WLA 2008: Genealogy and Local History Resources at the Wisconsin Historical Society

A presentation by Rick Pifer, Director of Reference and Public Services, Library/Archives Division, Wisconsin Historical Society.

Richard Pifer said about genealogy info at WHS, "Start with the premise that yep, we have it."

Range of resources available at the WHS -- a paper trail of cradle to grave records created about people:

• Births: registrations, baptismal records, announcement in newspapers
• Childhood records: school records, attendance records from rural schoolhouses, school census
• Marriage records: newspaper announcements
• Property records - deeds (most are in the county Register of Deeds office)
• Tax records - assessment rolls & tax rolls for 19th & 20th century
• Census
• Divorce records - through the Circuit Court case files (date range varies on the county which provides the records)
• Prison records
  
• Naturalization records - 19th century to 1980's
• Death registration, church burial records, newspaper obituary, probate records, wills, probate case files
  

WHS has genealogy info on:

• Wisconsin
• U.S.
• Canada

Local history records:

• local histories
• newspapers - huge collection, perhaps 2nd only to the Library of Congress; largest Native American newspaper collection in the country; largest African American newspaper collection in the country
  
• personal papers
• organization records
• maps
• photographs

The Peshtigo Fire

• personal correspondence
• birds-eye maps of before & after the fire
• Harper's Weekly newspaper articles about the fire
• photos (also available online)

Finding info and records:

• genealogical information is geographically based
• local history information is geographically based
• combine place names with type of record
• Use Madcat to search for surname + the word family as a way to search for info; a "sloppy" search like this will bring up lots of records, but Rick says "specificity is the enemy of finding what you want"
  

WHS web site:

• Wisconsin Genealogy Index
• links to Madcat and ARcat

Richard suggests this search strategy in Madcat:
Go to the guided search and start plugging in words; put in a placename (as a phrase) + type of record

ArCat (Archives Catalog)
Some finding aids or registers are available online; it's a volume-level listing of what's in a collection; tells you what's in a collection volume by volume and box by box

Research Portal

• Wisconsin Magazine of History available full text online
• Dictionary of Wisconsin History links to Google Maps, has biographical info

Finding newspapers = use Guided Search to enter placename + type of record
You can navigate through title changes, within the bibliographic record

Virtually everything found in ArCat can be transported closer to you or your patron at a local Area Research Center (ARC), except for photographs and maps

Map collection = paper-based card catalog is the only way to find out what's in the collection

Photo collection useful for local history, 45,000 images online, entire set of Wisconsin birds-eye photos

WHS is a partner with Google Books

• the vast majority of WHS' family histories has been digitized
• MadCat will eventually be linking to the Google Books digitized version of the book
• copyright date affects whether the book is available full text, or snippet view

Interlibrary Loan is possible for works of local history that don't have genealogical content