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.]

The Top Five MWM Posts for August 2012

Once again it's time for the monthly popularity contest, listing the most-viewed blog posts made during August. Once again, #1 was far in the lead. I'll report on September in early November when the dust of that month will have settled.

1. Eight Tips for Those Considering Certification (August 15)

2. Is an Obituary an Original Source? Does It Matter? (August 2)

3. Writing: The Ten Suggestions (August 7)

4. Book Review: How History and Genealogy Fit -- or Not (August 24)

5. Why Ambitious Genealogists Need Credentials (August 14)


Least viewed:

Halfway home: map of the 46 Indiana counties with marriages indexed on FamilySearch (August 25)


Harold Henderson, "Top Five MWM Posts for August 2012," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 30 September 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Is an Obituary an Original Source? Does It Matter?

Above is the obituary for my wife's maternal grandfather's second cousin's wife Ina (Smith) Burdick, 1862-1932. Some members of the ProGen Study Group have been debating whether an obituary is an original source. As all genealogists and historians should know but some still don't, sources may be original or derivative; the information they contain may be primary or secondary; and the evidence drawn from that information may be direct or indirect depending on the question we're asking at the moment.

Those of us who have left behind the "rip and run" school of genealogy want to analyze this evidence well, and these terms help us think clearly. But in my opinion the thinking is what matters, not which basket we decide to put it in. "Original" is no kind of baptism that absolves a record from all sin and error!

In Evidence Explained, Elizabeth Shown Mills defines an original source as "material in its first oral or recorded form" (p. 24). By that definition, this newspaper item probably doesn't qualify. Ina's surname has been butchered, one suspects by a sleep-deprived funeral director or journalist taking hasty notes over the telephone. His or her notes in turn were set in type, and somewhere along the way Ina acquired in death a surname she never had in life. Note that the presence of error itself does not make the source derivative -- many original sources contain errors. But this particular error looks like an error in hearing, because even very bad handwriting doesn't make a V look like a B. In all likelihood, there was at least one earlier written form of this information from which the published obituary was set.

But we are most unlikely to be able to find the reporter's notes for an 80-year-old six-line obituary, so what was published may be as close to the original as we can get. (Any surviving records from J. P. Finley & Son's funeral home would be worth seeking out, though.) Another consideration: when we think of derivative sources, we usually think of, say, a published index of obituaries published in the Oregonian in 1932, or perhaps an on-line database created by re-keying the print index. Those derivatives would be at least one or two steps further removed from its first written form, and hence more prone to error. So some sources are more derivative than others. (And, as Tom Jones has been known to explain, a source that is derivative to any degree can be considered a red flag telling us to look for what it's a derivative of.)

So much for theory. What we really want to know is, IS IT TRUE? That question, alas, cannot be answered by staring fixedly at the obituary, nor by analyzing to death its exact degree of derivativeness. It can only be answered by correlating its information with information from other sources. The point of wondering whether it's original or derivative is not to provide a label ("APPROVED" or "TOXIC"). The point is to consider how that record was created and how it stacks up to Elizabeth's ten categories of textual criticism (pp. 32-38), so that we can weigh it properly in the balance along with any other obituaries, Ina's death certificate, Aleen's birth record, family letters, census returns, etc.

In plain language, we need to know where that information has been and what wringers it has gone through. Once we have that understanding, the choice of label becomes academic, because we're ready to weigh this source against the others. (Sound weird to learn the terminology and then rarely use it? Welcome to the spiral staircase of genealogy learning!) Confirmation, or proof, is never done solo, and never just by applying a label. It's always a group affair.


ADDED Saturday afternoon 4 August 2012: For more depth on this whole topic, plunge into Evidence Explained Quick Lesson #10.


"Ina Veurdick," [Burdick], obituary, Morning Oregonian (Portland), Wed. 13 July 1932, p. 7, col. 7.

Elizabeth Shown Mills, Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2007), 24, 32-38.

Harold Henderson, "Is an Obituary an Original Source? Does It Matter?," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 2 August 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Obituary help for southern Indiana's Scott and Clark counties

An online twofer from Jeff Harmon of Franklin:

Obituary and Death Notice Index to The Chronicle, Scott County, Indiana 1880-1978

Index of Obituary and Death Notices in Clark County, Indiana Newspapers 1872 - 1900 (by Diane Henley, in print since 1992)

Hat tip to Cyndi's List What's New.

Got Evangelicals?

Writing in the September 30 issue of Allen County Public Library's email-zine "Genealogy Gems" (issues through 2008 archived here), Dawne Slater-Putt calls attention to the library's complete run of the Evangelical Church's periodical, the Evangelical Messenger, published weekly from 1848 to 1946. The library has two partial indexes of obituaries appearing in EM, one in print by David Koss abstracting obituaries 1848-1866 and named A-Schnerr, the other on line by Anne Dallas Budd, Rita Bone Kopp, and Sally Zody Spreng, covering 1893-1913 and growing. Those of us who visit this great library frequently may lose sight of its growing virtual presence.

