New Items

This is a listing of new items that have been posted or revised on this site. Please consider expanding the list by contributing. For some specific areas of need, please review the "help wanted" list. Thanks.

April 16, 2026--October 15, 2026

otherRecords/obituaries/ChronicleIndex

This page now has a new link to a Google Sheet version, which is the direction this data is moving for the future. The page was also revised to use the dl format rather than ul

otherRecords/obituaries

This page was edited to contain a "Can you help?" paragraph outlining how this page can be extended and improved, and requesting help. I plan on adding this to other key places in the future.

site/projects

This page was edited to add more detail for two projects that are currently underway. The goal was to make this page more visible; see below.

site

This page was edited to contain a "projects" item (see above) and the Site menu was extended to also include this item.

October 16, 2025--April 15, 2026

community/newsAndNewspaper

A link to http://pella.advantage-preservation.com was added. This site has all or most of the Pella newspapers (from 1855 to 2020) available for free, and they can be searched.

tools/marion

A link to the Pella Genealogy Club's website was added.

community/newsAndNewspaper

A link to https://iagenweb.org/iowaoldpress/newspaperIAlist.html was added.

otherRecords/militaryRecords/

I reformatted the page from just a list to a more detailed list (from ul to dl) with better formatting. (This list of new items for October 16, 2025--April 15, 2026 uses dl, but the preceding list, from April 16, 2025--October 15, 2025, used ul, if you wish to contrast.)

otherRecords/obituaries/

This is another page that I reformatted as described above. However, the text in the description was greatly expanded, and two new entries were added. (If you wish to view the old page and contrast it with the new one, check here.)

otherRecords/militaryRecords/

I added a new page here: G.A.R. Posts in Marion County. This lists the 8 Grand Army Republic posts for the county, and then a link to a page for each of these. The collection as a whole is a complete record set, but at this stage, it is not as useful since only an introductory page has been transcribed for each of the 8 posts. However, a link to each post on FamilySearch.org is available for those who wish to learn more. Each post will be transcribed in due course, though some pages will be rather large.

otherRecords/militaryRecords/

I added a new page here: Spanish American War Veterans Buried in Marion County. This lists the known Spanish American War veterans who were buried in Marion County. This is a complete record set, albeit a very short one. The page also gives general information about this war, which I think is often overlooked.

otherRecords/obituaries/funeralCards/Pella/1999/

Previously, this was just a page with a few names and links to pages with the text, but not proof-checked or formatted. Now, there are more entries for 1999; each transcription has been checked and formatted to the original image, and now also has a link to the original images. This is still just an incomplete record set since there are many more to be added to this 1999 page.

Checking HTML syntax

As part of this semi-annual review of the site, I am trying to check the HTML syntax of each of the files on the Marion site. (I have a tool in my text editor to do so very quickly, but I need to open up each file.) In this current review, I have checked all the files in the Other Records section (see menu).

April 16, 2025--October 15, 2025

• Last spring, I worked on the 1850 Marion County Mortality Census, so this fall I worked on the 1880 version. However, this is much larger and I have done the first two of seventeen pages: Polk, Lake Prairie, and Clay townships.
• I added an item in the Boards menu and it pointed to a new page, Guidance for using the Boards. This page, adapted from Rich Lowe's page, gives advice about using the four Boards: Queries, Obituaries, Biographies, and Documents.
• In the OtherRecords/CemteryRecords section, a new county map clearly showing county cemeteries was added (first item). I also reformatted the top half of this page from just a list to a more detailed list (from ul to dl).
• The Community/History section was reformatted from just a list of links to a more detailed list of links where each link has a detailed description what will be found at the link (from ul to dl).
• As part of this semi-annual review of the site, I am trying to check the html syntax of each of the files on the Marion site. (I have a tool in my text editor to do so very quickly, but I need to open up each file.) In this current review, I checked all the files directly related to the home page and the Vital Records section.

October 16, 2024--April 15, 2025

• For the three BMD pages (birth, marriage, and death), a link to the Iowa.gov page to obtain BMD records was added as well as a link that gives evidence (at FamilySearch.org) for the dates of collection of such records for Marion county.
• A map of the burials in the Funk Cemetery was added to the page for that cemetery.
• The complete 1850 Marion County Mortality Census was added. This shows those who died during the year ending 1 Jun 1850 in Marion county. This data was added when the general 1850 census was taken.
• The Immigration page was revised from a one-line link-description list to using the dl/dt/dd approach that makes the list much easier to read with more information.

