Besides the news stories about the horrific death of Melissa Hortmann and her husband by a deranged christian nationalist, Milwaukee's German-American papers might have had multiple obituaries, repeated death notices some maybe with pending info, followed by the funeral details, fraternal notices, reporting about the funeral and burial event, then family thanks, and even later, more notices of thanks from the family, possibly death anniversary notices in following years.
In the 1860s and 1870s, you might've found one of the papers lined with heavy black borders, just as the death notices are found, including running between the entire length of each column, as the newspaper draped itself in mourning.
That is, if you weren't the current so-called "presidential" administration of the USA that feed$ off the white christian nationalism of the assassin, and barely acknowledged this horrific, religious act.
Then an Admin. demanded I reveal specific sources used for my transcription of church registers specifying the cemetery. Imagine an LDS / FHL employee NOT knowing the source of church records? đ
Then followed a new tack concerning my helpful research leads into Milwaukee's German newspapers: "Stop forcing volunteers to use your index at the library." Those valuable leads don't satisfy today's demand for instant gratification taught by the Ancestry retail site. Or maybe standard look-up requests as a library service by MPL were refused, or lacking, or both? It's easy to request a look-up in a specific resource when a name and death date are supplied. đ
One volunteer demanded I post clippings & citations at Ancestry for her to copy. đ
Not only do these people lack research skills, but they've also proved to be especially malicious and vindictive. My effort to post the bulk of lost records for Holy Trinity Cemetery - from its founding through 1909 - is largely complete. That was accomplished just in time before Find-a-Grave vindictively terminated my access to my account there. đ
15 years ago I made a rare find in the German papers for a relative: an authentic, but unlikely obituary for a poor, old, insignificant German immigrant named Agnes Schumacher (nÊe Hamacher). She died in the County Asylum in 1884, and is officially recorded as buried there.
Agnes' step-son, Peter Schumacher, claimed her remains, and took steps to have an obituary published by the Seebote. She was buried from St. Anthony Catholic Church, at Holy Trinity Cemetery, recorded in the parish register, but where? Burial records were destroyed in a fire in 1909.
Last winter, I flipped over a toppled marker in Section 1 at Holy Trinity Cemetery & experienced a thrill: here was my step-3rd-great-grandmother Agnes! She was not buried with family in her daughter's Esser family plot in Block 3 as I had presumed, but buried in the St. Anthony parish section of single adult graves: it's called "Section 1", just east of the entirely separate Block 1.
Sadly, this is how we have to research Milwaukee's "working class" families. Need a resource? You might have to create it yourself. I wouldn't have known anything about Agnes without randomly browsing the German papers, then creating a huge index to help others.
I've done that twice for Milwaukee: first with the German-American papers. After collecting secondary resources for 20 years, I've used the data as an imperfect substitute for burial records lost by this cemetery. Most are now found as online Memorials at Find-a-Grave, where I've been blocked from creating or editing my work.
