Ohio Genealogy News Spring 2011

The Ohio Genealogy News -- the genealogy newsmagazine that outdoes some other states' quarterlies -- focuses on Civil War genealogy research this quarter. But I'd say the whole issue is worth it for explaining where to find the Cleveland District Round Table's index to the Cuyahoga County probate record images that FamilySearch has posted only in browseable form.

In other news, Ohio Genealogical Society's 50th annual conference begins later this week in Columbus. See you there!

Methodology Monday came on a Friday this week

I tend to assume that everybody reads Dick Eastman, and as a result I often forget to do so. That would be a mistake. There's plenty more to be said about internet searching, but what he relays from a recent FamilySearch conference call is plenty thought-provoking in itself.

This is one of the messages Elizabeth Shown Mills has been preaching for a while, and there are way plenty of genealogists (or as Craig Scott would have it, "people doing genealogy") who have not absorbed it yet.

Ohio Genealogy News Summer 2010

Ohio Genealogy News can stand up to most states' top-line quarterlies. This quarter features the society's new library (grand opening outside Mansfield July 23) plus:

Tacy Arledge Lewis on "Ohio Tax Lists: Practical Applications" including where to find them;

news of Ohio vital records, including three indexes at FamilySearch Pilot website; and

news of Ohio newspaper digitizations from Logan, Mount Vernon, and Perrysburg.

You really do not want to be without this magazine if you're researching Ohio people.

Ohio Genealogy News Spring 2009

Somehow the spring issue of Ohio Genealogy News got stuck at the bottom of my pile, which is too bad because it's a goodie:

"Armchair Sleuthing in the Internet Age: Reconstructing Family Stories," by Gail G. Whitchurch

"The Western Reserve Historical Society Library -- An American Family History Research Center," by Ann Sindelar. Besides library materials including the top periodicals, this Cleveland repository also boasts over 5000 manuscript collections, including Civil War and Shaker materials and papers of "local historians Charles Whittlesey, Joel Blakeslee, Alfred Mewitt and Winifred Wolcott," and Marion Turk's Channel Islands Genealogical Papers on "several hundred Channel Islands families from their earliest settlement to the 20th century." More on these resources next week.

"Cemetery Chronicles" from Trumbull, Henry, and Fairfield counties, by Lolita (Thayer) Guthrie

"George Washington's Valet Honored in Champaign County Cemetery," by Doris Hayden Gorgas

"Diocese of Toledo Parish Records and Ohio Tax Records Online" at FamilySearch Labs

Catching up with the Newberry

If you're just in from Mars and haven't yet started following the intermittent "Genealogy News" blog of Chicago's Newberry Library, here's what you missed in the last month:

FamilySearch Labs is putting up Cook County birth certificates.

The Hyde Park Herald newspaper is digitizing its archives, including 1950s, 1960s, and 1990s so far.

Selected items from the Newberry's own collections are up on Internet Archive, including primarily church histories and a number of specialized directories it would be easy to miss: Board of Trade, "Jewish Community Blue book," law and medical directories, "Colored people's blue-book," real-estate dealers, and a Bohemian directory and almanac.

1850 census source

If you're like me and depend largely on HeritageQuest for census searches, you'll be happy to know that Family Search's free "Record Search" pilot site now has the 1850 US Census population schedule returns indexed for Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio, as well as 21 other states including Iowa and Minnesota.