April 16, 2024--October 15, 2024

• Using the 1901 map of townships in Marion county found in the Overview section of Towns and Townships in Marion County a complete list of historical communities that were in the county in 1901, but not already listed as an incorporated or unincorporated community, was created. The historical name of the community is given with the section and township in which this can be found.
• A complete listing of Century and Heritage Farms was added to the Misc page under the People menu.
• I extended the last menu on the right that used to be just for starting a Search to now allow basic site tasks: Search, view new items, a new FAQ page and a new Kudos page. The Kudos page is intended to extend thanks to others who have made contributions on this site while the FAQ does what the name says. Both of these are just recent additions, so they are both bare-bone, but they have been on mind to add for a year or so.
• There were some edits to pages:
  • The General Tools was finished revising from a one-line link-description list to using the dl/dt/dd approach that makes the list much easier to read.
  • An introductory paragraph was added to Marion County Tools and a new link was also added to top that simply points to another part of this site focusing on towns and townships in the county.
  • An introductory paragraph was added to Towns and Townships of Marion County was created that added information about each of the four sections on this page with links to the last 3 sections.
  • A link to a historic church in Pleasantville was added.
  • A link to a historic church in Knoxville was added.
  • A link about early Primitive Baptist churches in Iowa was added under the General Information page in the Community/Churches page.

October 16, 2023--April 15, 2024

• The Cemetery Records page now has a section that lists cemetery records outside of Marion county but relevant to Marion county people. The first entry there points to the Marion county connections at Conni McDaniel Hall's Iowa Veteran's Cemetery in Dallas county.
• The Towns and Townships page was revised and improved. Headings were added to each section to better scan. Spacing was improved. The section on Incorporated Communities was modified from a list of towns in the county with the Wikipedia link to each and just a few other links added to Pella and Knoxville, to a list of towns with a link to a page for each town. (You can try one there.) Each (new) page now contains at a minimum a link to a Google map to the town, the Wikipedia link, a link from the Marion County Development website, and the data for what sections of what township does the town reside within. For those towns that have town websites or local school districts or other related sites, these are now also added. Clearly, Pella and Knoxville are longer than the smaller ones.
• In the list of towns discussed above, there is one item on the Pella page that needed elaboration, the one focusing on the Pella Community Memory Database. This last link is not to the Pella Database itself, but to the newly created page that gives a complete overview of the Database to show how many records each section has. This page was also created to include some of the names of people in this off-site website into the review of the search engine for this page.
• The Tools menu for this Marion county site is intended to provide a list of website tools to list websites of use specifically to Marion county, regional (counties around Marion), Iowa, national, global, general. The Iowa page has been updated and reformatted from a bullet list to an item/description list that allows makes it easier to add extended descriptions of the link.
• I am starting a new transcription project: 1937 Atlas and Rural Directory of Marion County, Iowa. I have only completed a small portion of the Lake Prairie Township Directory at this point.

April 16, 2023--October 15, 2023

• Two additional tools to help with German research were added to the German Tools page : Germanic Genealogy Society and Upstalsboom Society
• Two tools to help with Polish research were added to the newly-created Polish Tools page that is part of the tools/global page.
• In the previous 6 month window (described below), the churches page was put in place. Focusing on Pella's churches for now, the Pella page was extended from only listing the current churches to now also including some of the past churches as well as additional details of the current churches given in the Historic Information section of this page. Each item in this section comes from Pella Community Memory Database, specifically appropriately connecting the Marion county entries there in the Churches collection (61 entries) to the corresponding Pella churches. These entries include photos of many churches at different times as well as anniversary booklets for some churches and overviews of the churches in Pella.

October 15, 2022--April 15, 2023

• The page for churches under the Community menu was improved from having only one link to a history of churches in county to now a mostly-complete list of churches in the counties towns and villages that are in current existence. For each town, the church name, website (if available), address, phone number (if available) and email (if available) are given. Church records can be a valuable source for learning more about one's family and it starts by knowing where the church was for one's family. This is phase one for this section. Next, there will be an attempt to fill in some history of these churches; see the Pella link to how this was begun with one example. The one original link was added to the the general link on the page above.
• Similar to what was done in the previous item for churches, a step in a similar direction has begun for the schools for the county. Currently, Schools is a link to a potpourri collection of links related to schools that I assembled from the previous coordinator. I have not made a link to the Schools page just described, but here is an example of what has been started for the schools in Pella. Currently, this is just in the scratchpad mode and there is no link to this page yet, since it is limited in scope and not ready for prime time.
• The page for death records was reformatted from a simple list of links to a descriptive list. Additionally, a link searching for deaths recorded at Social Security Administration was added to the bottom of the list, as well as a link at the top of the list pointing to death records and death certificates for the county from 1904 to 1951 (listed at FamilySearch.org).
• The page for maps was reformatted from a simple list of maps to a descriptive list. Additionally, one really neat map was added to the top of the list showing how Iowa's counties were added over time by viewing an animated set of maps showing the progression.
• An assortment of tweaks were made: in the vital records pages for births, deaths, and marriages, the date of when records were begun and when compliant is noted; a footnote is added for the reason the county is named "Marion".
• Since RootsWeb is purportedly going down in mid-April, 2023, I evaluated the references that I had pointing to a page on this site and either commented them out, added a note to the potential demise, or if I thought it was important information I created new pages housed under the Marion banner.
• I relabeled the two menus formerly called "Tools" and "Links" to the new names "Boards +" and "Tools", respectively. I actually had used Tools as a place to put the 4 Marion county Boards (also on main page) and a link to other tools (i.e., links), while on Links I had as a leftover spot for other types of links (that also included the a link to the IAGenWeb special projects). Now the Boards + menu has the 4 boards plus a fifth item being the special projects. In contrast, the new Tools menu consists of 6 items: Marion, Regional, State, National, Global, and General. The first five are geographically-based links for the specified levels while the last one is a general list. The six newly created pages should make it easier to find particular links more readily, rather than one large collection of links with divisions within the page. I know that I actually created the Global section to help partition the German and French links that I find helpful for my personal research.

