If you do any family history research in Minnesota, you should be familiar with a valuable record source called "Dalby Database. " John and Jan Dalby started transcribing cemeteries in the early 1980s. The database they created now contains 2,500,000 records! Records from cemeteries (including a few in other states), births, deaths, MN Civil War veterans, people in books (including county directories), newspaper articles, city directories, obituaries, church records, high school yearbooks -- lots of good stuff! Check it out: http://www.dalbydata.com/. When I contacted John Dalby this week to inquire about what's new, he sent me the following update: Jan & I work on the database daily. Jan is presently indexing the Family History Books that have been donated over the years to the Steele County Historical Society.  She has finished with Rice County Historical Society family history book. You can find them in the People in Books File.  Thousands of names. I enter data from obits from about 50 sites daily.  I enter obits that volunteers type from old newspapers in surrounding counties.  I have recently added thousands of obits from Waseca County.  We also have volunteers walking cemeteries in other counties and email me the data in a spread sheet and I key it into our data base.  There is data from over 2000 cemeteries in our database. ...the Owatonna Public Library put it (the website) online for us in 2004.  My goal is to keep them (records) free to the public. We get emails from all over the world.  The most unusual one came from a Sailor sitting in a battleship out in the middle of the ocean during the Gulf War.

One of the many things I like about the Dalby database is the ability to customize searches to manipulate the records. Recently I was looking for an elusive distant female relative. I had a birth year but didn't know her married surname.  I searched Dalby database cemetery records for "Ruth" born "1893." Jackpot! I found her married name - with her maiden name in the comments - and learned she was buried right there in her hometown cemetery.

Over the years I've confirmed dozens of facts about Irish ancestors who lived in Dakota and Waseca counties. However, this database contains many fascinating stories, regardless of whether or not they involve your relatives. Try searching cemetery records with "hollow tree" in the notes, and then go to the referenced obituary! Search newspaper articles with "hobo" in the data field. Read about the Hinckley fire or the Northfield bank robbery.

I recommend reading the "Search Tips" section of the website: http://www.dalbydata.com/user.php?action=searchtips. Armed with these suggestions, I may uncover more family history tidbits. And with the Dalbys adding more data every day, I'm going to check back regularly.