Good news for researchers whose ancestors ever got sick or died of anything

The indispensable newsletter ResearchBuzz alerts us to the existence of the Medical Heritage Library, a free searchable archive of more than 1.7 million pages in more than 3,000 volumes of 336 old public-domain medical journals and reference materials. While researching what it might have meant to die of appendicitis in 1897 -- or what medical people were writing and publishing in 1850 -- don't forget to check their long list of related resources. And don't forget this is history, including many learned articles on long-refuted (if not actually murderous) medical claims and schools of thought.

New on-line resources

On the Porter County, Indiana, Genweb:

917 records from the Indiana Adjutant General's List of Porter County Civil War Soldiers

11,364 individuals residing in Lake Porter counties in 1916, with their addresses and credit ratings

From the St. Clair County, Illinois, mailing list:

Diane Walsh calls attention to the free online 1926 volumes by Isaac D. Rawlings in the Internet Archive, The Rise and Fall of Disease in Illinois, volume 1 and volume 2. Much of the book culls old medical journals for reports of diseases in specific places and times. With some effort it may be possible to retrieve copies of the original articles themselves for an unusual close-up on your location of interest. He covers the whole state and some adjacent counties as well if they happened to be written up by an Illinois physician.

Michigan Genealogist, 4th issue of 2008

From the Michigan Department of History, Arts, and Libraries comes the state's closest thing to a statewide genealogy publication, Michigan Genealogist #4 (PDF) for 2008:

There's advance notice of six Saturday-afternoon sessions 4 April 2009 called "Learning More at the Library of Michigan," specific topics to be announced in February. Free but registration required due to limited seating. ... Be aware that many residents of northern Indiana and northwest Ohio may be closer to Lansing than to their own state capitals! Based on a flying visit last month, the Library of Michigan is the easiest state library to reach by car that I've ever seen (getting out of town is a little trickier) and it looks like a wonderful place to work.

The library is getting microfilm sets of city directories 1936-1960, which is big news if you're a devotee or someone who's pining away waiting for the 1940 census to be made public in 2012. LOM now has these for Toledo, Columbus, Indianapolis, and eight smaller Indiana cities.

And a Christmas Eve present for those with Michigan medical ancestors: special collections librarian Gloriane Peck lists a number of biographical books on hand that cover public health nurses, Jewish physicians, black medical graduates of the U of M, and women physicians, plus two directories from 1885 and 1893. Check out this useful set of descriptions, even if you have to search for them closer to hand.

More Ohio Records and Pioneer Families

Ohio Records & Pioneer Families -- "locating and telling the stories of the men and women who were the first settlers of the state of Ohio" -- is supposed to be about pre-1860 Ohioans, but the second issue of 2008 offers some latitude. If you've been holding back on writing up your well-documented antebellum Ohioans, this would be a good time to get 'em done and send 'em off. I'm very fond of the auxiliary table of contents in the form of a county map of the state with counties shaded according to how much material they have in the given issue. Here's the gist:

"Betty's Diary: The Journal of Elizabeth Jennings Nixon 1853-1867," contributed by Brent Morgan -- she was from Marietta

"A Short Biography of Robert Atkin," by Garland Hurst Pilliar -- Ashtabula County farmer

"Barton Sweet, Ohio Pioneer and Country Doctor," by Deobrah Gilbert & Mary Kay Townsend -- of Richland County, with children moving on to Michigan and Bureau County, Illinois. "No information on his parentage could be confirmed. Instead, the names of several inter-related families have been provided in hopes that these may offer clues..."

"Description of the Black Swamp," by B. R. Minton (1843), contributed by Terri Gorney -- there's a nice map, but basically think of a two-county-wide path from Toledo to Fort Wayne, Indiana.

"Columbiana County, Ohio, 1858 Deaths," contributed by Sunda Anderson Peters

"Columbiana County Taxes to Be Collected, 1806," contributed by Sunda Anderson Peters -- from copies of Mss. 1134 Columbiana County Records 1803-1854 abstracted by Carol Bell and held at the Western Reserve Historical Society

"First Families of Ohio: The Early Years" (cont.), abstracted by Kay Ballantyne Hudson

"Revolutionary War Pension Application Abstracts" (cont.), abstracted by Lois Wheeler

"Official Register of Physicians by County, 1896, Wayne County"

"Merchants, Manufacturers & Traders of Ohio, 1885" (cont.)

"Record of the Douglass and Miller Families: Early Landowners in the Firelands," by Thomas Stephen Neel -- Huron and Erie counties

"Oh, the Stories Pictures Do Tell, submitted by Linda J. Hasting, on identifying some Greene County pictures of Wilberforce University students in the 1920s

"Dutch Families in Southwestern Ohio," by Harriet Foley -- including Conover, Barkalow, Lefferson, Monfort, Schenck, Stoutenborough, Vanderveer, Vandervort, Van Doren/Doorn, Van Dyke, Van Harlingen, and Van Horne