Midwest Historical & Genealogical Society

Memorial Day is a particular favorite of genealogists...a three-day holiday when our "normal" relatives join us in hanging out in cemeteries.  Because of this connection between genealogy and Memorial Day, this year the library at Midwest Historical & Genealogical Society will be open for our regular hours on Saturday, May 25, 2013.  Bring those genealogy-minded relatives down to do cemetery look-ups, check out our obituary collection, or just take advantage of our nice big tables, copier and scanner to share your research and photos.

Swedish Genealogy Workshop

Old Mill Museum, Lindsborg, KS will sponsor at Swedish Genealogy Workshop September 28 &29, 2013. Registration is required. Go to http://www.mcphersoncountyks.us/DocumentCenter/View/1552  for details.

Sumner County Historical & Genealogical Center

The Sumner County Historical and Genealogical Center will be closed after October 16, 2012 due to ongoing renovations at the Memorial Auditorium. And to also prepare for moving to our new rooms.  We hope to reopen by December 1, 2012. We will still accept research requests via email and postal mail, but it may be some time before you will receive a reply. 

Quiring Monument Purchase Orders

Midwest Historical & Genealogical Society has acquired purchase orders from Quiring Monument that includes orders for memorial stones from Wichita Monument, Marsh Monument, Quiring Monument, Creekmore & Son, Bruce Memorials (Klugman). These purchase orders cover the years 1919 through 1944, 1951 through 1973 and 1965 though 1991 and a great deal of information that could be helpful to the genealogist is found on some of these. The purchase orders from the five companies have been merged and indexed for your convenience in searching.

Midwest Historical & Genealogical Society Trip to OK City

OKC HERE WE COME — And You're Invited

We're headed for Oklahoma City on the bus! Join us for a one-day genealogical research road trip to the Oklahoma Historical Society Research Center (www.okhistory.org/research) on Monday, August 2nd. Our bus loads between 6:30 and 6:50 a.m. from Midwest's parking lot at 1203 N. Main in Wichita. We arrive back that night to the same spot between 9:30 and 10:00 p.m. The cost is $40 for members and $50 for nonmembers.

Of special interest: Book Collections of 85,000 bound books with information on all 50 states with emphasis on Oklahoma, the West, and Native American Indians; American Indian Archives with 3.5 million documents plus over 6,000 volumes including records of the Five Civilized Tribes; Photograph Collections from 1840 to present of 8 million images; Newspaper Archives with more than 4,000 titles — over 90% of all OK newspapers; 8,000 Oral Histories; Map Collections of 15,000+; the 1890 Oklahoma Territorial Census, and much more.

The Oklahoma Historical Center is a beautiful state-of-the-art facility with its comfortable genealogical library and friendly staffers, lockers to hold any of your valuables or extras you like to keep close by, a cafe to kick back and relax in for breaks and lunch, a fun gift shop for browsing and book buying, and a history museum to get lost in. This promises to be a great excursion!

Reserve your spot today and register with MHGS. The first 25 registrations received will be entered in a drawing for half-price on our next one-day trip. Registration and full payment are due no later than Saturday, July 24, so don't delay. (Please note: Meals are not included in the registration fee. The cafe will be open for lunch there and a stop will be made on the way home for dinner.) Questions? Contact Sara Jones at 316-682-5209 or e-mail at gjones63@cox.net.

Beat The Dog Days of Summer — Join Us!

Footnote Subscription

For the rest of the month of June Members of KCGS may purchase an annual member-ship in Footnote for half price. Just $39.95 is all it costs until July 1st and then the price for our members would go up to only $49.95 for one year. Regular price is $79.95 for one year.
Also for the month of June, KCGS will reap 20% of our total sales. That wouldn’t hurt either.
If you have wanted a chance to see what Footnote.com has to offer, here it is.
Here is the special personalized landing page for our members to go to to enroll. http://go.footnote.com/Kansas%20Council%20of%20Genealogical%20Societies_society/?xid=749

Did Granny Tell You There Was an Indian in Your Past?

