Links to the Past

This is a repost from Eastman’s online Blog. I thought it would be helpful to those of you who are looking for missing soldiers.

Online Database of U.S. WW II Missing in Action and POWs

The Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) has created the first electronic listing of missing personnel from the Second World War. The records came from two historical sources: Rosters of Military Personnel Whose Remains Were Not Recovered, 1951-1954 and The World War II Rosters of the Dead (All Services). POWs and MIAs are listed as well as those buried at sea. Entries on this website were created by corroborating names and service numbers appearing in both sources.

Use of the database is simple: go to the site’s web page and then look for the first letter of the person’s last name. There you will find separate listing for Army, Army Air Forces, Navy, Marine Corps and Others. The Others listings appear to all be civilians, including Merchant Marine. Service personnel who were buried at sea are listed in a separate section of the same web site.

Again, this web site contains lists only for those persons whose bodies were not recovered and those who were buried at sea.

You can access the “Service Personnel Not Recovered Following World War II” database at http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo/WWII_MIA.

Here is an article I read about the LDS church and it’s efforts to digitize information. We can look forward to some nice additions to the online genealogy community.

http://www.sltrib.com/ci_5930673

My cousin and I are actively seeking males with the surname Jonas to participate in the Jonas DNA study. If you are interested in more details please email me or go to Familytreedna.com for more details.

I broke down and finally decided to redo the website design. It is way over due…I know I am sorry!

The new design is Section 508 compliant which means those that may be visually impaired can use different settings and still see everything on the website. The new design will be done with one header and one footer which will make any future design changes much easier. Milwaukee will be a different color than Waukesha so that you will quickly know that you have traveled over 124th and across the county line.
It will take some time for me to redo all the pages so I am letting you have a sneak peak at the new design. I welcome your feedback. If there is anything you would like to see me do a little bit differently, let me know and I will see what I can do.

The new design can be found here.

I just got back from attending a 2 day conference sponsored by the Wisconsin State Genealogical Society. It was a great two days! I learned a lot more about different techniques of searching, where my resources are and best of all got to meet some neat people!

What did I learn?

Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak was the main speaker. She spoke on a lot of very interesting topics which included: Reverse Genealogy: Finding Your Lost Loved Ones; Building a Village-Based Community; and two seminars on DNA in Genealogy.

James Hansen-the reference librarian and genealogical specialist at the Wisconsin State Historical Society spoke about resources and searching at the Society Library and some techniques for getting around the burned 1890 census.

Reverend David McDonald spoke about Protestant religions which helped me understand who merged with who and where records of some of those lost churches might be.

All in all it was a good couple of days!

William F. Keppel discovered some glass negatives tossed out in a dump after the Groh Photography studio closed. He saved and preserved the negatives many years ago. He must have been a very special man to have saved so much history of Sheboygan County.
William has since passed away and now his son Bob is carrying on with a dream that William had. A vast amount of time has been put into this preservation as these negatives are being photographed, digitalized and contributed to the Sheboygan County Genealogy site by Bob Keppel where Debie is putting them online. Some are unidentified. Be sure to check out the site. Perhaps you can match a photo and give one of the unidentified photos a home.

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~sheboygan/25.htm

A month or so back I got a list of photographs from a researcher that she rescued this photos and would like to bring them back to their rightful family members for the cost of postage. If you are interested in the photos please contact the current owners directly.

All pictures are on a rectangular hardboard backing with the photographers backmarks in either the lower right hand corner of photo or on back. All in excellent condition as follows:

Uncle Holtz; photographer, Moses of Orleans
Aunt Holtz; mother of Lillie Barras; photographer Van Bugbee Photo
Josephine Holtz Barras; photographer, W. G. Mann, Waukesha, Wi. (more…)

Added information on the Enos, Child and Wilbur families, the Cushman, Kellogg, Davis, and Bennett Familes.

I added photos of the James/Hughes family to the families section. Bobbi found the photos in an antique shop and would like them to find their rightful owner. Please contact her directly if you are connected to the family.

First I want to wish everyone a very Happy Holiday Season and the New Year brings you and your families health and happiness. May you be able to climb those brick walls with ease. Also, thank you for visiting my site. I hope in some way it aids you in your research. Even if only to confirm the information you already have.

With that said, those of you who know me may know that I also have a genealogy research service that I operate part time out of my home. I have had a pretty steady list of clients since July so I haven’t had a lot of time to update the Milwaukee and Waukesha sites. Worse than that, I haven’t been able to get together things for those that want to transcribe items for the site.

My intention this upcoming week is to organize the data I have here so that I can more efficiently continue to add to the site. I know how important it is to find online resources such as this that can help get over those brick walls so I will do what I can in the coming months to add as much as I can.

Happy New Year!

Ellen-

These are unidentified photos sent in by a researcher. The occasion is believed to be his great uncle Joseph John DVORAK’s wedding day, in 1913, to Josephine Linschied, of Muscoda, Grant County, WI, USA. He has the photo of Joe and 2 of his 3 brothers, Frank DVORAK and his grandfather, William Joseph DVORAK, when his grandpa was only less than 20 years of age. (more…)