PLAIN HISTORY GENEALOGY GROUP NEWSLETTER
Vol 3 September 2001
We had a good turnout at our August 2001 meeting. We had attendees from as far away as Green Bay. In the future, instead of giving a "prize" for the person who traveled the furthest, we might acknowledge the person who is related to the most people at the meeting. A tiebreaker could be how many different ways you are related to the same attendee. The gene pool in our area can be a little shallow. It is not unusual for people to be related in more than one way.
The latter part of this newsletter will describe the meeting. We will start with coming events that you might want to attend.
Loganville Sat Sep 22 2001 8:30 am St Peter's Lutheran Church
The Friendship Rural School Historical Society will be holding a day-long meeting.
The society was founded after the local school was closed in 1962 due to school consolidation. A local group purchased the school. It is currently being used by a local Amish community as a school in exchange for keeping the building in good repair.
The morning will include the showing of a film "Loganville 1907." It is possible that they might have an Amish representative give a presentation. In the afternoon, a tour of the school will be held.
I will be attending this meeting. It sounds like an interesting program and a good way to meet members of another, nearby history group. www.shsw.wisc.edu/localhistory/calendar/
Milwaukee Oct 5-7 2001
The Federation of Eastern European Family History Societies will be holding their national convention for Eastern and Central European Genealogy. Germany and Bohemia will be covered at this convention. feefhs.org
Madison Sat Oct 20 2001 ?? Alliant Energy Center ( former Expo Center )
The Wisconsin State Genealogical Society is holding their Fall 2001 Seminar with the theme ARCHIVES RESEARCH. The word archives can imply some old boring library. Archives are the play areas of genealogists. At archives you can find the really good stuff. They are planning on have representatives from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Washington and Chicago. There will also be somebody from the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison.
I will be attending this meeting. Past seminars have been very useful in trying to figure out how to do research. There should also be a big vendor's area that will be selling almost anything you can think of. www.rootsweb.com/~wsgs/seminar.htm
Plain November 10 2001 9:30 am Plain Library
We will be holding our 4th meeting. If we can, we will try to have the meeting go to 2:00 or 2:30 pm. We will take a short break for lunch. Bring a sandwich or go to one of the local establishments.
One of the comments after the last meeting was that it would have been nice to have more time to talk with other people at the meeting. More time will be available for these discussions.
We will be trying to have the meeting upstairs. This will give us more room to spread out. Help with setup and cleanup will be appreciated.
We used two computer monitors as part of the presentation. If you can bring a computer monitor (with the cables) to be used at the presentation, please email me. We should be able to hook up to 5 monitors so we can spread out.
A big part of the presentation will be a "quick" showing of various things that you can do with a computer. You can't efficiently do a family research project without a computer. One of the problems of trying to learn how to use computers is that you don't know the questions to ask. Some of the things that we will be demonstrating include: computer basics, scanners, handheld computers, printers, image editors, family tree programs, suites, digital cameras. This will not be an in depth analysis, but rather something to help you decide how much of a computer geek you want to be. Based on what our group wants to do, we can have more detailed presentations on these topics in the future.
As anybody who has a computer knows, software can be expensive. At the meeting we will have "free" programs and utilities available. These programs will be distributed for a small donation to the library.
We will also have a presentation on the 1860-agriculture census for Franklin township.
Milwaukee May 15-18 2001 National Genealogical Society
Clear your calendars. This is going to be a big one. This could be the biggest genealogy convention ever held in Wisconsin. I will be joining this organization and attending this convention. I would recommend that you make your plans early. Hotel rooms and popular sessions will be filled up quickly. www.ngsgenealogy.org
Whitemound
Phyllis Dearborn, one of our "charter" members, had some of her research on this ghost town published in the Sauk County Historical Society publication "Old Sauk Trails Newsletter". Phyllis has offered to give a presentation early next year on Whitemound. She has got quite a lot of facts and one of a kind photos of the area. She also has some good stuff on the cemetery and the people there. How and where she got her information should be an interesting story in and of itself.
