Sources of Information

If you're searching for more information on any of the families described in these pages, you may find the following links helpful...

• ARIZONA BIRTH AND DEATH RECORDS - An index of births recorded 75 or more years ago, and deaths recorded 50 or more years ago, by the State of Arizona, made available by the Mesa Family History Center.
• CALIFORNIA BIRTH RECORDS, 1905-1995 - A record of births recorded in California since 1905 by The California Department of Health Services, at site maintained by ancestry.com.
• CALIFORNIA DEATH RECORDS - A record of deaths recorded in California 1940-1997 by The California Department of Health Services. Remember that the data in this index has been transcribed from the original records which may or may not have been correct, or legible.
• CIVIL WAR SOLDIERS & SAILORS SYSTEM - This site, maintained by the National Park Service, is an excellent source of information on Civil War veterans from both North and South. The site is updated regularly. We've found information on several of our ancestors and their regiments here.
• ILLINOIS STATE ARCHIVES DATABASES - Information on Illinois marriages, deaths and veterans as far back as 1763.
• INDIANA BIOGRAPHIES - Biographies of many of the pioneers who settled Indiana in the early 19th Century, taken from county histories.
• INDIANA MARRIAGE INDEX - An index of all Indiana marriages through 1850. The Indiana library which maintains the data base keeps changing its address; try googling Indiana "Marriages through 1850" if the link is broken.
• THE INMAN COMPENDIUM - An international resource location for genealogists researching the Inman/Inmon family.
• MENNONITE OBITUARIES - An archive of obituaries which appeared in several Mennonite publications from 1864 on.
• MIAMI COUNTY OHIO MARRIAGE INDEX 1807-1865 - Just what it says! Another wonderful service provided by the same people who put together the MVGI (see next).
• MIAMI VALLEY GENEALOGY INDEX - A data base to an index of census information and birth, death, marriage and other information in a twelve county area of Western Ohio.
• ONLINE OHIO DEATH RECORDS & INDEXES - Data bases containing information on Ohio obituaries, burials and death records.
• ROOTSWEB DEATH RECORDS - Death records from all over the U.S.A., transcribed by RootsWeb volunteers. This project is just getting started. We've noticed extensive records from Monroe county, IN, but not for other areas of interest.
• U. S. GENWEB - The home page of a network of volunteer genealogical sites. From here, you can visit any state and county in the U. S. A. to do your research.
• YODER FAMILY ARCHIVES - A lot of information on this very common Amish-Mennonite surname, plus good background information on "Pennsylvania Dutch" history.

Please be aware that a site which is described as an index is just that - an index to actual records or sources of data which exist elsewhere.

The following books are also excellent resources...

IRVINS, DOAKS, LOGANS AND McCAMPBELLS OF KENTUCKY AND VIRGINIA, privately published by Sarah Margaret (Logan) Morris about 1915. My grandmother, Alice (Seward) Walker, gave me this book, in which she made a number of pencilled notations correcting Mrs. Morris' errors. It contains a great deal of information on grandmother's Irvin and Seward ancestors, as well as other lines, from the time of their arrival in America down to the early 20th century. The entire book has been scanned and is now available in this family album.

AMISH AND AMISH MENNONITE GENEALOGIES, Hugh E. Gingerich and Rachel W. Kreider, published 1986 by Pequea Publishers, Gordonsville, PA. This monumental and authoritative tome traces many of the "Pennsylvania Dutch" lines from their arrival in the New World in the middle of the 18th Century down to the mid-19th Century. Its 858 pages are indexed to make it possible to locate individuals more or less easily. It traces my line as far down as my great grandparents, Samuel and Elizabeth (Wilhelm) Plank, who were born in 1850 and 1852 respectively. Rachel Kreider and her work were the subject of a May 2004 article in the Goshen News.

AAMG was reprinted in 2003. In March 2007, Masthof Press of Morgantown, PA, announced the availability of a "revised and updated" second edition, 955 pages long. According to the publisher:

This volume contains all known Amish immigrants living in the United States with some information provided on their European roots. Families are carried through the generations up to 1850, and ends when couples are married in the mid-1850s. Corrections will be printed in future issues of Mennonite Family History, including new information on later families for a future second volume.

Much of the information in AAMG was once available in a data base at the Swiss Anabaptist Genealogical Association (SAGA) web site. However, we were unable to locate that data base in May 2016.