Montgomery County Illinois on line in a big way

The Historical Society of Montgomery County's digital archive holds tons of information that would be even better with a bit more context:

* searchable index of 27,044 death certificates 1877-1950, with a link to the form for requesting actual copies from the County Clerk/Recorder.

* searchable index of 6,946 first land purchases, mid-1800s; helpful information on how to read these descriptions is at the Illinois State Archives' web site, from which at least some of the information appears to come.

* vintage photos, biographies, and historical tidbits for 17 towns from Butler to Witt.

* searchable list of 10,214 veterans with DD 214 discharge forms registered with the county clerk/recorder, going back to World War I.

* searchable index of 22,737 obituaries 1980-2008 from two local newspapers, as scrapbooked by society members.

* names and detailed location information for 125 cemeteries.

And that's just on the research tab! If you don't lose track of the time perusing this site, your ancestors sadly must not have passed this way.

Hat tip to Cyndi's List What's New.

You'll wish your ancestor stopped in Shawano County Wisconsin

In case you're wondering, this is the county just WNW of Green Bay, on the way to Wausau. Check out the Shawano County resources, including 80,000+ obituaries, and (one of my personal faves) plat maps from 1898, 1905, and 1911.

Hoosier Heritage: Indiana History and Genealogy Online

Browse the collections at Hoosier Heritage and just look at what's there from various Indiana libraries in the way of online obituary indexes (and there's a lot more than that):

Madison County 1921-1967

Bremen, Marshall County to 1997

Elkhart 1921-1952, 1962-present

Evansville early 1900s-present (the famous Browning Collection)

Michigan City 1887-present (not complete)

Monroe County 1920-present, some 1843-1884

Elwood, Madison County, 1893-present

South Bend, 1913-present

Sullivan County 1870-1905 and 1929-present

Wells County 1866-2000

and several other locales that didn't specify a date range!

Hat tip Library of Congress.

The ultimate online resource for Kalamazoo

There's a good meeting scheduled for Kalamazoo nine days from now, but if you just can't make it, don't despair -- there's an excellent online site for that county, combining indexes and digital images of original records. You're going to wish your ancestors camped there in 1830 and never left.

Let me count the goodies at the bare-bones site kalamazoogenealogy.org:

vital records indexes and images (page by page in the original books), with a link to local library information;

cemetery transcriptions and (some) images;

"family trees";

directories (for the city, nine between 1860 and 1915), transcriptions and images;

school yearbooks 1859-1976, transcriptions and images;

WWI veterans;

Schoolcraft Express obituaries 1917-1972 with a link to the Kalamazoo Library database; and

probate 1831-1857.

I found useful information about my only relative in the county, a peripatetic stonecutter, and his wife and children. Those of you with more relations here will have a blast.

Portage County Wisconsin obituaries and so much more

For many archival purposes, the Wisconsin Historical Society has divided the state into 14 Area Research Centers (ARCs), where a surprising variety of records that you might only otherwise find in courthouses reside, including vital, tax, school, property, probate, cemetery, business, and other record types. Check out this overall map and pick your spot -- every center operates a little differently. If your main interest is pre-1907 vital records, there's a statewide index here.

The university library at Stevens Point appears to be especially active genealogically speaking. Among other things they maintain the Stevens Point Area Obituary Index, a collaboration between the university archives, the Portage County Public Library, and the Stevens Point Area Genealogical Society. If you find a research target therein you can request a copy ($10 for up to 5 requests, but be sure to read their terms of service carefully -- clearly they have to deal with a lot of clueless people and you don't want to be one of them). The index is said to cover the following newspapers and date ranges: Stevens Point Weekly Journal 1872-1920, Stevens Point Daily Journal 1895-1980, Stevens Point Journal 1981-, Gazette 1878-1923, Portage County Gazette 1999-, and Wisconsin Pinery 1864-1890.

BTW, after I wrote this post I received the new issue of the always excellent NGS Magazine, which contains a meaty, detailed account of Wisconsin's ARCs by native son and veteran researcher David McDonald, CG. Check it out!

Blogs, Maps, and Forgotten Bookmarks in South Bend

FYI, the St. Joseph County Public Library's Family and Local History Section has had its own newsletter (PDF) for the last few months. In addition to their catalog, they have on line listings of genealogically useful holdings, including their maps (anyone for an 1838 street map of South Bend?) and research guides for those seeing Eastern European or Irish homelands.

The library also has an online database of locally published obituaries from 1913 to the present of people with ties to St. Joseph County, Indiana. (Print indexes of earlier obituaries are available.)

And that's not all, folks! One of the spookiest blog posts I've seen in a while was on the library's main SJCPL blog last month, featuring a bookmark from 1960 that turned up in a library book. Of course it's been entered as well on the web site (you knew there was one) called Forgotten Bookmarks. Yes, history can jump out and bite you!

