It was such a productive weekend! I even had the time to re-arrange my office a bit and still get some other stuff done. My husband, Mr. Brown Eye's loves to research in the census and he does a bang up job typing them in as well. I enjoy it too, just not as much as he does. So he did lots of census work over the weekend.
Back between Christmas & New Year's we spent some time down in Montgomery County, Ohio - where most of my mom's family came from. She was born there so there are still cousins in the area. Anyway one of the places where I had some digging to do was the Brethren Heritage Center in Brookville, Ohio. A fabulous resource for all things Brethren. While there I was told about the Brethren Digital Archives which recently came on line.
I really had not had the time to spend any serious time browsing or searching the site until Sunday, but let me tell you- I was so glad I did! The gold mines I found there!
The link I gave you above is a "masterlink" sort of thing. In my case I was looking for the main "newspaper" for the Brethren, which is the Gospel Messenger. So in the alphabetical line up I clicked on the G. It opened up the flood gates of obituaries for me! There in digital splendor was a major portion of the Gospel Messenger in its entirety! I don't know that it could be any better than it is.
There are some years missing but for what is available the missing is such a small portion, I can live with it. I'll just have to make a trip back to Brookville to get the ones I can't find on line.
If you even think you might have ties to the Brethren faith with your ancestors its worth a shot to look here. The Messenger covers all states where there are Brethren congregations and its one stop shopping, all in one informative newspaper. I've even found some pictures.
If you've not been fortunate enough to locate any Brethren obits, this might be the time to try. The obits I've found are full of birth, death and marriage dates & places. Parents are named, maiden names are given. The number of children born to the couple are listed, but as a rule children are not named unless still living with the parents.
Some of the surnames I have that are in the Brethren Church are Early, Eby, Kreitzer, Boomershine, Wampler, Garber and quite a few more! My states of interest for the Brethren are Virginia, Ohio, Missouri and Indiana.
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