Category Archives: Genealogy

Introducing Footnote!

Have you tried our newest reference and genealogy database?  Footnote is a rich resource of digitized historical documents gleaned from the collections of the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and other institutions. Are you writing a paper on the … Continue reading

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Revolutionary Resources

What with the thirteen American Colonies and their territories being mostly east of the Appalachian mountains in the late 1700s,  it should come as little surprise that no Iowa soldiers fought in the Revolutionary War.  But that doesn’t mean that our ancestors didn’t … Continue reading

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Yearbooks: Embarrassing or Awesome?

The Davenport Community School System has three high schools.  The original Davenport High School took up residence in its current Main Street campus in 1904.  It was renamed Central High School after West High was built on West Locust in … Continue reading

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Beginning Genealogy Workshop!

Genealogy is very popular on TV this month. NBC is offering Who Do You Think You Are?, which features celebrities researching their family history and their family’s connections to historical events.   And  PBS just wrapped up its four-episode run of Faces … Continue reading

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Defective, Dependant, and Delinquent

AncestryLibrary, the library version of the popular subscription database Ancestry.com, posts new resources almost daily. On February 7, 2010 one of the special supplemental census schedules for 1880 was posted – the Defective, Dependent and Delinquent Classes. One of the … Continue reading

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More Tales of the Census: Special Schedules

Population was not the only information the United States government was interested in collecting during the decennial federal censuses. Non-population questions were equally important – and for we historians equally interesting! Over the years, these censuses included mortality, social statistics … Continue reading

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Tales of the Census

Soon, we will all be part of history. How, you wonder?  In April of 2010, the new decennial United States Federal Census will be arriving in our mailboxes. The government will be mailing the questionnaire, as it is still not … Continue reading

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Magazines, Journals and Newsletters

The Special Collections Center is home to a great number of genealogical magazines, journals and newsletters. There are magazines for a variety of different groups: American/Schleswig-Holstein Heritage Society Newsletter British Connections German Connection Heritage Review (Germans from Russia) Mayflower Descendant … Continue reading

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Just Shelved: Germans, Canadians, and Iowans–Oh, My!

We are now the proud owners of volume 25 and 26 of Kevin M. Hansen’s Map Guide to German Parish Registers.  These volumes primarily contain information on the Lutheran and Catholic parishes of the Kingdom of Saxony, but other churches are also … Continue reading

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Those Vital, Vital Records

To a genealogist, vital records are the mainstay of his or her research, the triumvirate of documentation.  Birth, marriage, and death records pin down a life from start to finish and connect an unbroken (one hopes) line from one generation … Continue reading

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