Pre-1882 Indiana Deaths

Of course, The Genealogy Center offers a wide variety of databases for your use. Some are subscription databases can only be used by those visiting one of the Allen County Public Library’s branches. Our other databases include ones we’ve created in which many are centered on Allen County, including indexes for obituaries, some cemeteries, early death records and modern marriages. But there is also a section of Indiana and Other States Resources that includes a wide variety of free information.

Now, we all know that the recording of deaths was not mandated in Indiana until the 1880s, although there are many various sources for locating a death date. But trying to recall all possible sources can be frustrating. Fortunately, Dawne Slater-Putt, Certified Genealogist and professional librarian with the The Genealogy Center created a database using county histories, family Bibles, and other published and unpublished sources to create Pre-1882 Indiana Deaths, and has allowed it to be posted on the The Genealogy Center’s site for your use.

You may search by first and/ or last name, and employ exact, Soundex or Fuzzy (any part of the name) search. The results will supply date and location of death, parents’ names, if supplied, and source with page number. It is always advisable to proceed on to the source, which may supply more information about the person’s life and survivors.

If you are seeking an elusive Hoosier, take a few minutes to check this wonderful source!

Footnote.com

Footnote, a database available at the Genealogy Center, maintains partnerships with the National Archives, Library of Congress, and other institutions, including the Genealogy Center at the Allen County Public Library, in an effort to provide unique historical documents online. Besides searching for historical and genealogical records for an ancestor on Footnote.com, you can also browse their varied collections of material.

One unique collection on their site is the Interactive Vietnam Veterans Memorial, where you can view a digital image of the wall and read comments and stories concerning the soldier.

The Black History Collection contains documents, photos, and pages pertaining to Slavery, Civil War, Reconstruction & Jim Crow Laws, World Wars, and the Civil War Movement.

The Holocaust Collection carries stories, maps and facts from concentration camps, details from the Holocaust Assets Collection, and National Archives records and images. Other specialized collections currently on Footnote.com are the Native American Collection, Interactive Census Project, World War II Collection, and the Great Depression.

Microtext

The Genealogy Center owns 592,000 pieces of microtext material, which consists of film and fiche. The information contained within the microtext items include census, passenger lists, military records, city directories, and locality specific records, such as local histories, land records, probates and wills, court records, and vital records. To locate what is available at the Genealogy Center you can search the microtext catalog. With state of the art film/ fiche readers, you can view, scan, print, and save your images on a jump drive.

News article on Internet Archive in the USA Today

Perusing my home copy of the USA Today one day last week, I noted this article on Internet Archive, and was pleased to see it garnering national attention. In my own insular way, I hadn’t realized the wonderful applications for researchers with various physical challenges who have trouble holding or reading a book. I only know it as a wonderful source for some rare genealogical and historical sources, and that many volumes that are part the Genealogy Center’s collection have been digitized and added to Internet Archive’s collection to be freely used by all. Although not shown with the online version, the print article included a photograph of IA’s employees and volunteers at the San Francisco facility, I was struck at how similar the area was to the space in the Allen County Public Library’s Lower Level 2 that Internet Archive occupies to scan the material from the Genealogy Center and the rest of the library’s collection. If you haven’t already explored this site, or haven’t checked it out in a while, take a fresh look!

Heritage Quest Online

Along with the other great databases you can use at the Genealogy Center is Heritage Quest Online. Using this exceptional source, you can search selected federal census, Revolutionary War era pensions and bounty land warrants, Freedmen’s Bank Records, more than 28,000 family and local history books, and, last but certainly not least, the Periodical Source Index (PERSI), the largest genealogy and local history periodical index which is produced by the Genealogy Center’s Foundation. When you’re here, take a few minutes to check this valuable resource!

African American Heritage

To discover your African American ancestors online, you can access ProQuest’s African American Heritage database while visiting the Genealogy Center. The database is divided into four categories: Search the Collections, Visit the AfriGeneas™ Community, Explore Black Genesis, and Consult Reference and How-to’s.

Search the Collections focuses your search on African American ancestors in the 1860-1930 Census,  1865-1874 Freedman’s Bank Records, and World War I and II Draft Registration Cards.

Visit the AfriGeneas™ Community searches the AfriGeneas website for census, marriage, death, and slave records.

