Wisconsin leapfrogs into the 21st century

I hope someone more cosmopolitan can correct me, but isn't Wisconsin the first state genealogy society to put its flagship publication on line? The move was dictated by finances but it's also a visual upgrade, and it coincides with a push to publish readable articles in addition to compiled and abstracted records. It's a combined January-April 2009 issue, 52 pages in PDF format available to members. Join at Wisconsin State Genealogical Society. Included in this quarter's contents:

"Dane County -- Inventory from the Lower and Upper McFarland Cemetery"

"Fond du Lac County -- Rienzi Cemetery Study: A Search for Unmarked Graves," by new co-editor Tracy Reinhardt. Another precedent question: who else, where else, has tried to study how many unmarked burials a particular cemetery contains?

"Fond du Lac County -- FDL Public Library Seefeld Local History Room"

"Marquette County -- Thomas Mozley Writes from the Wisconsin Frontier: 'If I am spared I shall see for myself,'" by Harold Henderson (that's me)

"Wood County -- Governor Awards Marshfield Public Library for Genealogy Database"

Ripon research

The New England Historical and Genealogical Society's Enews reminds us of the resources available for east-central Wisconsin at the Ripon Historical Society and nearby places. (BTW, unlike many genealogy societies, NEHGS is flourishing and has more members than ever. Their move into New York is only the beginning. In the fall issue of New England Ancestors, its new board chair muses on how to position the society as "the national organiztion it really has become," with "extraordinary resources . . . for almost every state of the union and many European countries.")

Meanwhile, back in Ripon, use the explanatory links at the Ripon Historical Society to get started, branching out to local library resources including PDF cemetery files, the Samuel Pedrick Collection (housed at RHS although the guide is on the college website), the Ripon College Archives, and . . . speaking of outfits that loom large far beyond their state's borders . . . the bountiful resources of the Wisconsin State Historical Society.

Fond Du Lac County, Wisconsin, vitals index

The Fond Du Lac Public Library has turned a 64-year-old card index into an online Vital Statistics Index covering at least some marriages, obituaries, funeral notices, and "milestone anniversaries" in local newspapers from 1846 to 1994 and from 2005 to the present. As the site says without wasting words, "The newspaper index is incomplete. Various indexers worked at differing levels of thoroughness."

So the usual strictures about indexes apply: put the results in your database if you want, but if you want to know, email the library for a photocopy of the newspaper report (which itself is far from infallible).

H/t to the New England Historic Genealogical Society's eNews, edition of 11 June, to which you can subscribe for free; few recent issues are archived on line.