Sports Illustrated!

I'm making no promises, but those who have late-20th-century ancestors may want to be aware that Sports Illustrated has its entire archive back into the 1950s on line and apparently every word searchable. Advanced search options are available, and results can be refined by decade or by date.

Property records are the superheroes of genealogy

Over at Archives.com, I have a bunch of examples of the powers of deeds, mortgages, and similar documents that can seem intimidating but are widely available and easy to use. Since I wrote it up, I attended an ancestral certificate ceremony where several of the awardees used deeds to prove their ancestors' residence in the county at an early date.

As for intimidating, once you have a basic idea of how the clerk's or recorder's office works, they are wonderful places to work: the office folks don't hover, let you go about your business, but can offer help if needed.

Midwesterners in the new NYGBR

Indiana has an author in the new July 2011 issue of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record. Dawne Slater-Putt, CG, of the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center, chronicles John and Elizabeth (Halbert) Blair of Ontario and Yates Counties, New York. John was a Massachusetts minuteman and quite possibly was also involved in Shays' rebellion prior to his move to western New York.

This article is only the first installment, but already Blair descendants with various surnames are traced into Ohio (Crawford, Defiance, Geauga, Richland, and Williams counties), Indiana (Allen and La Porte counties), Michigan (Hillsdale and Monroe counties), Iowa (Allamakee, Clayton, and Decatur counties); and Kansas (Osage County).

New NGS Magazine

Some of my favorites from the July-September issue of NGS Magazine:

* Southern Illinois University-Carbondale anthropologist Dawn C. Stricklin on locating scholarly and academic publications.

* John Philip Colletta's context for the life of Carl Ludwig Richter in and out of New York City's 19th-century "Little Germany." If you've heard any of his talks, you'll hear his voice as you read.

* Denys Beaugrand-Champagne on something we rarely think of as a Midwestern genealogical resource: fur trade permits granted in the district of Montreal, 1721-1752, which include mentions of places now in Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Pennsylvania.

* Claire Prechtel-Kluskens' reconstruction of the lives of the "lightning brothers" -- Civil War soldiers from Licking County, Ohio, whose tent was struck by lightning on 15 February 1863.

There's more . . . as they say in blogger land, read the whole thing.

Indirect Evidence to the Rescue . . .

. . . is the title of my article just published on Archives.com.

Most records genealogists deal with were not created to answer our questions. Vital records often come close, but common names can be a problem, and as we move back through the years such records become scarce or were never created in the first place. In general, the more distant the ancestors, the less likely we are to find direct answers to our questions about them, and the more we will need to think in terms of indirect evidence -- piling up clues from which we can prove a conclusion, or at least a probability.

This will also be the topic of one of my two talks at NGS 2012 in Cincinnati.

New on-line resources

On the Porter County, Indiana, Genweb:

917 records from the Indiana Adjutant General's List of Porter County Civil War Soldiers

11,364 individuals residing in Lake Porter counties in 1916, with their addresses and credit ratings

From the St. Clair County, Illinois, mailing list:

Diane Walsh calls attention to the free online 1926 volumes by Isaac D. Rawlings in the Internet Archive, The Rise and Fall of Disease in Illinois, volume 1 and volume 2. Much of the book culls old medical journals for reports of diseases in specific places and times. With some effort it may be possible to retrieve copies of the original articles themselves for an unusual close-up on your location of interest. He covers the whole state and some adjacent counties as well if they happened to be written up by an Illinois physician.

Free learning opportunities

Two of my important genealogy learning experiences are not part of any larger institution and don't do a lot of promotion, so I thought I should mention them here in case any studious and ambitious genealogists aren't aware of them. Of course your mileage may vary, and they may not suit your style or your needs at any given moment.

ProGen Study Group, 18-month mentored groups reading, discussing, and practicing skills described in the book Professional Genealogy, ed. Elizabeth Shown Mills

Transitional Genealogists Forum, "a mailing list for anyone who is on the road to becoming a professional Genealogist. It is a place to share experiences, problems, obstacles, downfalls and triumphs."