Methodology Monday with reasonably exhaustive search

Good genealogy requires that we do "reasonably exhaustive" or "reasonably extensive" research, which according to Board for the Certification of Genealogists Standard 19 includes "appropriately broadening the search beyond the person, family, event, or record of most-direct impact on the project," and looking for possibly conflicting information.

Naturally newcomers and learners want more specifics, and there are plenty in Laura Murphy DeGrazia's article on the subject in the October-December NGS Magazine. (She is a Certified Genealogist and president of BCG.) She has a very nice paragraph on this exact point, from which I'll quote only the last sentence: "To meet BCG standards, every search must be extensive enough that a highly experienced researcher would consider it reasonably exhaustive, regardless of the level of experience of the person who conducted the research."

Hard core Chicago research info

Today I will give belated thanks for Cynthia's authoritative explanation of the so-called Chicago Burial Index over at ChicagoGenealogy. If you already understood all this, you are my idea of a seasoned Chicago researcher.

Case File Clues (plug)

For 29 cents a week, you can read a brief informative first-person account of ongoing genealogical research; it comes by email as a PDF attachment. And it just happens to be written by my favorite genealogist from western Illinois, Michael John Neill (who was also the headliner at last months Illinois state conference).

This week's issue of Casefile Clues deals with the vexing problem of when to hire a professional researcher, and how to go about it if you do. That's good information, but there's a bonus: the meat of the problem is hard-core Chicago research involving name changes, death/disappearance, probate, and property records. (Neill's ancestors pack more melodrama into a few decades than mine did into a few centuries.) Try it, I think you'll like it.

Context files: Grand Army of the Republic

The Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), the Civil War Union veteran's organization, is widely known as a public and political and fraternal force in the late 19th century -- and now as a genealogical resource where its records have survived. What I learned from Robert C. Nesbit's History of Wisconsin, volume 3, Urbanization and Industrialization, 1873-1893 is that the group was almost moribund prior to its 1880 "grand national encampment" in Milwaukee. After that it became a political power as its members moved into their peak years of numbers and political efficacy. Even so, at its peak, it recruited no more than one fifth of the available veterans.

Methodology Monday with Coin-Coin

The APG Great Lakes chapter's article discussion this month was Elizabeth Shown Mills's "Documenting a Slave's Birth, Parentage, and Origins (Marie Therese Coincoin, 1742-1816): A Test of 'Oral History'" from the December 2008 National Genealogical Society Quarterly (96:245-66).

The article operates on two levels, just as the double title suggests. On one level it's a vivid reminder that "tradition" and "local lore" have an amazing amount of junk encrusted around a possible inner pearl of truth. On another level, it's a demonstration of how to prove ancestry in circumstances when many genealogists would despair. If you like indirect evidence and conflicting evidence, you'll love this article. It definitely repays rereading. Mills also lectured from the same material at FGS Little Rock earlier this fall, so there's a companion CD from Jamb Tapes, Inc., in St. Louis.

Context files: Did your ancestor clear a Midwestern farm in the 1850s?

Economists Jeremy Atack and Robert Margo have confirmed what most of us might have expected: that the coming of the railroads in the 1850s did encourage Midwestern farmers to clear more land. That's the gist of their new paper at the National Bureau of Economic Research (full access by purchase or university affiliation).

The authors identified 278 counties in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Missouri that didn't change their boundaries, and compared land-clearing activity in counties that got a railroad during the 1850s with those that didn't. For many reasons the figures can't be precise, but they figure that between 1/4 and 2/3 of the land-clearing activity was inspired by railroad access, and the cheaper transportation and higher crop prices that it promised.

"Whatever else might have led Midwestern farmers to undertake the back-breaking labor of clearing their land," they conclude, "no other single factor seems likely to be as important as the potential gains from trade deriving from the arrival of the Iron Horse."

Sanborn maps in Cincinnati!

I blogged about Sanborn fire insurance maps, a great resource for buildings up close and personal, in May and June. Now the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County has digitized two volumes with more to come. They're in color, 1904-1917 and 1904-1930. Even if they cover the same area (not a given), the distinction is important because these were working maps and often changes were pasted right over the original version.

While you're there, enjoy their excellent collection of Cincinnati city directories, beginning in 1819 and covering pretty much every year 1849-1895. That kind of close coverage is what researchers need.