Nine indexes and finding aids on the web site

Continuing our holiday observance of free, here are five indexes and four finding aids available in full for your consultation at Midwestroots.net:

INDIANA

1857 Porter County, Indiana, Assessor's Book (all townships)

1902-1933 Indiana small city directories on microfilm; where to find specific cities and years on 5 otherwise unlabeled films, Adams County to Winchester.

List of Indiana newspapers available at the Mishawaka Heritage Center.

Finding Ancestors in Fort Wayne: The Genealogist's Unofficial One-Stop Guide to the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center

ILLINOIS

1902-1933 Illinois small city directories on microfilm: where to find specific cities and years on 12 otherwise unlabeled films, Addison to Winfield.

MICHIGAN

1902-1935 Michigan small city directories on microfilm: where to find specific cities and years  on 7 otherwise unlabeled films, Allegan to Sturgis. 

MIDWEST
List of Midwestern city directories available on microfilm at the Valparaiso Public Library.

NEW YORK

Estate Papers 1807-1930, Box 2, Allegany County, New York, indexed by name and initial image number as found in the FamilySearch collection, “New York, Probate Records, 1629-1972.” These would be deaths in the 1830s and 1840s.

FHL MICROFILM

FHL microfilms already in the Midwest, including a listing by number of those held at the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.



Harold Henderson, "Nine indexes and finding aids on the web site," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 5 July 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]  

Illinois Newspaper Indexes at ALPL

One benefit of showing up at a conference is learning about resources that are new to me. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum in downtown Springfield has a printed list of newspaper indexes that it has in its collection. They are not complete for the referenced localities, and not on line as far as I know. Until the day that all newspapers have been well digitized these resources remain precious. (Heck, just knowing that they exist helps!) They include some newspapers in the following counties:

Bond (Greenville)
Bureau (Buda, La Moille)
Cook (Chicago, Franklin Park; also Defender, Denni Hlaslatel, Dziennik Chicagoski)
Dekalb (Shabbona)
Dewitt (Farmer City)
Franklin (Benton)
Gallatin
Grundy
Hardin
Jackson (Carbondale)
Jo Daviess (Galena)
Kendall
Knox (Galesburg)
La Salle
Macon (Decatur)
Macoupin (Bunker Hill, Carlinville, Staunton, Virden)
Madison (Alton)
Massac (Metropolis)
Peoria
Rock Island (Moline)
St. Clair (Millstadt)
Saline
Sangamon (Springfield)
Stark (Toulon)
Tazewell (Tremont)
Union (Jonesboro)
Washington (Nashville)
Will (Lockport, etc.)

Another kind of finding aid is on their website, an "obituary finder" of citations to obituaries found by researchers at the library, organized by surname. You can browse as well by searching a blank entry.



Harold Henderson, "Illinois Newspaper Indexes at ALPL," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 21 October 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Michigan and Ohio Newspapers

GenealogyBank has just posted significant additional runs of four Midwestern newspapers:

MICHIGAN

Kalamazoo Gazette 1870-1904  (total reported: 1837-1922)

Grand Rapids Press 1901-1922 (total reported: 1893-1922)

Jackson Citizen-Patriot 1866-1922 (total reported: 1859-1922)

OHIO

Columbus Ohio Monitor 1820-1835


Since this blog does not systematically report all such accessions at all the possible sites, consider this as a generic warning that there is more material on line than you thought!



Harold Henderson, "Michigan and Ohio Newspapers," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 15 October 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.

ProQuest Historical Newspapers(TM) in Academic Libraries

Genealogy is local, but we're not. Often we need access to newspapers in distant places. Some digitized titles are available by subscription. Some subscriptions are not available or affordable to individuals. ProQuest is one such, and in my experience libraries tend to subscribe to it just for their own localities if at all.

Here's where academic libraries can help the determined researcher, even if he or she is not formally affiliated there. Those libraries that allow the public (most, in my experience) have not only scholarly article databases like JStor, they may also subscribe to an interesting variety of ProQuest Historical Newspapers (TM), which has impressive runs of 38 titles. Those of particular Midwestern import in the ProQuest fold are the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Defender, Cleveland Call and Post, Detroit Free Press, Indianapolis Star, Louisville Courier Journal, and St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Public computers at one Midwestern university library recently had about half of the 38 titles listed at the above link. These were not for printing out or emailing, however, so be prepared to take notes the old-fashioned way. In actual use the titles are not consistent, so a continuous run of an Atlanta paper, for instance, actually involves several titles, not all of them alphabetized under "A."


