Vol 8 Aug 2002

2002 Meeting & Events Schedule
July 20, 2002 meeting
Genealogy seminars
Trips to Wisconsin Historical Society Library
Trips to LDS FHC Library
Whitemound presentation
Sharing Resources - Lending Library
St Luke's Chimes / Ox's Tail Project
PRESENTATION - Using resources of Family History Centers
Online Genealogy Courses
Internet Sites and Other Goodies
Sept 14, 2002 meeting

Questions Looking for Answers

Plain History Genealogy Group Sat Sep 14, 2002 9:30 am, Plain, WI

This should be an interesting meeting, especially if you want to learn how find things on the Internet. I will be giving a talk on how to use search engines. Even if you have been using search engines (like GOOGLE) forever, you should pick up some new things. You don't have to be a genealogist or historian to attend this meeting.

As a general rule, meetings will be held at the Kraemer Library & Community Center on the 2^nd Saturday of the month at 9:30 am in "odd" months. An email and newsletter will come out before the meeting. Things can change so check the website and watch your mail.

Sep 14, 2002 - Nov 9, 2002 - Jan 11, 2003 -Mar 8, 2003 - May 10, 2003

July 20, 2002 Meeting

Genealogy seminars - These are a great way to become a better researcher. They are also a great way to spend money. Some of our members have attended seminars recently.

NGS Conference - Milwaukee May 2002 - This was a once in a lifetime opportunity to attend a national convention in Wisconsin. This 4-day conference had almost 200 talks on a wide range of topics. Like a kid in a candy store, it was tough to choose which talks to attend. Speakers provided a handout for their talk. The nice thing about seminars like this is that they created a book of ALL the speakers' handouts. This book allowed you to read about what was discussed in the talk. There was also a huge area for vendors to sell stuff and demonstrate new things in the genealogy field. The conference was well worth the $200 fee.

Workshop of German States Whitewater WI July 13, 2002 - This is an annual workshop that is held on the campus of UW-Whitewater. We had a pretty good crowd from our group at this year's workshop. For $21, which includes lunch you can't go wrong. I have attended this seminar for several years and have rarely been disappointed. You should mark your calendar for next year's workshop.

Trip to Wisconsin Historical Society Library - We set up our trip to this library in Madison. If you are doing genealogical or historical research, you have got to visit this library. In the next newsletter, I will write about this visit that we made August 17, 2002. Including how several of us, were "trapped" on the elevator.

Trip to LDS FHC Library - Again, this is another "gotta go to" place. No definite time was set for this visit. We will see how the WHS library trip goes first. (See the write-up in this newsletter about these libraries.)

Whitemound presentation - One of our members has done a tremendous amount of research on this ghost town, north of Plain. This will be a presentation at one of our meetings in the near future. (Maybe November 9,2002?) You will want to mark your calendars for this one.

Sharing resources - Lending library - Our members have lots stuff that others would like to borrow. The problem is that even with the best of intentions, we have all experienced lending stuff only to never see them again. We are asking our members if they have any suggestions that would allow us to share our stuff and be sure that we will get them back.

St Luke's Chimes / Ox's Tail Project - We discussed a number of issues on the best way to do this project. Our current plan is to digitize these books using digital cameras.

Here is a basic game plan.

1. take "medium" resolution pictures of each page
   take "high" resolution pictures of group photos, etc
   review quality of photos and redo photos as needed
2. create an index and HTML pages for the photos
3. put the images on disks & create a label for the disks
4. review finish product
5. show product to St Luke's School / Church for approval
6. come up with a marketing / advertising plan
7. distribute the disks

This will be a lot of work. One of our members, Marian Burmester, has taken the "medium" resolution pictures of each page of the Chimes. The quality of these pictures is very good. This is a huge step towards getting this project rolling.

At the next meeting, we will try to schedule Saturday meetings in October to work on this project.

Why would people from Sauk County, WI want to use the resources of the LDS to research German ancestors? The reason is, because they have got the good stuff.

LDS is an abbreviation for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Members of this church are also known as Mormons.

Why does the LDS have good stuff. The concept of family is important to this church. They have a religious ceremony that "binds" families together for all time, even family members that are dead. Genealogical research is important to identify ancestors so that they can be included in this "binding" ceremony.

To make it easier for their church members to do this genealogical research, LDS has over 100 camera crews filming records throughout the world and the US. LDS film crews have filmed many of the records from Germany. (Note: you have to constantly check for new films. Films for Waldmuenchen, Bavaria, Germany were added in 1997.)

These records are housed in the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. They have over 2.5 million rolls of microfilm. There are a lot of books and microfiche that you can also use. If you are a "true" genealogist, you have to put a trip to Salt Lake City on your list of things to do.

The really neat thing is that you don't have to be a Mormon to use these resources. Even though the church has footed a tremendous bill to gather these genealogical resources, they make them available to anybody at ridiculously low costs.