April 15, 2022--October 15, 2022

Link tests may reveal some 403 errors (forbidden requests) on some pages, but all the links actually do work when used on the actual url is tested (based on my attempts). Also, for many of the Findagrave.com links I received a 429 error which means that the requests came too fast, but all that I tested worked. The only reason one should not work is if there was a merger of two and the my listed id was the one merged into a new one.

• Under the Other Records/Military Records menu, I have created the page World War II Army Casualties - Army that lists the WWII Army casualties from Marion county with the name, rank, serial # and type of casualty.
• Marion County Optometrists and Opticians was added under the People/misc menu. This lists, as the name implies, the names of optometrists in various cities within the county for 3 different years (which is all the source gave).
• Under the Tools/misc menu, I have created the page http://iagenweb.org/marion/tools/genealogyResearch.phpGeneral Tools for Genealogy Research [removed the link on 2022-10-27 since I reorganized this section and that particular link no longer works - see the description above in post October 15, 2022] that currently has 25 links to pages of information that can be useful to genealogists. Some are lists of abbreviations used in documents, some are lists of obsolete (deprecated) names for occupations or illnesses. Some are useful for working in a particular country or language. Check it out. NOTE: the websites using www.genealogyintime.com throw a 403 error with Xenu, but they work when clicked (so must object to the webcrawler at Xenu).
• Under the People/misc menu, I have the page Underground Railroad in Marion County, Iowa that describes this important movement in general and then lists the participants, and their roles, from Marion county.
• As in the past, I have added a number of additions to the Obituary index to Pella newspapers, but they are not currently reflected on this new page since there are some issues with my host where I keep the database housed. Similarly, the list of interments at Oakwood Cemetery in Pella had about another 50 additions, but these too are constrained by the same situation. I hope to get this resolved in the next several weeks and then will update the pages on this site.

October, 2021--April, 2022

Link tests may reveal some 403 errors (forbidden requests), but all 9 links actually do work when used on the actual pages.

• A Birth Certificate Index in text format (1909-June 1921) was added from https://iowaculture.gov/history/research/collections/vital-records
• The Biographies page was updated with additional entries after combing through The Blue Book of Iowa Women: A History of Contemporary Women to find all references to Marion county or its towns.
• A link to FamilySearch.org for the Iowa, Old Age Tax Assistance Records 1934-1958 has been added Other Records/Miscellaneous Records
• An entry into Other Records/Land Records has been made to allow one to search Bureau of Land Management - General Land Office Records for Marion county (or any county in the U.S.) land patens. Names can be searched or specific plots can be searched and then one can view the maps that have the plots assigned to a particular person.
• The Current Townships page has been revised to be in the form of a table (rather than a list) and incuded the addition of the township and range values for each Township. Additionally, two maps were added to help visualize their locations.
• In Other Records/Miscellaneous Records a page describing the population of the county (and its rank among the 99) is given as a table and by graphs from 1850 to 2020
• A new type of record was added: Divorce Records, but only for the year 1935. This is a complete index for this year with the two names listed, the marriage date and divorce decree date, plus a link to the image on FamilySearch.org. Other years will be added as they are found.
• In Other Records/Miscellaneous Records a page pointing to Marion county Patent Holders was started some time ago in the past, but it went only until about 1885. It has now been extended to 1950 and will be completed in the near future.

April, 2021--October, 2021

• The Iowa State Gazetteer 1918-1919 Business Directory is a complete transcription of the businesses existing in Marion county towns and villages in 1918. The original source is found at Hathitrust.org. [Thanks to Rich Lowe / Van Buren County for the idea.]
• The Oakwood Cemetery in Pella was updated with about 76 new entries and others edited, now having 8817 entries.
• A map of Marion county cemeteries was added.
• Two new links were added to the community/history section of the website: (1) a link to a website called Rural History Buffs of Marion County Iowa; (2) a pop quiz section from the The Windmill Weekly about what is under Lake Red Rock
• Forty additional obit index records for 2007 from the Pella Chronicle were added to the database. The current static version of this work is found here, but this is update yearly in April so from that page use the alternative site to view those added recently.
• The Iowa Gravestone Photo Project Marion County Surname Index was updated in the otherRecords/cemeteryRecords section as a static listing so that FreeFind can find the names.
• I have begun a page to list the patent holders from Marion county and it can be found here. I have only added a small portion of the data because I am awaiting formal permission to copy the data from the source (which was listed on the "Ideas list" that was generated by IAGenWeb coordinator list).