UPDATE POSTED MONDAY MORNING: Over on the Transitional Genealogists Forum, Michele Lewis just posted word of a useful low-budget resource for those seeking on-line newspapers, on Wikipedia. And of course, being Wikipedia, it's a resource we can all contribute to.

Harold Henderson, "ProQuest Historical Newspapers(TM) in Academic Libraries," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 6 August 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

To finish the job, go off-line

Experienced genealogists frequently admonish novices, "Not everything is on line." We're usually thinking of manuscripts, or the wall-high shelves of books in county offices, many not even microfilmed yet. But we can't even complete as simple a task as locating old newspapers entirely on line.

Recently I needed to locate newspapers published in November 1915 in three adjacent Indiana counties: Blackford, Delaware, and Jay. None of these are on line anywhere that I have looked.

Always my first place to check is the Indiana State Library's "Indiana Newspapers Holdings Guide," and I found a total of FOUR titles, just waiting for me the next time I get to visit the biggest collection of Indiana newspapers on earth.

Piece of cake, right? Not if I had stopped there.

Next I went "across the street" (as if I were in Indy!) and found a FIFTH title at the Indiana Historical Society.

Then I went to my own listing of newspaper microfilms held at the Mishawaka Penn Harris Public Library Heritage Center and found a SIXTH (significantly closer to home than Indianapolis for me).

Nothing more at the Library of Congress.

Done yet? Not so much. Then I went off-line.

I remembered that in her new book on Indiana research (part of the NGS series on Genealogy in the States) Dawne Slater-Putt mentioned a book, Indiana Newspaper Bibliography. This book is not on line; I had to check it out of my local public library. Sure enough, the compilers had located a SEVENTH title, held only at the Blackford County Historical Society (whose web site is not specific about what dates they hold) -- and an EIGHTH, held only at the Jay County Recorder's office.

Of course, Indiana Newspaper Bibliography was published in 1982, and the papers may have migrated since. But as far as I know, no on-line resource for Indiana newspapers matches this 30-year-old book.

Genealogy doesn't get a lot simpler than looking up where old newspapers are. But in order to do the job right -- in order to find 100% of what I was looking for instead of just 75% -- I couldn't rest content with the information available on line.



John W. Miller, Indiana Newspaper Bibliography (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1982).


Harold Henderson, "To finish the job, go off-line," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 24 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Ramping up the web site

This past week I've added a couple of features to my Midwest Roots web site -- sixteen available presentations (formerly known as lectures), and seven books in which I will do free lookups within reason. In the right-hand column of any page, you'll see the picture of the sandhill cranes at Jasper-Pulaski, and below that a list of categories. Click on whichever one suits your fancy, but "presentations" or "free lookups" will show what's available -- everything from old court records and place names to a talk on the ten (genealogical) commandments.

I hope to add soon some lookups in unpublished materials I've indexed. In all cases, as usual around here, the content is mostly but not exclusively Midwestern.

Other somewhat recent additions are four "unfindables," my indexes of library resources not easy to locate either on line or in person: in Fort Wayne, microfilmed small-city directories in Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan from the early 20th century; and in Mishawaka, a sizeable collection of out-of-county microfilmed Indiana newspapers.








Harold Henderson, "Ramping up the web site" Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 19 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Watchdog Wednesday: GenealogyBank Advertises 35 years of Coverage, Provides 9 -- NOTE CHANGES BELOW

[CORRECTION TO HEADLINE: it wasn't an advertisement, it was a blog post. Precision in all things!]

[NEWS FLASH: The original post has now been changed with excellent added information.]

I love what GenealogyBank does in digitizing old newspapers from all over. I am a subscriber and will continue to be.

I don't love the way they promote it. Yesterday a post on the GenealogyBank blog proclaimed "Chicago Times (Chicago, Illinois) Newspaper Archives (1854-1888)." (BTW, the Chicago Times is a very interesting newspaper historically in addition to its genealogical value as a pre-Fire information source. During the Civil War, it was in many ways a Copperhead paper in Union territory, and was briefly suppressed by an overanxious military officer. Preserving it digitally is especially important because few people today know of it.)

