Stumbled Upon

Have you ever come across a valuable genealogical resource while researching a different topic? That was my case recently when I was researching the involvement of Nemaha (KS) countians during the civil war.

Not only did I uncover quite a bit of information and records for the 8th Kansas infantry, but I encountered a site called Kansas Military Index. This site lets you put in a name (or just a surname) and it searches quite a few Kansas military records for that name.

Since some of my Kansas surnames are fairly distinctive, I tried just a surname search to see what I could find.

Briles:

• Kansas Adjustant General’s Report, 1861-1865 showing five records of unfamiliar BRILES family members
• Civil War Militia, 1861-1865 showing eight records including my 3rd great grandfather, Alexander Briles; his son, John; his nephew, Branson; and several yet to be identified Briles family members.

• World war II Selective Service Records that included my uncle Watler Briles

Using this search, I was able to identify 12 World War II records for the MENTZER surname with 8 of them being for my MENTZER family in Woodson county.

While investigating this tool, I also stumbled across the ‘Kansas Names‘ search feature. Repeating my ‘Briles’ search in this tool, I found a list of marriage records for many of my Briles family members. This list evenprovides the book and page number for the county record, making it possible to locate the original record.

My results contain a lot of records beyond the 1854-1861 time frame. When I clicked on the ‘New search of Kansas Marriage Index’ link, I found that this information is being created by volunteers!

I am thankful that the Kansas State Historical Society is creating these indexing tools and that volunteers are helping to index county records.