Words from IGS Conference Day

Several admonitions are echoing in my mind from the Indiana Genealogical Society's day-long conference in Fort Wayne; other attendees' mileage may vary.

More than half of the 111 attendees also attended the business meeting, where we heard that our 76 volunteers had helped index 100% of Indiana's portion of the 1940 census in less than a month, far ahead of all neighboring states.

* Speaker Michael Hall, deputy chief genealogical officer of FamilySearch: “Every one of you should be writing in the FamilySearch Wiki [page about your county] about your libraries and resources,” thus helping draw genealogical tourism.

* Speaker Debra Mieszala, who works in the genealogical part of the process of identifying and returning remains of US soldiers long lost in action: The military now uses all three kinds of DNA -- Y-DNA, mitochondrial DNA, and autosomal DNA, so relatives of missing soldiers may have new opportunities to provide reference samples. Of the 88,000 missing, 78,000 are from WWII.

* IGS president Michael Maben, who asked for volunteers for an advocacy committee and identified the State Archives (long relegated to an outdated warehouse) as a problem to be addressed: “We need to press our legislature to replace that facility."

* Mieszala again (part of an informative talk on finding the patent filings of inventive ancestors): The Great Lakes Regional Branch of NARA has a Facebook page, and we should "friend" it. Among the many great examples they post from their holdings, one is a patent infringement case.

Lots of good people and good laughs, all in a day's genealogy work . . . the April 2013 conference in Bloomington will feature Josh Taylor.


Harold Henderson, “Words from IGS Conference Day,” Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 29 April 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.] 

Illinois Spring 2009 Quarterly

Illinois State Genealogical Society Quarterly 41(1), Spring 2009

Margaret J. Collins and Daniel W. Dixon, "The Inventive McWorters of New Philadelphia, Illinois: Patents as a Genealogical Resource" -- some amazing drawings from Pike County African-American inventors of a century ago, plus a wakeup call about the existence of the Illinois State Library's Patent and Trademark Depository Library.

Mary Manning, "The Robert R. McCormick Research Center: Military Records and More," located at Cantigny Park in Wheaton, DuPage County.

Ann Wells, "Military Monument in Union Cemetery," Crystal Lake, Lake County.

Jeanne Larzalere Bloom, "Military Separation Papers as Record Source" -- although no longer a public record.

"Faces from the Past -- Identifying Photos with Marge Rice." A gallery of identified but as yet unclaimed images, 1895-1910.

Oriene Morrow Springstroh, "Aurora Historical Society: An Overview of Its Genealogical Resource Holdings."

Kristy Lawrence Gravlin, contr., "Family Bible Collection" -- Chapman, Crampton, Jones, Butler, Moulton, Ordway, and associates.

Oriene Morrow Springstroh, "Confessions of a Grateful Genealogist" -- including details of an 1855 Henry County estate sale.

"New Genealogical Publications at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library for 9 August-15 November 2008"

"Illinois Newspapers Available on Interlibrary Loan"

Early patents index

From the days when the Midwest and Northeast were the invention headquarters of the world . . . new on Cyndi's List is 19th Century Patents, an alphabetical index to inventors by name, including all those who obtained "X patents" from 1790 to 1836 and "the first 10,000 utility patents (1836-1853)." Residences and patent numbers are included.

If you have an inventive research target from that era, let me know how you do in finding any of these folks via Google Patents or the US Patent and Trademark Offoce website. I've had very mixed results.