Ten top genealogists in the best venue . . .

DNA, business, branding, writing, working for entertainment and corporate clients, and more: it's not too late to sign up at the early-bird rates for the Association of Professional Genealogists' biggest-ever Professional Management Conference, January 10-11 in downtown Salt Lake City, featuring D. Joshua Taylor, Judy G. Russell, J. Mark Lowe, and a supporting cast of seven (including me)!

APG membership is not required -- but if that is an option on your 2014 menu, this is a good place to meet folks and find out if it's for you. I understand there's a famous library nearby, too, and a famous institute the following week. See you there?


Harold Henderson, "Ten top genealogists in the best venue...," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 2 January 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Getting down to business in Michigan

Jasia, world's liveliest genealogy blogger, laments in a comment yesterday not getting much help finding business records in the Mitten State. I found one place to start on line, but clearly you'd have to go there, and what they have might not necessarily be what you need -- that's the way with archives.

The Archives of Michigan enumerates more than 100 businesses for which they have something in this circular (all these circulars are PDF files).

Of course it won't include her grandfather's baking company unless those records were saved and donated there. Maybe they weren't kept. Or maybe they were donated to another archive, closer to home. Or maybe they're still moldering away in some relative's attic! (I have a research target that was a Michigan business for years, but its archives, to the extent they exist, are across the lake in Wisconsin because the business later moved.)

Looks like you might have better luck if your research target was a Michigan corporation, because they had to file reports to the state starting in 1840. Here's the Archives of Michigan's corporation circular, but it doesn't name them all. Looks like lotsa microfilm, the 1840-1980 index alone runs 25 reels. Obviously it'd be a big help to know when your targets were in business there.

But that's not all. The Archives also has circulars indicating their holdings in shipping and navigation; mining; lumbering, logging, and forestry (including some payrolls); licensed professions (auctioneers and ferry masters go way back); and account books and ledgers (including individuals, churches, societies; some going back to 1813). Yee haw!

Getting down to business

It's pretty much 100% likely that your ancestors worked for someone else, or started a business that employed others. The records generated this way may still exist. But how many people get around to them?

If the idea of "most underrated" made any sense, I'd be tempted to say business records are the most underrated category of records among genealogists. The Newberry Library recently added a research guide, American Business History Research at the Newberry Library, that has helpful resources even for those who can't get to the actual library.

Gems from 1844 and 1860

Illinois Harvest (previously blogged here) has recently digitized two goodies:

First, we have the 1903 "Souvenir [re]Publication" by T.F. Bohan of the General Directory and Business Advertiser of the City of Chicago for the Year 1844, with a Historical Sketch and Statistics extending from 1837 to 1844, by J. W. Norris (Chicago: Ellis & Fergus, 1844).

True to the title, the actual directory of individuals occupies only 45 of the 132 total pages; much of the rest is business cards. Somehow the history is padded out to 16 pages, including this passage from page 6: "What the destiny of Chicago is to be, the future can alone determine. Judging by the past, it seems difficult to assign a limit to its advancement." My step-grandmother's maternal-line ancestors, the then-prominent Lowe family, are well represented.

NOTE: Images of the 45 directory pages only are available at Old Directory Search, which also has Cleveland and Ohio City 1837, and Monroe (Green County), Wisconsin, 1891.

And then there's the 994-page Illinois State Business Directory 1860, compiled by Smith and DuMoulin (Chicago: J. C. W. Bailey & Co., 1860).

I'm not sure their downstate coverage is that great, but if nothing else this cross-section of business life just before the Civil War can add color to just about any Midwestern story. The list of businesses covered is worth the price of admission alone: Artificial Limbs, Mnfrs. of; Axe Helves, Mnfrs. of; Basket Makers; Bathing Saloons; Bell Hangers; Bird Stuffers; Brass Cocks and Gauges; Candle Moulds (Metallic) Mnfrs of; Chandlers; and so many more.