of Aurora in Early Pioneer Life in Illinois. The book (which does not appear in WorldCat) appears to have been compiled as a fundraiser for a WCTU rally in 1892; it contains 48 biographical sketches of elderly Aurora women, all of which are reprinted in the magazine. (It's a keeper.)

A few months ago, working on behalf of a client, I ran into a similar publication (which does appear in WorldCat), Memorial to the Pioneer Women of the Western Reserve, edited by Mrs. Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham, apparently originally published in bi-monthly installments in the 1890s, under the auspices of the Women's Department of the Cleveland Centennial Commission. The inadequate indexing of the book almost drove me crazy but the content is a welcome (and historically beneficial) change from the overwhelmingly masculine and downright patriarchal viewpoints of the ordinary mug books produced in this period.

Have you seen any books like these in other areas?

All About Cleveland

If you have Western Reserve or Cuyahoga County ancestors and don't know about the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, it's time to get on the bus. It includes biographies, general articles, images (salt mine, anyone?), and a historical timeline (pick a number between 1 and 10 and you will have the total population of the city in 1800). There must be a map of the city's neighborhoods somewhere, but I couldn't find it. Let me know if you do!

Hat tip: Internet Scout Report

Migration routes New England to NE Ohio

Late last year there were several interesting posts at H-Connecticut on overland migration routes through New York state and Pennsylvania to the Western Reserve of Ohio some 200 years ago. Here's a taste, from the post by Alden O'Brien of the DAR Museum:

There were two main routes to Ohio: thru NY State on a variety of new
turnpikes, and thru Pennsylvania on the "Forbes Road". Roots and Routes
lists some published diaries c 1810 detailing travel on the Forbes road.
I hadn't encountered Roots and Routes before. They say they're
"about family history, heritage travel and more.Our idea is to
use the cultural connections, great migrations, settlements and
symbolic landscapes of North America to inform these popular
avocations and make them more meaningful."

Microhistory and genealogy meet on US 20

How, exactly, did people get from Connecticut to Ohio's Western Reserve in 1817? Over at H-Net, Alden O'Brien of the DAR Museum posted on some of his research, conducted "poring over historical maps on one side of my computer screen with Google maps on the other," as well as some other interesting sources. Part of the route is close to present-day US 20, but that's a gross oversimplification.

This post was on H-Connecticut, "a communications center and discussion forum for Connecticut’s history and heritage communities" sponsored by the Office of the State Historian. This is just one of roughly 150 different history discussion networks (email lists) on the overall site, hosted at Michigan State University. There are lists for Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan, as well as the Holy Roman Empire and the culture of industrialization in the South. Check 'em out.