Monday, January 24, 2011

February meeting: show and tell

"Show and tell" will be the theme of the La Porte County Genealogical Society's meeting 7 p.m. Tuesday, February 8, at the Swanson Center for Older Adults, 910 State Street, La Porte. Members and visitors will share genealogy-related objects, memories, or experiences in this month's program.

The scheduled December and January meetings were canceled due to bad weather. The December 2010 residency and Genealogist of the Year awards will be presented at a later meeting, as will the January 2011 auction.

The society meets at 7 pm on the second Tuesday of each month at the Swanson Center, weather permitting. The public is welcome at all meetings. For more information about the society's activities in awards, research, publication, and records preservation, visit our web site.

Also at our web site, those who believe they have La Porte County ancestors (and can prove it!) can find information on how to apply for First Families of La Porte (before December 1840), Pioneer Families (1841-1860), Settler Families (1861-1880), and Civil War Families (1861-1865). You can also read or search back issues of the society's newsletter, December 2005 through December 2009, including genealogical and historical information from members' research and abstracting work in local records, on our blog.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Indiana resources in Michigan

(Please forgive the cross-posting.)

If you had a genealogical problem in La Porte County, Indiana, the first place you'd look would be Kalamazoo, Michigan, right? No, but it should be somewhere on your list.

The Western Michigan University Archives & Regional History Collections' on-line catalog reveals two resources for "LaPorte":

* LaPorte County News Collection, 1902-1908, collection no. A1274, three reels of microfilm of the Union Mills La Porte County News from Union Mills. The Indiana State Library's excellent collection holds only one issue of this newspaper.

* Minnesota Historical Society Collection, 1834-1926, no collection number, containing papers of James Mandigo 1834-1891,with a scrapbook that at least mentions his attendance at Indiana Medical College in La Porte.

In this index as in many others, the search term "LaPorte" brings up different results from "La Porte." It's all part of our incompletely digested French heritage.