Unwrap this present BEFORE Christmas!

World Vital Records is offering free access to a number of 20th-century city and business directories -- too many to list here, and (I am told) ending on the 26th. For our area of interest, you're in luck if you need

Belleville, St. Clair County, Illinois
Kohler, Sheboygan/Ozaukee counties, Wisconsin
Plymouth, Sheboygan County, Wisconsin
Sheboygan, Sheboygan County, Wisconsin
Sheboygan Falls, Sheboygan County, Wisconsin

but there are plenty more. Check the whole list because not all the offerings for each place are together.

Hat tip to Diane Walsh on Rootsweb's St. Clair County list.

NE Wisconsin history

One of the pleasures of attending Wisconsin's well-planned Gene-A-Rama earlier this month was getting acquainted with Voyageur, "Northeast Wisconsin's Historical Review," in the vendors' hall. It's based in Green Bay, so anything in that general area seems to be fair game.

I picked up the Summer/Fall 2008 issue (which was in the future the last time their web site was updated) and have been reading my way through stories about the Green Bay Packers' abortive post-WW2 out-of-town training camp; "the day [a piece of] Sputnik [IV] fell on [a street in] Manitowoc"; the story of "Baby Doe," a frontier Colorado beauty from Oshkosh; the history of Green Bay's small public squares; Sheboygan's grand old ballpark; and stories from the Wisconsin Oneidas, who were involved in the only WPA project with a linguistic focus and that employed Native American researchers.

Not a genealogy magazine, but if you have people anywhere in the upper right-hand corner of Wisconsin this is a great way to soak up their history.

Southeastern Wisconsin Archives All In One Place?

Well, no, not really. I try not to make a habit of recommending 13-year-old internet resources, but I like the philosophy behind the Online Guide to Genealogical Collections in the Milwaukee Metropolitan Area, produced by the Library Council of Southeastern Wisconsin, Inc., and hosted by the Archives at the Golda Meir Library, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

For one thing, they define their area broadly, including Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Sheboygan, Washington, and Waukesha Counties. And they made the best of it when it became clear that they couldn't list everything available in all those counties: the guide focuses on official records of churches and governmental bodies, and within those

Many records exist which can be of great use to genealogists, but are rarely examined. The Guide contains entires for many of these kinds of records, especially those of civil and criminal courts, fire and police departments, and personnel records...

Just in places where I have research targets, I found delinquent tax lists 1862-1926 for Sheboygan County and assessments for the Town of Plymouth 1861-1877 (at the Sheboygan County Historical Research Center), Kenosha County tax rolls 1856-1965 and assorted church and cemetery records 1839-1952 (at the University of Wisconsin Parkside), and Milwaukee County school censuses 1913-1960 (at the Milwaukee County Historical Society).

The lists are not consistently alphabetized, i.e. Kenosha church records are under "C" not "K" or any of the denominations. But in any case this is a source of inspiration for when you're stuck, and a metaresource: in all cases be sure to check the web site of the alleged repository for up-to-date holdings information before you grab your laptop and head out!

More Sheboygan

Sheboygan History is a useful and unpretentious site with many local school yearbooks going back to 1900, as well as photos, transcriptions of county histories and the inevitable 1894 biography book, plus a 1940 telephone book and local links including the Sheboygan County Historical Research Center, previously blogged here.

Down by the old mill stream . . .

. . . in Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin, is where you'll find the Sheboygan County Historical Research Center, literally within earshot of the 24/7 waterfall created by the old dam.

Among local research places I've visited, SCHRC is distinguished by efficiency (even when confronted with the daunting surname of Smith), friendliness, thorough cemetery transcriptions, and a collection of local deed abstracts (a bargain at $5 per search, $1 a page -- not many local centers go this deep). Check out the full list of holdings.

And September 25-27 SCHRC will host a conference on "The Dutch-American Experience in Wisconsin: 1840-Present."