Local History & Genealogy

How do you approach the unique challenges of African-American genealogy? How can you make the most of your research time and effort? Join expert genealogists Franklin Carter Smith and Emily Anne Croom to explore successful strategies for getting started and moving beyond the basics.

The discovery of a large cache of circulation records from the Muncie, Indiana, Public Library in 2003 offers unprecedented detail about American reading behavior at the turn of the twentieth century. Frank Felsenstein and James J. Connolly have mined these records to produce an in-depth account of print culture in Muncie, the city featured in the famed "Middletown" studies conducted by Robert and Helen Lynd almost a century ago. Using the data assembled and made public through the What Middletown Read Database (www.bsu.edu/libraries/wmr), a celebrated new resource the authors helped launch, Felsenstein and Connolly analyze the borrowing choices and reading culture of social groups and individuals.

What Middletown Read is much more than a statistical study. Felsenstein and Connolly dig into diaries, meeting minutes, newspaper reports, and local histories to trace the library's development in relation to the city's cosmopolitan aspirations, to profile individual readers, and to explore such topics as the relationship between children's reading and their schooling and what books were discussed by local women's clubs. The authors situate borrowing patterns and reading behavior within the contexts of a rapidly growing, culturally ambitious small city, an evolving public library, an expanding market for print, and the broad social changes that accompanied industrialization in the United States. The result is a rich, revealing portrait of the place of reading in an emblematic American community.

Best known for Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, written with Cornelia Otis Skinner, Emily Kimbrough was one of the most popular writers of this century. How Dear to My Heart, first published in 1944, is her tribute to a happy childhood spent in Muncie, Indiana, a humorous glance over her shoulder at the way things used to be.

This is more than a funny book, a period piece. Dignity and love are never quaint. They were the essence of this civilization. They are the essence of a book which is going to be dear to a lot of hearts besides the author." --Boston Globe (on the original publication)

... poignant, evocative, humorous." --Indiana Magazine of History

From the 1890s through the 1920s, the postcard was an extraordinarily popular means of communication, and many of the postcards produced during this "golden age" can today be considered works of art. Postcard photographers traveled the length and breadth of the nation snapping photographs of busy street scenes, documenting local landmarks, and assembling crowds of local children only too happy to pose for a picture. These images, printed as postcards and sold in general stores across the country, survive as telling reminders of an important era in America's history. This fascinating new history of Muncie, Indiana, showcases more than two hundred of the best vintage postcards available.

Discover your Irish roots! Trace your Irish ancestors from American shores back to the Emerald Isle. This in-depth guide from Irish genealogy expert Claire Santry will take you step-by-step through the exciting--and challenging--journey of discovering your Irish roots. You'll learn how to identify immigrant ancestor, find your family's county and townland of origin, and locate key genealogical resources that will breathe life into your family tree. With historical timelines, sample records, resource lists, and detailed information about where and how to find your ancestors online, this guide has everything you need to uncover your Irish heritage.

In this book, you'll find-

.The best online resources for Irish genealogy
.Detailed guidance for finding records in the old country, from both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland
.Helpful background on Irish history, geography, administrative divisions, and naming patterns
.Case studies that apply concepts and strategies to real-life research problems
Whether your ancestors hail from the bustling streets of Dublin or a small town in County Cork, The Family Tree Irish Genealogy Guide will give you the tools you need to track down your ancestors in Ireland.

Majestically told and based on materials not available to any previous biographer, the definitive life of Andrew Carnegie-one of American business's most iconic and elusive titans-by the bestselling author of The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst. Celebrated historian David Nasaw, whom The New York Times Book Reviewhas called "a meticulous researcher and a cool analyst," brings new life to the story of one of America's most famous and successful businessmen and philanthropists- in what will prove to be the biography of the season. Born of modest origins in Scotland in 1835, Andrew Carnegie is best known as the founder of Carnegie Steel. His rags to riches story has never been told as dramatically and vividly as in Nasaw's new biography. Carnegie, the son of an impoverished linen weaver, moved to Pittsburgh at the age of thirteen. The embodiment of the American dream, he pulled himself up from bobbin boy in a cotton factory to become the richest man in the world. He spent the rest of his life giving away the fortune he had accumulated and crusading for international peace. For all that he accomplished and came to represent to the American public-a wildly successful businessman and capitalist, a self-educated writer, peace activist, philanthropist, man of letters, lover of culture, and unabashed enthusiast for American democracy and capitalism-Carnegie has remained, to this day, an enigma. Nasaw explains how Carnegie made his early fortune and what prompted him to give it all away, how he was drawn into the campaign first against American involvement in the Spanish-American War and then for international peace, and how he used his friendships with presidents and prime ministers to try to pull the world back from the brink of disaster. With a trove of new material-unpublished chapters of Carnegie's Autobiography; personal letters between Carnegie and his future wife, Louise, and other family members; his prenuptial agreement; diaries of family and close friends; his applications for citizenship; his extensive correspondence with Henry Clay Frick; and dozens of private letters to and from presidents Grant, Cleveland, McKinley, Roosevelt, and British prime ministers Gladstone and Balfour, as well as friends Herbert Spencer, Matthew Arnold, and Mark Twain-Nasaw brilliantly plumbs the core of this facinating and complex man, deftly placing his life in cultural and political context as only a master storyteller can.

