Ohio Genealogy: August 2007

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Google Book Search

Are Your Ancestors in Google Book Search?
A favorite search tool is Google's Book Search, at books.google.com. By typing in keywords just like in a normal Google search, you get results from all sorts of out-of-print and hard-to-find books. Type in "Ohio Genealogy" and more than 350 books will come up. Try your surname or the county or town where you are researching. There are many other resources here. Some books show up in the results as full page scans with searchable text. Other books are restricted to just showing a few preview pages or a few paragraphs of excerpts. Some are downloadable as PDF documents. (Even if you can't see all of the information, Google gives you the publisher's information that gives you a head start on finding it at your library.)

Ohio soldiers in the War of 1812

Roster of Ohio Soldiers in the War of 1812 -
The roster of the war of 1812 for Ohio consisted of a total of 26,280 men who enlisted from Ohio to assist the nation in this war. They comprised of 3 regiments, 464 companies, 13 cavalry troops, and 1 artillery battery. This dataset has broken up this list for easier perusal by the company, troop, or battery of the soldiers.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

research comment

He who cares nothing about his ancestors will rarely achieve anything worthy of being remembered by his descendants. —author unknown

Newspaper index

http://www.starklibrary.org/genealogylinks.htm
This is a link to the Stark County, Ohio library and their web site. Here you will find the searchable archives of the county newspaper going back more than 100 years. This is an amazing amount of information. You will also find a link here to the death certificates in the state repository.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Civil War pension Files

These files contain an amazing amount of information. I sent away for my great-greatgrandfather's pension file and received 97 pages of valuable copies of handwritten documents from his parents, friends, and family as well as doctors, ministers, and fellow soldiers. He was from Gallia County, Ohio and now I can share much information with others in that county...copies of their ancestor's signature, for example.
NARA Record Request Fees Go Up Oct.
We’ve known it was coming since the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) proposed last February to raise its reproduction fees for records you order. The good news is, it could’ve been worse.Effective Oct. 1, NARA will charge $75 for a Civil War pension file of up to 100 pages, plus $.65 per additional page (for longer files, staff will contact the requestor with a price quote before filling the order). NARA will charge $50 for pre-Civil War pension files regardless of page count, and $.75 per page to copy other records.While still a steep increase from the current $37 for a Civil War pension file, these fees are less than the $125 and $60 NARA originally proposed for Civil War and pre-Civil War pensions, respectively. (Still, save some cash by sending your request before October.