Sixteen lookups on the web site

It's a famous midsummer holiday, and what better to celebrate than free? Midwestroots.net now offers free lookups in 16 resources (actual indexes and finding aids in the next post).

 INDIANA
1830s La Porte County court records every-name index
1830-1855, 1886-1906 St. Joseph County marriage index
1910 DePauw University Alumnal Record
1971, 1986, 1987, 1990 La Porte directories
1975 Indiana Place Names
Pre-1979 Genealogy Articles in the Indiana Magazine of History
1986 Manuscript Collections in Indiana Historical Society and Indiana State Library

ILLINOIS
1931 Chicago Tilden Tech yearbook
2009 Illinois Place Names

MICHIGAN
1986 Michigan Place Names

NEW YORK
1804-1823 Western New York Land Transactions

THE SOUTH
1949 Gulf Coast pilot's guide, Key West to Rio Grande
1949-1950 Southern Baptist Theological Seminary directories

METHODISTS
1834-1850 Obituary Abstracts from the Western Christian Advocate

FAMILIES
1870-1898 Flint-Thrall letters (southern Illinois)
1976 Thrall genealogy

Please do not abuse this offer. If you use any of these regularly and it is purchasable, support the author and publisher and buy your own.



Harold Henderson, "Sixteen lookups on the web site," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 3 July 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.] 

A 1948 snapshot of the Gulf Coast shoreline

Visiting a used-book store in Freeport, Maine, I purchased an intriguing mid-20th-century source for a dollar -- a detailed mile-by-mile survey of the Gulf Coast for navigators: United States Coast Pilot: Gulf Coast, Key West to Rio Grande (Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1949), third edition. So far I have not seen it on line. According to the 2 April 1949 preface, the book "includes the results of a special field examination made in 1948." Among these results:

"Salerno [Florida], a small town at the head of Manatee Pocket, has a vegetable-packing plant, an asphalt plant, a shark factory, and is headquarters for a fishing fleet. . . . Gasoline, Diesel oil, fresh water, ice, and facilities for overnight dockage or seasonal storage are available at the yard. Groceries are obtainable at nearby stores." {214}

"For a distance of 40 miles eastward of the entrance [to Mobile Bay], the shore, although low, is wooded and unbroken. . . . . Approaching Mobile, two tall buildings near the water front are first seen. The easterly building has a pointed finial. The westerly building was under construction in May 1948 and will be the higher of the two." {272}

"The wreck of the S. S. Leo Huff is in 39 feet of water 6.0 miles 161 [degrees] from the whistle buoy marking the entrance to Calcasieu Pass Channel [Louisiana]. The mast shows above the water. A lighted buoy marks the wreck." {362}

"Gulf [Texas] is a small town 35 miles northeastward of Pass Cavallo. The sulphur mines north of the town were not in operation in 1948. The twin stacks and buildings at the mines are prominent from offshore." {405}

For landlubbers like me, it's as if someone had carefully noted every few miles of any given highway for hundreds of miles, as of 65 years ago. I'll add this to my informal list of people who are deeply interested in very specific and very small places, along with genealogists, cartographers, and weather forecasters in tornado season.

The book is not completely indexed (the wrecks are not included, for instance). But since its value is mostly in the description of local town and bay features I'll probably add this to my free lookups in due time.




Harold Henderson, "A 1948 snapshot of the Gulf Coast shoreline," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 24 May 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]