Any good genealogist is concerned that he documents the truth. Once something is in print it is almost impossible to correct it. In the books that I did for Christmas I made a couple of mistakes with the photos. ( Each family got a different set of photos, so you might not have these folders in your book. )

On my sister Mary’s page of photos I included a photo of Jackie Ruhland. At least there are only 4 copies with this page.

A more distressing mistake was on the Bauer page of photos. One of the photos was chosen because it showed the disease that most of my Bauer aunts suffered from. When they were younger, it seems they couldn’t pass by a car without jumping on its hood and having their picture taken. I think the medical name for this disease is BBB ( Bauer Butt on a Buick). I thought it was a picture of my aunt Evelyn. When I showed it to my mother, she said it was her. It’s pretty bad if you can’t recognize your own mother.

Yet another case of a Haas tombstone having misleading information. I have starting researching my grandfather’s service in the war. On the back of his tombstone it lists a unit that he was in. However, he was in this unit after the war ended and it only one of the four units that he was in.

Soldiers were paid a "bonus" for having served in the war. ( If my memory serves me right, there was a big whoop-de-do about these bonuses involving a "march" on Washington D.C.) I got a copy of the card that covered the bonus Lute received. He got $84.33. From this card several "events" are documented.

The card is blank regarding ENGAGEMENTS. There is a reference to another military unit on the card. Det Cas. 206, 163^rd D.B. last Co B.

This will be an area of further research.

I will be sending a request to the St Louis records center. Unfortunately many of their records burnt up. One of the things I would like to support is the story that Lute was sick in Europe ( Spanish flu ??) . I am going to ask them to search their records for daily morning / muster reports that could tie this down.

I have a set of books about WWI ( The Order of Battle.) that describe in unbelievable detail what went on in the war. For example I think know the name of the ship that Lute went to Europe on, when and where it left and docked. I found a picture of this boat on the internet.

Stuff to look for.

This will be section in future newsletters. I’ll cover things that I found interesting that I have read about.

Beer Steins: You’ve probably seen the old beer steins with the metal lids. I thought that the lids kept the beer from going flat. Turns out they are related to plagues that killed lots of people in Europe. Flies were thought to be carriers of death. The lids were meant to keep the flies out. What’s the big deal about getting a little extra protein with your drink.

Civil War Pensions: When do you think that the last Civil War Pension was paid out? A soldier in the war would have been born before 1850. I read in a respectable genealogy magazine that Civil War Pensions were still being paid out to 2 people ( at least they were in 1997). No, there isn’t some 150 year old geezer. It is more likely that there is a 85 year old floozy. ( A woman born in 1915 marrying an 80 year old veteran in 1930 would make the math work. )

Serving your country: During the wars, the government asks its citizens to support the war effort. In the past the government has asked it’s citizens for hickory nuts and the contents of ladies’ chamber pots. ( If you don’t know what a chamber pot is, you probably don’t fully appreciate indoor flush toilets. ) Hickory nuts were used for gas masks in WW1. General Washington asked the ladies for their movements. Turns out you can make saltpeter (used to make explosives ) from this stuff. Just so you don’t think I got this out of Penthouse’s Letters to the Editor, you can find it on page 4 of HISTORY MAGAZINE April/May 2001. Now I know what my history teacher meant when she said that the soldiers were supported by women's movements.

I am setting up a new web page on the Internet . The "old" sites only had 8 million bytes of storage. You really couldn't put a lot of stuff out there. I have found a cheap site that gives you 500 million bytes of storage. This should be more than enough room to do some good things. The site is pretty rough but it will give you access to the things I have. Some of the stuff I will put out on the site are.

• an index / table of contents of the stuff that I have on the CD disks

• thumbnails (smaller photos ) of the stuff on the disks
• all the previous news letters
• a link to family trees
• organized pictures on various topics
• what is going on with the Plain history / genealogy group
• lists of other web sites to go to

The site is solo18.abac.com/garylhaas

I will be working on this site to make it prettier and with clearer instructions on how to use it.

This site will be slow for people using dial-up internet access. It works pretty good on cable-modem dial up. On a regular basis I will dump the stuff out on the internet to a CD disk that will be easier to use. I would appreciate any constructive comments.