I clicked on the GenealogyBank link to the newspaper and started searching. Many searches came up empty. Then I started conducting searches without specifying any search term except a range of years. With a little clicking I found out that instead of preserving thirty-five years of the Chicago Times, GenealogyBank is (as of the evening of 10 August 2010) in fact preserving, at most, nine.

An honest blog post from GenealogyBank would have announced that they have digitized at least some issues of the Chicago Times for the years 1854, 1855, 1856, 1859, 1864, 1879, 1884, 1885, and 1888. Not "1854-1888." . . . I hope they will soon have many more years posted.

Ohio online!

The winter issue of Ohio Genealogy News contains good news for researchers (as well as a full program for the 22-24 April OGS conference in Toledo and glimpses of the Big Three Repositories in that northwesern quadrant of the state):

(1) Via the University of Cincinnati Libraries, the city's birth records (1874-1908) and death records (1865-1908) will be digitized and available on the web beginning in August 2010.

(2) The Archives and Rare Books Library at the U of C has posted indexes to information from two compilations by Lois Hughes: Wills Filed in Probate Court, Hamilton County, Ohio, 1791-1901, and Hamilton County, Ohio Citizenship Records, 1837-1916. Original copies can then be ordered.

(3) Via the Ohio Historical Society, issues of thirteen selected Ohio newspapers published between 1880 and 1920 are being digitized and uploaded to the Library of Congress Chronicling America web site. Check the site as they become available. Locations to be included are Canfield, Perrysburg, Marion, Akron, Canton, Mount Vernon, Springfield, Hillsboro, Logan, and Marietta.

On down the trail

Did your research targets move right on to Missouri? Or Alaska? (Hey, they're both west of here!)
Or did they stay put northwest of Chicago, say, in Mt. Prospect? Then check out the linked resources, all courtesy of the ever-vigilant New England Historic & Genealogical Society's eNews (click on a particular issue in the up-to-date archive for a signup link). The Missouri papers, part of an impressive online state presence, are fairly scattered; the Alaska index is mostly to headlines. Enjoy!

Index to Indexes of Michigan Newspapers!

The Library of Michigan soldiers valiantly on despite the stress being laid on it by state government cutbacks. The new issue of the sadly truncated Michigan Genealogist brings welcome good news from research LeRoy Bennett who has completed an 8-page PDF listing, "Indexes to Michigan Newspapers," covering more than 200 newspaper indexes whether on-line, in-library, or completely off-line. Adrian, Michigan, has an online index of death and marriage records in Lenawee County newspapers, 1850s-1870s, on GenWeb. At the far end of the alphabet, vital records from the Ypsilanti Commercial have been indexed from 1876 to 1883, and the index is in the Burton Collections of the Detroit Public Library (fee for entry).

Note that the indexes are listed alphabetically by city AND BY COUNTY, so if you don't find your town of choice you may possibly find tidbits from it indexed under the county name. My ownrecent research targets of Cheboygan and Montcalm counties didn't show, but maybe next time. I just love finding aids to finding aids.

Methodology Monday with Cynthia at ChicagoGenealogy

The indispensable Cynthia of the Chicagogenealogy.com lookup site is also the blogger at ChicagoGenealogy. She doesn't post real often, but it's worth the wait.

9 June: how to find a Cook County marriage license with only a newspaper listing and not a number.

4 July: a post for anyone interested in unrecorded Cook County births, passport applications, or The Devil in the White City.

Can you get by with the library version...

...of Genealogy Bank? On the official blog, Tom Kemp advises a questioner that the individual subscription version ("Genealogy Bank") has more than 3800 newspaper titles [most, of course, are not full runs], whereas the library version ("America's Genealogy Bank") has about 2200 titles in its "Historical Newspapers" section.

I compared the Genealogy Bank newspaper source list as of 2 May with my local library's newspaper source list from America's Genealogy Bank, for Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Overall GB has 35 titles in those five states, AGB 79. Both have weaker coverage of Michigan than the other states.

