The library is more than just books. Every month, the Milwaukee Public Library joins Lake Effect to share resources, book recommendations and cool stuff you might not know about.
This month, we’re digging into genealogy — the study of ancestry and family histories. Now of course there are resources like Ancestry and 23andMe, but the Milwaukee Public Library (MPL) system has always been a place to find free resources and records about local histories since its founding. If you’ve always been interested in learning more about your local family history, the library and their partnership with the Milwaukee County Genealogical Society (MCGS) is a great place to start.
"[Genealogy] has been a mission of Milwaukee Public Library since the very beginning. The library just celebrated 125 years, and we have definitely been collecting local history topics ever since then," notes Kirsten Thompson, MPL's Library Services Manager for Arts and Humanities.
These materials are largely housed in Central Library’s Frank P. Zeidler Humanities Room in downtown Milwaukee. These materials include city directories, maps, print material such as family lineages, census records, passenger lists, local periodicals, method books on how to trace genealogy and more.
"A lot of research is done online these days, and the Milwaukee County Genealogical Society has been a long-time supporter in promoting digital access," notes Thompson.
In fact, the MCGS used to pay for the library's subscription to Ancestry.com before MPL got an institutional subscription. "A stipulation that [the MCGS] had was that a library card wasn't required, so that it would just be available to anybody who walked in," she adds.
The MCGS has been around since 1935, and MCGS member and newsletter co-editor Karen Jegen says the library has also been a crucial component to the organization's work. "This is our home. We’ve been here a long time. We have an office area in the back where we keep files and various things. So, it’s just always been a big part of doing genealogy to come to the library."
According to Jegen, the main mission of the MCGS is to teach the public about genealogy. They do that through free monthly classes 10 months out of the year, speaker series, and their regular "Ask A Genealogist" sessions at libraries around Milwaukee, where you can get one-on-one guidance on how to research your own family history.
Thompson notes that MPL also recognizes that people don't always want to come to Central Library, and their partnership with MCGS has made the genealogy programs more available across Milwaukee.
"In today's environment, I think library programs in general are moving away from the person in the front giving a talk, kind of providing a lecture, and more helping people just kind of go from where they are in their own research," she explains. "This has been a really great partnership, we've really been taking full advantage of the full Milwaukee Public Library system moving these [sessions] all around the city ... so that people really have access. We really just want to encourage people to be able to participate."
So where do you start if you want to research your family tree? Jegan says simply start with yourself, and work back from there. "Don't jump into some[one] because they have the same name and think they're related to you. You start with yourself, your parents, your grandparents, and then usually people start with the censuses because they're readily available," she explains.
The MCGS also has specific research groups if you want to be a part of exploring resources or learning more about Mexican, African American, Polish, Italian and Czech-Slovak family histories.
As an example (and also because I was very curious), I passed along some Nowakowski family history to see what else could be found through Jegen's diligent work. All I had known about was my dad's immediate family and very little beyond that.
"I had a hard time getting started on it, but once I figured, 'OK, this is really the right [Nowakowski],' ... I started with the [1950] censuses ... Your great-grandparents were George John Nowakowski and Helen," says Jegen.
She notes that when you look into census data, the census has a 72-year waiting period because they don't want people looking up living individuals. Jegen then found the census that had my father's parents (my grandparents) and his parents (my great-grandparents) even living in the same household. As Jegen worked further back, she found my relatives, who were the first to come from Poland to Milwaukee, and they started my Nowakowski family tree: Marcjanna and Marjan.
"They both came here from Poland ... [around] 1893, not together, and then they got married in 1893," Jegen explains. She even found the marriage certificate, which also lists Marcjanna and Marjan's parents, which Jegen says could be a stepping stone to find out what town in Poland they came from. Church records in Milwaukee are also an additional resource. "Religious records more often have more information," she notes.
Jegen even found the gravesite where my great-great grandparents are buried in Saint Adalbert's cemetery on Milwaukee's south side.
The Nowakowski family is but a recent example of the hundreds of family histories that Jegen, Thompson and others involved in MPL and MCGS have helped people find with their resources. Thompson says that whether you're just starting your genealogy research or have been wanting to pick it back up, always keep looking.
"Even though you may have already looked for somebody, if it's been a while look again because new records are always being digitized and you might find something new," she notes. "One of the people I've been looking for recently is my great-grandfather. He was an African American man who left Georgia to serve during World War I, he served in Europe, and just recently I found a list of all the people on the ship coming back from Europe to America right at the end of the war in 1919."
If you're interested in researching your family history, the MPL and the MCGS will have upcoming "Ask A Genealogist" sessions on April 3 at the Good Hope Library & May 11 at the Mitchell Street Library.
Additional resources for genealogy research include:
Library Subscription Databases:
Other Genealogy Resources:
