There's No Such Thing as a Free Lunch, or Free History Either

Writing in Illinois Times, Peter Ellertsen has something to say about volunteering at Lincoln's New Salem State Historic Site near Springfield, Illinois -- where the paid interpreters were laid off in August because of a state budget shortfall: "I can't subsidize the state of Illinois indefinitely when the governor's office and the state legislature aren't living up to their responsibilities."

Here in Indiana, libraries are cutting back hours because of an ill-conceived property tax "relief" law. From where I sit, government is not the problem, the problem is "taxpayers" who want services but don't want to pay for them.

Where Your Ancestors Came From -- New York Newspapers

Not all Midwesterners were born here! Distant cousin Skip Higgins reminded me to visit the unusually named Old Fulton NY Post Cards, a quirky website much expanded since my last visit. For our purposes its most interesting feature its enormous collection of every-word-searchable images of old New York state newspapers. It's free, and I know from my own research that it gets results not found on Genealogy Bank, NewspaperArchive, 19th Century US Newspapers, or America's Historic Newspapers.

It's not always easy to get the information needed to properly cite the search results you find but it is possible. The trick is to use the FAQ-HELP-INDEX button in the far upper right of the home screen, click on the list of newspaper titles, find the title you want in the three-page non-alphabetical list, and look through the individual page PDFs. This same button will lead you to an address for sending donations.

It appears to me that some papers have the sides or bottoms of the pages cut off in scanning. But for quick access to more than 200 upstate New York newspaper titles, I'll take it.

Microhistory and genealogy meet on US 20

How, exactly, did people get from Connecticut to Ohio's Western Reserve in 1817? Over at H-Net, Alden O'Brien of the DAR Museum posted on some of his research, conducted "poring over historical maps on one side of my computer screen with Google maps on the other," as well as some other interesting sources. Part of the route is close to present-day US 20, but that's a gross oversimplification.

This post was on H-Connecticut, "a communications center and discussion forum for Connecticut’s history and heritage communities" sponsored by the Office of the State Historian. This is just one of roughly 150 different history discussion networks (email lists) on the overall site, hosted at Michigan State University. There are lists for Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan, as well as the Holy Roman Empire and the culture of industrialization in the South. Check 'em out.

Online Directories at EveNDon

Thanks to a poster on rootsweb's Cook County, Illinois, mailing list, I have learned that the free and ad-free site EveNDon has images (not transcripts!) of city and county directories well beyond their Pittsburgh home base. (Also some other materials I haven't had time to check out.) They accept donations for this great service and offer fee-based lookups and copying services if you have needs in western Pennsylvania.

In our area they have the following directories on line:

ILLINOIS: statewide, Cass County, Christian County, Coles County, Shelbyville, Springfield, and Chicago (12 directories 1844-1900)

INDIANA: Fort Wayne (4 directories 1860-1917), Indianapolis (9 directories 1858-1896), Jay County

MICHIGAN: Detroit, Saginaw

OHIO: statewide, Cincinnati (29 directories 1819-1875), Cleveland

WISCONSIN: Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Wood County

FYI if your Midwestern roots stretch back to Pittsburgh, they also have 41 Pittsburgh directories 1761-1951.

As a directory aficionado, I would add that if you're in pursuit of everything about a research target, you may need to resort to travel, hired research, or pay sites (such as Footnote.com) that can offer every-year coverage. Working people's residences and relationships and business ties change very often, and you could easily miss an all-important clue by skipping even one year of the relevant time period in a directory. This also applies to non-appearances; people randomly disappear and reappear sometimes.

More Ohio Records and Pioneer Families

Ohio Records & Pioneer Families -- "locating and telling the stories of the men and women who were the first settlers of the state of Ohio" -- is supposed to be about pre-1860 Ohioans, but the second issue of 2008 offers some latitude. If you've been holding back on writing up your well-documented antebellum Ohioans, this would be a good time to get 'em done and send 'em off. I'm very fond of the auxiliary table of contents in the form of a county map of the state with counties shaded according to how much material they have in the given issue. Here's the gist:

"Betty's Diary: The Journal of Elizabeth Jennings Nixon 1853-1867," contributed by Brent Morgan -- she was from Marietta

"A Short Biography of Robert Atkin," by Garland Hurst Pilliar -- Ashtabula County farmer

"Barton Sweet, Ohio Pioneer and Country Doctor," by Deobrah Gilbert & Mary Kay Townsend -- of Richland County, with children moving on to Michigan and Bureau County, Illinois. "No information on his parentage could be confirmed. Instead, the names of several inter-related families have been provided in hopes that these may offer clues..."