Another new section will describe memories of events that mean something to me. Hopefully these things actually happened and aren’t some repressed memories. Maybe they will spark some of your memories that you’ll share.

Grandma’s house: Some of favorite memories are staying overnight at my Grandma Bauer’s home. I would sleep on the floor in the living room. ( It was the only room with air conditioning – two windows and a fan..) The best part of this memory was waking up to the smell of the lilac bush.

For some reason when I think of her house, I picture witches and scary cats. Hmm, I wonder why.

Can anybody tell me why I have these pictures kicking around in my head.

Cold fried egg sandwiches for breakfast: I remember having cold fried egg sandwiches for breakfast. This usually happened on the first Friday of the month. Again you younger kids probably don’t remember FIRST FRIDAYSs and getting communion. Back in the old days you couldn’t eat after 12 midnight. When I had my first communion, there was a three hour wait. Normally mass was held at 11:00 for school kids. On FIRST FRIDAYs there was an 8:00 am mass. With the three hour wait you couldn’t eat breakfast. After mass we would go back to the classroom and eat the sandwiches and whatever else we were sent to school with.

If you want to see a nice example of photos you can make with a computer and a medium quality inkjet printer, have my parents show you the panoramic photos of Plain in summer and winter. ( If they don’t have the pictures up by the next time I go home, they’ll have some explainen to do. ) The photos are about 3 feet long by about 4 inches tall.

It costs about $10 to print the pictures out. I had them professionally framed and matted. This cost about $110 each. About $70 for the frame and the glass, the rest for matting and prep.

I have some panoramic photos from Germany that I am thinking of having mounted.

A group of us is trying to setup regular meetings to discuss the history and genealogy of the Plain area.

We've had a couple of meetings and there is a lot of stuff out there about the people of Plain and its history. One of the goals is to gather all this stuff in one place so that it is preserved for the future.

The next meeting is tentatively planned for Saturday August 18^th at the library. I will send out email when the date is firmed up. Notices will be put into the Home News.

I have given a set of my disks to the Plain Library. This is a complete set. There was no editing or excluding of pictures from this set. It includes a picture of one of my aunts making a chipmunk face, and another of my mother and a sister in the "outdoor reading room" showing a hand gesture pointing to the sky.

If you are interested in getting a set of the disks, I would recommend that you try to attend one of these meetings or set up another time that we can get together.

I have been trying to interpret my Haas ancestor's german marriage documents. These are written in the old german script which is very difficult to read. As a starting point, I will start with parts of George Haas & Kunigunda Rasch documents that deal with their education. ( These are Lute Haas's grandparents. )

These records were titled Schul Entlafs Schein. Both of them refer to the town of Poppendorf.

George has one page that seemed to be standard boiler-plate language. It was handwritten without much format. It lists his birthdate of Mar 13 1818. The form was signed Dec 18 1842.

Kunigunda had two pages. Her forms had a format to them, hand-drawn boxes with what appear to be "classes" and her grades. It lists her birthdate of Apr 20 1810. Her grades were "gut". What is interesting is that she has 2 forms, one dated 1822 and the other dated 1828. There was a tax for getting these forms prepared, so they wouldn't have gotten 2 handwritten copies of the same record . I am guessing when suggest that one was "elementary" school and the other an equivalent of "high" school.

In Hilda Thering's "A History of Plain, Wisconsin", she lists 5 men who died in the Civil War. She has a footnote that says that "Records pertaining to the Civil War are not open to the general public." Well, this is not really true. There are hundreds of sites on the Internet that give you all the details that you can get. ( One site even gives you access to the pension request filed with the government. The following is a brief summary of how these men served in the military. )

You have to be careful when looking up soldiers from FRANKLIN. There is also a FRANKLIN that is the suburb of Milwaukee.

The above list does not include soldiers from Bear Creek or White Mound.

The following is a partial list of veterans from cemeteries in the area.

This would make for an interesting research project.

Q: How do you make holy water?
A: You take regular water and boil the HELL out of it.

Q: Did you hear about the dsylexic agnostic who suffered from insomonia?
A: He staid up all night wondering if there was a dog.

I would appreciate constructive comments about these newsletters and stuff you might be interested in

Email garylhaas@yahoo.com

Gary Haas
2400 E Bradford #904
Milwaukee WI 53211
414 793-4496