This second issue of 2026 features articles on Iowa, “The Hawkeye State”. This issue, like all issues in this continuing series, will feature the state’s history, including how to find great historical and genealogical records and more:

● Mining Genealogical Gold: Finding Historical Iowa Records (and the stories behind them). The land we now call Iowa stands as a testament to American possibility. Here, upon vast prairies that once stretched beyond vision, a story unfolded that tells us not just about a single state, but about our nation itself. This story begins long before recorded history, when glaciers sculpted the terrain and left behind soil so rich that it later earned the title of “black gold.” In continues through centuries of native peoples who built civilizations among its rivers and rolling hills. And it carries forward into our present age, where Iowa remains fundamental to understanding America.

● The Vacant Chair: Iowa’s Civil War Soldier Farmers (and the families they left behind). The premise of this article is two-fold, not only highlighting the Civil War service of Iowans, many of them farmers, but the wives and families they left behind. While there were no battles fought in the state, the war and its aftermath nevertheless left its mark on the young state of Iowa.

● Weathering Iowa. If Iowa were a person, its best friend would be agriculture and its worst enemy would be the weather. The land may have the richest soil in the world, but the sky seems determined to destroy it at every opportunity. Iowans do not just farm; they battle nature as if it were a seasonal sport. Tornadoes, floods, blizzards, and droughts all show up on the schedule, and if the Bible promised plagues of locusts, Iowa has the climate to make it happen.

● The Dash: Vida Lois “Mom” Moreland Wade (1891-1976). In the 1930s and ‘40s she was known as “Mom Wade”, and historical evidence confirms how fondly she was remembered. For as long as she could remember, Vida wanted to be a nurse. Instead, years later, she established a maternity home, perhaps, as her family speculates, to fulfill her long-held dream.

Enjoy the issue!