This is an example of what our group is about. In another 10 years it could be tough to find more than a handful of people who will have even heard of Whitemound. People and places of the past need to be documented and persevered.
Miscellaneous
I forgot to answer the question about putting chickens on church steeples at the meeting. In the 9th century, the pope decreed that all churches have a chicken on their steeple. The idea was that this would remind the faithful of St Peter and how he denied Jesus 3 times before the cock crowed. (It would have been too easy if I had said rooster.)
Joke
What is the German word for constipation?
FarFromPoopen
Internet as a source of Help
We took several pictures of the people at our Aug meeting. I suggested that we not label the picture to identify the people. This will be a joke on anybody who looks at this photo in 20 to 40 years.
Unless the genealogy gods have smiled on you, you probably have several photos that are driving you nuts because you can't identify the people. We can use the Internet to help solve these mysteries.
If you send me a scanned image of the photo and include a typed up description in computer format, we'll post the photo to our web site and ask for help in identifying the people. People all over the world will be able to help.
I would recommend that your description be "lengthy". Just saying that the photo has possible relatives won't get you very far. You never know who has the information you need and how to let them know they can help you. You never know what will trigger a helpful response from somebody.
Its like fishing, you've got to use the right bait. Nightcrawlers are okay if you are satisfied with carp. If you want trout you need an attention-getting fly (or an electric generator - but that is another story).
In your description include as much as you can , even if you have to estimate : date the photo was taken, type of event (marriage, reunion, death, etc), time of year, possible families and individuals in the photo, and who you think it might be.
We can use the web page to solve any other genealogy/history mysteries that might be keeping you up at night. Send me your questions in email / computer format and we'll post it on the web site.
We will reserve the right to edit or exclude mysteries/requests that we consider to be inappropriate.
Survey
We are asking people to submit a voluntary survey. Members of our group might wish to post on data on the website: about themselves, families they are researching, special items that you have, stuff you would like help on. (You don't have to attend meetings to be considered a member.)
A webpage linked to a "mystery" help request could make it easier for somebody to help solve your problem. It also could generate you a lot of responses from people who see a webpage with your information.
The survey will be free-format and can include a wide-variety of information. The following are some suggested items to include. You can add additional information to be considered for the webpage. Be careful the whole world will see this.
your name and email
families of interest , names of key ancestors , when they arrived
in US,
their birth, marriage, death dates, places they lived
special items that you have : pictures, stories, historical books
special skills that your have : languages , research libraries
that you've used, travels in Germany
areas in which you are willing to provide help
Please email me the data you would like to have posted on the website. garylhaas@yahoo.com
Aug 18 2001 Meeting
(As a warning, any complaints about the completeness of these notes about the meeting will earn you the position of secretary at the next meeting. )
We started the meeting with discussions on a number of topics.
We started with what our group's primary objectives are. As a starting point, our group wants to GATHER and SHARE information. Our members have got a lot of books, pictures, movies, family trees, family stories to share. What we would like to do is catalog and index as much as we can and post it to the website.
Meeting times were discussed and it seems like the 2nd Saturday of the month works best. At this time we will not commit to a definite schedule what with the holidays and other things coming up. Our next meeting will be Nov 10th.
Future topics for meeting were discussed. There are a lot of things that we can talk about: local history topics, computer related training / demonstrations, open discussions on topics and questions and answers sessions. Please email me if you have any ideas or you would like to give a presentation.
Future projects will definitely include indexing and cataloging what we have. Having "one" index with everything in it will make searching for and sharing data easier. We need to know what we've "got". One of the sad facts of life is that you can't take it with you. A common nightmare for historians & genealogists is that after you are gone, your family puts the stuff you spent a lifetime gathering into a dumpster or a rummage sale.
An example that covers all this was a 1980s?? book of all the farms in Sauk County with pictures of families and farms. One of the attendees at our meetings found this book at a rummage-type sale for $5. This is a priceless historical document. You can just see the original owner turning in their grave over how this was just given away. (If the person is still alive, they had to be an idiot to get rid of such a treasure.)