OUR HUDSON FAMILY HISTORY: fourteen generations of the family of Abraham Hudson (1750-1829) of Morristown, New Jersey, Sergeant in the American Revolution, compiled by H. Ezra Eberhardt & Robert M. Hudson, 2 volumes published 1989 by Gateway Press, Inc. Although the primary focus is the Hudson family, there are two excellent chapters featuring my great-great-grandfather's siblings, Isaac Carey and Sarah (Carey) Hudson. The books are well-researched and heavily annotated and are excellent sources of information on our families' Ohio and New Jersey roots.

WESTWARD, HO! Genealogy of Scott, Davis, Perry, and Kuhns, by Nancy Scott. I bought this excellent book from Nancy in 2003. It contains 270 pages, including indices. If you're descended from the Perrys of Venango county, PA, the book will definitely interest you. Nancy informs us the book sold out its first edition, but is available at the following libraries:

• Allen County Library, Fort Wayne, IN
• The LDS Church's Family History Library, Salt Lake City, on microfiche #6007676.¹
• Lexington Genealogical Society, Lexington, IL
• DAR Library, Washington, DC

WINANS FAMILY, Genealogy and History of Descendants of John Winans and Susanna Melyn, compiled in 1983 by Orin Clifford Winans, Paris, Illinois, and published in 1993 by his daughter, Harriet Winans Arland. Both are now deceased. I acquired my copy from Mrs. Arland's daughter Susan Arland. The book contains more than 700 pages of information on many Winans descendants. Unfortunately, it has no index, which makes it somewhat difficult to use. While there is extensive information on John Winans and other early ancestors, it only goes as far down my own line as my great-great-grandmother, about whom it says merely "Hannah Winans. Married ? Carey. Issue and further information unknown."

WINANS FAMILY GENEALOGY, by Alice Winans Egy Woolley, 1987. This book has a lot more information than O. C. Winans' book on the lines that interest us, e.g. it traces John Winans' descendants all the way down through my great grandfather, David Clark Carey (1838-1921). It is indexed, which makes it fairly easy to locate people in it. It is out of print, but is available from the LDS Family History Library on microfiche #6088122.¹ I acquired a copy from another researcher in Feb 2007. The information on persons listed in this book has been collected into a web site in GED2HTML format by a fellow Winans researcher. I have transcribed many pages of this book and made them available in this family album. (See list of available pages.)

County histories. From 1880 to 1920, nearly every county across the United States was the subject of one or more histories or Who's Who-type publications. These were produced by many different firms, and probably were sold mostly to the residents of each county. They may also have been sold to public libraries in other areas. I found hundreds of such publications in the Los Angeles Public Library's big downtown branch. Quite a few of our ancestors were written up in a county history. I have yet to read an uncomplimentary biography, so have drawn the conclusion that most of the information in the biographies was supplied by the subjects themselves. Neverthess, they are wonderful sources of information. Be sure to read County History Books: Can We Trust Them? for more on this subject.

A visitor to our site, Mary Wilson, who is a tutor for Northern Mentors, and her young student, Amanda, recommended this article as a good source of general information on genealogy...

Another visitor, Steve Anastasiadis, wrote to us about the publication of which he is the founder:

Steve also told us about a wonderful resource for teaching children about family history, saying "It looks very interesting, because with this kind of advice parents can help their children connect with previous generations. It also touches on autistic children":

New in November 2017:

Here's another interesting site, which is a blog maintained by Mark Orwig. If you are just "getting started with genealogy", you will definitely find it of value...

Did your ancestors enter our country through Ellis Island? Here is a source of a lot of information which might be of interest, which was called to our attention by Steve Neale, whose son Garrett discovered it while working on a genealogy project at school:

PAF? At this point, you used to see a few lines lauding the LDS (Mormon) Church's Personal Ancestral File program, which we've been using for more than a quarter century. But, in July 2013, the LDS' FamilySearch announced that it was no longer making PAF available. FYI, I still use the DOS version (3.01m) of PAF, to keep track of my family members' names, dates and places, and don't plan to change.

We'll be happy to provide files containing all the vital stats on the families we're researching to anybody who is interested. These files will be in the "Gedcom" format, which is recognizable to most genealogy programs on the market. If you're interested in sending us, or in receiving, family history data, please let us know.