These Tuesday Tips items below are all related to prior posts in my series Researching Photographers Working in the South, but are useful for any historic research you may be doing. Although not all this information is brand new, it’s a good idea to become familiar with it if it is new to you. If you are anything like I am, you will at least add it to your Searches To Do List.

This Marietta GA Book Store Advertisement ran in the Marietta Journal during July & Aug. 1906

The group of Georgia 1890 Property Tax Digests is scanned and indexed and on ancestry.com and located within the group of 1793-1892 property records. Georgia genealogist extraordinaire Ken Thomas shared this fact with me some time ago, but I failed to take a good look at it until the Savannah vital records were also added to ancestry. I shared details on that fact in a prior Tuesday Tips post at http://wp.me/p3wX4F-a2

This is another good substitute for Georgia’s 1890 census which was lost due to a 1921 fire at the U.S. Commerce Department. All 135 state counties that existed in 1890 are searchable on Ancestry (with the exception of Lincoln, Pike, and Walker Counties). This index is free to use at both the Georgia and National Archives. The index will eventually be added to the Georgia Archives’ Virtual Vault.

This list will not tell you family members’ names, but it will tell you who in the family paid tax that year, as well as any acreage owned. If tax was paid for an estate, or paid for a minor, you will know the name of who was in charge of that estate or minor. The list includes Georgia’s African American citizens. http://tinyurl.com/l8tzeaw

I have found, when doing a cursory search in this group of records, that in 1885 (at least), “Daguerreian or other artist” is a separate column which will be checked for some persons. So much more fun for me to have within these records!

Historian and genealogist Kenneth R. Marks, via his blog The Ancestor Hunt, has posted an “African-American Online Historical Newspapers Summary” with links to free newspapers from all over the country. http://tinyurl.com/m6py7gn

In this list of newspapers by state, under Georgia, instead of the link given for the Colored Tribune, try this one: http://tinyurl.com/moopzjx

ArchiveGrid has been updated, basic features of it have not changed, but it has been redesigned. They have made more access points available, added a map to help with finding your way, and changed the layout.  Sample it here http://beta.worldcat.org/archivegrid/

Below is the link for the result for the search term “georgia photographers” – it puts everything nicely in one place (with the few, expected. false hits). http://tinyurl.com/lpghq4n

Thanks are due to the Weekly Genealogist Newsletter I receive from American Ancestors (http://tinyurl.com/kv2xyqk New England Historic Genealogical Society ) for this useful information. There is a searchable obituary index located on the Huntsville-Madison County Public Library website http://hmcpl.org/hhr  with over 70,000 records from 33 newspapers (1819 through 1998). The HMCPL Obituary Index is a project of the Library’s Heritage Room; a direct link to the search page is http://obits.hmcpl.org/

Huntsville, Alabama is located in the northeast quadrant of the state. The Huntsville History Collection is a cooperative project published with the assistance of the Huntsville-Madison County Public Library. It includes visual materials (a postcard collection, an architectural collection, a historic homes photo collection, maps), articles by local historians, biographical sketches, and oral history recordings. http://tinyurl.com/7845q8g

Advertisement for the X-L Studio, 1917, run by J. J. Wirz, “photography and taxidermy”;  Augusta GA Business Directory 

GenealogyInTime Magazine has a list of Occupation abbreviations, First Name abbreviations, and City Directory abbreviations – all useful to consider as you do your research. Occasionally you will come across a word that “just doesn’t make sense,” but it may be an abbreviation and if so, it probably does make sense. http://tinyurl.com/mo6jtvy

Thanks go to Caroline Pointer of 4YourFamilyStory.com  who reminded me of The Atlas of Historical County Boundaries found on the Newberry Library (Chicago IL) site.

For every state, the historical boundaries, names, organization, attachments of every county, extinct county, and unsuccessful county proposal is covered.  This is such good information to use to track a photographer’s travels, and not only to track movements of itinerants, but of those peripatetic “resident” photographers, too. http://publications.newberry.org/ahcbp/index.html

The area of the Georgia-Alabama Chattahoochee Trace; Courtesy Historic Chattahoochee Commission

Georgia’s county names and boundaries changed over time. If you are searching for information on a person, and not finding anything, it is quite possible you are looking in the wrong place!

Remember to consider a nearby state in your searches. For Georgia, those states are Alabama to the west, South Carolina to the east, Florida to the south, and Tennessee and North Carolina to the north. Check records for another state’s counties nearest the location of your Georgia person, just in case.

If you haven’t looked at the website for the Georgia Archives since they were placed under the umbrella of the University System of Georgia, do so now!  I think it a vast improvement – the layout makes more sense to me now. http://www.georgiaarchives.org/

I know their website is still in transition, but the parts I have checked work well (other than “Receive Updates”).  I look forward to my visit there later this week, my first since they became a part of the University System.  I’ll let you know about that visit and what I will be doing there, in a later post. Meanwhile, I wish you happy hunting and even happier gathering!

© E. Lee Eltzroth and Hunting & Gathering, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without  written permission from this blog’s author is prohibited. The piece can be re-blogged, and excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to E. Lee Eltzroth and Hunting & Gathering, with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.