State and Regional Genealogy Journals version 2.0 is up

. . . at my site and soon if not already at Michael Hait's. We have included all the additions and corrections received so far; keep 'em coming!

Estivation

In order to take care of business, this blog will be hibernating -- well, estivating -- for a few months, with postings only when I can't bear to keep my mouth shut. I commend you to Angela McGhie, Michael Hait, Kimberly Powell, and whoever they in turn recommend.

Indianapolis Orphan Asylum 1851-1940

For those with an interest, my feature article about the Indianapolis Orphan Asylum, entitled "Early Midwestern Orphanage," has just been published in the Spring/Summer issue of The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections, published by the Indiana Historical Society. The society holds about three dozen volumes of detailed records from the asylum's 99-year history, which when incorporated into a planned database should be of great interest to many genealogists, some of whom may not even know it. (Children came mostly from central Indiana, but some were adopted as far away as Kansas.) Regular readers already know that this is one of two quality genealogy magazines published in the state.

From what I have seen, the asylum's records also contradict the historical stereotype of such institutions as primarily warehouses for children. In fact, most of its children were placed in new homes or back in their families. And the records sketching out why children arrived there in the 1890s and early 1900s document the terrible stories of ordinary people down on their luck in a society with a minimal safety net.

State and Regional Genealogy Journals: The List

Michael Hait and I have compiled a list of state and regional genealogy journals, with writers' guidelines when available, and posted it on both of our web sites. We hope this will help in three ways:

* encourage writers to submit their family histories (or portions thereof) for publication.

* encourage editors to seek out, prefer, and prioritize histories that are backed up with good documentation from original sources.

* enhance general awareness of the importance of state-level publications in publishing and preserving these accounts.

Please let either or both of us know about potential additions to the list and additions to each listing. We have not been able to consult paper copies of every journal, so accurate information on additional journals' guidelines, standards, and future plans is especially welcome.

Slavery and emancipation resources in Illinois

Dave Bakke, a columnist for the State Journal-Register newspaper in Springfield, Illinois (home of this September's FGS meeting), has called attention to the state archives' database of servitude and emancipation records (1722-1863). The database (not new) includes information from a variety of sources in nine southern Illinois counties on 1301 men and 929 women, and instructions on how to obtain the original records there indexed.

The same column brings news that University of Iowa law professor Lea VanderVelde is working on a book about slaves in the Land of Lincoln, and in the process helping upgrade the database. She'd like to see it include, for instance, material documenting the role of African-Americans in the lead mining district that includes Jo Daviess County in the state's far northwestern corner.

In her background reading, it sounds like VanderVelde is learning what genealogists should already know: that the late-19th and early-20th-century county histories are far from inclusive. "Many of the frontier histories have been whitewashed, creating an ‘amnesia’ about the slaves and indentured servants in free states.” While culling them for clues and additional sources, we would be ill advised to rely on them for information on anyone who wasn't prominent or conventional, or on the outline of the history they tell.

IGHR Samford Day Four: states' opportunity

One highlight of Thursday:

Tom Jones observed that in his view, state-level genealogy journals have an opportunity to fill a big gap in the genealogy literature, by publishing well-documented portions of family histories that are not difficult enough to be of interest to national publications.

This strikes me as a good idea for several reasons:

(1) For the author, it's a lower-cost method of publication than in book format. Publication is a method of preservation.

(2) For the author, it doesn't take as long to see results if you write up two or three generations than if you have to wait until you have done them all.

(3) If the article's title mentions the most relevant surnames, the article will be picked up in the periodical search index PERSI (which does not index every name within a journal) and thus will be much more accessible to future genealogists, perhaps more accessible even than a book.

(4) For the readers, well-researched and documented accounts of other families are likely to be of more interest than abstracts of local records -- which are better placed on line anyway, where they will be more accessible.

I know that the supply of such writings can be a problem. But the genealogical public is growing and genealogical education opportunities are expanding. (See, for instance, Angela McGhie's blog, Adventures in Genealogical Education, and many of Kimberly Powell's posts at About.com). So there ought to be more people out there who can do this.

The potential writers need to make writing a priority. And the state editors have to ask, and be willing to select wisely.

IGHR Samford Day Three

The homework for Course Five is mounting up. Highlights of Wednesday:

Elissa Powell introduced us to the existence of the website MagCloud.com, for self-publishing your own printed magazine.

You cannot be considered a genealogy geek unless you know the meaning of the superscript "b-2" when used as a generation indicator.