Breaking down a brick wall + Milwaukee Germans

The occasional blog "Relative Musings" has a nice story about breaking down a "Bruce" family brick wall in early Milwaukee.

And if it's Germans in Milwaukee you want, be sure to visit Adele Marcum's really well sourced blog called, well, Milwaukee Germans.

Germans in NW Ohio

If you've got Germans and live within range, check out the noon brown-bag program at the Sandusky Library Archives Research Center this Wednesday. "Becky Hill, Head Librarian of the Hayes Presidential Center [another online and physical resource in NW Ohio you don't want to miss], will discuss the German roots of a large percentage of Northwest Ohio residents. Germans in this area came mostly from two different migrations - one usually through Pennsylvania in the 1700s; the other direct from Germany in the 1800s." SLARC has details and registration info.

Illinois' winter quarterly with German pioneers

The centerpiece of the Winter 2007 isue of the Illinois State Genealogical Society Quarterly is part 2 of Gary Beaumont's "German Immigrant Farmers in Illinois," featuring letters from Jacob Menke, who settled near Beardstown (Cass County) in the 1830s, and a diary by Johann Konrad Dahler, who settled near Mount Carroll (Carroll County) in the 1850s.

"Around us there are about 20 German farmers," wrote Menke, "including three medical practitioners with a degree, jurists, theologists, mechanics, even a mayor of Giesen, foresters etc. -- very educated people with whom we have a very pleasant contact.... We are likely to establish a reading or literary circle and a club..."

Dahler on the winter of 1856-57: "From beginning to end there was deep snow, on which smooth ice three inches thick had formed. When we needed firewood and went with the oxen to drag it in, they would go perhaps three paces on the ice and then break through.... We lost our 2 cows, which had cost 30 dollars apiece. We had a log stable for them and slough hay for feed but we lacked straw for bedding in the extreme cold."

Other articles:

"Illinois Resources: Where From to Kansas? Illinois!" by Cherie Weible

"Alderman Protects Family Graveyard," by Jeanie Lowe

"The Digital Revolution in Genealogical Research: What's Coming from Family Search, Part 1," by Susan A. Anderson

"Six Degrees of Separation or Two: Applications for 'Cluster Genealogy' and 'Genealogy Buddies,''' by Margaret M . Kapustiak

"Are You Killing the Things You Love?" by Patricia L. Miller

"Ask the Retoucher!" by Eric Curtis M. Basir

"Richard F. Sutton's Story: A Revolutionary War Soldier, Part 1," by Raleigh Sutton