October, 2020--April, 2021

• A list of links to free access to href="http://iagenweb.org/marion/links/newspaperLinks.php"newspapers in Iowa and elsewhere has been added. This should be useful as place to look for obituaries or other items of interest [actual link removed since this page has been moved under Tools under a reorganization - all content is now there]
• There are nearly 40 chapters of the book Pioneers of Marion County book in the People/Pioneers portion of the site. There was a consistent typo in each file that needed fixing and a navigation system was added at the bottom of each chapter to make it easier to move from chapter to chapter. Additionally, two other electronic editions of the book were added as links.
• A page on War Bonds was added, although the data is not of my doing. It was part of the site before I took over in 2013 but somehow it had been neglected to be added to the new organization.
• Three additional photos were added to the Terry Reid family.
• I added a link to the genealogy portion of the Internet Archive and posted it on the href="http://iagenweb.org/marion/links/GeneralLinks.php"General Genealogical Links page [actual link removed since this page has been moved under Tools under a reorganization - all content is now there]
• A link to US Online Searchable Death Indexes and Records was made in the death records page but also the href="http://iagenweb.org/marion/links/GeneralLinks.php"General Links page [actual link removed since this page has been moved under Tools under a reorganization - all content is now there]
• A link to learn about copyright guidelines for various dates of an item was added to the Other Tools page of the Tools section.
• Links to genealogical or historical societies for the counties surrounding Marion county was added to the Other Tools page of the Tools section.
• I added a link to U.S. Newspapers and Obituaries Directory at LDS Genealogy on the href="http://iagenweb.org/marion/links/newspaperLinks.php" Free Newspaper Links page in the "Of general interest" section [actual link removed since this page has been moved under Tools under a reorganization - all content is now there]
• The images of three marriage licenses and some details about the people were added to the vital records section.
• Approximately 172 new obit index records were added to theObituary Index for Pella Newspapers and now the year 1976 is complete by having all obituaries added. From this link, you can choose to view the entries by name or by date.

April, 2020--October, 2020

• The Oakwood Cemetery in Pella was updated with about 150 new entries and others edited.
• The Obituary Index for Pella Newspapers was updated with 358 new entries and others edited. This includes now having the years 2008 and 2010 completely indexed with about 200 in each year.

October, 2019--April, 2020

• Edited the page for the Marion County IAGenWeb Mailing List to reflect Rootsweb discontinuance of providing their service and guidance to use the Query Board for the county.
• Added data from The Medical and Surgical Directory of the State of Iowa (1876) for Marion county
• Added page linking to a list of patents held by Marion County people

April, 2019--October, 2019

• The Oakwood Interment Book transcription project is now in the double-checking stage. Currently, 8019 of the 8612 records have been double-checked. This past 6 months we double-checked more than 430 records. Another 28 new ones were added.
• The Oakwood Lot Book transcription project has been underway since the interment book completed its first round. Currently, 6756 of the 8600 records have had their lot book page (recorded name, grave #, location) connected to the interment record and the data from the lot book added to the interment record. In the last 6 months, 0 interment records were updated but about 125 lot book records were updated. The results of these transcriptions show up mostly in the links for the lots in the Oakwood Interment Book (http://alhibbard.com/marion/interment/index2) and when viewing an individual's interment record. Thanks again to Ron Steenhoek for his significant help in this area.
• The static listing, by name, of those at Oakwood Cemetery in Pella was updated.
• The static listing, by date, of those at Oakwood Cemetery in Pella was updated.
• Six more postcards were added, gifted by a donor: view and added to the 20 others added before.
• The number of entries in the obituary index (http://alhibbard.com/marion/obitIndex/index2) for the local newspapers has been increased by 35 in the last 6 months. In particular, work is being done on scanning every page of the Pella Advertiser. The March through October 6, 1898 issues have been examined thus far. The ported tables (not including these last 34) are here at the Marion IAGenWeb site.

October, 2018--April, 2019

• Added a link on the main page to the Wikipedia page for Marion county to give a perspective of the county.
• The Oakwood Interment Book transcription project is now in the double-checking stage. Currently, 7588 of the 8600 records have been double-checked. This past 6 months we double-checked 1882 records. Another 50 new ones were added or edited.
• The Oakwood Lot Book transcription project has been underway since the interment book completed its first round. Currently, 6756 of the 8600 records have had their lot book page (recorded name, grave #, location) connected to the interment record and the data from the lot book added to the interment record. In the last 6 months, 1023 records were updated. The results of these transcriptions show up mostly in the links for the lots in the Oakwood Interment Book and when viewing an individual's interment record. Additionally, 219 lot records were either created or updated. Thanks to Ron Steenhoek for his significant help in this area.
• The static listing, by name, of those at Oakwood Cemetery in Pella was updated.
• The static listing, by date, of those at Oakwood Cemetery in Pella was updated.
• Twenty postcards were added, gifted by a donor: view
• The number of entries in the obituary index (http://alhibbard.com/marion/obitIndex/index2) for the local newspapers has been increased by 201 in the last 6 months. In particular, the year 2009 is now complete. This involves looking at online editions of the local newspapers and scouring them for obituaries. The ported tables here at the Marion IAGenWeb site are now up to date.

