Written by Karen Zach
It seems to me about every county in the US has a few special resources, something obscure or unusual. Thought I’d tell you about a couple of resources in the county where I dwell as there may be something similar in your county or area.
The best that I know of in Montgomery County, Indiana (although we have lots of goodies) are the early marriage affidavits. When I was a librarian at Crawfordsville, I wrote a grant in order to copy these thousands of pages of little tiny notes that dated back to the beginning of our county in 1823.
At one point, all of the Indiana counties had this amazing research material in their courthouses; however, due to tight space, most of these precious babies ended-up in a trash bin and destroyed.
It was lucky that we had a genealogy lover as a clerk. When ordered to purge the old records, she called us to see if we’d like the old little pieces of tiny papers that were in no order whatsoever. Well, yes we did!
The project was amazing and actually brought the staff together as we worked on organizing, copying and putting together 18 books of about 250 pages each, all indexed, of course, also a feat and well done by the staff. We would all try to outdo the others by finding the niftiest of all of the notes and post them for others to see. It was great fun and gave us something to talk and laugh about for weeks.
Notes are literally what these were – from mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, ministers dating up to about 1890. They let the clerk of the court know that it was okay for their family members to marry.
These documents were extremely important prior to the census years and in between them. Laughingly, we tried to decide just what term to call them and finally jokingly said they were pre Social Security cards, as they told who someone was.
Some of the little notes left something to be desired, yet, others were fabulous. One might rea: 23rd day of November 1837. Clerk: Mary can marry John today if it is okay by the court. Signed: Nathan Jones. Or, perhaps more detail in others: 23rd day of November 1837. My wife, Sarah and I have decided to okay the marriage of our daughter, Mary to marry John Simpson on this day. He’s a good boy! Signed: Nathan Jones. Or another might be similar to this: the 23rd day of November 1837. Please be informed that it is not okay for our daughter to marry John today. Mr. and Mrs. Nathan Jones. Certainly, for months that we copied these little tidbits, organized them into the books. We eventually packed and sent them off for binding, sending a copy to the Allen-County Public Library and one to the Indiana state library. They stored the originals in acid-free folders and boxes. We were entertained and thrilled that we had was a unique treasure. Recently we heard that the Crawfordsville District Public Library plans on scanning them all and putting them online to use so that’ll be pretty thrilling as sometimes those were the ONLY item to connect a person to an ancestor. Used ‘em many times for that purpose where people thought there was nothing left to add to their research and then bingo – our affidavits!
Likely the other item would be the Hiram Pratt diaries that are now housed in climate-controlled storage at the Crawfordsville library but they are also typed on the Montgomery County Indiana GenWeb page. Back before Facebook or even the internet, as I typed these wonderful entries, I would send them to a listserve. My group could not wait until I got home each evening from school and type another few entries to send. Then the discussions began, “Well, what did he mean by this? How do you know what Willie did?” What fun.
Not only did we learn about the little town of Waveland in the late 1800s and early 1900s and the people who lived there, but we came to know Hiram Austin Pratt (HAP as they dubbed him), his first wife who died from huge tumors in her stomach, going on the train, looking up the hill at her town and saying that she might not ever see it again! His second wife few of us liked although she wasn’t horrible, but we thought she should have made better effort to try to raise HAP and first wife, Eliza’s adopted son (I researched Little Willie as they called him and discovered his real name and how Eliza came to take him home and the group was thrilled, celebrating each new piece of information). Hiram Pratt was a Civil War soldier and active in church and GAR happenings. What a worker, selling sewing machines, newspapers, toiling on the railroad as it came through town, having a grocery, cutting hair for over 50 years and it went on beyond that. So much history about the nation and world was in the short but thorough entries. Here’s an example of one and do go to the website below if you love history as you’ll enjoy getting to know HAP and Waveland 😊
February 1870 — Wednesday, Feb 2 — $4.40 I made today. Some how or rather (sic) I had a good run of work. Done one poor job of colloring (sic) a mustache for Columbus Moore. Bought 1 sack flour 1.50 2# soda .25. Pd Mr. Milligan 4.00 for 2 months rent for Dec and Jan. 1 hair oil 75. Eliza has concluded to take 1/2 dozen bottles of Dr. Wm. Halls Balsom for the lungs. She done her ironing of cloths (sic) this forenoon. Offered to take $500 for my place here.
Pratt Diaries: http://ingenweb.org/inmontgomery/diaries/pratt,-hiram-austin.html
(click the bars on the top left and ENJOY!)