Another attendee mentioned that they have family "scrapbooks" that total thousands of pages. There has to be amazing stuff in this collection. Posting an index of this collection would be a major addition to the website.
We discussed the possibility of taking trips to places like : the Sauk Co Court House, the Wisconsin Historical Society Library in Madison, the Family History Center in Madison. If and where we go will be determined by what members want. We are thinking about a spring trip to the WHS Library. We'll keep you posted.
Copyright concerns were brought up. This will be an issue that we will constantly be dealing with. Anything on the website is fair game. Any of the disks are not. If you get any CD disks from our group, you must get the "originator's" specific permission before you make copies of any disks or share any pictures.
Presentation - Family History Library Catalog. This CD disk lets you search the huge holding of the Mormon / LDS church. Your family research is not done until you have searched this source. Doing family history research is a key part of this church. It would slow up the church's members if they had to individually contact parishes / governments in foreign countries to research their families. To get around this problem, the LDS church is going worldwide, filming whatever they can. I believe they have 125 films working throughout the world.
This catalog can be accessed through their Internet site at familysearch.org. They sell this catalog on a disk for $5. Even though the disk is not as up-to-date as the website, it benefits are 1) it runs lots quicker, 2) the search is more complete than the website and 3) you can bookmark items.
Presentation - Irfan Viewer. This is a free program that will let you view pictures and documents on the disks our group distributes. It lets you edit images to get a better picture, look at thumbnails and run slideshows. This program will be part of a UTILITY disk that will be available at the next meeting. The best way to learn how to use this program will be hands on demonstrations at our meetings. Included in the handouts were some screen snapshots and brief instructions on how to use the program.
Presentation - Our Website. We went over the website. The contains data gathered for the Haas Bauer family research and the Plain History Genealogy Group. In future newsletters we will cover the website in more detail.
Presentation - Nachreiner Funeral Book. This is an interesting piece of the history of Plain. It is the detail records of the local undertaker Joesph Nachreiner. The entire book has been digitized and put on a CD disk. An index of this book is on the website. It should be noted that Nachreiner had an interesting way of spelling things. The index has used his spelling. There is one sheet per funeral. This sheet contains information about : the deceased, their family, cause of death and detail breakdown of the costs of the funeral. We looked at some of the individual sheets. The number shown in the page number and the computer file number.
1 Feb 9 1903 This was the first funeral covered
6 Feb 2 1903 Example of cause of death "scaulded by
steam"
15 Feb 12 1906 Cause of death spelling example "hart
faluar"
27 Oct 15 1907 Cause of death BIRTH
48 Nov 21 1909 Place of death spelling "Bare Creek"
53 May 19 1910 astronomical observation "Haleys Comet"
168 Rev Pesh (Pesch) Jun 8 1918 very expensive funeral (including
a $3 shave)
219 Apr 30 1922 first use of automobile as a hearse
Presentation - Haas / Bauer Disks. We looked at some of the basic history stuff on the disks. The first number below is the DISK NUMBER, the next is the file name.
03 00000220 exterior 3rd church in
Plain
03 00000224 00000225 interior 3rd church in Plain
03 00000236 steeple of 3rd church in Plain after
cyclone
03 00000258 ruland gruber wedding photo
03 00001118 1857 plat map of the Plain area
16 af190512 1905 agriculture census of Franklin
03 ag000009 1906 plat map of Plain area
03 ag000012 1906 plat map of town of Plain
16 az188005 1880 agriculture census of Franklin
03 bo000003 bo000028 1843 survey of the Plain area
16 ff186013 ff187010 ff190019 federal census of Franklin
16 sf187505 sf188508 sf190604 state census of Franklin
By the next meeting the handouts from the Aug meeting should be posted to the website.
KEEP IN CONTACT:
We want to get your comments and suggestions. garylhaas@yahoo.com
Be sure to check the website occasionally. solo18.abac.com/garylhaas/