Category Archives: Wyoming

Research in the Equality State: Online Resources

Wyoming, ,

Every state is going to have a similar list of resources available online, so you can take what I share here and search for something similar in another state your are researching in. Most states will have a state archive and/or library. There may be a statewide digitizing project. You might find several universities that have archival collections. (In the case of Wyoming, there is only one, the University of Wyoming in Laramie.) There may be specialized museums around the state that have archival and research collections. And when I say “online,” I mean they have a web presence which may only be a catalog and you might need to contact them for copies or to find a research proxy.

These are some of the important collections of online resources in Wyoming:

  • Wyoming State Archives, located in Cheyenne, their online collection contains some county records, newspapers, maps, photos, and so much more.
  • American Heritage Center, located at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, their online collection consists of research guides and catalogs of their manuscript and rare book collection.
  • Wyoming State Historical Society‘s website is full of historical facts about the state including an encyclopedia, oral histories, field trip information, a blog, special topics, and more.
  • State or county-level genealogical societies are generally available. Wyoming does not have a state society, but there are several local societies such as the Cheyenne Genealogical & Historical Society.
  • Local public libraries often have a local history section, such as the Albany County Public Library in Laramie.

There are a lot of ho-to and link websites that we use everyday and are useful for finding Wyoming information such as:

This is the end of my series on Wyoming, for now. I did a webinar for Legacy Family Tree Webinars (subscription required to watch) on this topic back in 2019. So if you’d like to hear more details, you might head over there and give it a watch (this is an affiliate link).

Next week we will start something new. “See” you then!

Research in the Equality State: Online Card Catalogs

Genealogy Program, Wyoming,

If you haven’t used the card catalog feature on a few of the main genealogical sites we all might use every day, let me take this moment in Wyoming research to demonstrate it. Main of the big genealogy sites have this feature but I have found that over the years, not many know about it or use it. I’ll show both Ancestry and FamilySearch’s card catalogs today, but be on the lookout for a similar feature on other sites.

At Ancestry, you can find the Card Catalog under the Search Tab:

Ancestry’s Card Catalog

Once your in the card catalog, you can filter your results by using the options on the left. For this example, I have filtered by “USA” and “Wyoming:

You can further filter by the county, record category etc. This will help you see more quickly databases, record sets, and sources that Ancestry has for Wyoming specifically.

Similarly, at FamilySearch, you can also search the “Catalog.” From the home screen, it can be found under the Search tab:

FamilySearch’s Catalog

From this screen, you will see options to search by Place, Surnames, Titles, Author, Subject, and Keywords. Most of the time, I find I use the Place search.

FamilySearch’s Catalog

You can start your search broadly by typing in “Wyoming”:

FamilySearch’s Catalog

From there you can see all of the options that are at the state level, or you can click on “Places within United States, Wyoming” and see a list of counties:

FamilySearch’s Catalog – Wyoming
FamilySearch’s Catalog – Wyoming Counties List

Once you’ve picked a county, you can see what records they have for Albany County land records:

FamilySearch – Albany County Land Records in the Catalog

From there, it is almost like the “old days” of scrolling through microfilm, except you are at home. (Of course, there are some digitized films that must be looked at while at a Family History Center or Affiliate library due to contract restrictions.)

FamilySearch Catalog Entry for Deeds
FamilySearch Deed Index for Albany County

So, if I want to look up any deeds for Susan Baily, I can start “scrolling” or clicking and find the B entries in this index and then find the deed.

Using the card catalog allows me to be more thorough and intentional with my research. If you are just using the global search function from the front page of any of these large genealogical sites, you are probably missing a lot of records. Give the card catalog a look.

Research in the Equality State: Published Sources

Wyoming, ,

Wyoming has a fair number of books published about it that are genealogically useful and historically interesting. Like other states, you will find county and regional histories. Your main repositories for published sources about Wyoming are:

When examining county histories, don’t just look at the biographical sketches. Also examine the topical sections for important background.

Table of contents for A Sketch of the History of Wyoming by Isaac A. Chapman

You can also find published books at Ancestry. In the card catalog, use ‘Wyoming’ as the title and then use the filters on the left.

Using these filters, you can find a digital copy of History of Natrona County, Wyoming.

Examine these resources for books about the history and people of the county you are researching.

Next, we will examine some map collections for Wyoming.

Research in the Equality State: Newspapers

Wyoming,

Newspapers are one of my absolute favorite sources when it comes to genealogy. Nothing gives you a better spotlight into a community and or a person’s life quite like a newspaper does. Wyoming had a fair number of newspapers throughout the state over time, and there are a number of excellent resources for finding them.

Of course you are going to want to examine some of the usual sites, such as Newspapers.com, NewspaperArchive, and GenealogyBank. It is just good practice to see what newspaper coverage those sites have for the area you are researching. Also, check with Chronicling America from the Library of Congress, which currently has five digitized newspapers available for Wyoming:

Chronicling America catalog of digitized newspapers for Wyoming.