Let's make that specific. If you're like me and try to cheap out by using the library version, as of 2 May you would miss the following titles (date ranges vary and are at the site linked above) --

in Illinois, Centralia Sentinel, Chicago Herald, Chicago Times, Daily Inter Ocean, Illinois Advocate, Illinois Emigrant, Latin Times, Nauvoo Expositor (one issue only), Noticia Mundial, Quincy Whig, Sol de Chicago (one issue only), Sunday Times, Vida Latina, and Vorbote.

in Indiana, Amigo del Hogar, Indiana Centinel, Indiana Democrat, Indianapolis Sentinel, New Albany Daily Ledger, Terre Haute Express, and Wabash Courier.

in Michigan, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, and Kalamazoo Gazette, and Weekly Detroit Free Press and supp...The Household.

in Ohio, Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, Cincinnati Daily Gazette, Democratic Herald, Elyria Republican, Greene County Torch-Light, Ohio Republican, Painesville Telegraph, Plain-Dealer, Spirit of the West, Supporter, Western Herald, Wooster Republican.

in Wisconsin, Guardia, Jeffersonian Democrat, Milwaukee Journal of Commerce, Milwaukee Sentinel, Wisconsin Chief, Wisconsin Free Democrat.

Obviously this list will change, and obviously not all titles are of equal interest or cover comparable date ranges. Where the two services overlap I didn't see any differences in the date ranges covered. I don't own stock in this company, I don't work for them, and at present I'm not even a subscriber. But if you're watching the pennies now you can better judge what the effect may be on your research, and of course you can compare the two sites for your areas of interest.

Chicago newspapers history and whereabouts: 4 online sources

The most authoritative source for Chicago newspapers has to be the Illinois Newspaper Project, which lists 1394 titles, and enumerates, for each, which libraries are known to have them.

INP doesn't give a family tree of newspapers or a good sense of which ones existed when. The Encyclopedia of Chicago has three nice timelines of selected Chicago dailies, selected Chicago foreign-language dailies, and selected suburban papers, including mergers and disappearances.

Wikipedia also offers a list.

Most readable but least satisfactory is Chicagology's "family tree" of papers, which names only 39.

None of these sources is without errors of omission or commission, but Chicagology's linked account of the Chicago Times (written many decades ago but unattributed) is terribly incomplete.

Catching up with the Newberry

If you're just in from Mars and haven't yet started following the intermittent "Genealogy News" blog of Chicago's Newberry Library, here's what you missed in the last month:

FamilySearch Labs is putting up Cook County birth certificates.

The Hyde Park Herald newspaper is digitizing its archives, including 1950s, 1960s, and 1990s so far.

Selected items from the Newberry's own collections are up on Internet Archive, including primarily church histories and a number of specialized directories it would be easy to miss: Board of Trade, "Jewish Community Blue book," law and medical directories, "Colored people's blue-book," real-estate dealers, and a Bohemian directory and almanac.

Chronicling America in Newspapers

I don't need to be convinced of the genealogical value of newspapers -- I once found an entire branch of my great-great grandfather's sister's family from a two-line social note in a rural Illinois paper, just because it gave a woman's married name when she came to visit.

So, a belated hat tip to Christy Fillerup and Daniela Moneta on the transitional genealogists' listserv, for pointing us to the Library of Congress's search site for locating where newspapers have been published in the US, and where surviving copies can be found now. Another site from the National Endowment for the Humanities US Newspaper Program offers access to state-level data that may be more precise, especially in those states with newspaper projects of their own.

(I cannot forebear to mention that three of NEH's eight national-level repositories are in the Midwest: the Wisconsin State Historical Society in Madison, the Center for Research Libraries in Chicago, and the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland. Kansas State Historical Society is a fourth, and the rest are, um, out east somewhere.)

A chronic issue with catalog listings of old newspapers is imprecision about which dates are actually available. If the record says "1875-1877" check if there's fine print that says the issue you really really need is "wanting," i.e., not there. Or call ahead if it's a critical matter and a long trip. I also observe that some of the holdings listings appear to be 20 or more years old.

The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections Fall/Winter 2008

If you can't find some new inspiration and new records to investigate from reading the fall/winter 2008 issue of The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections, the semiannual from the Indiana Historical Society, you probably aren't paying attention. The well-written and well-edited articles include:

"After the War: Billy Yank Comes Home to Small-Town America," by Mary Blair Immel, focusing on Civil War veterans in and around Covington, including the unpleasant parts.

"Census Records: Federal Non-Population Schedules," by Curt B. Witcher of the Allen County Public Library. These lesser-known and lesser-used schedules include agricultural, manufactures, social statistics, and mortality. They're all worthy of genealogical attention -- sometimes for basic genealogical information, sometimes to point the way to additional genealogical sources, and sometimes to enlarge our understanding of how our ancestors lived in their place and time.