Family History Month Seminar by Robert Winter Owl Vann, Genealogical Lecturer and Native American Storyteller with session topics: Climbing the Family Totem Pole, Geographical Migrations of Native Americans, Government Records for Indian Research and Methods of Organization and Records Management. (Sessions are intended for beginning genealogists and those just starting their Native American Research.
Active in genealogical research since 1963, Robert Winter Owl Vann has taught genealogy classes to church groups as well as adult Community Extension classes through Sam Houston State University. He is an LDS Family History Center Associate Director, a Beta tester for the new familysearch.com program, a family Church Services Missionary, and is the current President of the Walker County (AL) Genealogy Society.
Mr. Vann has national experience as a Native American Historian and Storyteller, and regularly does workshops and lectures on things Cherokee. His three-issue article on Cherokee research was published in the Valley Leaves Quarterly of the Tennessee Valley Genealogical Society.
Join Midwest Historical and Genealogical Society on Saturday, October 11, 2008 from 8:15 AM to 4:30 PM at the Eugene M. Hughes Metropolitan Complex at Wichita State University, 5015 East 29th Street N, Wichita, KS. Reservations made by September 30 will include a box lunch at no additional charge. $25 for MHGS members, $35 for non-members. For reservation contact MHGS at 316 264-3611 or by e-mail.
Funded in part by a grant from the City of Wichita.

Central Plains Region National Archives

Researchers with Kansas connections might find some interesting resources at the Central Plains Region National Archives in Kansas City. Why not put a visit in your plans while attending the NGS conference in May!

The National Archives Central Plains Region holds the retired records of federal agencies in Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota. We hold records of over 100 different government agencies dating from the 1820s to the 1990s. These agencies include the National Park Service, the Weather Bureau, the National War Labor Board, and the United States Geological Survey, among others.

Many records at the Central Plains Regional Archives are of interest to genealogists. Among them, for example, are the records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which contains information about reservations, schools, and agencies of northern woodland and plains Indians. These records document tribal economic, political, and social life of American Indians, the government's perceptions regarding them, and the American Indians' relations and opinions of the government. In addition to reports, correspondence, and other textual records, there are photographs and maps among these records.

The records of the Bureau of Land Management document land records for the states of Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska from 1840 to 1915. Among these records are homestead claim papers, abstracts of land entries, tract books, and material related to surveys of the land.

A large record group at the Central Plains Region Archives that is of interest to the genealogical community is Record Group 21, Records of the District Courts of the United States. These records include civil, criminal, equity, and habeas corpus proceedings that took place in courts in the seven-state region. Also in the records are naturalization proceedings, which include declarations of intention, petitions for naturalization, and citizenship certificate stubs. This record group also includes World War I-era enemy alien registrations from the state of Kansas.

Another record group that genealogists may find useful is the Records of the Bureau of Prisons. These contain original prison inmate files created by the U.S. Federal Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas. These records date from the first inmate incarcerated in 1895 through the 1920s. The files contain record sheets detailing inmates' crime, conviction, sentence, violations while in prison, and usually, a mug shot.

The Central Plains Regional Archives also has available to researchers over 45,000 rolls of microfilm, including the US Census from 1790-1930 as well as indexes for military records, Freedman's Bureau records, and microfilmed Indian census of the Five Civilized Tribes (Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole). The microfilm research room is designed for self-service, but volunteers are available to provide efficient service and personalized attention.

We invite you to visit the National Archives-Central Plains Region. We are located at 2312 East Bannister Road, Kansas City, MO 64131 and phone number is 816.268.8000. For email reference: kansascity.archives@nara.gov. Visit us online at: www.archives.gov/central-plains/kansas-city
"This article is reprinted from UpFront with NGS, the Online Newsletter of NGS, Volume 8 Number 3, dated 1 March 2008. by permission"

Osage County Historical Society Completes Naturalization Index

Osage County Historical Society Museum & Research Center has completed the Naturalization Index for Osage County Kansas. The index can be found under the RESOURCES heading at our website.

Copies of these microfilmed original documents are available. Email us