...Research Tools

Finding Indiana Ancestors: A Guide to Historical Research

EDITED BY M. TERESA BAER AND GENEIL BREEZE

Genealogy is history on the most personal level, a quest to discover and share stories about one’s forebears. First-time researchers wonder where to find information and how to compile it. These are the same questions asked by historical scholars seeking to tell community and national stories. Finding Indiana Ancestors: A Guide to Historical Research serves both audiences by  providing an overview of research in general while focusing on Indiana-specific sources. The Indiana Historical Society began compiling this comprehensive guide in 2000, contracting  archivists, librarians, journalists, genealogists, and historians in the state’s major historical and genealogical organizations to write about their areas of expertise. The resulting essays

appeared first in the Society’s family history journal, The Hoosier Genealogist (upgraded recently to THG:CONNECTIONS). In this book, they come together to form a complete guide for historical research in Indiana. The book is divided into six parts. Parts 1–3 focus on getting started, working with family stories and pictures, documenting sources in libraries and archives, and understanding different record groups. Parts 4 and 5 explain researching with maps and researching different ethnic groups. Part 6 discusses manuscript and artifact research, nineteenth-century medicinal and industrial history, and data verification. A sample family group sheet and a sample pedigree chart appear in appendixes. Six model chapters show how to turn data into full-fledged stories. Finding Indiana Ancestors: A Guide to Historical Research will help

students, scholars, and family history researchers delve deeply into historical sources. Readers will learn where to go for the next piece of information, how to interpret the data, and how to incorporate each new fact into the stories of our ancestors—the people of Indiana.

paper, ISBN 978-0-87195-203-5

304 pp., 8.5" x 11", March 2007

Abstracts of the Records of the Society of Friends in Indiana

Volume 2, Revised Edition

Edited By Ruth Dorrel & Thomas D. Hamm

Published by

Indiana Historical Society Press

This volume is an index to six sets of records from the Indiana Soldiers' and Sailors' Children's Home. The records include: applications for admission, admission book, discharge books, discharge cards, school record cards, and indenture papers.

234 pp. 1999. Paper. Alphabetized.Index

Centennial Farms of Indiana

Edited by

M. Teresa Baer, Kathleen M Breen, & Judith Q. McMullen

With Genealogical Indexes By

Ruth Dorrel

Published by

Indiana Historical Society Press

This beautiful book celebrates the golden era of family farming in Indiana while tracing the history of Hoosier farmers—from Native Americans to agribusiness executives. The centerpiece of this generously illustrated book is an award program sponsored by the Indiana Historical Society (IHS) and the Indiana Historical Bureau (IHB) from 1947 to 1951. In partnership with Purdue University's School of Agriculture and the state's county agricultural agents, the IHS and the IHB certified more than 1,600 farms as having been owned by the same family for one hundred years or more.

Woven throughout the book are both stories about the Centennial Farms from the families who owned them, as well as historic photographs of Hoosier farms. As one Centennial Farm applicant states, "There is considerable sentiment, and much history connected with the whole thing."

125 pp. © 2003,  Paper

The Genealogist’s Companion & Sourcebook

A Beyond-the-Basics, Hands on-Guide to Unpuzzling Your Past

Emily Croom

Published By

Better Way Books

This book alerts you to promising types of primary and secondary sources. It shows you how to get past the kinds of obstacles—public records lost to fire or flood, for example—that often frustrate family searchers. It shows you how to cluster genealogy effectively. In these pages you’ll learn about such wellsprings of information as church and funeral home records, government documents, court records, newspapers and maps.

The Genealogist’s Companion & Sourcebook offers you solid, step-by-step guidance from a searcher who’s been where you are now. You’ll find bibliographies, case studies, appendices with census forms, a family group sheet, and information on major archives, libraries, lending libraries and publishers.

229 pp. • © 1994 • paper • ISBN: 1-55870-331-4