Special to The Times by Bill Schu

* Editor's note: Bill Schu is the newsletter editor of the Northwest Indiana Genealogical Society.

The Northwest Indiana Genealogical Society covers Lake and Porter counties and would like to tell you about the research we do, what we have accomplished through our dedicated volunteers and how that can assist you in researching your family's history.

We are working on several very large projects, the largest of which is copying the Lake County marriage records for 1837 through 1957. Indexes of 1837 through 1914 can be viewed in the online archives section of our society's Web site, http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~innwigs/.

Our society also has been working on extracting obituary information from The Times for 1930 and 1938. Currently we are working on 1935 through 1938. We have completed 1930 through 1934. This information can be viewed at the Lake County Public Library in Merrillville. Marlene Polster, the society's first vice president, has led these projects.

Another large project includes the indexing of employment records from several different Pullman Standard plants, mainly from the 1920s through the 1940s. Records covering surnames starting with the letters A through J can be found on our Web site.

Another project involves society volunteers indexing the names and information included in the employment records from 1915 to 1949 of the Gary Screw & Bolt Co., a well-known early employer in Gary. This project is being headed up by Martha Latko in close cooperation with Steve McShane at the Calumet Regional Archives at Indiana University Northwest.

Martha also has worked on numerous projects over the years, including the indexing of school enumeration records for various schools in Lake County. These enumerations were literally a census of all students ages 6 through 21 who were not married. Much of Martha's work covers enumerations for Whiting, Hammond, Griffith, East Chicago and Highland.

Over the past decade, Doris and Ed Brozak have led a team of volunteers who have walked through and recorded the information from every tombstone in all 122 cemeteries in Lake and Porter counties. This has been a monumental effort, requiring not only the initial gathering of the data, but also walking each cemetery to verify the correctness of the data.

Details of all of these records, worked on by our volunteers, have been published in books, which we donate to the main libraries in Lake and Porter counties - in Merrillville and Valparaiso, respectively. You also can purchase these publications by visiting our Web site, clicking on "Our Publications" and looking through a list of our current publications; prices and an order form are included.

In addition, indexes of some of these publications are online. Also at our Web site and under links, click on "Online Archives" to find numerous databases to assist you in your search for your ancestors. The first major index that we placed online was the Porter County death index covering the years from 1884 through 1927.

There are numerous volunteers who have worked hard on projects over the years. To all, we would like to give our heartfelt thanks for your fine efforts.

The public is welcome to attend a free monthly meeting and learn more about the fascinating endeavor of genealogy.

Our next meeting is at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Lake County Public Library, 1919 W. 81st Ave (U.S. 30) in Merrillville. It will be a special meeting with the Lake County Public Library. At 10:30 a.m., guest speaker Eric Basir will talk about repairing photographs, and in the afternoon he will talk about dating photos. To register and buy a box lunch, visit http://www.rootsweb.com/~innwigs/ or e-mail nwigs@hotmail.com.