April, 2018--October, 2018

• Formerly, the index to the Pioneers of Marion County book had links to pages on RootsWeb, which has had significant problems this past year. When they came back up online, all the links were changed and instead of revising them, I ported all 69 of biographies onto this site.
• Added a link on the History page to an interesting article about an Iowa law and practice to ban using non-English languages during WW I.
• The number of entries in the obituary index (http://alhibbard.com/marion/obitIndex/index2) for the local newspapers has been increased by approximately 19 in the last 6 months. This involves looking at online editions of the local newspapers and scouring them for obituaries. A group of about 15 volunteers will be making great additions on 10 October as part of Central College Service Day. The ported tables here at the Marion IAGenWeb site will be updated when there is a greater number to port over.
• The Oakwood Interment Book transcription project is now in the double-checking stage. Currently, 6090 of the 8576 records have been double-checked. Many thanks to Ron Steenhoek who did many of these (checking everyone else's work). I now need to check all of Ron's. This past 6 months we double-checked 4273 records.
• The Oakwood Lot Book transcription project has been underway since the interment book completed its first round. Currently, 5733 of the 8576 records have had their lot book page (recorded name, grave #, location) connected to the interment record and the data from the lot book added to the interment record. In the last 6 months, 2837 records were updated. The results of these transcriptions show up mostly in the links for the lots in the Oakwood Interment Book and when viewing an individual's interment record.

October, 2017--April, 2018

• World War I Honor Roll list of casualties from Marion County
• Vietnam War - list of casualties from Marion County
• Korean Conflict - list of casualties from Marion County
• Freedom Trail participants from Marion County
• The Oakwood Interment Book transcription project is now COMPLETE! This represents 8597 records that have been transcribed. It includes listings by name (alphabetical order by last name) and by date (reverse chronological by date of death). We are now double-checking this work and this is approximately 50% done. Many thanks to Ron Steenhoek who continues to make major contributions.
• The Oakwood Lot Book transcription project has been underway since the interment book completed its first round. With an infusion of the efforts of 12 volunteers at the Central College Service Day, we added the transcriptions of 2252 records from the lot book, more than 1/4 of the total. In total, we are now approximately 35%-40% done. The results of these transcriptions show up mostly in the links for the lots in the Oakwood Interment Book and when viewing an individual's interment record.
• The number of entries in the obituary index (http://alhibbard.com/marion/obitIndex/index2) for the local newspapers has been increased by approximately 31 in the last 6 months. This involves looking at online editions of the local newspapers and scouring them for obituaries. More work is expected to be done here in the future. The ported tables here at the Marion IAGenWeb site will be updated when there is a greater number to port over.
• The Surname Index from the Iowa Gravestone Photo Project has been updated as a static document, though it is best to always go to the original dynamic database.
• The Surname Index from the Iowa WPA Project has been updated as a static document, though it is best to always go to the original dynamic database.

April, 2017--October, 2017

• A static listing of the data on the Marion page of the Iowa Gravestone Photo Project
• Added a link in surnames that show many people there are in the US with a given full name or surname. Interesting site.
• The number of entries in the obituary index (http://alhibbard.com/marion/obitIndex/index2) for the local newspapers has been increased by about 12 in the last 6 months.
• The Oakwood Interment Book continues to have new pages being added but only 9 this period have been double-checked for accuracy. These new additions are best viewed on this dynamic site (http://alhibbard.com/marion/interment/index2) so that they can be found by the search tools, embedded in a new version of the alphabetical listing of the approximately 8407 records at Oakwood. Of these, in the last 6 months approximately 1950 records were either entered in as new or newly transcribed and another 840 were indexed awaiting to be transcribed. The current status is now available at IAGenWeb here [supplanted by a new addition now]. Each of the indexed entries or transcribed entries have also been matched and linked with Find a Grave. This is huge progress for a time-consuming, but valuable, task. Many thanks to Ron Steenhoek who has made major contributions.

October, 2016--April, 2017

• The number of entries in the obituary index (http://alhibbard.com/marion/obitIndex/index2) for the local newspapers has been increased by approximately 550 in the last 6 months. This involves looking at online editions of the local newspapers and scouring them for obituaries. Many of these records were done on a Service Day project at Central College. The tables at Marion IAGenWeb site, have now been updated to reflect these, but the link there also points to the database site (http://alhibbard.com/marion/obitIndex/latest) that contains the always-current version. While some of these records were more or less randomly in response to trying to learn more about an entry in the Oakwood Interment Book (see below), others were done systematically. The volunteers for the Service Day project started with January or July for the years 2008-2014. Most of these volunteers did at least 2-3 months of their window. The year 2011 was completed in its entirety
• The Oakwood Interment Book continues to have new pages being added and many of these have been double-checked for accuracy. These new additions are best viewed on the dynamic site (http://alhibbard.com/marion/interment/index2) so that they can be found by the search tools, embedded in a new version of the alphabetical listing of the approximately 8183 records at Oakwood. Of these, approximately 1200 records were either entered in as new or double-checked. This is huge progress for a time-consuming, but valuable, task. Many thanks Ron Steenhoek who has made major contributions.
• For each record that is added from the Oakwood Interment Book, a Find A Grave (FAG) record is either added or updated. This does not show in any explicit way to the IAGenWeb user except that FAG is a commonly used resource that reflects some of the information from the IAGenWeb pages.
• About 40 transcribed obits were added to IAGenWeb Marion county Obits board

