Historical and Genealogical database for May

From Howard, our Local History Online database supervisor:

May saw the completion of long-term projects, the beginning of new projects, and a return to suspended projects. In all, 2,696 records were added in 31 record series.

Mary Margaret Jones completed the retrospective indexing of News-Gazette obituaries from the period 1920-1935. More than 11,000 obituaries and death notices were added due to her painstaking work. Mary Margaret's new project involves the retrospective indexing of obituaries and death notices printed in the Champaign Daily Gazette and Champaign Daily News for the period 1898-1920. She will also be looking for articles and other news items mentioning the construction and remodeling of buildings in Champaign, Urbana, and the surrounding communities in Champaign County. Having such references added to the HGI database will be a tremendous aid to those interested in the architectural history of the area.

Ray and Nancy Sanden are nearing completion of the indexing of the University of Illinois Illio yearbooks, having this month indexed 704 pages that contained Champaign County people. While Ray will bring this project to a close in June, Nancy will begin indexing the second volume of the Archives' four-volume set of Champaign County Sheriff's Department County Jail prisoners' records. The first volume, covering the period 1923 through early 1936, has been input; Nancy work will begin with records from mid-1936, potentially ending some 29,000 records later with records from the mid 1950s!

Two building-related series were added to the database this month. One, consisting of 76 records, is an inventory of downtown Urbana business spaces done by the Urbana Association of Commerce in 1967. The other consists of historic building inventories of Champaign, Urbana, and significant rural buildings done by students in a University of Illinois Urban Planning class in the early 1980s. The original documents in these series have also been scanned and links made to them in the individual indexing records.

Finally, Archives personnel have returned to two sizable projects with the hope of providing complete indexing to two important Champaign County record series in the HGI. In the Death Certificates series (1878-1922), two gaps are being closed, one for late 1912 through 1915 and the other for 1919-1921. In the Register of Births series (1878-1918), a seven-year gap between 1889 and 1896 will be removed. Further work to complete the Register of Births series will also be undertaken, beginning with records from early 1903 through March 1918.

Historical and Genealogical database totals as of May 31, 2010:

Records 594,972

Headings 3,348,680
Names 1,753,958
Subjects 37,934
Addresses 38,912
Newspaper article titles 373,540

Digital content (jpg, pdf, audio, links to web sites) 5,132

The Champaign County Historical and Genealogical Index is available here.