PLAIN HISTORY GENEALOGY GROUP NEWSLETTER
Vol 2 August 2001
I have been meaning to write this newsletter earlier but I have fallen under the spell of playing sheepshead on the computer with people from all over the world. But that is another story. Since our last meeting a lot of good things have happened. I will share them as examples of what our group is trying to do.
INTERNET CONTACTS: I was contacted by somebody who is related to people in Plain but he lives out west. He saw the stuff out on the Internet. We wrote back and forth several times and he sent some of the names in his family. Rummaging around through the family trees prepared by Georg Ederer (memorize this name) I found a copy of his tree going back to the mid 1700's. I scanned it into my computer and sent it to him using email. Within minutes he had information for his family research. Everybody is welcome to use our resources, whether it is coming to the meetings, reading the newsletters, using the web site or even phone calls and the old fashion mail.
Another person from out-of-state saw my web site and contacted me. Turns out her family was researching mutual ancestors from the same small town in Germany. This sharing stuff works both ways. The genealogy gods reward those who are generous with their stuff.
I was amazed that anybody found these sites. The internet sites' addresses were not widely known (or so I thought). Turns out that these sites were "indexed" by some of the main internet search engines. It is kinda weird to search the worldwide Internet with HAAS and HINTERKLEEBACH and find the newsletter about my family's adventure in Germany a few years ago. This means that somebody in Germany can read about what our group is doing.
I strongly recommend that you get some of your stuff out on the Internet (find a friendly geek to help). This is just like baiting the hook and going fishing. Sometimes you get carp, sometimes you get bass.
EMAIL: The newsletters and mailings that were sent out have been passed around like a chain letter. The nice thing about using the Internet to send mail and newsletters is that it is free. We just add the names to the list and the person will get our mailings. Send me the names and email addresses of anybody who might be interested in getting our group's mailings.
KEEP LOOKING IT IS OUT THERE: I belong to a fairly large genealogy group in
Milwaukee. At our July meeting I gave a presentation on WWI military records to a group of 160 persons. Part of the speech dealt with draft cards at the Madison Wisconsin Historical Society and how you can find a person's real name on the cards. One of the attendees had been looking for his grandfather's burial site for years. He went to Madison, looked at the card and found that the name had been misspelled consistently in the official records. A quick call to the government veteran's organization gave the place of the burial site.
This is an example of never giving up, you never know when or where you will find something. It also shows that attending meetings and belonging to a group can be a great benefit in trying to break through brick walls in your research.
TRIVIA: In the Aug/Sept 2001 issue of the History Magazine, there was an article about weathervanes. It mentioned that in the 9th century the pope required that every church had to have an image of a chicken on the steeple. What's the deal with the chicken? Watch for the next newsletter or come to the August 18th meeting to find out.
ROBERT MINERT "ADVANCING YOUR GERMAN RESEARCH"
7/14/2001 Whitewater Wisconsin
I attend several genealogy seminars a year. I never miss the annual one put on by German Interest Group - Wisconsin www.rootsweb.com/~wigig/index.html . This year they had an excellent speaker from Salt Lake City, Utah.
One of the topics, R. Minert talked about was burial customs in German countries. We take it for granted in the USA that burial sites are "forever" and by individual. Cemeteries are a good source for research because tombstones have names and dates.
It doesn't work this way in Germany. Burial sites are rented for a set period of time, usually around 30 years. After 30 years the site can be re-rented, however it is not all that simple. You just don't rent a site and have somebody take care of the site for you. The renter of the site is totally responsible for the site's maintenance. In the fall with falling leaves, you are expected to keep the site clean which can be a daily process. Also, after 30 years, the grandkids might not be too interested in keeping up grandpa Fred's burial site.
The bodies are placed in the site without a great deal of preparation or steps taken to preserve the body. After 30 years there is very little left. If the family decides to not re-rent the plot after 30 years, the headstone is "discarded" and the site is reused.
Most of the tombstones do not have individual's names nor dates. You can't be sure whether the site has been kept by the family for years or it is new. Cemeteries in Germany are not the source of information that they are in the USA.
Another interesting topic discussed was last names (surnames). Families didn't always have last names. People started using last names when it got to the point that there were too many Johanns in the same town. ( I've got too many Johanns in the same family. ) Last names were determined using a variety of methods.
