Washington County/Germantown Area Research Church Registrations - Milwaukee Archdiocese Researching / Field Trip InterLibrary Loan Catholic Church Registrations - Milwaukee Archdiocese Contributed by Donald Joseph Schulteis: The Catholic church maintains birth, marriage and burial registrations but sometimes it is a bit difficult to determine where to look for them. Guess it is safest to say where the event transpired is where you will find the registration. BUT and a big but, this is not necessarily our perception of the event. Some examples, parishes which support missions and the missions also maintain sacramental registration books, here you may find the registration in the books of the particular mission or possibly another mission or the home parish. This was the call of the ministering priest. St. Boniface as an example, up to 1915 the parish was responsible for St. Mary mission in Richfield. So from 1856 to 1915 you can find registration entries that apply to members of St. Mary mission in the books of St. Boniface, St. Mary and in some cases in both books but the latter is rather unusual. Regarding religious burial registrations, just because you find a gravestone for an individual in a given parish cemetery does not necessarily mean that you will find a burial registration in the parish books. And just because you did not find a grave marker does not mean the person was not buried there. The burial registration is identified in the books of the parish where the burial service was performed and this may not be where the individual was buried. For a person who was a member of St. Boniface parish, died, and the burial service was performed at the parish but the person was buried at St. Hubert in Hubertus, you will find the body at St. Hubert but the burial registration at St. Boniface. As an extreme example, a person died in Houston, Texas, had the burial service performed at St. Hubert, and is buried at St. Boniface You go to St. Hubert to find the religious burial registration, to Houston to find the civil death certificate and the body you will find at St. Boniface. For Catholic marriages, the pastor of the parish where the ceremony was to be performed checked with the pastors of the parishes where the two parties were baptized to make sure they were actually baptized. The baptismal parish generally recorded near the baptismal registration entry for the person, where the marriage transpired, who the marriage partner was and sometime who performed the ceremony. The actual religious marriage registration entry may identify where the person was baptized. For burials, going through a cemetery and recording names from marker stones does not identify all who are buried there. Some marker stones have been lost, some can't be read, while others never had a marker stone in the first place. In order to get a truer reading of who is buried in a particular parish cemetery, you need to check both the markers and parish burial registrations. Hold your hat, you say you have checked both and still did not find your great-grandfather? As noted above, he could have had the burial service performed elsewhere. Where was he living at the time of death? Check that parish too. For very early records of the Milwaukee Archdiocese in the 184x to 186x, this was a missionary period not a parish period. Registrations although generally posted to the mission where they happened, this though was not always the case as they could have been posted to any of the missions' books the priest minister to. In the case of Father Caspar Rehrl, which is an extreme example, some of his registration were not identified to any of his many missions and are recorded separate. As we humans do make mistakes, sometimes the registrations may not have been recorded. You may need to look elsewhere. Take my grandfather for example, he was born in 1878. This was before Washington County began recording births. St. Boniface did not record his baptism nor did the neighboring parishes of St. Hubert, St. Augustine, St. Mary, or St. Anthony and I have checked most of the parishes in Washington County, it just isn't there. So was I lucky, yes I was. In looking up civil birth certificates for his siblings, his younger brother had a delayed birth certificate filed in the 1940s which included an affidavit from my grandfather in which was identified his birth date. So sometimes you need to hang on to a string. Regarding the Milwaukee Archdiocese, we genealogist should be immensely thankful as the diocese has allowed the sacramental registrations for all its parishes to be microfilmed by the Church of the Latter Day Saints. These microfilmed records are available for viewing at any of the churches Family History Centers (FHC) I believe anywhere at least here in the United States. So if you live in California, in Texas, in Florida, in Connecticut, in Utah, or even Washington County, go to your nearest FHC, order the film, nominal fee charged to cover shipping, sit down and look at the records yourself. This is more difficult than using John Von Haden's lists or having diocese personnel do it as you will have to decipher the hand writing and the language as the entry may have been written in Latin, maybe German but if you are lucky in English (as are the Irish parishes). The first parish in Milwaukee St. Luke has its early registrations 1839-1841 in English. Then came Father Kundig and we go to Latin. If you only have a few lookups, having diocese research personnel do it may be your best bet. If you have many, your trudging through the records may be a better option. And you can also use John Von Haden's church books. If you are looking for a registration for the years 1839-1845, look at the records of St. Peter the Apostle in Milwaukee as that is where many religious registrations were recorded for Fathers O'Kelly, Kundig, Heiss, and Morrissey. Remember this was a "missionary" time period. You may be lucky. With present merging and closing of parishes, it is difficult to determine where parish sacramental registrations can be found. In the Wisconsin Pastoral Handbook 2005 Edition, the availability of these records was detailed. This information can be found here. Top Researching / Field Trip Contributed by Donald Joseph Schulteis: When a person is researching, there will come a time when a field trip or two will be necessary. The visit may begin from an area many miles distant or then again it could be from just down the block. In any case, be it far or near, having your research effort in order before you start is of utmost importance. Lets look at this from the perspective of both the individual doing the research and well as the institution where research will be transacted. Researcher: The burden for success falls on you the researcher. You need to have your act together. 1. Identify your objective(s) in detail. Saying I am going to research my xxxxx family will not cut it; way to broad. Identify the time period, identify the families, the individuals, identify the locations are a must. 2. Identify what information you are looking for. Are you looking for vital records? Are you looking for pictures? Are you looking for background information? Sure you would like it all, BUT, you have time constraints. Set your goal so it can be achieved in the time frame you have given for yourself. Be reasonable, don't give yourself 1 day and attempt to gather vital information on 200 people. 