New
Visitor Information: Welcome! You are on the path to discovering ALL available Madison County
vital records directly related to genealogy -
births, marriages, deaths and burials. The one
exception, due to a concern for privacy, is that births and marriages
only older than 100 years
old are included, and are updated annually.
The
SITE MENU to the left will lead you to an abundance
of genealogical records. The most popular
links are BIRTH RECORDS (28,500+), CEMETERIES (30,600+
burials), MARRIAGE RECORDS (13,000+), and OBITUARY INDEX
(37,300+).
Also spend time in
CENSUS RECORDS, starting with the
extremely helpful Composite
Census Index.
It is the key to transcriptions of the Federal
Census from 1850 through 1930 and the Iowa State
Census from 1849 through 1895, plus the
informative 1925 census.
Then check out all the
other links in the menu and throughout this page
to round out your family’s Madison County
history.
Here
are two other helpful hints.
- Use
the yellow SEARCH THIS SITE box in the upper right to find references to a name,
surname, place, etc. located anywhere across this
website.
- Click on MADISON COUNTY FAMILY TREE icon
in the upper left where
100,000+ individuals
are grouped in 32,000+ Madison County families.
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Daily
Updates: The County Coordinator, along
with several members of the Madison County Genealogical
Society, is working daily on obituaries, cemetery
records, marriage records, birth records, gravestone
photos, newspaper gleanings, the Madison County Family
Tree, and other research
pertaining to Madison County. If you visited this
website before and didn't find your relative's
information, we urge you to look each
time you visit here.
In the period from
October 2022 thru March 2023, here is a sample of what has been
added through daily updates:
- Obituaries - 288 new/alternates,
both recent and found from previous years
- Births - 291
births took
place in Madison County in 1922
- Marriages
- 87 marriages took place in Madison County in 1921
- Church Histories - 85
known Madison County churches established since 1846
- Cemetery Burials
- Reflecting the most recent interments
- Family Tree - Constant
growth with new leaves and whole branches
New
Data Sets and Major Additions to Ongoing Projects: Several
sets of additional information have been added to this
site over the last year along with major updates to
ongoing projects. Below is detailed
information of this work, done between April
2022 and March 2023.
1922
Madison County Births: The complete set of
Madison County births for calendar year 1922, comprised
of 291 records, have
been posted to our birth pages as of Jan 3, 2023. To
see the list of 1922 births, click here.
To see them integrated with all births, select BIRTH
RECORDS on the left. (Posted
03 Jan 2023)
Random
Birth Records: As a part of routine
maintenance of the website as well as special projects,
we may run across Madison County births not found in the
official birth records that either haven't been included
or for which additional information has been uncovered. They may come from other
county's state census records, marriage records,
obituaries, death records,
Social Security Applications or Draft Registrations.
These random records or record changes are accumulated and posted to the
website every 6 months. Birth records accumulated in the
6 months ending 31 Mar 2023 have been integrated into
our Birth records and also posted
here
as a separate
list. (Posted 30
Mar 2023).
1921
Madison County Marriages: The complete set of
Madison County marriages for calendar year 1921, comprised
of 181 records, have
been posted to our MARRIAGE
RECORDS as of September 30, 2022.
To
see the list of 1921 marriages, click
here.
To see them integrated with all marriages, select
MARRIAGE RECORDS on the left. (Posted 30 Sep
2022)
Census
Supplements: Look
for census supplements placed on the CENSUS
RECORDS page. Though not a complete list of all
those who were living here, they provide a snapshot of
specific individuals that may help you place your
family in Madison County. The first one available
is 1878
Madison County Farmers by Post Office.
