DRAPER MANUSCRIPTS AT OGS

Lyman Copeland Draper 1815-1891 served as Secretary of the Wisconsin Historical Society where his original manuscripts are housed. Beginning in the 1830s, he began collecting material on the Trans-Allegheny region including Ohio, Kentucky, southwestern Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and more. Many of his correspondents sent him the original 18th century documents - especially things from the Revolutionary War time period and items dealing with Native Americans. This was Draper's life work but he never got much of it published. More information may be found at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyman_Draper. The microfilm set has been available for years and it is now digitally on FamilySearch - no complete index. The Ohio Genealogical Society has just acquired a printout of the entire microfilm set, excepting Series SS David Shepherd Papers and Series TT & UU South Carolina Papers. Our recommendation is that you visit OGS, explore this vast collection of bound Draper Manuscripts, and then once you locate the pages needed with citations, visit the FamilySearch web site to get an image that you can touch up with your photo software. It takes forever to find something online with no real index. Allen County Public Library is the only other facility in the country that holds this bound set.

Newsletter Need a Fix!

Susan Zacharias will be giving a program at the Ohio Genealogical Society this Saturday, Oct. 11th at 10 AM, on Newsletter Rescue: Display, Design, and Content. If you know of anyone who works on a newsletter for any organization, this lecture will be helpful as Sue is a national award winner as a newsletter editor. Call the library 419-886-1903 or email Tom Neel - tneel@ogs.org - to leave your name for the class.

While in the OGS Library, check out the Ohio Civil War 150 Display courtesy the Ohio History Connection. This will be open to the public for viewing through November the 15th. It is in the meeting room, so you will have Civil War scenes around you as you hear about newsletter preparation!

Keep in mind that OGS is open free of charge to all during October, Family History Month - no admittance fee. Send people in our direction. New members can sign up for $25 as well during October, a $10 savings.

My last blog message told about FamilySearch posting the Ohio county death images. Unfortunately, they have redesigned their web site database listing and this one has not made it to the new listing.There are actually two database listings now to get them all. One comes up when you click on Ohio and then you have to click on the link to See All Databases to get the others to show. The old Probate death index is there but not the image database recently posted. I'm sure they will find it again in time! We are back to 27 Ohio-specific databases on FamilySearch.