Expected and Unexpected Resources from SW Illinois

The first 2008 issue of the St. Clair County (Illinois) Genealogical Society Quarterly has enough material to make some state publications jealous. Contents include:

the second of two parts of a county marriage index for 1908 (alphabetical by bridal surname, from Lizzie Crowder to Helena Zubrawski).

"E. St. Louis Gazette: Some Vital Stats, 1866, Tidbits 1872."

"Extracts from Death Register Book 1, 8 March 1882-28 April 1883," by Melinda Cahill and Diane Walsh

"Biography of James Bissell 'J.B.' Davis," by Thomas W. Davis, Jr.

"Belleville Public Library Website Adds Features," including a glimpse of a genealogical source I'd never dreamed of: an archival document in German, listing books checked out, the individual patrons' names, and the due dates, 1863-1866. What was your ancestor reading?

Announcement of a new SCCGS project and a first installment of its index: a Funeral Card Collection.

Tech tip

Allison writing at Genealogy Insider has some useful tips for genealogically searching Google Books. (That should be enough to ruin my plans for the rest of the day!)

Dead and Gone is alive and kicking

It's easy to start a blog, it's hard to keep one going. I sure hope Kim Smith at Dead and Gone: Historical Content for Genealogical Research keeps going. (Hat tip to Cyndi's List.) Part of her opening statement:

Because I'm not an historian, nor Indiana Jones, I stumble across information that doesn't make sense to me sometimes. Why did Richard Stout fight for the Dutch, when he was British? Why was my ancestors' land taken from them after the Revolutionary war? Why did another of my ancestors fight for the confederacy, if he lived in Ohio? These are the kind of questions I look for answers to. This blog is intended to provide historical information and pose questions that may be useful for amateur genealogists like myself. I will pick random topics in history and explore them with a genealogist's eye.

For starters, she has a post on exactly the sort of event we genealogists need to know about -- huge at the time but barely a sentence in most history books -- the great Ohio River flood of 1937.

A Century of Chicago Public School Graduates

The Chicago Public School system has established a networking site for its alumni at CPSalumni.org, and it's also very serviceable for their friends and relations and genealogists. Free registration is required (non-alums can register as guests), and your password gives access to the two "halves" of the site.

The first half consists of web pages, one for each school, with a few historical notes and (already) some alum-contributed data on favorite memories, distinguished teachers or graduates, and the like.

The other half consists of PDF images of the school board minutes for each year from 1873 through 1973, listing names of graduates. You reach these images by clicking on the generic graduation photo labeled "Get historical attendee records" halfway down the right side of every school page.

Graduates are listed citywide by year. Each year is its own PDF file, so it'll help if you know roughly when you expect to find your research target. Within each year they're listed alphabetically by school , and then within each school alphabetically by name. I found my immigrant grandfather graduating from Calumet High School in 1898, and my father graduating from Tilden Tech in 1931. My grandfather's class consisted of nine girls and nine boys; five of the boys and two of the girls took the college preparatory course. You can measure the progress of universal education by timing your downloads: 1898 is a lot faster than 1931!

From 1873 to 1895 the only records are high-school admissions, that is, elementary-school graduates and those who passed proficiency tests. High-school graduates are listed starting in 1896. Early on there's little identifying information, but in later years the record does include elementary-school graduates' dates of last vaccination (1901) or birth dates (1972-3). (BTW, all this information was already public.) The Newberry Library blog reports they're already using the site to answer people's questions.

School records aren't always the first things we think of but they're well worth pursuing. And if you need a boost of ancestral self-esteem, remember: a century ago, a high-school diploma was a more elite achievement than a four-year college degree is today.

Frontier Indiana

Andrew R. L. Cayton, author of Frontier Indiana, is my kind of historian. He's not afraid of the big ideas. (His more recent magnum opus, The Dominion of War, coauthored with Fred Anderson, examines how the United States was "conceived in empire as well as in liberty.") And he tells about them through individual people, communities, and families.

In Frontier Indiana he tells the surprisingly riveting story of the century before Indiana became a state in 1816. It's largely a story of the wars that sprang up repeatedly because nobody could establish firm control of the Wabash River valley. Cayton's individual stories feature trader George Croghan; the village of Vincennes; Kentucky adventurer George Rogers Clark; military men including Josiah Harmar, John Francis Hamtramck, Little Turtle, and Tenskatawa; Anna Tuthill Symmes Harrison, wife of territorial governor and future president William Henry Harrison; and territorial politician Jonathan Jennings.

It's not a straight-line story, and one curious key episode in the 1780s pits the fledgling US government against the vicious cycle of revenge involving the desperate Indians who saw their way of life evaporating and the rampageous Kentucky settlers who didn't much care which Indians they killed.

By 1790, President Washington and Generals Knox, St. Clair, and Harmar had concluded that it would take stronger measures to establish the authority of the United States in the Northwest Territory. They had to act. They had to intimidate both Indians and settlers, awe them with the power and majesty of the American government, [and] demonstrate that the United States could accomplish what no other power -- not France, not Great Britain, not Virginia -- had done. The resulting military strategy would take half a decade and would involve immense problems and some of the worst defeats in American history. But in the end ... the agents of the United States did establish it as the supreme power north of the Ohio River. The same John Francis Hamtramck who despaired of his position in Vincennes in the late summer of 1788 would command the left wing of the victorious American army at Fallen Timbers in 1794, oversee the construction of Fort Wayne at the confluence of the St. Joseph and St. Marys rivers later that year [on the ashes of the Indian town of Kekionga], and assume command of Detroit when the British finally evacuated it in 1796. {126}

United States Sanitary Commission

And speaking of the Civil War, a contributor to the Association of Professional Genealogists list APG-L points to an unusual record held at the New York Public Library (PDF) with plenty of Midwestern relevance: the records of the Washington Hospital Directory Archives of the United States Sanitary Commission, including more than 9,000 files documenting friends' and families' inquiries about the condition and location of injured soldiers, and the Commission's replies.

According to the collection's scope and content note (PDF),

"The records of the Washington Hospital Directory Archives, particularly the Letters of Inquiry, are rich in content, and will support research in genealogy, military history, medical history, social welfare history, political history, and studies in race, gender, class, ethnicity, and religious culture. The records also illustrate patterns of emigration, migration, language and communication. Inquiries were sent by men, women and even older children from all stations of life," and may amplify or correct other records on the soldiers concerned.

NYPL has an database of these soldiers on line, but the files themselves are not digitized.

Michigan City's Civil War Training Ground, Camp Anderson

Patricia Gruse Harris, longtime local historian and president of the La Porte County Genealogical Society (of which I'm a member), has just published a 41-page book, Camp Anderson 1863-1864, Michigan City, IN Civil War Camp, including references for more information. If there's another book on this subject I don't know about it. Ubiquitous La Porte County historian Fern Eddy Schultz has a brief account on line at the La Porte County Historical Society site, noting that

It is assumed the camp was named for Rev. Edward Anderson, Colonel commanding the 12th Cavalry. I say “assumed” because there is no proof beyond the fact that many Civil War camps were named for their post commanders. It was under his command that the 9th Congressional District raised more volunteers than any other district in the State of Indiana.

At this spot three Indiana Civil War regiments mustered in and trained during late 1863 and early 1864: the 12th Cavalry (AKA 127th volunteers), the 128th Infantry, and the 129th Infantry.