(Posted
01 Jan 2023)
Madison
County Hall of Fame: This is a listing people who were either born in Madison County
and/or lived here during their formative years and went
on to achieve national significance. This is a work in
progress and more names will be added. You can access it
at the HALL OF FAME link on the left. (Posted 01 Oct
2022)
Madison
County Church Histories: Extensive work was
done to create a complete list of 85 known churches
since the settlement of Madison County, with historical
information found for all but five. The project included
determining their locations, summarizing their
histories, and digging for photos. If possible,
names of early members are included for genealogical
purposes. Each church has one or more sources for
further research. You can access the histories
at the CHURCHES in the menu to the left. (Posted
30 March 2023)
Winterset
News Obituaries:
Most of the older obituaries on line came from a
collection of clippings from the Winterset Madisonian
held by the Winterset Library. With the recent
availability of all Madison County newspapers on line, we initiated a project
in April 2022 to glean the Winterset News
(1873-1945) of obituaries not found in the Madisonian as well as
obituaries with significantly new information. The
former were posted as new obituaries and the latter were
appended to the existing obituaries.
This project was
completed on 25 Aug 2023. A total of 431 new obituaries
were posted and 907 were appended to existing
obituaries. (Posted
25 Aug 2023)
Obituary
Photos: We were fortunate to receive a collection of
1200 obituary
photos from the Ochiltree Funeral Home (now Caldwell
Parrish) in Winterset. On November 29, 2022, we completed appending
these photos to our
obituary postings which included years 1997 through
2019. (Posted 29 Nov
2022)
Gravestone
Photos: Over
30,600 gravestones in Madison County's
55 cemeteries have been photographed and posted at the Iowa Gravestones Project.
This is a continuous effort as there are new
burials, repaired gravestones, or stones placed on
existing graves. In the period 01 Oct 2022 to 31
Mar 2023, 117 gravestones have been
photographed and
posted. A list of
the new postings can be seen in
a separately compiled list
of new Gravestone Photo
postings. (Posted
31 Mar 2023)
Civil
War Gravestone Project: With
collaboration among the Madison County
IAGenWeb team and the, Madison County Genealogy Society, volunteers are
researching and procuring Veterans
Administration (VA) issued gravestones for Civil War soldiers
currently lying in unmarked graves in Madison County
cemeteries. Photographs of
the gravestones already placed can be seen here.
Veterans of other pre-WWI conflicts have now been added
to the project. (Posted
30 Mar 2023)
Enhanced
Gravestone
Information:
Volunteers are working on several improvements to the Madison
County gravestones pages within the Iowa Gravestone
Project. First, all new gravestone photos now contain
the GPS coordinates. Second, in the transcription area,
a link between the gravestone page and that person's
obituary is being added. And last, to find the actual
grave within the cemetery, the starting
direction (ex. west) and row number are being added to
each gravestone, one cemetery at a time. See a
sample here.
(Posted 30 Mar 2023)
Iowa
Veterans Cemetery:
Thanks to the ongoing generosity of a volunteer within
the IAGenWeb community, the CEMETERIES page now contains
a link to Madison County individuals buried in the Iowa
Veterans Cemetery just outside of Van Meter.
(Posted 30 Mar 2023)
Madison
County Family Tree: Our online tree holds
over 100,000 individuals who have a direct
connection to Madison County (without ancestors and
descendants who do not). Continual updates are made from
various sources, such as additions to this website,
vital records encountered in our research, and incoming
obituaries. When first generated, the tree had few
sources. For the past five years, we have been entering
sources for all new entries and as we have occasion to
work with older entries, adding sources for them as
well. (Posted 30
Mar 2023)
Current
Contributors: Maintenance and
improvement of this website would be impossible without
the continued support of volunteer contributors. They
have our deep appreciation.
- Special
thanks go to Pat Hochstetler and Shirley
Keating who have worked tirelessly
in transcribing new obituaries weekly along with older obituaries
as they are found.
- During
2022, a
variety of local genealogists, led by Pat
Hochstetler, volunteered
their time in cemeteries to gather data and
to add photos for the Iowa
Gravestones Project for Madison County. Pat
then updates both row-by-row and alphabetical
listing documents, which
are available at the Winterset Public Library.
- Colleen Peterson has put much energy into the Civil War Gravestone
Project, researching candidates, creating VA
applications, communicating with cemetery trustees,
coordinating installations, and inviting
descendants, if known.
- Kent Transier,
although retired from active County Coordinator
duties, continues to expand the website with new/additional
information in many categories or to connect information within the
website. Recent examples include the Civil War
Gravestone Project and the extensive Church History
information.
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