"'C'est La Guerre': The World War I Correspondence of Kenton Craig Emerson, Steuben County, 1917-1919," by Geneil Breeze

"History in Church Minutes: The Rise and Fall of the Lick Creek Baptist Church, Henry County, 1835-1848," by James B. Cash

"Bank Crash: Legal Papers Gathered in Wake of Bank Failure Tell Stories of Elisha and Martha Hyatt Family and Neighbors in Daviess County, 1885-1896," by Rachel M. Popma

"Servant Cries Foul: Open Letter from Runaway in Indiana Sentinel September 1819, Offers Flavor of Frontier Life," by M. Teresa Baer

"The 'Raintree County' Project: Annotated Transcriptions, Biographical Database and History Compiled through Research of Letters in Grandparents' Attic," by James B. Cash

"The 'Jefferson Chronicles': Statewide Articles from a Nineteenth-Century Indiana Newspaper Correspondent," by George C. Hibben. Rev. William W. Hibben's work as a special correspondent of the Indianapolis Sentinel.

"Civil War Pension File: Some Genealogical Data and Other Gleanings Found in My Great-Great Grandfather's Pension File," by Robert D. Hennon

"Citizens' Petitions: Official Requests to the Governor of Indiana in the Indiana State Archives," by Kurt Jung

"Spanish-American War: United Spanish War Veterans Collection at the Indiana State Archives," by Ron Darrah. A few months of war, a century of records.

Relevant additional material will be posted at Online Connections later this month.

Where Your Ancestors Came From -- New York Newspapers

Not all Midwesterners were born here! Distant cousin Skip Higgins reminded me to visit the unusually named Old Fulton NY Post Cards, a quirky website much expanded since my last visit. For our purposes its most interesting feature its enormous collection of every-word-searchable images of old New York state newspapers. It's free, and I know from my own research that it gets results not found on Genealogy Bank, NewspaperArchive, 19th Century US Newspapers, or America's Historic Newspapers.

It's not always easy to get the information needed to properly cite the search results you find but it is possible. The trick is to use the FAQ-HELP-INDEX button in the far upper right of the home screen, click on the list of newspaper titles, find the title you want in the three-page non-alphabetical list, and look through the individual page PDFs. This same button will lead you to an address for sending donations.

It appears to me that some papers have the sides or bottoms of the pages cut off in scanning. But for quick access to more than 200 upstate New York newspaper titles, I'll take it.

More places your Midwestern ancestors went

Keep an eye on Jerry Reed's Free Genealogy blog. Last week he posted about a free online site, the Florida Digital Newspaper Library, housed at the University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries, with 384 titles from portions of three centuries. These are actual full-page and fully searchable images. My only complaint is that the search function only takes you to the individual page and doesn't highlight the phrase sought. Those 19th-century papers packed a lot of print onto one page!

Fall Genealogy News from Ohio

In a timely manner, the fall issue of Ohio Genealogy News features Ohio's unxpected riches in voting records.

"Ohio Voter Records," by Deb Cyprych, gives an overview of legal milestones, followed up with specific resource lists:
"Poll Books in Ohio Genealogy" in five different repositories.
"Quadrennial Enumerations of Eligible Vioters, 1800-1907"
"1907 Cleveland Voter Registration Index" on line at the Western Reserve Historical Society.

"NewspaperArchive.com: Free Access for OGS Members," by Mark E. Schmidt

"Newspaper Collections at the Ohio Historical Society," by Elizabeth L. Plummer

"Cemetery Chronicles," by Lolita (Thayer) Guthrie

"Using Footnote -- A Powerful Internet Research Tool," by Brent Morgan

"Check the Original!" by Harold Henderson (yes, it's me), an example of the surprises that await when you go behind the transcribed 1880 census and look at the original record, along with a smidgen of Scofield genealogy.

St. Clair County, Illinois -- where you hope your ancestors lived

One of the most active local societies in Illinois, with a sizeable web presence, is in the southwest, right across the river from St. Louis: St. Clair County. I'm a member, so don't take my word for it -- check out their stuff.

They've just announced a new free newspaper database: "Vital Statistics Extracted from the Belleville (Ill.) Daily Advocate, 1927-1954," the gift of Nancy Giles. For those of us who have ancestors after the 1930 census (!) and who are twentieth-century impaired, this is a wonderful thing. My own Flint and Thrall lines converged in St. Clair, so it's already done my database some good and I look forward to zeroing in on the original articles the next time I'm over that way.