Explore Black Genesis, a State-by-State Resource Guide by Dr. James M. Rose and Dr. Alice Eichholz provides information on records and repositories for African American resources available within the United States, Canada, and the West Indies.

Consult Reference and How-to’s searches books on African American research methods.

Hints for Indiana Vital Record Searches

By John

Indiana birth and death records can sometimes be confusing to use, especially in Lake and Allen counties. When the act creating the State Board of Health was passed in 1881, many individual cities established their own local health departments, which gathered birth and death information in separate books from those of the county. For most counties, these records were gathered together and published in single volumes by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, typically covering the period 1882 to 1920. Most of these are available in a statewide index on Ancestry.

In Lake and Allen (and perhaps a few other counties as well), not all of the indexes were combined. Lake County, for example, had a county office, as well as separate offices at Crown Point, East Chicago, Gary, Hammond, Hobart, and Whiting. The WPA published these records in individual volumes, so if you have ancestors in that county, you may wish to search all of the volumes.

Allen County is more problematic. In the early twentieth century, separate health departments existed for the county, as well as in Fort Wayne, Monroeville, Grabill, New Haven, Woodburn, and Leo. The WPA volume included only the Fort Wayne and County birth and death reports. Death records for the county begin in 1882; deaths for Fort Wayne begin earlier, in 1870. Birth records begin in 1887, though there was at one time an earlier birth record volume, 1882-1886, and the Genealogy Center has an unpublished name-index-only manuscript (977.201 AL5hea) to that volume, created by the county, covering original volumes A-P, and apparently including the original 1882-86 book, which is now no longer extant. This index does not include the birth date information or parents’ names – only the name of the child and the page reference in the original book.

The records for the other towns were not included in the WPA volume. If your ancestor was born or died in one of these other Allen County town or in the country near these towns, he or she may not appear in the Allen County birth and death indexes, or, for that matter, in the Ancestry index. The Monroeville Birth and Death Records cover the period 1906, 1909-1937. These volumes have been microfilmed and are indexed in a separate bound volume (Genealogy Center call number 977.201 AL5mon). The Grabill-New Haven-Woodburn Birth and Death Records span 1907 to 1937 and are available in a separate has an unpublished typescript abstract (Genealogy Center call number 977.201 AL5gra). The Leo vital records have not been published and remain in the office of the Allen County Department of Health.

So when researching Allen County, be aware that there is no central index of all public vital records in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While the reporting of births and deaths was never complete, it is possible that the event was recorded in one of these separate town vital record office books. Perhaps one day all of these indexes will be combined into a single source.

Missing Ancestor: Gone to California — and Prison?

If you have an ancestor who disappeared from the old homestead and family memory between 1851 and 1944, he or she might have gone to the Golden State to make a fortune, but found trouble instead. The Genealogy Center has San Quentin Prison List of Convicts (979.4 M33RO and M33ROA) which provides an alphabetical list of inmates with their convict numbers. The introduction cautions a researcher to be aware that first and last names were occasionally reversed, and that, of course, spelling of names could be inaccurate. No further information is provided in the index, but there is a guide to the years in which specific numbers were issued to narrow down a search. The records themselves are held by the California State Archives.

World Vital Records.com

Another database available at the Genealogy Center is WorldVitalRecords.com. The online site takes a different approach to searching for family history. Besides offering you access to information off their site, such as vital records and military records, they are a clearinghouse that guides you to other genealogy web sites. For example, you can search for one individual and find links to Find A Grave, Newspaper Archive, National Personnel Records Center, Footnote, Find My Past, and the Godfrey Collection.

You Can’t Always Find It By Browsing!

Sometimes in the Genealogy Center, a useful book pertinent to a particular location is not found under a particular subject entry or title. Consider the book, On the Eve of Conquest: The Chevalier de Raymond’s Critique of New France in 1754, edited by Joseph L. Peyser and published by Michigan State University Press in 1997. The book is cataloged as 971 R214o, which is a general Canadian number. However, “New France” in the 1750s, before the conclusion of the French and Indian War, comprised a large portion of the upper Midwest and Great Lakes of what would become the United States. Charles de Raymond, the central figure of the work, was the commandant of Fort St. Joseph at what is now Fort Wayne in the 1750s. The book contains a useful, first-hand account of this and other areas occupied by the French, but not strictly about Canada. If you are researching the French period of Fort Wayne’s history, or indeed, those of other French-occupied settlements of the 1750s, this book deserves a closer look.