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 (28,900+), CEMETERIES (30,600+
burials), MARRIAGE RECORDS (13,000+), and OBITUARY INDEX
(37,700+).
To
get off to a quick start, we suggest:
- 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
100,700+ individuals
are grouped in 32,900+ Madison County families.
Then check out all the
other links in the menu and throughout this page
to round out your family’s Madison County
history.
|
Daily
Updates:
The County
Coordinator and several members of the Madison County Genealogical
Society are 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 again.
This list is a sample of
what has been added from April
2023 thru September 2023. Additional
details are provided in the next section.
- Obituaries -
370 new,
both recent and found from previous years
- Marriages
- 99 marriages took place in Madison County in 1922
- Church Histories - 88
known Madison County churches established since 1846
- Row
locations - 16,000 row links have been added to Iowa
Gravestone Photo Project records to assist in
locating the actual grave
- Cemetery Burials
- Reflecting the most recent interments
- Family Tree - Constant
growth with new leaves and whole branches
New
Data Sets and Major Additions:
Below is
a description of additional, complete data sets added
(the first six) plus major updates
to ongoing projects, done between October
2022 and September 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 30 Sep 2023 have been integrated into
our Birth records and also posted
here
as a separate
list. (Posted 30
Sep 2023).
1922
Madison County Marriages: The complete set of
Madison County marriages for calendar year 1922, comprised
of 198 records, have
been posted to our MARRIAGE
RECORDS as of September 30, 2023.
To
see the list of 1922 marriages, click here.
To see them integrated with all marriages, select
MARRIAGE RECORDS on the left. (Posted 30 Sep
2023)
Census
Supplements: A
Census Supplements section has been added to the CENSUS
RECORDS page and contains two new datasets. 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. They
are the 1878
Madison County Farmers by Post Office
and the more extensive
Madison County 1892 Farmers by Post Office, which
is of value since no 1890 Federal Census records exist
for Madison County. (Posted
30 Sep 2023)
Madison
County Church Histories: Extensive work was
done to create a complete list of 88 known churches
since the settlement of Madison County, with historical
information found for all but five. This project included
determining church 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 Sep 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 multi-year 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)
Ongoing
Projects:
Several efforts require work over multiple years to
complete or to maintain constant updates.
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
Apr 2023 to 30 Sep 2023, 198
gravestones have been
photographed, with GPS coordinates, and
posted. A list of
the new postings can be seen in
a separately compiled list
of new Gravestone Photo
postings. (Posted
30 Sep 2023)
Enhanced
Gravestone
Way-finding:
To help those who want to personally visit family members' gravestones in a
Madison County cemetery, a project is underway to add a
link with the row number, as well as section letter for
larger cemeteries, to the gravestone photo. This
link will take you to a cemetery map with the rows
marked. Using this information, a visitor can walk
to the row then use the gravestone photo to locate a
stone. Please note that rows are often incomplete
or irregular, so searching neighboring rows is
suggested. See a
sample here.
Over 16,000 gravestones records have been updated with a
row link. (Posted 30
Sep 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.
Veterans of other pre-WWI conflicts were added
to the project
in early 2023 and as of 31 Oct 2023, 22 new stones have been placed
and 2 repaired.
Photographs of
the gravestones already placed can be seen here.
Iowa
Veterans Cemetery:
Thanks to a volunteer within
the IAGenWeb community, the CEMETERIES page now contains
a link, with continual updates, to Madison County individuals buried in the Iowa
Veterans Cemetery just outside of Van Meter. (Posted 30 Mar 2023)
Surname
List of Madison County Gravestones:
Under
construction More information to come. (Posted
21 Nov 2023)
Madison
County Family Tree: Our online tree holds
over 100,700 individuals, grouped in families, 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
Sep 2023)
Current
Contributors:
Maintenance and
improvement of this website would be impossible without
the continued support of various volunteer contributors. Those
below are especially dedicated to their work and have our deep appreciation.
(Posted 30 Sep 2023)
- 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, creating cemetery maps with rows
in support of the Iowa Gravestone Photo Project, Winterset
News obituaries, census supplements, and the extensive Church History
information.
|