Welcome to the Madison County IAGenWeb site.

Madison County is located in the south central part of Iowa. It was created in 1846 and organized in 1849 from unorganized territory (Mahaska). Madison County has many covered bridges made famous in the book The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller. It is also the home of the "Delicious" apple and the birthplace of John Wayne. The county seat is Winterset.

What's New

Daily Updates:  The County Coordinator, along with several members of the Madison County Genealogical Society are working daily on obituaries, cemetery records, marriage records, birth records, headstone photos, newspaper gleanings, the Madison County Family Tree, and other research pertaining to Madison County. This results in many daily updates of this website. If we were to list each change we have made over the past six months, you would have to plow through well over 100 pages of change documentation. However, we have elected to post complete data sets for your perusal as they are generated. See "1917 Madison County Births" and "New Birth Records Project" below to access new data sets.

If you visited this website before and didn't find your relative's information, we urge you to look again and to look each time you visit here. In the period from Oct 2017 thru Mar 2018, we have posted 702 new obituaries and added alternate obituaries to about 175 already on line. New birth records added in this period number 1300. Updating in the Madison County Family Tree resulted in 852 additional people listed.  Finally, cemetery records were updated to reflect burials within the past 6 months. Listed below are some of the highlights of What's New in the past year.

1917 Madison County Births - The complete set of Madison County births for calendar year 1917, comprised of 319 records, have been posted to our birth pages as of March 31, 2018. To see the list of 2017 births, click here. To see them integrated with all births, select "Birth Records" on the left.

Madison County Family Tree Issue: -  The Madison County Family Tree is hosted on the RootsWeb website that was taken over by Ancestry a few years ago. Because of some kind of security issue, Ancestry elected to take all of RootsWeb down in mid December 2017. Although the Family Tree availability has been restored, our ability to update it has not. A large backlog of changes to the tree are being held until we again have access. Also note that Ancestry quit indexing new uploads over a year ago so new additions and other changes do not show up if you do a tree search but can be accessed if you go to the surnames list of the individual data base.

More Madison County Newspapers Are Now On Line - In mid summer 2017, digitized versions of the Earlham Echo were put on line to supplement the already posted Winterset Newspapers. In October 2017, digitized versions of The East Peru Mail, The Independent and the Truro News have been added

Recommended Reading -  Recently added to our County History page is a link to the November 01, 1906 edition of The Winterset Madisonian which was their semi-centennial edition including an extensive history of the early years of Madison County and its people.

1916 Marriages On Line - Madison County Marriage Records for calendar year 1916 were posted as of 30 Sep 2017. The data consists of 219 new records. Click on "MARRIAGE RECORDS" on the left to access the data.

New Birth Record Project - In starting to incorporate recently released Iowa State Birth Records (ISBR) (1904-06) into our Birth List, it was discovered that Iowa Delayed Certificates of Birth (IDCB) have been released. The IDCB records cover from inception through 1939. The earliest Madison County, IDCB is for someone born in 1860. For Madison County, the ISBR is comprised of 430 records and the IDCB 4308. With 4738 records to process and post as well as the corresponding effort to verify and update the Madison County Family Tree, this has become a major project. To better manage the project, the records have been broken down into sets by surname first letter. Progress will be posted here under What's New and you can also review what's happening globally and view the actual changes here.

Wilkinson Reminisces  - William S. Wilkinson arrived in Madison County as an 11 year old, just two years after the first settlers arrived. His account of early Madison County life was presented to the Madison County Historical Society in 1901 and reprinted in the Winterset News in 1906. Thanks go to Pat Hochstetler for transcribing this document which, as of 22 May 2017, appears in our County History pages. See Wilkinson Reminisces.

Special Recognitions:  Mary Welty Hart, former Madison County Recorder, who has been a major contributor to Madison County genealogy for many years, working in support of the Madison County Genealogical Society, the Madison County Historical Society, and this website, resigned from active service in September as she moved to a retirement facility. Her contributions to this website including thousands of obituary transcriptions and thousands of gravestone photos have had a major impact and she will be missed.

Current Contributors:  Maintenance and improvement of this website would be impossible without the continued support of volunteer contributors. Special thanks go to Pat Hochstetler who has worked tirelessly in finding and transcribing older obituaries. Over the past year, Eileen Reed has submitted many obituaries and family photos which are greatly appreciated. And finally, thanks go to our team who works on current obituaries and gravestone photos, Ida Morse, and Shirley Keating.

Madison County Family Tree: Have you ever wondered how all these people listed in the births, deaths, and marriages are interrelated? To answer that question, the County Coordinator has developed a "Madison County Family Tree", currently including 92,773 names of people who were born, lived, married, and/or died in Madison County. Information was being added to the family tree daily and 852 names have been added to the tree between Oct 2017 and 15 Dec 2017 when access to uploads was suspended. Click on the Madison County Family Tree icon to the left.

Gravestone Photos: All gravestones in Madison County have been photographed and posted at the Iowa Gravestones Project. Newly discovered gravestones in the period 01 Oct 2017 to Mar 31 2018 have been posted and can also be seen in a separately compiled list of new postings.

VISIT ADJACENT COUNTIES