It seems like more and more local governments have been digitizing old census records lately. The genealogy hobby has grown exponentially with the unlimited access the Internet provides. It appears that historical societies, libraries, and city halls are responding to the increase in requests.

Commercial News brought this information to our attention in their article, “Newspaper columns help researchers.” The Indiana Digital Archives has many indexes to its collections that can be accessed here. The Civil War Soldiers Database has records of more than 213,000 individuals alone. One can search for an individual (or a surname, and then select an individual), and obtain information about the soldier’s age, dates and locations, his company and regiment, and any additional available information.

Another database available includes the records of thousands of Indiana National guardsmen who served from 1898 through 1940. Anyone with Hoosier ancestry will want to check this website; I did.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.