Indiana Genealogical Society blog

I've blogged for a few years now and many are treating blogs as online newsletters.
Indiana now has a blog including information on the Indiana Marriage Indexing Project run by the Indiana Genealogical Society. Find their blog at:
indgensoc.blogspot.com

Iowa Censuses Indexed

ALL of the Iowa censuses from 1836 to 1925 have been digitized and indexed, containing over 14 million records. The 1925 state census is a particularly rich source of information for genelealogists, including the mother's maiden name, the year of marriage, war service, and other details. Iowa is a base of German, Scandanavian and Dutch settlement that reflects typical Midwestern roots and migration patterns.

Indexing makes our hobby so much more productive!!!!

Genealogy News Bytes

The February issue of "Genealogy News Bytes" from the Mid-Continent Library lists this blog as a site to check in their newsletter. The current four page issue is online at : www.mcpl.lib.mo/us/gen/h/news/200702.pdf

A variety of helps, research tips, websites and announcements are posted there for genealogists of all levels. The networking possibilities continue to expand as the genealogical community digitizes, volunteers, researches and publishes more and more material! What an amazing array of help we have in the 21 st century!

Grandma's Passing

Last night, a remarkable 101 year woman died in southern Wisconsin, her family with her and having justly earned her reward! She raised five children and outlived two of them and two husbands, as well as outliving some of her own grandchildren and all of her contemporary friends. She survived having four sons serving in the Korean conflict at once, and "prayed them all home safely".

She loved all who came in contact with her and always had kind and encouraging words for all of us. Her eyes twinkled as she would reminsence about times gone by, whether decades ago or hours ago at the annual family reunions. She fed the thirst for more historical knowledge with her own unique perspective on simple inventions, like saltine crackers, or modern marvels, like airplanes and submarines.

She was always amazing and always will be!!!! VIRSC 1905-2007

Ohio Name Index

Another online index is the Ohio Name Index, with over 88,000 entries covering the time frame of 1796-1850. The site is at: http://libraryworld.net/cgi-bin/opac.pl?command=clear. Females, as well as male names are included, with the bulk of the entries from school directories and city directories. As I checked on my McMillen line, which spends a fair amount of time on Ohio before emigrating to Wisconsin, I didn't find my ancestors but a doctor and some school girls showed up, substantiating the claim.

The site could be especially helpful to gather children's names from families before the 1850 census listing everyone individually by name in the household, and to track children who often died at young ages, if they attended school.

New Year's Research Resolutions

Any researcher has the WISH LIST that they hope to focus on for the year, or maybe on the tougher cases, for the decade.

As you make your list, remember to round out your researching goals with your learning goals. I usually have a conference or two on my "must attend" list for the year, a book or two that I intend to read to become more knowledgeable in a geographic area, country or language, as well as my TOP TEN research goals, although to be honest, I seldom get past five of the ten, so they continue to reappear on the next year's research goals list. I also continue to expand my use of the many Internet sites, as they add indeces, digitized records and contact information. These are exciting times for us as dedicated researchers!!! Share your successes with all of us!!!!

"Your Family Tree in 20 Minutes"

One of the genealogical magazines that I regularly subscribe to arrived yesterday with an article on finding your family tree in "20 minutes" on the cover. I had to laugh out loud before I even opened up to read the "tips" there because I believe that it is misleading to the "newbie" to think for even 20 seconds that they can successfully find their family tree in such a short amount of time, even with all of the fabulous online databases.

As it turns out, there were a variety of tasks that you could accomplish on individual tasks on your family history research in 20 minutes or less, according to the author. Be careful what you promise........

Happy New Year and Success in the Search!