April, 2016--October, 2016

• The number of entries in the obituary index (http://alhibbard.com/marion/obitIndex/index2) has been increased by approximately 640 in the last 6 months. This involves looking at online editions of the local newspaper and scouring them for obituaries. Approximately half of these records were done on a Service Day project at Central College. The tables at Marion IAGenWeb site, have now been updated to reflect these, but the link there points to the database site (http://alhibbard.com/marion/obitIndex/latest) that contains the always-current version. While some of these records were more or less randomly in response to trying to learn more about an entry in the Oakwood Interment Book (see below), others were done systematically. Each of the volunteers for the Service Day project started with a particular year. Additionally, later another year was chosen and completed in its entirety, the year 1956.
• As of last October, the Oakwood Interment Book had about 100 pages that had been transcribed at that point. Now, the number of pages transcribed is 168, thus adding approximately another 2000 records. These new additions are best viewed on this dynamic site (http://alhibbard.com/marion/interment/index2) so that they can be found by the search tool, embedded in a new version of the alphabetical listing of the approximately 8150 records at Oakwood. Each October, I will again copy back to the IAGenWeb pages the latest additions. This is huge progress for a time-consuming, but valuable, task. Many thanks to the many helpers who have contributed.
• For each record that is added from the Oakwood Interment Book, each record's entry is also double-checked later by another (or same) person. Thus far, 3152 have been double-checked with approximately 2900 done in the last 6 months. This does not show in any explicit way to the IAGenWeb user except that this is a step toward quality control. Much thanks to Ron Steenhoek (of Knoxville) who did the lion's share of these 2900.
• For each record that is added from the Oakwood Interment Book, a Find A Grave (FAG) record is either added or updated. This does not show in any explicit way to the IAGenWeb user except that FAG is a commonly used resource that reflects some of the information from the IAGenWeb pages.
• Related to the Oakwood Interment Book, there is the Oakwood Plot Book where each plot in the cemetery has details and names listed who are buried there. This project has just begun with 15 cemetery lots having been cataloged and most being correlated with the Interment Book. This work does not yet show up for the user but it will as more work is done. This will enable one to pick a lot and see who is all buried in that location or if one has chosen a particular person of interest, this will enable the user to view who else is buried in that plot. Furthermore, the lat/long of each plot is given so that one can readily see where in the cemetery the plot is located.
• About 70 transcribed obits were added to IAGenWeb Marion county Obits board

October, 2015--April, 2016

• At the Maps page, a link to a collection of 1930 Plat maps has been added. (Thanks to the tip from Cherie J McNaul.)
• A listing of Marion County Funeral Homes was added.
• A listing of 1889 funeral cards from Pella funeral homes during 1999-2015 have been added. This is the current collection, but more will be added for future months and years.
• The number of entries in the obituary index (http://alhibbard.com/marion/obitIndex/index2) has been increased by approximately 199 in the last 6 months. In two weeks, there will be a Service Day project at Central College in which a team will add more. The tables at Marion IAGenWeb site have not yet been updated to reflect these, but the link there points to the database site (http://alhibbard.com/marion/obitIndex/latest) that contains them.
• Approximately 40 obits were added to Marion Obituaries Board at IAGenWeb, some by me and many by other volunteers.
• As of last October, the Oakwood Interment Book had 489 entries that had been transcribed at that point. The number now easily surpasses 2300 with over 100 pages being completed. These new additions are best viewed on this site (http://alhibbard.com/marion/interment/index2) so that they can be found by the search tool, embedded in a new version of the alphabetical listing of the approximately 8000 records at Oakwood. As this list grows, I will again copy back to the IAGenWeb pages the latest additions. This is huge progress for a time-consuming, but valuable, task. Many thanks to the many helpers who have contributed.
• [Note to reviewers for April, 2016: If you find any link errors of the sort "http://iagenweb.org/marion/community/history/Souvenir/pages1-50/function.include", these are not really errors but the link checker just doesn't understand how to process some code that I have for my "bread crumbs". For example, if you go here, you will find a page of this Souvenir book. At the the top, below the menu, is a list of "bread crumbs" that show where one is within the site. Technically, this page is in the folder "pages1-50" inside the folder "Souvenir". The bread crumbs are created automatically by the some of code of mine but since there is really nothing to view inside of "pages1-50", I have written JavaScript functionality to take one back a level to the main Souvenir page. For some reason, Xenu doesn't like this and calls it an error. However, I call it a feature.]

