January-March NGS Magazine

This quarter's NGS magazine has quite a bit of Midwestern material.

Ronald Ames Hill writes about some of his adventures in ferreting out old court records for his award-winning Ball family history, in Henry County, Indiana, and Muskegon County, Michigan. In both cases the county clerks falsely claimed that records had been lost to fire. Hill writes, "I make such requests in a very determined manner. I never say I am doing family history. I never ask if they have such and such. I simply say 'I want to see such and such.'"

Michael D. Lacopo of northern Indiana gives an overview of "Beginning Swiss Mennonite Research," including two key denominational archives in North Newton (Harvey County), Kansas, and Goshen (Elkhart County), Indiana.

David McDonald, CG, has an engaging piece on "Going beyond the Usual Records in Wisconsin," including some unusual collections of Wisconsin archives. The jail register for Dane County, for instance, offers not just names, addresses, and physical descriptions, but also "commentary about the conduct and demeanor of thei nmates, along with remarks on the heritage, drinking habits and frequency of custom within the jail system."

Claire Prechtel-Kluskens writes about Extension Service annual reports found in the National Archives at College Park, using Fairfax County, Virginia, and Lake County, Ohio, as examples of the down-home facts that can be gleaned from supposedly remote federal records.

Joseph F. Martin reports on Calumet and Hecla mining records -- "a mother lode of information" from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, in this case Houghton County.

From the far north end of the Midwest

Thanks to Jessica's Genejournal for pointing to an elegant blog orchestrated by Ceil Wendt Jensen, CG, "The Polish Pioneers of Calumet, Michigan." Calumet was a mining town about halfway up the Keeweenaw Peninsula, which sticks out into Lake Superior on the north side of Michigan's Upper Peninsulra. The blog "explores the Polish community of Calumet, Houghton Co., Michigan. They were not the largest ethnic group -- but many Midwestern families trace their ancestry back to a miner in Calumet." I especially like the map showing some of their ancestral villages near Poznan.

No danger of sentimentalizing this place. A recent post transcribes the records for Andrzei Adamski, a "drill boy" born in 1875 and killed 17 Dec 1889 or 1890 by an "explosion of dynamite." The year 1889 appears on the gravestone and mine accident report; it's 1890 in the county death returns. Go figure.