Good news for Wisconsin researchers!

The Wisconsin State Historical Society kindly takes us behind the curtain and lets us know that it's about halfway through digitizing its 8,000 Sanborn insurance maps, proceeding alphabetically. So this is especially good news if your town of interest is big enough and falls in the alphabet between Ableman (Sauk County, 1912) and Marshfield (Wood County, 1904). The rest of the alphabet should be done by next spring, and will be followed by digitizing the 800 insurance maps for Milwaukee, which present special problems. You can go direct to their free on-line map images too.

And if there's anyone reading this who never heard of Sanborn Fire Insurance maps, you are in for the treat of your genealogy life. Intended to record information relevant to the insurability of specific buildings and towns, for us they offer detailed enough information to build a replica of our ancestors'  late-19th- or early-20th-century home towns. (I used them a bunch when writing about my relatives in Wharton, Texas, a place where I have never set foot.)


Harold Henderson, "Good news for Wisconsin researchers!," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 12 November  2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

On Wisconsin and On to FGS Fort Wayne

Cross-posted from the FGS 2013 conference news blog:

Is Wisconsin on your way to or from the 2013 FGS conference in Fort Wayne? You'll love the Badger State's hospitable research stopovers – and leave your down coat at home: August is a good time to visit.

Wisconsin Historical Society
816 State Street, Madison
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/libraryarchives/
That's library AND archives, including pre-1907 vital records (index on line), US census agriculture schedules, and a famous newspaper collection. If have time for only one stop en route to Fort Wayne, this is it.

13 Area Research Centers
La Crosse, Platteville, Whitewater, Parkside, Milwaukee, Oshkosh, Green Bay, Stevens Point, Eau Claire, Stout, River Falls, Superior, and Ashland
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/libraryarchives/arcnet/
Check out the map and links to localized holdings in 13 places besides Madison. (La Crosse has steamboat photographs.)

Milwaukee Public Library
814 West Wisconsin, Milwaukee
http://www.mpl.org/file/hum_genealogy.htm
Sailors in your pedigree? Check out the Great Lakes Marine Collection, including data on more than 10,000 ships: http://www.mpl.org/file/hum_marine_index.htm



Harold Henderson, "On Wisconsin and On to FGS Fort Wayne," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 17 February 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Bookends Friday: 56,000 pages about Wisconsin

The Wisconsin Historical Society is more than generous with its online offerings. Recently Kathy Lenerz reminded me of their "more than 80 standard county histories," most published between 1850 and 1920 and affectionately nicknamed "mug books," at Wisconsin County Histories. You can search by county and browse individual books, search by community name, or just search full-text of all of them together. Enjoy -- but don't totally believe everything you read!

New sources for Wisconsin

The March-April issue of the Wisconsin Historical Society newsletter Columns notes two batches of documents recently placed on line at Turning Points in Wisconsin History:

300 pages of a total of around 3000 pages of records of the Anti-Saloon League focusing on the league's "secret infiltration of taverns in 1917-18," including "private investigators' reports of drinking in Delavan and Oconto Falls." (Query: can we see the PIs' expense reports?)

documents on Hispanic history in Wisconsin, including a history of migrant farm workers a century ago, "a social worker's mimeographed report on the Mexican-American community in Milwaukee in 1930, and a 1968 account of the founding of Obreros Unidos, a migrant workers' labor union."

Portage County Wisconsin obituaries and so much more

For many archival purposes, the Wisconsin Historical Society has divided the state into 14 Area Research Centers (ARCs), where a surprising variety of records that you might only otherwise find in courthouses reside, including vital, tax, school, property, probate, cemetery, business, and other record types. Check out this overall map and pick your spot -- every center operates a little differently. If your main interest is pre-1907 vital records, there's a statewide index here.

The university library at Stevens Point appears to be especially active genealogically speaking. Among other things they maintain the Stevens Point Area Obituary Index, a collaboration between the university archives, the Portage County Public Library, and the Stevens Point Area Genealogical Society. If you find a research target therein you can request a copy ($10 for up to 5 requests, but be sure to read their terms of service carefully -- clearly they have to deal with a lot of clueless people and you don't want to be one of them). The index is said to cover the following newspapers and date ranges: Stevens Point Weekly Journal 1872-1920, Stevens Point Daily Journal 1895-1980, Stevens Point Journal 1981-, Gazette 1878-1923, Portage County Gazette 1999-, and Wisconsin Pinery 1864-1890.

BTW, after I wrote this post I received the new issue of the always excellent NGS Magazine, which contains a meaty, detailed account of Wisconsin's ARCs by native son and veteran researcher David McDonald, CG. Check it out!