April, 2015--October, 2015

• Work has been completed on the transcription of the 344 page book entitled Souvenir History of Pella. This web page lists all the pages of the book and a link to the text of the book (some given marked up in html and some in just plain text) as well as a link to the pdf of the page in the book. There are a number of pages consisting of just photos (with captions) and so there are not (yet) text pages for these pages but these can be viewed via the pdf links.
• The number of entries in the obituary index (http://alhibbard.com/marion/obitIndex/index2) has been increased by approximately 250 in the last 6 months. In particular, the following date portions were completed: next 2 months of 1962, next 2 months of 1963, the rest of 1968 is done, and many other random dates. See below (Oct. 2014 - Apr. 2015) for more details about this process. These entries, plus all the others that have been entered, are now added as tables on the Marion IAGenWeb site, both ordered by last name and date.
• Approximately 50 obits were added to Marion Obituaries Board at IAGenWeb, some by me and many by other volunteers.
• Much work has been done at the Oakwood and Graceland cemeteries in Pella. Approximately 500-800 photos have been taken at these cemeteries and added to Find A Grave and to the Iowa Gravestone Photo Project. At both of the cemeteries mentioned above, the lat/long values have also been added to Find A Grave. These values will eventually be added to this site.
• About 30 more entries have been added as transcriptions of entries from the Oakwood Interment Book (http://alhibbard.com/marion/interment/index2). The 489 entries that have been transcribed thus far now appear on this site so that they can be found by the search tool, embedded in a new version of the alphabetical listing of the 8007 records at Oakwood.
• At the Cemetery Records page, links to a single map of the county showing the counties cemeteries has been added.

October, 2014--April, 2015

• In reference to the first item in the October, 2014 entry below, more work was done in these areas. About 10 additional users were added and participated in using the obituary index (http://alhibbard.com/marion/obitIndex/index2). These users gave additional feedback and helped refine this process. While no users were added for the interment index, I did a lot of work in this area and there was continued improvement in the design of these pages.
• The number of entries in the obituary index http://alhibbard.com/marion/obitIndex/index2 almost doubled in the last 6 months with 316 new ones being added. In particular, the followed date portions were completed: first 3 months of 1962, first five months of 1963, almost all of 1968 is done, and 1984 was completed. Thanks to several volunteers who made some great contributions here. For some of these entries, the obit was added their corresponding Find A Grave record and also some were added to the Marion Obituaries board and more are ready to be added. The advantage of the obit index over the Obituaries board is that one can have almost the same effect without a transcription of the obituary article. The index includes, when provided in the article, the full name, death date and place, birth date, newspaper name, publication date, page and column, perhaps a Find a Grave index, and other notes. From this data, a link is programmatically created that will bring up the actual newspaper page containing the obituary. The viewer can then transcribe or extract as desired but the main search terms are included in the index as much as in a transcribed obit. So the main advantage is that one can produce more obit index entries than one could transcribe an obit in the same amount of time.
• A large number of entries, more than 430, were added to or updated on the interment index (http://alhibbard.com/marion/interment/index2) as they were transcribed from the interment book that was scanned last spring. Many of these transcriptions have in turn been added their Find a Grave records. I have had many reports from users expressing appreciation for these transcriptions.
• Further work was done on preparing about 40 pages of Souvenir History of Pella by applying OCR techniques to the pdf pages. These pages still need to be proof-read. (Can you help out here?) These pages have not yet been added to the website as they are waiting the first step in doing general proof-reading.
• While this does not show up explicitly show up on this site yet, I spent a lot of time adding lat/long values to entries in Oakwood Cemetery in Pella. This data will eventually find itself on this site and prove to be a useful investment of time. In working on adding lat/long, I also found a number that either didn't have photos or were not already in the database and both of these were accomplished. In doing so, many (hundreds) photos were added to the Iowa Gravestone Photo Project.

October, 2014

• More work was done to finish coding a new database approach to process several aspects to work on the Marion county IAGenWeb activities (see Aug. entry). There are now separate database tables to handle an obituary index (http://alhibbard.com/marion/obitIndex/index2), a surname index (http://alhibbard.com/marion/surname/index2), and an interment index (http://alhibbard.com/marion/interment/index2), as well as a user table to handle users. The supporting pages have been built, tested and refined. These are now ready. These should expedite work in these three important areas. Each of these have been written to be extensible in case another county wishes to try out these pages as well, with only slight modifications.
• Many burial records, photos, and lat/long numbers were added to Find-A-Grave for those buried in Oakwood cemetery, Pella. In turn, these photos have been added to the Iowa Gravestone Photo Project. Both the FAG and IGPP ids will be recorded in the new Interment database.

August, 2014

• Added transcribed text and original pdf for pages 66-80 for the book Souvenir History of Pella.
• Work was begun to create a new database approach to process several aspects to work on the Marion county IAGenWeb activities, designed to be extensible to other counties if the steps here work out. While a spreadsheet was initially used to build the Obituary index for the Pella Chronicle, a database and supporting pages were created to facilitate this. When a year's worth of indices will be added, static html pages will be outputted and added to this site so that the search engines can find them. Similarly, a database and pages were created to handle the Surname pages here. Finally, also a database and pages were created to handle cemetery interments.

