Civil War medicine, if you can take it

The Springfield-based weekly Illinois Times has a brace of articles on Civil War medicine by Tara McClellan McAndrew: an extended notice of Glenna Schroeder-Lein's new Encyclopedia of Civil War Medicine (211 short articles in 419 pages, $95), and an account of how medicine was practiced at Springfield's training-ground-cum-prison Camp Butler. For the second story she used some archival material from the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, as the camp's records were destroyed in an 1865 fire. Lein is manuscripts librarian at ALPL, and describes herself as someone who "feel faint at the sight of blood," but who wished she'd had a comprehensive medical resource like the encyclopedia when she was writing her dissertation. I think this is likely to be either a must-have or a reason for frequent library visits for those of us with Civil War research targets.

Book budget maxed out? WorldCat shows it in 46 libraries so far...

Buffalo County, Wisconsin

The New England Historic and Genealogical Society's e-news highlights the Buffalo County Historical Society, whose online resources are strong on cemeteries and obituaries. Careful researchers will need to go beyond these. Here's one person buried in Cascade Cemetery:

Benjamin, Arthur, b: 1887, d:1963, Grey stone. He farmed in Cascade Valley.
Married to Cecil Best. They had 2 sons. He had many town offices, was one
of the founders of Nelson Telephone Coop, and sold Insurance. Moved to
Durand died there at home.

This is great, but it's not as great as it could easily have been. Some good person added biographical information beyond what was inscribed on the gravestone, and now those of us "from away" don't know which information came from where. And for the part that obviously wasn't on the stone, we have no idea where it came from, or how reliable it might be.

Downloadable book$

The latest Wholly Genes newsletter includes notices of new downloadable books (PDF) for sale, including two that treat places other than New England or the mid-Atlantic:

Jacob Piatt Dunn's 1919 Indiana and Indianans: A History of Aboriginal and Territorial Indiana and the Century of Statehood. Barbara Vines Little, CG, observes, "Researchers stopping to read a particular entry are likely to find themselves completing the chapter before moving on to the next item of interest." I observe that this every-word-searchable version is noticeably less expensive than you can get the hard copy at abebooks.com.

Rev. A. B. Cristy's 1896 Cleveland Congregationalists 1895: Historical Sketches of our Twenty-Five Churches and Missions. Again, I can't find this for even twice the price as a used physical book.

(Although I am a satisfied user of Wholly Gene's bread-and-butter database product, I have no other connection with them.)

More Sheboygan

Sheboygan History is a useful and unpretentious site with many local school yearbooks going back to 1900, as well as photos, transcriptions of county histories and the inevitable 1894 biography book, plus a 1940 telephone book and local links including the Sheboygan County Historical Research Center, previously blogged here.

Historical Maps Online

"The intent of the Historical Maps Online project is to electronically publish the images of maps charting the last 400 years of historical development in Illinois and the Northwest Territory." That's the first line on the website, which is a collaborative project of the University of Illinois Library and the University of Illinois Press, with help from other outfits including the Newberry Library.

The site's search function is odd, such that "Edwards County" with or without quotes brings up 213 hits, most of them irrelevant, whereas "Edwards" alone brings up 4, including the relevant county page from Warner and Beers' 1876 atlas of the state. These atlas pages are the most obviously genealogically useful ones -- with old towns and all townships delineated for each county -- but they can't be enlarged as much as one would like.

Browsing categories for this collection are topographic maps of Illinois (290), North America (89), Northwestern Territory (11), former colonies in North America (1), Louisiana Territory (14), Canada (Nouvelle France) (9), early maps (49), South America (111), Mexico (6), Illinois (756), Indiana (32), Champaign County (749), Indians of North America (769), Warner and Beers Atlas 1876 (286), and maps from the Newberry Library (9). Thanks to Diane Walsh on the St. Clair County mailing list for pointing this out.

Forthcoming books

The fall 2008 publishers' catalogs are out, and I find two books (which pretty much by definition I have not seen) that may prove to be valuable as genealogical references:

Due out in November from the University of Illinois Press, Place Names of Illinois by Edward Callary of Northern Illinois University: "the origins of names of nearly three thousand Illinois communities and the circumstances surrounding their naming and renaming."

Due out in December from the University of Chicago Press, Chicago Neighborhoods and Suburbs: A Historical Guide edited by Ann Durkin Keating of North Central College, and coeditor of the Encyclopedia of Chicago: "comprehensive, cross-referenced entries on all seventy-seven community areas, along with many suburbs and neighborhoods both extant and long forgotten, from Albany Park to Zion." Contributors include Michael Ebner, Susan Hirsch, and Robert Bruegmann.

Midwestern sources at Family Search Labs

Several blogs and email lists alerted me to new database items with original items at FamilySearch Labs' Record Search. Here's the current list of Midwestern sources available there:

Illinois: Diocese of Belleville, Catholic Parish Records 1729-1956 (browsable only)

Michigan: Births 1867-1902, Marriages 1868-1925, Deaths 1867-1897 (searchable and browsable)

Ohio: Deaths 1908-1953 (searchable and browsable)

Wisconsin: State Censuses 1855, 1875, 1885, 1895, 1905 (browsable only)

This is both an opportunity to make new searches in sources difficult to find before, and an opportunity to "clean up" your existing records with higher-quality sources.