3. Stick to your schedule or you can forget your last day(s) scheduled effort. Set priorities, the highest priorities schedule first and the lower priorities schedule last. Do this among each institution and within the institutions. As an example, you have five days and five institutions you will be visiting. The institutions who may have your highest prioritize data should be scheduled first. Within each institutions prioritize the data that will be researched. Doing this will give you the most chance for success. Schedule more work than you can reasonable expect to achieve. At least then you will not have time on your hands when some of your priority tasks come to a faster completion than you had expected. 4. Bring with you ALL your necessary supplies and supporting research materials. Don't expect these institution to provide you with materials, pencils, paper and the like. Be mindful also that ink and ball point pens may not be acceptable at some institutions. You might wish to consider these writing instruments are not acceptable at any institution. 5. PLAN AHEAD. You should probably spend as much if not more time at home preparing for this trip than the trip will actually take. The more organized your research objectives, the easier will be your research effort. For example, if you already have some information about individuals you are going to research in your genealogy program, you may wish to create a report identify what you know and what you wish to know. While at the institution all you need to do then is fill in the blanks and you can lean on that which you know. 6. Don't expect others to do your research. The individuals in these institutions have their own work to do. They will graciously help you get started but then it is your research, not theirs. Don't expect hand holding, period! If you should be so fortunate, be thankful and express these thanks verbally, when you are there, and with a thank you note after you return home. A thank you note is always in order. The Institution: From a genealogy perspective you will be receiving two type of individuals, your local people and those who may have come many miles to visit you. Your local people can return the next day, the next week, the next month but those coming from afar have but one day as they may not return again for a year or more. What make these two types of people unique is that the first trip for a local might be to gather information on what you have available and how well does this information support their research needs. Their next one, two or three visits would be used to gather the information. The individual who comes from afar does not have the luxury of first determining what information you have and then schedule time to acquire it. They may have but that one trip or a second trip in a year or two. When these individuals enter your door, they need to know then what information you have and how it applies to them. If you have no genealogies, they are wasting their time looking for them. If they are looking for pictures, they are wasting their time if you don't have any or the ones you have don't reflect the time period they are searching. Many individuals will not only be looking for genealogical information but also for background information of a historical nature. When the latter is desired it is important that the researcher be made aware that your requirement is to point out the source and make it easily obtainable. The researcher needs to spend the time to gather it (read). Very difficult for short visits when materials cannot be removed from the institution. Don't believe you wish to receive phone calls asking what information/documents you have. It would be nice though to communicate this information but one time for all requests. In this day of the Internet, having a web presence allows you the institution to communicate much information with but a one time effort. Please do identify on you web site, the categories of information you maintain, and specifically with sufficient detail to allow the viewer to determine if the information applies to them. For example, a category may be genealogies. This is a broad category and the viewer will say, great, but do they have information on my family. So in this case identifying surname would be a help and with a time period would be even better. If you have pictures, are they scenery/location/portraits, old ones, new ones, identified etc. The better the researcher understands your offerings, the more likely they will not be disappointed after visiting your site be they local or from afar. You certainly want happy campers as they are your best advertisers. All appreciate that those who come from afar do not support the existence of your institution. On the other hand, if you can't support most of their needs, you are probably not supporting your locals either. Top InterLibrary Loan Contributed by Donald Joseph Schulteis: The question regarding interlibrary loan, specifically obituaries, was asked of the West Bend and Hartford Libraries. Both libraries replied: "Your members may initiate InterLibrary Loan at their local libraries. The Bmicrofilm will be sent to their local library from State Historical Society in Madison. Any pricing issues are decided by their local libraries, and their policies usually vary." The West Bend and Harftord libraries do not lend microfilm." From the Wisconsin Historical Society Library: http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/library/ "Any item that circulates from the Library may be loaned to a patron of another library through the interlibrary loan process. Rare, fragile, unbound, and heavily used materials (including all genealogical and most local history resources) do not circulate and thus are not available to remote users. The Library has duplicate circulating copies of some Wisconsin county histories and Wisconsin censuses and these may be sent via interlibrary loan. All interlibrary loan requests should originate at the researcher's home library. Do not contact the Society Library directly if you wish to request that an item be sent to you. Start at your local public or academic library instead. Requests from libraries outside Wisconsin are charged a fee of $15 per transaction (covering up to six volumes or six microfilm reels of the same title), plus copying charges if applicable. We loan via OCLC (symbol WIH) or mailed ALA forms." ... Regarding newspapers: "The Society Library owns 11,740 bound volumes, 100,000 reels of microfilm, and 17,000 sheets of microprint spanning three centuries of American newspaper history. Particular strengths include Wisconsin newspapers, colonial and early American newspapers west of the Appalachians, and the largest collection of labor and trade union papers in the nation. The Library's holdings of 1960s "underground" or alternative newspapers are also extensive. Other areas of the collection that have attained national importance are Native American and African-American newspapers. Among rarities in the newspaper collection are the first African-American and Native American newspapers and the first Bohemian, Dutch, Norwegian, and Spanish language newspapers published in the United States" Top