Thursday, July 24, 2014

Adventures Diggin' for Genealogy Gold

The other day I heard that there is genealogy gold in South Dakota.  I made a trip to Pierre, South Dakota and dropped in at the South Dakota State Archives.  They dug that building into the side of a hill and from where it is located, people can watch wagon trains ford the river and head for the gold fields in the Black Hills.  That hole in the hill has a lot of genealogy gold buried in it, such as a Newspaper Index and the Index to the Civil War Veterans taken in 1885.  I just happened to have relatives who were in Dakota Territory in 1870, so I looked them up on the 1870 Agricultural Census.

I could have stayed in that building in the hill for a long time, but decided I needed to drift south to Kansas.  The Kansas Historical Society is in Topeka.  Plopped my bags down with relatives and took off on a run to see what I could find.  I discovered gold in Kansas Memory.  I clicked on Atchison County and up came 347 memories ... everything from photos to documents.  
Carpenters Building a House
Kansas Memory

From Kansas I crossed the mighty Mississippi and set off for Ohio.  Somebody in my travels told me I should go to the State Library of Ohio in Columbus.  That's one big city, but I have a mouse and it didn't take me long to find my way to genealogy gold.  Buried there is information about their Digital and Special Collections.  They open the door to other places in Ohio and before I knew it, I was looking at City Directories.  With the help of that little mouse, I was looking at the 1825 Hall Cincinnati Directory.  Now that is really genealogy gold!  I threw that old directory into my saddle bag and decided to see what else I could find.  There's even more genealogy gold.  I discovered the Ohio Public Records Index (deaths). started clicking and before I knew it, the horse needed fed and watered.  

I took off for Delaware.  It's a small state, but the records there are enormous.  My journey took me to Delaware Public Archives.  The mouse led me to their Digital Archives.  There are a lot of new-fangled names like eBooks and PDFs.  I kept clicking and discovered what they call PDF files for five volumes of the Delaware Archives-Military.  Talk is that my great, great, great grandfather served in the Revolutionary War from Delaware.  This might be a big help!  

The mouse is tired, my saddle bag is full and the horse needs a rest.  I'll be off somewhere else tomorrow, so stay tuned. 

Ruby --- mining for Genealogy Gold! 

1 comment:

Jana Iverson Last said...

Ruby,

I want to let you know that your blog post is listed in today’s Fab Finds post at http://janasgenealogyandfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/2014/07/follow-friday-fab-finds-for-july-25-2014.html

Have a wonderful weekend!

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