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 (29,200+), CEMETERIES (30,600+
burials), MARRIAGE RECORDS (13,000+), and OBITUARY INDEX
(37,900+).
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
101,500+ individuals
are grouped in 33,300+ Madison County families. Then
verify what you see there with additional research.
Next,
check out all the
other links in the menu and throughout this page
to round out your family’s Madison County
history.
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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 September 2023 thru March 2024. Additional
details are provided in the next section.
- Obituaries - 225 new,
both recent and found from previous years
- Row
locations - 9,500 row links have been added to Iowa
Gravestone Photo Project records to assist in
locating the actual grave for 82% of entries
- Cemetery Burials
- Reflecting the most recent interments
- Gravestone photos -
400 additions or updates
- Family Tree - 869
individuals added for constant
growth
New
Data Sets and Major Additions:
Below is
a description of additional, complete data sets
completed between April 2023 and March 2024.
1923
Madison County Births: The complete set of
Madison County births for calendar year 1923, comprised
of 313 records, have
been posted to our birth pages as of Mar 31, 2024. To
see the list of 1923 births, click here.
To see them integrated with all births, select BIRTH
RECORDS on the left. (Posted
11 Apr 2024)
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. Random
birth records accumulated in the
6 months ending 31 Mar 2024 have been integrated into
our Birth records and also posted
here
as a separate
list. Note
that all of the special projects, which were the prime
sources of new births, have been completed and reporting
random births will be suspended going forward. (Posted
12 Apr 2024).
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)
1881-1882
Obituaries:
Over 150 obituaries from 1881/1882 and associated family
members have been
gathered in addition to those found in the Winterset News
project described above. Winterset
Madisonian newspapers
for 1881 and 1882 are not available for microfilming
and/or digitizing. However, for many years the Madisonian
ran weekly features of news items that took place 10, 20, 30, and 40 years previously. On
occasion, this included mentions of deaths, so these
have been added to the obituary index. Newspapers
from Dallas, Clarke, Union and Warren County have also
provided obits from these years. The majority of
these 1881-1882 obituaries had accompanying gravestones
photos that have been linked. (Posted
26 Jun 2024)
Surname
List of Madison County Gravestones:
A
surname list of Madison County's Iowa Gravestone
Photo Project (IGPP) records are now accessible under CEMETERIES.
This allows IGPP entries to appear within the results of the
all-site search in the yellow box in the upper right.
Updates are done quarterly. (Posted
13 Apr 2024)
1862
Madison County Active Militia List:
A complete list of Madison County
militia volunteers, both for infantry and cavalry duty,
has been added to the MILITARY RECORDS page. These
groups were formed by law and put into effect in
September, 1862. The information was provided by
the State Historical Society of Iowa. (Posted
02 Jul 2024)
1916-1917
Mexican Border War Veterans:
A complete list of Madison County
Iowa National Guard veterans who served during the
Mexican Border War has been completed on the MILITARY RECORDS page.
These names were taken from the 1916
Biennial Report of the Adjutant General of Iowa published
by the State of Iowa. (Posted
02 May 2024)
Madison
County Inventor List:
A
complete list of Madison County individuals who have
been awarded a U.S. patent from 1843 to the present has
been added under COUNTY HISTORY. The list includes
description, patent number, and date. A link is
provided to search for associated documentation. (Posted
25 Jul 2024)
Ongoing
Projects:
Several efforts require continuous updating or work over multiple years to
complete.
Gravestone
Photos: Over
31,000 gravestones in Madison County's
55 cemeteries have been photographed and posted at the
Iowa Gravestone Project.
This is a continuous effort as there are new
burials, repaired gravestones, or stones placed on
existing graves. In the period from September 2023 thru
March 2024, 400
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
13 Apr 2024)
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 25,500 gravestones records (82%) have been updated with a
row link. (Posted
13 Apr 2024)
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.
Seven more have been acquired during the winter and are
to be installed in 2024. Photographs of
the gravestones already placed can be seen here.
(Posted
13 Apr
2024)
Madison
County Family Tree: Our online tree holds
over 101,500 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. In the period
from September 2023 thru March 2024,
869 individuals have been added and linked to their
families. 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
13 Apr 2024)
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 13 Apr 2024)
- Special
thanks go to Pat Hochstetler and Kathi Kuhl who have worked tirelessly
in transcribing new obituaries weekly along with older obituaries
as they are found.
- Since 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
update.
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