"Description of the Black Swamp," by B. R. Minton (1843), contributed by Terri Gorney -- there's a nice map, but basically think of a two-county-wide path from Toledo to Fort Wayne, Indiana.

"Columbiana County, Ohio, 1858 Deaths," contributed by Sunda Anderson Peters

"Columbiana County Taxes to Be Collected, 1806," contributed by Sunda Anderson Peters -- from copies of Mss. 1134 Columbiana County Records 1803-1854 abstracted by Carol Bell and held at the Western Reserve Historical Society

"First Families of Ohio: The Early Years" (cont.), abstracted by Kay Ballantyne Hudson

"Revolutionary War Pension Application Abstracts" (cont.), abstracted by Lois Wheeler

"Official Register of Physicians by County, 1896, Wayne County"

"Merchants, Manufacturers & Traders of Ohio, 1885" (cont.)

"Record of the Douglass and Miller Families: Early Landowners in the Firelands," by Thomas Stephen Neel -- Huron and Erie counties

"Oh, the Stories Pictures Do Tell, submitted by Linda J. Hasting, on identifying some Greene County pictures of Wilberforce University students in the 1920s

"Dutch Families in Southwestern Ohio," by Harriet Foley -- including Conover, Barkalow, Lefferson, Monfort, Schenck, Stoutenborough, Vanderveer, Vandervort, Van Doren/Doorn, Van Dyke, Van Harlingen, and Van Horne

Ohio Records and Pioneer Families

The fourth in the Ohio Genealogy Society's quartet of publications is on a catch-up schedule, but it's still packed. Contents of issue #1:

"The Shellhorns of Portage and Summit Counties, Ohio," by Ted Marshall Minier, an interesting presentation of indirect evidence on the identity of John Shellhorn, aiming to amplify the 1972 Shelhorn Genealogy by Lines and Jones.

"A Letter to My Brother: Louis Breuninger," contributed by Karen Miller Bennett

"Letters Written by John Marsh D'Camp, 1825-1837," contributed by Nina B. Mack

"Records of the George Ruckel Family Bible," contributed by Robert L. Keener

"First Families of Ohio: The Early Years," abstracted by Kay Ballantyne Hudson

"Revolutionary War Pension Application Abstracts," by Lois Wheeler

"The Mystery of Captain Benjamin LeRoy, War of 1812," contributed by Eric E. Johnson

"Official Register of Physicians by County, 1896, Washington County"

"Log Cabin Reminiscences -- Daniel Skinner Family," contributed by Sunda Anderosn Peters

"Residents of Mahoning County, Ohio, Infirmary, 1870," abstracted by Joseclyn Wilms, from the US census

"Merchants, Manufacturers & Traders of Ohio, 1885," abstracted from R. G. Dun's The Mercantile Agency Reference Book -- part of a series, in alphabetical order by towns

Crossing state lines in South Bend

The October issue of the South Bend Area Genealogical Society's Quarterly Newsletter features a history of the House of David 20th-century religious cult located in Benton Harbor, Berrien County, Michigan, compiled by Ken Reising. Other material:

"Minutes of the September 29, 2008, Members Meeting," including a summary of Matt Baumgartner's talk on Oliver Cromwell.

"Tombstones Recovered" -- an account of the rescue of five tombstones found in the manure pit of a 19th-century barn in Union Township in 2005 and since restored and reset in Lakeville Cemetery.

"List of Telephone Subscribers" from the 18 November 1896 issue of the South Bend Daily Times. The South Bend Telephone Company boasted nearly 600 patrons.

"Newspaper Tidbits" by Richard Berkheiser, drawn from the South Bend Tribune of 29 April 1920.

"1910 Index of Heads of Households for River Park, Indiana," now part of South Bend -- continued from the July issue.

The society's website now hosts the Michiana Genealogical Index, a database of over 900,000 Michiana surnames, mostly from vital records, cemeteries, and newspapers, contributed by Norbert Cramer of St. Joseph, Michigan. Users who want to get the most out of the database should not stop at the overall surname search form, but proceed to the particular event search form in order to get some indication of the original source.