Relay – A Family History Blog

I’ve just finished the research on one of the descendant families of the children of John Swartz and Elizabeth Ohlweiler in early Clark County, Indiana – see the articles on my McLeland-Wieser Family blog.   This descendant couple had a large number of children, whose birth’s spanned from 1826 to 1850.  I don’t think I’ve ever run across a situation before where the types of records useful for writing genealogical biographies has so obviously changed over time.  The period between the death of John and Elizabeth’s daughter Sarah in 1878 and the death of her youngest daughter in 1925, is often called the “Rise of Newspapers” and it is very, very apparent when researching this family.  By about 1905, there are multiple extant newspapers for this small Indiana town and they are filled with social news, court dockets, probate information, land sales and political news all on a very local level.  It’s almost overwhelming.  And of course, all those newspaper snippets have to be checked, and cross checked against, vital records, court, land and probate records and so on.  It makes the lives of this generation much more visible but the work is more complicated.  And ironically, I thought it would be easier as I entered the 20th century.