Online resources at both ends of Indiana

In northern Indiana:

In Elkhart County, the Wakarusa Public Library Historical Room has a few photographs, maps, books, and articles on line, plus a goodly number of obituaries including full transcribed text from local newspapers. (I can't tell how many are indexed, but just two of them have birthdates before 1800.) The other items are browseable as well as searchable, the obituaries are only searchable. We all buzz right over to the obituaries, but if you have research targets there don't forget to check out the three plat maps of land ownership in Olive Township (the east half of congressional township 36 North range 4 East of the 2nd principal meridian) for 1874, 1892, and 1915.

Just a few miles south of Wakarusa near the Kosciusko county line, the Nappanee Public Library’s Evelyn Lehman Culp Heritage Center Collection has a similarly searchable set of obituaries.

In southern Indiana:

In Washington County (northwest of Louisville KY), Salem's Crown Hill Cemetery was founded in 1824. The city of Salem has its history and records on line, complete with a location map within the cemetery. (Two burials from 1824 are recorded.) This is the way on line cemeteries should be. The history refers to a cholera epidemic in 1833, and you can confirm that by searching for burials by date: six in 1832, 47 in 1833, eight in 1834. The site also links to the Washington County Historical Society's John Hay Center, with a genealogical library. (Hay was born here and is best known for being Abraham Lincoln's personal secretary.)

(Another hat tip to Valerie Beaudrault of the New England Historic Genealogical Society's eNews for spotting the above resources.)

Also in virtual southern Indiana, right on the Ohio River, the Vanderburgh County genweb site has a new look and includes links to the Willard Library in Evansville and to the famous Browning obituary collection.

Porter County, Indiana Genweb's new look

In northwest Indiana, Porter County GenWeb has a new address and searchable obituary transcriptions (with full citations available), biography transcriptions (so far from the 1882 and 1894 mug books mostly), and Pearl Stoner Johnston's abstracts of wills and probates 1839-1880. Steve Shook is the coordinator. More is promised, including plat maps.

Current Obituaries by State

The ever-vigilant Jasia at Creative Gene alerts us to Michigan Daily Obituaries, which turns out to be just one member of a family of blogs that reprint a given day's obituaries from entire states at a time! For our immediate area of interest, there are:

Michigan Daily Obituaries, beginning 7 August 2008.

Indiana Daily Obituaries, beginning 11 August 2008.

Ohio Daily Obituaries, beginning 25 June 2008 but apparently not updated since 24 September.

Illinois Obituaries, beginning 24 September 2008.

I see also sites for New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and all the states northeast of them except Maine, plus Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, Georgia, and Tennessee. Not all are present: when I visited, Tennessee had no posts.

These sites are not particularly transparent; the only clue to the blogger's identity is "gh" at an incomplete profile listing only some of the sites. Nor is it clear how extensive the coverage is in a given state: a quick check of the first few 27 September entries for Illinois found reasonable distribution: Chicago, suburban, Rock Island, and Peoria. This is surely an automated system that "harvests" links to obituaries from newspaper web sites.

One noteworthy quirk: each day's entries are alphabetical by whatever part of the deceased's name came first. Researchers trying to keep up with particular surnames in particular known states should nevertheless find this a time-saving resource.

Ohio Genealogy News, Summer

If you're not a member of the largest state genealogy organization in the US, here's what you're missing in their magazine:

"Mahoning County Historical Society Archival Library," by Pamela L. Speis, which actually focuses on Trumbull and Columbiana counties as well. As always, a visit will be rewarded by finding unique local records -- for instance, the James Mackey collection. He was a surveyor in the Youngstown area 1849-1901.

"Synopsis of the Year 2007," by OGS Library Director Thomas Stephen Neel

"A Case of Mistaken Identity," by Martha Hamilton, one of the first-place winners in OGS's writing contest, who distinguishes two John Hamiltons in Gallia County.

"2008 OGS Conference a Success," by Kenny Burck, looking back on the April event in Cincinnati

Among the shorter notes, be advised that the Akron-Summit Public Library has made its 1940-2007 Akron Beacon-Journal obituary index available on line. Of course, if you actually go there you can view an obituary index going back another 99 years!

A bow toward Canton, Ohio

Bloggers are supposed to be up-to-the-minute types; if we're late mentioning something we either hide it or are embarrassed. This time I'm late to the party and I don't care, because I'm so impressed with the Stark County (Ohio) District Library's index to death and obituary items in the Canton Repository, covering the years (deep breath here) 1815-1889, 1900-1955, 1957, 1961, 1963, 1966, 1978, 1979, and 2000-2004 -- so impressed that I don't mind that Karen at Ohio Genealogy told about them last September. Thanks, Karen.

Thank heavens my wife has one known relative with the good sense to die there.

Another place you wish your ancestors had died...

...is Evansville, Vanderburgh County, Indiana, home of the Browning Genealogy Database of more than half a million obituary records compiled by the late Charles Browning. (Could you ask for better evidence that all genealogy is local?)

I happened onto this resource years ago because a prolific branch of Morgan cousins of mine moved from SE Illinois to SW Indiana about 1920. Thanks to Mr. Browning's lifelong labors, I know a lot more about them than I ever expected to. And thanks to Arlene Eakle and Nashville librarian Taneya, whose posts reminded me.