Some people are concerned that using these LDS resources will subject them to conversion attempts by LDS church members. I have been using these resources for over 5 years and I have NEVER heard religious topics even mentioned.

There are FHCs in Madison and Milwaukee. Each FHC is different. They have different hours, different facilities, and different levels of information on hand. I have heard the FHC in Madison has limited resources and you need to make reservations.

I am more familiar with the Milwaukee FHC, which is one of the better ones.

In most cases, you need to go to a FHC to place your order for films. Some FHCs will take phone orders. If you are new to the FHC, ask one of the volunteers to show you what they have. You can also ask the volunteer to help you plan out your research.

At the Milwaukee FHC, you can use the tremendous resources that they have locally. Here are just a few. (For about $1 you can a detailed list of their holdings.)

• gazetteers to locate towns in the old country (Germany's Myers Orts)
• books and finding aides to guide your research
• microfilms of passenger arrivals at New York
• microfilms of Wisconsin Federal and State census
• Sauk County, WI Cemetery Inscriptions
• over 300 CDs' of genealogical data
• broadband access to the Internet and Ancestry.com premium databases
• over 10 microfilm readers, 2 printers (I have never had to wait to use a reader)

The volunteers are also tremendous help. For example, the Milwaukee site has(?) / had a nun who knew German. She was very helpful in translating the old, German documents.

I have been very lucky in finding stuff about my families. I found 5 "packages" of marriage documents from Germany. These documents were from the mid 1800's and were 10-20 pages in length. These documents will probably be covered in a future newsletter.

Another treasure I found was a typed list of people who left the Waldmuenchen, Germany area for places like America. This list covered the 1850s through 1901. For a variety of reasons, you had to get formal permission to move in Germany. The actual documents themselves are in the hard-to-read German script. The typed list was prepared in 1939 by the Nazis. My guess is that the Nazis were looking for possible sympathizers.

I have put a transcription of this list on the web site. YOU HAVE TO BE CAREFULL WHEN ORDERING FILMS OF THESE RECORDS. The films you will order are in alphabetical order however, the documents aren't. I found Bauer's under the W's.

Feel free to contact me, I can steer you away from some of these land mines.

This only scratches the surface of FHC resources. Come to our meetings or write if you have additional questions.

You don't have to travel to a classroom to attend a class anymore. Ancestry.com / MyFamily.com offers a variety of classes that you can take on the Internet. I have signed up for a class on German Genealogy. The class starts Sept 5, 2002. It costs $29.95.

This is a class on how to research your German ancestors. This class will help you determine where in Germany your ancestors came from, and how to begin the research. You will also learn how to read key German words and phrases and old German script (Frankturschrift). You can learn how to find, search, and interpret the different types of records to find your German family roots.

The course outline and more information about other classes being offered
can be found at the following address. I will write about this in future newsletters.

I hired a researcher to look for records about my ancestors. She did this research in the Catholic archives in Bamberg and Regensberg. Using a researcher will probably be a topic of a future article. For now I just want to say that she found some incredible stuff. If you are related to me (if you are from Plain, WI - everybody is related to everybody), you might want to contact me to see what I got. I can give you an idea of where the good stuff is in Germany and share the neat stuff she found.

More than 24 million men had to register for the WWI draft. These cards are available at the Wisconsin Historical Society Library in Madison, WI. If your male ancestor was born between 1872 and 1900, he probably had to fill out one of these cards. There is some pretty neat information on these cards (physical description, occupation, former military service, and place of birth). If your ancestor actually served in WWI and was from Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Historical Society Library also has the "bonus" cards. These cards give detail information about the person's military service.

It can be difficult to know how to start your research in foreign countries and other states.

Scanners are great for regular sized documents, but what about huge, odd-sized books?

I tried to scan some large books but it was hard to hold the book on the scanner with the other end flopping over the edge. I needed to create a large flat surface to hold the book. My scanner is 1" high. I went to an office supply store and purchased -five, 30"x40"x3/16" pieces of foam board. 5 times 3/16" is pretty close to an inch. I stacked these boards and cut out a space for my scanner using a utility knife. For the $20 cost of the boards, I now have a huge, flat surface that works pretty neat.

The following is a tentative agenda for the next meeting

1. Trip to Wisconsin Historical Society Library - Sat Aug 17, 2002
2. Fern Hill School Records
3. Work on Projects - St Luke's Chimes
4. Questions - Comments
5. How to find things on the Internet - Search Engines

Lots of people have lots of questions about lots of stuff. This new section will try to help answer some of these questions. In general send me your question in written form. (Email is preferred.) The question will be added to the newsletter and eventually posted to the web site.

Questions can be about anything related to the genealogy and history of Plain, WI and the general area.

It is better to ask specific questions. Questions like "Tell me everything you know about the Smith family" will be sent back for additional information. Names, dates and places will give you a better shot of getting an answer. Here is our first question.

Be sure to check the website occasionally. solo18.abac.com/garylhaas/