St. Clair County, Illinois, Harvest

Southwestern Illinois' hub, St. Clair County, has a number of relevant books available on line through Illinois Harvest:

Prairie Farmer's Reliable Directory of Farmers and Breeders of St. Clair and Monroe Counties, Illinois. Evansville, IN: Unigraphic, 1978. 323 pages. This is a republication of the 1919 edition, published by Prairie Farmer, and it promises unique genealogical (or microhistorical) data: it includes a tractor owners' directory including the make of each tractor.

The Birthplace of the Midwest, Cahokia, Illinois. [250th anniversary celebration souvenir program.] N.p.: The Association, 1949. 28 pages.

Nebelsick, Alvin Louis. A History of Belleville. Belleville: Township High School and Junior College, 1951? 272 pages.

O'Fallon Centennial Celebration, 1854-1954. O'Fallon: n.p., 1954. 89 pages.

Reflections of the Belleville, Illinois, Sesquicentennial, 1814-1964. Belleville: Belleville Sesquicentennial Commission, 1964. 32 pages.

Two places you wish your ancestors were buried

NEHGS eNews highlights two Midwestern cemetery websites, one small, one large:

Lakeside Cemetery in Bay Village, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, has "over 270" burials.

Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis, by contrast, has over 185,000 burials including John Dillinger's, and (this is a new one on me) a staff genealogist. It's also the headquarters of the Genealogical Society of Marion County.

Coles County, Illinois, Harvest

Recently digitized books of genealogical interest on eastern Illinois' Coles County from Illinois Harvest:

Perrin, W.H. et al., compilers. The History of Coles County, Illinois. Chicago: W. Le Baron, 1879. 699 pages.

Allison, Etta Mae. Pioneers of Coles County, Illinois. S.l.: s.n., 1942. Unpaginated.

Summers, Alexander. Mr. Mattoon's City. Mattoon: The National Bank of Mattoon, 1955. 30 pages. Revised from a 1946 edition.

Mattoon Memories. Mattoon: Gazette Printing, 1955? 88 pages.

Still more confusing Chicago City Directories!

Back in April I blogged about the many books hiding under the simple guise of "Chicago City Directory for [year]." Besides the free sites Newberry Library's Chicago Ancestors, Chicago History Museum, and Illinois Harvest, Footnote.com is also in the fray.

Key new information here: what Footnote.com calls the 1871 Chicago City Directory is apparently identical to Illinois Harvest's Edwards' ... annual directory ... of Chicago. v.14 I say "apparently" because the Footnote.com version includes two additional title pages, one characterizing it as a "Fire Edition" and claiming that its information has been carried up to December 12, 1871, but so far the pages I have viewed contain the same information in the same format as before.

Each of these online sources has its good points, and each has directories the others lack.

The Newberry's site is linked with other very useful resources for Chicago research, including a mapping function and the Chicago History Museum's book documenting the 1911 street renumbering in PDF format. It also breaks the directories up into units by letter so that you don't have to download the whole thing. It has directories designated as 1866, 1870, Edwards' Census 1871, 1875, 1880, 1885, 1892, and 1900. (Check my earlier post for more detailed citation proposals, especially for the confusing 1870-1872 period.)

Illinois Harvest requires you to download the whole thing, but it prints up very nicely and it preserves the original page order, which is no small matter if you've struggled with Footnote.com. As far as I know IH has only two directories, Edwards' volume 12 (1869-1870), and Edwards' volume 14 (1871, not the same as "Edwards' Census" displayed at the Newberry site).

Footnote.com, the only pay site discussed here, has more directories than anyone -- 1843-1849, 1851-1889, 1902-1903, and 1908-1909. You can search across years and save wanted pages in a "gallery." But. The last three years are incomplete as of midday 27 July 2008. And many of the complete directories have their pages out of order. Each directory's unpaginated front matter is dumped at the back, making it an adventure to find the title page for proper citation, and the variously paginated portions of the directory are usually presented, not in their original sequence (which heaven knows was arbitrary enough), but by page number. For example, the residential directory's page 21 is followed by the business directory's page 21, and so forth. Also, Footnote.com has taken the liberty of renaming the 1874-5 directory as "1874," 1875-6 as "1875," and so forth through 1878-9. The print quality is a bit below the Newberry and Illinois Harvest standard. (Some related discussion on Michael John Neill's Rootdig blog and on the Association of Professional Genealogists' listserv, both of which are free and should be lurked on by any wannabe genealogist.)

Lest we forget, the Chicago History Museum has the 1928 "criss-cross" Chicago directory on line (and many other on and off line resources). But you will need to know the street on which your research target lived in order to find him or her, as (from my point of view) the directory only has the criss and not the cross. I found it a little touchy to get loaded but it would probably help to have the latest PDF reader.

The fact is that Chicago researchers who don't live next door to a major genealogy library can't do without any of these four sites. And we can't afford to call "1871 Chicago City Directory" an adequate citation, either.

Tired of your own genealogy? Puzzle along with Craig Manson at Geneablogie, as he digs through records in Latin, French, and English along the Illinois-Missouri line in search of his Micheau/Mischeaux families.

"Contrary Mary"

New blogger and veteran professional, Kansas genealogist Mary Clement Douglass, CG, offers what has to be the world's simplest format for a research plan at Notes That Matter.

McLean County Harvest in Illinois

Illinois Harvest has recently digitized the following McLean County histories:

Custer, Milo. Soldiers of the Revolution and the War of 1812 Buried in McLean County, Illinois. Bloomington: ?, 1912. 32 pages.

Marker, Charles A. A History of Heyworth. Heyworth: Heyworth Star, 1926? 44 pages.

Official Souvenir Program, McLean County Centennial, Aug. 27, 28, 30, 1930. Bloomington?: McLean County, 1930? 56 pages.

Bellflower, 100 Years, 1871-1971. Bellflower: ?, 1971. Unpaginated.

Saybrook Sesquicentennial. Saybrook?: The Historical Committee, 1975. Unpaginated.

Heritage of the Prairie: A History of LeRoy and of Empire and West Townships, McLean County, Illinois. LeRoy Bi-Centennial Commission, 1976. ~100 pages. A second volume is said to have been published by the LeRoy Historical Society in 1985 but does not seem to be on line.