However, the best resource for digitized newspapers from Wyoming is the Wyoming Digital Newspapers Collection. This website is provided by the University of Wyoming and the Wyoming State Archives and contains newspapers back to 1849 and over 1.1 million pages of digitized content. We are going to conduct a search for our female homesteader Susan Baily:

We found 72 items for the phrase Susan Baily.

Our search for Susan Baily, without any other filters, returned 72 hits. As you can see, you can filter your search by exact phrase, date, county, city, and title. The first result is an article about a dance that was held in Centennial, Wyoming.

From the Wyoming Digital Newspaper Collection.

Digging a little further, we find an article about Susan’s sister, Philena Baily marring Willie Conners.

From the Laramie Republican, 16 March 1910

The state newspaper site is fantastic, and full of wonderful Wyoming newspapers. Have fun exploring!

Research in the Equality State: Wyoming Vital Records

Wyoming, , ,

In Wyoming, statewide vital registration was required starting in July 1909. Depending on the age of the records your are looking for, there are a couple of locations you might look for records.

  • For birth records under 100 years old and death records under 50 years old, they can be obtained at the Wyoming Department of Health. Their website indicates that birth records may be obtained by the “registrant if 18 years of age, either parent named on the certificate, lawyer representing the registrant or parent(s), or legal guardian with Court Ordered Guardianship papers.” As for death records, you must be an immediate family member, named on the certificate, a bank, a lawyer, or otherwise need to show proof of your relationship to the decedent. Marriage and Divorce records are also on file since May 1941. Prior to that, you will need to check at the county level.
  • For births older than 100 years and deaths older than 50 years you will find the records at the Wyoming State Archives. Of course, this is only back to July 1909. Prior to that, if a record was kept you might find it at the county level.
Wyoming State Archives Death Certificate Database
You request a copy from the State Archives by using the Contact Form.
My husband’s great-uncle’s death certificate from Wyoming.

And even though we didn’t request it, the Wyoming State Archives also sent his obituary! And all of it was completely free!

Obituary for George F. Furbeck from Sheridan Press, 12 November 1953, p. 2.

Of course, you will want to examine the FamilySearch catalog for the county in Wyoming that is of interest to you. Here is the catalog for Albany County marriage records:

And here is the marriage certificate for Philena Bailey, one of the sisters of Susan Bailey, our homesteader from Centennial, Wyoming from the previous blog post:

Be sure to check the county websites as well. You never know what you might find. This is the website for Laramie County (the county where Cheyenne is located, not Laramie, which is in Albany County). They have digitized their handwritten marriage index for the years prior to 1985.

A sample index page from Laramie County’s marriage index.

There are some other useful sites when looking for vital records in Wyoming beyond those listed above:

Next up, one of my favorite record sets, newspapers!

Research in the Equality State: Land

Wyoming, ,

Wyoming is a big state, with big counties. The state only has 23 counties, and they are all fairly large in size.

Map from U.S. Census Bureau, 2000.

When we moved to Wyoming in 1988, we lived in Big Horn County, right up near the Montana border, in a little town called Cowley. When I went off to attend the University of Wyoming, we lived in Laramie, which is in Albany county, not Laramie County. My husband was born in Cheyenne, which IS in Laramie County… confusing, I know.

The land in Wyoming was part of the Public Land system. This was land, once obtained by the federal government was then sold by cash sale or given to settlers through various programs such as the Homestead Act. Once the land was distributed by the federal government it became the property of the individual. You can find the first disposition of the land at the Bureau of Land Management’s General Land Office website.

When you search for documents at the BLM website, you can search by the “authority” or the act by which the land was distributed.

BLM Website with a zoom in on the Authorities by which land was distributed with Homestead highlighted.

There was a female homesteader in Albany County named Susan Baily. She obtained 160 acres in two sections.

BLM website entry for Susan L. Baily in Albany County.
BLM website entry for Susan L. Baily in Albany County showing the map.

There is a great site called HistoryGeo (requires subscription) that has a “First Landowners Project” where they have pulled all of the individuals listed in the BLM database and placed them on maps beside each other. This allows you to see the neighbors, at least at the time of obtaining the land from the federal government. Looking for Susan Baily in this project showed me that several members of the Baily family obtained land near each other in Albany County.

HistoryGeo, Baily Family Entries
HistoryGeo, Baily Family Entries, Jason D. Baily is Susan’s father.

Homestead records for ten states have been digitized and are available on Ancestry: Alaska, Arizona, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Utah, and Wyoming. At that database, I was able to locate Jason Bailey’s homestead packet.

Homestead Packet at Ancestry for Jason D. Baily

In those homestead packets you often find genealogically useful information such as “I am a Native born citizen of the United States over the age of twenty one year and the head of a family consisting of wife and three children.” And that the land “is grazing and hay land, of timber, a few trees.”