July, 2014

• Added transcribed text and original pdf for pages 50-65 for the book Souvenir History of Pella. Pages 11-46 were given a final proof-editing (thanks to Amy S.).

June, 2014

• Added transcribed text and original pdf for pages 46-49 for the book Souvenir History of Pella. Pages 6-10 were given a final proof-editing (thanks to Amy S.).
• Many entries and photos were added for Oakwood Cemetery, Pella, IA. The relevant information will be reflected on this site in a planned database-based web site to supplement this site.

May, 2014

• Added to the page on towns and townships a list towns that once existed in Marion county, coming from IAGenWeb's state-wide list.
• Added link to list of Marion county cemeteries on Iowa GPP and some direct links to specific cemeteries there in addition to the Find A Grave links.
• Links to all current and past newspapers published in Marion county, as given at Chronicling America at the Library of Congress, has been added the Newspaper page.

April, 2014

• A list of projects that are currently underway can be found here. Any help by contributing would be greatly appreciated.
• One of the projects that is currently underway is to build an index to the obituaries in the Pella Chronicle. This is an ambitious project but will hopefully prove useful for genealogists and families. The Pella Public Library has had many years of this newspaper on microfilm but is in the midst of converting these to online digitized images. So far, the years 1975-2011 are available. This means that the index can also be prepared to point directly to the online page containing the obituary. Check out what has been done so far.
• The book Souvenir History of Pella, Iowa is being added with its full text. While a surname index has been available for some time, this will be a great improvement to have the actual text that can be found while the web site is searched. PDF pages of photos will also be included. There will also be a link to a digital image on each page. Check out what has been done so far.
• A number of links to pages at FamilySearch.org have been added: Birth Records, Marriage Records, and Census Records

March, 2014

• Added a link to Iowa Old Press in the News and Newspaper section - sporadic transcribed news from the past
• Add the Marion newspapers available in 1919 to other lists in News and Newspaper section
• A number of maps were added to the Maps section
• Added link to all Marion county cemeteries from county GIS/WEB dept. in Cemetery records
• Added a searchable form to Find A Grave focused on Marion county in Cemetery records

October, 2013

• Redesigned the Home page
• Converted all (almost -- just a handful left) pages to new format, cleaning them up and testing them.
• Menu expanded with new entries reflecting converting of pages to new format
• Add "bread-crumbs" to each page so that navigation is clearer and easier for the user to know where he/she is within the site.
• About 8000 names have been added for Oak Wood cemetery in Pella.
• Central College Service Day 2013 helped produce about 70 obits. These have been added to the Obituaries page for Marion County.

Summer 2013

Apologies for no activity. I had two separate, back-to-back 4-month long projects during the first 2/3 of this year that were under a deadline and consumed most of my time.

May 2013

• 11 May 2013 - Completed reformatting (i.e., placing new menu structure on as well as "cleaning up" the HTML code and having them pass W3 standards) all of the marriage records.
• 1 May 2013 - Completed reformatting (i.e., placing new menu structure on as well as "cleaning up" the HTML code and having them pass W3 standards) all of the surname records. This included sending emails to all researchers and remove the link (but not actual email) of any email that bounced (did not go through). The emails were also all cleaned up and errors removed in them.

April 2013

• 17 Apr 2013 - Completed reformatting (i.e., placing new menu structure on as well as "cleaning up" the HTML code and having them pass W3 standards) all of the cemetery records. Also added Find A Grave links to each cemetery.

March 2013

• 26 Mar 2013 - Listings for Timber Ridge Cemetery contributed by Charles Rus, formatted by Al Hibbard
• 15 Mar 2013 - began process of setting up new menu and design of web site, as evidenced here. Pages are slowly be ported to this approach (after being cleaned up and reformatted) - done by Al Hibbard
• 15 Mar 2013 - Nine one-page bios of women who had Marion county connections - from Google pages (see link in articles), formatted by Al Hibbard
• 10 Mar 2013 - New Design of What's New page - by Al Hibbard
• 1 Mar 2013 - Al Hibbard took over as county coordinator

2012

• On-line Pioneer Project: Abraham Paulus Buwalda, William Drake, Leicester "Lester" Ware and Margaret Reynolds Wells

May 2011

• Pleasantville High School Graduates. Discover more information and photos by exploring the Alumni Lists (1901-2004). Thanks to Marcia Schmitz for drawing these pages to our attention! [LINKS failed - modified by Al Hibbard 5/3/13]

March 2011

• Now Ernie Braida has posted 860+ obituaries since November 2010! Wow!

January 2011

• New email address for Ellen Wyman Farrester researching Briggs, Green, Keys, Willey, and Wyman
• Don't miss the many new obituaries (300+ and counting!) that Ernie Braida is putting on the Obituary Message Board