This will be a geek-day. We will be working on the computers in the Library on

MCGS Workshop Milwaukee, WI Sat Apr 26,2003 http://my.execpc.com/~mcgs/programs.html

This group has a workshop every two years. Their last one was super. I would hold a spot open on my calendar (depending on the final program being offered).

Exploring Door County’s Ethnic, Industrial and Maritime Heritage!I have this one marked in my calendar. It makes a good excuse to go to Door County. More information will be available in Spring 2003.http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/annualmeeting/index.html

GIG Whitewater,WI Sat July 12 2003 M. Wolfert http://www.rootsweb.com/~wigig/workshop.html

If you miss this annual workshop, you are missing a lot.

This was a great presentation given by Phyllis Liegel Dearborn about this Ghost Town that was on her family's farm. Phyllis shared her research. The amount of detail that she had was tremendous. There is not enough room in this newsletter to properly summarize the details. Phyllis has self-published a really neat book that has all the good stuff she covered in her presentation. The layout and the photos combined with all the neat research , gives you one nifty looking book. You can get a copy from her at a reasonable price (cheap) at our meetings.

As a tease to get you interested in getting one of these books, I will give you the table of contents

Early Settlement p2
The Stage and Post Office p8
The Ghost Village of White Mound p12
The Methodist Episcopal Church p15
O'Malley's Cheese Factory p19
The Store in Billytown p23
Other Industry in the White Mound area p27
The Billytown Saloon p30
The White Mound Schools p33
The White Mound Cemetery p36
Index p46

I found a neat article written by Lariane K. Ferguson, "Bavarian Marriage Proclamation and Residency Files Part I." (I couldn't find a part II in the magazine. Nor did I write down the name of the magazine.)

When doing German research on marriages you don't want to stop with the church records. The church records will only usually only give you a few paragraphs. For German marriages, you want to get the documents filed to get "Permission to Marry." (Lots of these documents have been filmed and are available from the LDS church through their Family History Centers.)

Why is the "Permission to Marry" so nifty? In the old days you couldn't just get married. You had to prove to the local authorities that you would be able to support yourself and were good enough to be granted residency in the town. I have found 6 of these for my German ancestors. Each of these is a package of a number of documents. Some of the documents I have found in these packages include.

These documents contain a lot of detail: names, places of birth, ages, parents, brothers, sisters, physical description, name and location of the church.

The basic reason for these rules was to keep poor people from getting married and having to be supported by the local community and church. Before marrying, a couple had to become "official residents" of the community. In order to become a resident they had to prove they could support themselves.

If her article Ferguson describes how poor non-residents were treated. Under a 1751 ordinance, beggars could be branded with a B. The severity of this ordinance was reduced in 1780, when beggars were only required to openly wear a square brass plate as a sign of their poorness.

Who could grant residency and permission to marry? It has changed several times in the past.

Prior to 1808 - permission from the village

1808 to 17 Nov 1816 - permission from the county

17 Nov 1816 to 1825 - village council made up policeman, mayor, doctor, council members of the
poor, parish minister who was the chairman of the committee

1825 to 1834 - a new more liberal decree issued. county courts or city councils resolved conflicts. Decree of Ansaessigmachung issued using some of these rules:

The taxes to move in and out of a village were not to exceed 100 fl.

1834 to 28 may 1862 - because of the more lenient law, there were more marriages among poor people and more people requiring welfare support. The power was transferred by to the village council, which had the final say.

28 May 1862 - The veto power of the village council was eliminated.

16 Apr 1868 - A new law established removing residency requirement. Marriage could be vetoed only if the people getting married had received welfare support in last 3 years or owed debt / taxes to the village. Military requirements had to be met.

This was a great day-long program held in Madison. You can never learn everything about genealogy. One of the speakers has been a librarian at the WHS library for many years. She told us that she just recently found out the when you are using the ARCAT online catalog, it is better to use the "secret" location code than the name of the county, state. For example searching for S3 instead of Sauk County gives you over a 100 more items. It's also a nice place to rub elbows with fellow genealogists. I always pick up something new at every genealogy workshop. If you want to improve your skills, you have to go to workshops.

At our meetings, I have stated that LDS church's PAF is my primary genealogy program. I like PAF because it will always be around. It is unlikely that the church will be bought out or go out of business. The price is right - free. It also lets me dump ALL of my genealogy research to my cell phone computer. This allows me carry ALL of my research with me anywhere I go.

Why isn't it my primary program anymore? (Actually there is a tie.) I was working on a family genealogy book to give to my family. PAF does not do a very good job with books. In order to prepare a book, I was going to have to print-out each report separately, sort, collate and all sorts of yucky stuff.

I pulled out an "old" version of Family Tree Maker.I was able to transfer my data from PAF to Family Tree Maker without much retyping. Family Tree Maker lets you prepare a book with pretty much what you. You can put whatever reports you want in the book. You can include photos and scrapbooks. Once you have "told" the Family Tree Maker what reports to include, you hit the print button. ("Telling" Family Tree Maker what to include can be tricky.) You end up with a book that is paged numbered, has a table of contents and an index to the people in the book.

There are a couple of reports in PAF that Family Tree Maker doesn't have. I also have a program called GENLINES, that I will use for special reports. I will let Family Tree Maker do the heavy lifting when it comes to preparing a book and use the other programs for the special reports.

(Note: using GEDCOM files to transfer data back and forth is what makes this transferring between programs possible.)

www.familysearch.org - This is a great place to do research. We will show you how to
get at the free, databases that the LDS church makes available on their site

We want to get your comments and suggestions. garylhaas@yahoo.com