Homestead Packet at Ancestry for Jason D. Baily

Once the land is obtained by the individual, and then later sold, those transactions are handled by the counties. Many of their records have been microfilmed by FamilySearch. Or contact the county to obtain records.

I’ve created an Ancestry Family Tree for Susan Baily as I work on her project. You can view it here.

Research in the Equality State: Migration and Transportation

Wyoming, , ,

Wyoming may be largely made up of wide-open spaces, but there are several important migration routes and transportation events. I’m going to cover five migration routes:

  • Bozeman Trail – connected the gold rush areas of Montana to the Oregon Trail
  • Oregon Trail – from western Missouri into the Rockies and on to Oregon City
  • California Trail – from western Missouri across the Rockies into the California Gold Fields
  • Mormon Trail – from Nauvoo, Illinois to Nebraska and on to Salt Lake City and beyond to California
  • Chisholm Trail – branch that ended in Cheyenne and joined the Oregon, Mormon, or California Trails

Rivers served as migration and settlement points. The North Platte River and the Sweetwater, a long tributary of the North Platte, are part of the Mississippi river system and the water eventually reaches the Gulf of Mexico. These two rivers are along the Oregon, California, and Mormon trails. They offered important water for explorers and settlers. Wyoming is a very dry state (I could never seem to drink enough water!) It was imperative for explorers and settlers to stay near water sources.

Image by “Shannon1” permission by Creative Commons license (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:North_Platte_basin_map.png : viewed Aug 2021).

The railroad played an important role in the expansion and settlement of the state of Wyoming. The Union Pacific Railroad was vital in that it financed town-building across the state. The railroad fostered economic growth not only for itself but also for the state of Wyoming. It helped move livestock out, and other goods in to the state. When coal was discovered in southwest corner of the state, it powered the railroad while the railroad also moved coal out of the state to sell to other regions and consumers.

Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act, 1 July 1862. This act created the Union Pacific (UP), and subsidized the UP and the Central Pacific by granting 10-square mile sections of land for each mile of track laid. In 1864, the second Pacific Railway Act doubled the land grant to 20 square miles and also gave mineral rights to the railroad. The sales of this land then paid for the building of the railroad. The pounding of the Golden Spike on 10 May 1869 at Promontory Summit, Utah, connected the railroad from the Atlantic to the Pacific. This opened trade and transportation to and from farther locations. This made Wyoming much more accessible for settlement. Transportation by train was more preferable to wagon trains.

The ceremony for the driving of the golden spike at Promontory Summit, Utah on May 10, 1869; completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad. At center left, Samuel S. Montague, Central Pacific Railroad, shakes hands with Grenville M. Dodge, Union Pacific Railroad (center right). By Andrew J. Russell – Yale University Libraries, Public Domain.

Next we will look at land in Wyoming. There’s plenty of it… mostly filled with sheep and sagebrush.

Research in the Equality State: Background & History

Wyoming, ,

I’m going to start a new series with this post, about researching in one of my favorite states: Wyoming. We moved to Wyoming from Ohio when I was 14. I went to high school and college there. I met my husband there. He was born there. And now, my daughter is about to start attending the University of Wyoming this semester. So, Wyoming is a special place for me and my family. I also created a locality guide for the state (I don’t recommend doing a guide for an entire state, but that’s another story.)

Wyoming is a state with a lot of firsts for women, giving it the title “The Equality State”:

  • Esther Hobart Morris – first female Justice of the Peace, served in South Pass City, Feb. 1870
  • Mrs. Louisa Swain, first woman to vote in the nation in Laramie, 1870
  • Estelle Reel became the first woman elected to a state office, 1894
  • Mrs. Nellie Tayloe Ross, first elected female governor in the United States, 1924
Esther Hobart Morris, first female Justice of the Peace, Library of Congress image in the Public Domain.

Most of the Wyoming’s land was acquired by the US through the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Most of the southern portion of modern-day Wyoming was claimed by Spain and Mexico until the 1830s but there was no real presence by them in the area at that time. The Oregon Territory claimed a western portion. There was also a little bit that was part of Texas.

“The Territorial Acquisitions,” The National Atlas of the United States, digital image (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Territorial_Acquisitions.png)

The first known explorer to Wyoming was John Colter in 1807. Later, he was a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. He first wrote about the geological features in what is now Yellowstone National Park. In 1812, South Pass was discovered by a party of men returning from Astoria, Oregon. This important route would later be used by the Oregon Trail, the Union Pacific Railroad, and eventually become Interstate 80 that runs along the south part of Wyoming from east to west.

When traveling from my home in Colorado to Salt Lake City to visit the Family History Library, I drive across I-80. There is a lot of flat nothing much out there. I often find myself wondering about those first explorers and what they must have thought about that landscape as they traveled across it. By car it takes me about 7 hours to get to Salt Lake City. It would have taken many days by horse, wagon, or walking. Plenty of time to think about life while crossing the state!

We will explore important migration and transportation routes next week.