In most cases once a family took a last name it remained the same. ( Except for spelling variations or situations where a man married a widow's and took her last name name because she owned a lot of property. ) This makes researching a family easier.
However there was another obnoxious way of setting the last name, called patrinomics.
The child's last name was based on the father's first name.
Paul Sorensen (grandfather) Peter Paulsen (father) Lars Petersen (son)
This took place in the Scandinavian countries and some places in Germany. Could you imagine researching your family tree with the last names changing all over the place.
As though this wasn't bad enough, in the earlier 1800's, some governments passed laws that all newborn children had to be assigned a last name that wouldn't change. To comply with the law most people gave their children a set name. This worked okay until after a few years, families reverted back to the old naming conventions. Looking back through the church records you would find the same person under several names. The government had to reissue the laws several times before it took hold.
Think about this next time you complain that you can't find some long lost great great grandfather. Your family tree could really be hosed up.
PRESENTATIONS AT OUR MEETINGS: We would like to put a little more order to our meetings. This order will allow us to cover topics in more depth. Standing up in front of the group and talking is okay but it is tough to cover difficult topics in detail.
As a starting point, we will have detailed handouts for each presentation. This will make it easier to follow the talk. You won't have to take as many notes either. Handouts are okay to a certain point, but it is even better with a "projection" that people can look at. This is especially important if we want to demonstrate stuff on the computer.
One option is to all stand around the library's computer and look over somebody's shoulder. This is good for a group of 2 , but it would be better if people could look at presentations sitting down.
We could get a fancy projector for a computer. They look really good. But they cost over $3000. Heck the bulb alone costs $500. This won't work.
An overhead projector can be gotten for $130. They look good. But it can be expensive to create the overheads. It also doesn't let you demonstrate computer programs. Finding a space for a screen can be a problem.
This brings us to the solution we are going to try. I've got a laptop and equipment that lets us hook up two additional monitors. Using a program called PowerPoint, we can put on presentations with full color and little fuss. We can put the monitors on a couple of desks and people can watch the presentations sitting down.
The PowerPoint presentations can be printed out and put on our web site on the Internet.
This combined with coverage of our meetings in the newsletters will allow people who can't make it to the meetings to keep up.
Salt Lake City, Utah: I have decided to make a trip to the center of genealogy research. The Family History Library of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The have got hundreds of microfilms and books of old German records. From 7:30 am in the morning to 10:00 pm at night, I plan on looking at a microfilm reader until my eyes drop out.
JOKE:
Three guys are debating about which of their languages is the most pleasing to the ear.
Consider the word for butterfly. In Spanish, this is Mariposa, a beautiful sounding word.
The French guy says, "True, but Papillon is even more beautiful".
"What's wrong with Schmetterlink?", says the German....
Saturday August 18th Meeting 9:30 am Plain Library
We have lots to talk about. One discussion topic will be what projects our group should work on. A possible project is to create an index of everything that we have and place this index on the web site. Knowing what people have will make it easier to share.
We will also talk about coming up with a standard meeting time. If you can't make the meeting, email me times work best for you. Example: the 2nd Saturday of every other month.
Another topic is whether people would be interested in making a group visit to the Wisconsin Historical Society Library in Madison. (If you have never been there, you can’t really say that you have done genealogy/history research.)
The proposed format of the meeting will be 1/2 hour of opening discussion , a 1 hour of presentation with a break in the middle, and another 1/2 hour of closing discussion.
The presentation will deal with some of the data on computer disks that are at the Plain Library.
Family History Library Catalog - This disk lets you search the film and book holdings of the Salt Lake City library, which is one of the best genealogy libraries in the world. They have lots of records from Germany.
Germans to America - The book version of these disks is a great source for finding which ship your ancestors came to America on. The disks cover the period of time from 1850-1888.
Haas Bauer Disks - There are numerous things on these disks that are of general interest regarding the Plain area. Census records, federal , state and agriculture. Pictures of old Plain. Plat maps of the area. Original surveys of the area.
Nachriener Funeral Book - This is a fascinating record of deaths in the area.
We will also deal with general questions from the group. Bring yourself and your questions to the meeting.
(The grammar and spelling errors were left in this newsletter to agitate picky readers.)
CONTACT US:
Solo18.abac.com/garylhaas/
Be sure to check the web site every other week for new stuff