• Maps of county homestead or similar land patent purchased in the past, as recorded on the database of the General Land Office (GLO) of the Federal Bureau of Land Management (www.glorecords.blm.gov). Includes maps showing county location within state, surrounding counties, congressional townships within the county, cities and towns within the county, and county cemeteries. There is also an index of surnames for county patents (with parcel-counts for each surname), and a surname/township index (with parcel-counts for each surnames by township).

Named for the Delaware Indians who lived in the area from about 1794 to 1820, this Indiana county was organized in 1827. It soon developed an economy based around agriculture, which remains important today. The area's first railroad, from Indianapolis to Bellefontaine, Ohio, came to Muncie in 1852. Indiana's first commercial gas well was drilled in Eaton, and many more wells were drilled in the area, which brought glass, metal, and other industries to the county, especially in towns such as Albany, Eaton, and Muncie. After the gas supply failed, automobile components--from gears to batteries--became a thriving industry. During World War II, Delaware County produced goods for the war effort ranging from land mines to submarine interiors. Ball canning jars were the area's most famous product until Jim Davis's Garfield (the cat) came along. In the 1950s and 1960s, Delaware County experienced growth and prosperity with the addition of machine and tool shops and small businesses.

Unlock the secrets in your DNA!

Discover the answers to your family history mysteries using the most-cutting edge tool available. This plain-English guide is a one-stop resource for how to use DNA testing for genealogy. Inside, you'll find guidance on what DNA tests are available, plus the methodologies and pros and cons of the three major testing companies and advice on choosing the right test to answer your specific genealogy questions. And once you've taken a DNA test, this guide will demystify the often-overwhelming subject and explain how to interpret DNA test results, including how to understand ethnicity estimates and haplogroup designations, navigate suggested cousin matches, and use third-party tools like GEDmatch to further analyze your data. To give you a holistic view of genetic testing for ancestry, the book also discusses the ethics and future of genetic genealogy, as well as how adoptees and others who know little about their ancestry can especially benefit from DNA testing.

The book features:

• Colorful diagrams and expert definitions that explain key DNA terms and concepts such as haplogroups and DNA inheritance patterns
• Detailed guides to each of the major kinds of DNA tests and which tests can solve which family mysteries, with case studies showing how each can be useful
• Information about third-party tools you can use to more thoroughly analyze your test results once you've received them
• Test comparison guides and research forms to help you select the most appropriate DNA test and organize your results and research once you've been tested

Whether you've just heard of DNA testing or you've tested at all three major companies, this guide will give you the tools you need to unpuzzle your DNA and discover what it can tell you about your family tree.

Indianapolis has long been steeped in important moments in African American history, from businesswoman Madame C. J. Walker's success to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan to the founding of Crispus Attucks High School, which remained segregated through the 1960s.

In African Americans in Indianapolis, author and historian David Leander Williams explores this history by examining the daunting and horrendous historical events African Americans living in Indianapolis encountered between 1820 and 1970, as well as the community's determination to overcome these challenges. Revealing many events that have yet to be recorded in history books, textbooks, or literature, Williams chronicles the lives and careers of many influential individuals and the organizations that worked tirelessly to open doors of opportunity to the entire African American community.

African Americans in Indianapolis serves as a reminder of the advancements that Black midwestern ancestors made toward freedom and equality, as well as the continual struggle against inequalities that must be overcome.

From Muncie's past come weird tales of supernatural encounters, creepy ghostlights, haunted houses, and eerie hoaxes.

In the years before the Civil War, wraiths routinely harassed travelers on turnpikes southeast of the city. A poltergeist once terrorized a family farm in northeast Center Township in 1890. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ghosts appeared frequently at local businesses, theaters, office buildings, factories, and turnpikes.

Delaware County historian Chris Flook delves deep into local historical archives to reveal dozens of uncanny encounters, ghostly pranks, and strange paranormal phenomena of the Magic City.