A Discussion on Site Contents, Etc.
Hello, my name is Gordon Felland and I am the site coordinator. I took over this site in August, 2004 from Kermit Kittleson. Kermit did an excellent job developing this site and contributed a lot of information.
I grew up in Worth County on a farm in Bristol township. My parents were both born in Worth County, my father in Fertile township and my mother in Danville township. Also two of my grandparents were born in Worth County. I no longer live in Worth County, but I have strong ties to the county as some of my relatives still live there.
The purpose of this site is to assist people who are doing genealogical and family history on persons who might have lived in Worth County.
An excellent resource for geneologists is the "History of Mitchell and Worth Counties, 1883", published in 1884. Cay Merryman and Kermit Kittleson have prepared a fairly extensive index to the Worth County portion of the book. To see the index to names, places, and events, from the book, go to data/wor1884x.htm. The township histories and biographies in the book are online.
In 1918, by the S.J. Clark Publishing Company of Chicago published and updated version of this book titled HISTORY OF MITCHELL AND WORTH COUNTIES in two volumes. I have transcribed the Table of Contents of Volume I. Volume II has only biographies and they are all online. See it all at the following two URLs:
Vol.1-Table of Contents
Vol.2-Biographical Index.I have copies of both the 1883 and 1918 versions and I will gladly do lookups. I can be contacted at gfelland@q.com.
There are the Worth County/USGENWEB archives. The archives have over 900 obituaries for Worth County. To see these obituaries along with other information on Worth county, click on the archives page: Worth Archives
There is a list of about 1750 marriages that took place in the county from 1859-1900. To see the master Index to the marriages, click here: Marriage Archive
Another feature is the 1964-2000 Social Security Death Index, all specialized for Worth County, Iowa. It contains over 2300 individuals who were living in Worth County when they died. The earliest death date is 1964, the most recent is late 2000. The earliest birth recorded in that group is 1868. For that information, go to: SSDI Index
A good source of information on individuals is the U.S. Census. Under Census there are census indexes for the years 1870 and 1910. I have also transcribed the complete census for 1860, 1880, 1900, 1905 and 1930. For 1930, there are 11,151 people listed along with their family members, age, place of birth and occupation. See it at 1930 Census
There also is a page called "Links to other Resources," which might actually be what you are looking for. Hopefully, these links will lead you to sites that will assist you in your research.
I have a copy of the book titled THE FIRST 100 YEARS 1899-1999 JOICE, IOWA, by Elaine Ness Bergan. It contains dozens of biographical sketches of people and families, many of whom are still living in the Joice area. This book is copyrighted, but I have included the table of contents lists in this site. See it at: Joice-Book. If you want to see biographies from this book, you should purchase the book from the Joice library.
There are three listings of the rural residents (farmers) of Worth county. From 1913, 1963 and 1988.
Leading Farmers in 1913
Rural resisdents in 1963
Rural residents in 1988.One great way to further your interest in Worth county Genealogical research is to sign up with the Worth County List Serve mailing list, known affectionately as IAWORTH-L -- It's run by rootsweb.com. There, people who have a common interest in Worth county genealogy can exchange ideas and information in a constructive and fun way. Your e-mails sent to the List serve address are sent to everyone on the list, and vice versa. Try it! You can unsubscribe any time. To sign up, just click here: IAWORTH-L Signup Screen. I have online, quite a sizeable collection of cemetery data. There files for Beaver Creek, Sion, Bethel, Bristol Lutheran, London-Deer Creek, Bristol Township, Concordia, Kensett, Silver Lake Township, Silver Lake, Sunset Rest, Stateline Cemetery and Somber. These files are in the cemworth.htm.
Barbara McCoy has submitted a list of the Northwood High School graduates for 1930, copied from the Baccalaureate Program.
A list of a couple dozen or so men that died during World War II, in the service of their country, from Worth County.
One of the more recent additions to this site is Church Histories. Both active and disbanded churches are listed, but the not all churches are covered. The histories cover mainly rural churches in the western part of the county. Look under Churches
Do you have information on Worth County, such as obituaries, biographies, newspaper clippings, etc. Please share them by posting them on the Worth County boards. Maybe you have information or pictures, that can't be put on the boards, just e-mail them to me and I will post them in the appropiate place. If you don't want to type in the information, you can always mail it to me. E-mail me at gfelland@q.com and I send you my mailing address.
WANT TO HELP US?
Because IaGenWeb is a volunteer operation, we are constantly in search of people who have the urge to help out. There are positions such as:
- County Coordinator
- Census transcriber
- Web page writer
- Data entry person
- Reference look-up person
If you are good at HTML, we can use you. If you can type and read microfilms, we can use you. If you own a book, or map, or other pertinent document, and don't mind people e-mailing you with short little questions to answer, please volunteer.
If transcribing (non Federal) Iowa census records is what you might like to do, go to the Iowa Census Project coordination page.
Otherwise, please click here to offer your services. The rewards are indescribable!
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County Coordinator: Gordon Felland
Last Update: 10/23/2010