More good news for Ohio genealogy geeks

Chris Staats strikes again! and unearths a promising resource on Ohio legal history, which may be as complicated as its land history. Worldcat will tell you where copies exist, and the Newberry Library's Atlas of Historical County Boundaries will show the size of certain relevant territorial counties' jurisdictions.

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?

Resources for the Olden Times

In the Midwest, "olden times" are before statehood. In the October-December 2008 NGS Magazine, Dian VanSkiver Gagel, immediate past president of the Ohio Genealogical Society, describes colonial and territorial records for the Midwest and elsewhere. (I had never thought about the research implications of the fact that Minnesota was under at least seven different jurisdictions prior to 1857!)

Gagel also mentions what sounds like a useful resource if you're working in this time period: Michal Chiorazzi and Marguerite Most, eds., Prestatehood Legal Materials: A Fifty-State Research Guide, including New York City and the District of Columbia, 2 volumes (New York: The Haworth Information Press, 2005). Worldcat shows it mostly in law-school libraries, although among more accessible Midwestern libraries, it's also available at the Library of Michigan, Allen County Public Library (Fort Wayne), Milwaukee County, and Grand Rapids.

Early Ohio Tax Records redux

If you do lots of work in Ohio before 1820, you may want to take advantage of the reissuing of Esther Weygandt Powell's Early Ohio Tax Records, which offers partial census substitutes for the largely missing 1800 and 1810 enumerations in that state. Seventy-five counties are covered. Details on the new book are at this Terre Haute, Indiana, newspaper site (thanks to Genealogy Miscellanea for the pointer).

If you need to consult this reference only occasionally, be sure to check for it on WorldCat after entering your zip code. It looks to me like it is fairly well distributed (at least around the Midwest) in mid-size libraries as well as the major genealogical ones -- you may live within driving distance of a copy!