Climbing Your Hoosier Family Tree March 2001 Volume 2, #3

Welcome to the lucky folks researching Indiana resources! In this issue, you'll find more ideas on how to find those hard-to-find ancestors, plus more info to make your family members more than just a name and a few dates in your tree. Make sure the printer has plenty of paper---let's get started. :-)

When in Indiana.... Have you seen the tree growing out of the Greensburg courthouse roof? No kidding, a tree! To check out Greensburg online(and see a picture of the courthouse that it's known for), please go to http://www.treecity.com .

This month's notable Hoosier... Does the name Gus Grissom mean anything to you? Grissom Air Force Base in Indiana? How about NASA's Mercury 7 and Gemini Missions? Find out about one of Indiana's own, Virgil "Gus" Grissom, born April 3, 1926 Mitchell Indiana, and died Jan. 27th, 1967 in a grim explosion. Gus was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery; please go to http://www.astronauts.org/astronauts/grissom.htm and read about his service to the country in the military and in the space program.

Are you researching an ancestor from Indiana who was blind or deaf as a child? If that's the case, the Indiana Deaf School or the Indiana School for Blind would be good places to check out. To get started, each has a website... http://isb.butler.edu/bwfp.htm will tell you about the school for the blind that was established in 1847; http://www.deafhoosiers.com/isd will tell you about the history of the deaf school that was founded in 1843 as the Willard School and renamed the following year to the name it uses today. Both schools have served a vital need for quality education for those with visual or hearing deficits. (I remember my high school competed with the girls teams from Deaf School in both volleyball and basketball.)

While going thru the old family Bible or other precious family mementos, was there anything about your relative being active in The Grange? If you come from "city folk", you might not even know what or who a "Grange" is...I had to do some reading myself. (Just because there's a lot of farmers in my family tree doesn't mean I knew anything about this organization!) The more official name of the group is Order of Patrons of Husbandry- this group was an early advocate for the farmers. To learn more about the history of The Grange, please visit http://www.geocities.com/patronsplace .

Just in case you missed it in the newspapers or any genealogy mailing lists... Ellis Island records are now available online! To see if your relatives came to the US via Ellis Island, please take a look at http://www.genealogy.com/genealogy/ellisinfo.html to get started. Good luck!

"Climbing Your Hoosier Family Tree" © 2000-2001