Saturday, January 10, 2026

LET THE MORMONS DATA-RAPE THE EPSTEIN FILES! [That seems fitting.]

But don't let them have volunteers transcribe them, because they'll become unintelligible, and anyone who accesses them will be forced into a sort of mormon transcription slavery just to read them. [I'm thinking of the execrable transcription of the Milwaukee County Vital Records gifted to the mormon's retail site by the Milwaukee Public Library.]

Thursday, January 8, 2026

Milwaukee's German newspapers were a haven for Austrian immigrants after WWI ...

https://youtu.be/jV9mEkvJAbE?si=hh_u6L-oneXn0Y31

Sing along to the tune of beloved Edelweis:

Epstein files, Epstein files, please expose them completely.
Your denial's out of style, now you're coming off 'weakly'.
What's in them so heinous you can't show? Prove you're no transgressor.
Epstein files, Epstein files ... Yes! They'll haunt you forever.

 

Saturday, January 3, 2026

What can you expect to find in Milwaukee's German newspapers?


Besides the news stories about the horrific political assassination of Melissa Hortmann and her husband by a deranged christian nationalist self-styled preacher, 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 & burial event. Then there might be family thanks, and even later, more notices of thanks from the family, and very possibly possibly death anniversary notices in following years.

If this had been the 1860s and 1870s, you might've found an edition with this horrible news about a beloved public figure lined with heavy black borders, running vertically between the entire length of each column, as the newspaper draped itself in mourning.

Monday, December 29, 2025

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, found in Milwaukee's genealogy circles ...

Recently a cluster of genealogy hacks went on a rampage to attack my posting many of Holy Trinity Cemetery's LOST burial records at Find-a-Grave; I used alternative sources, and the complaint to Find-a-Grave was that my sources do not mention the cemetery. Admin. threats followed that these memorials would be changed to "burial unknown". But those whiners, who have more ambition than research skill, were wrong.

Then an Admin. demanded I reveal specific sources used for my transcription of church registers. Who does this? And imagine any LDS or FHL employee NOT knowing how to check for sources?

A new tack followed, 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 were refused by MPL, or lacking, or both? It's easy to request a look-up in a specific resource when a name and death date are supplied. 😏

One Find-a-Grave subscriber demanded I post clippings & citations at Ancestry for her to copy. 😂

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 a Find-a-Grave administrator vindictively terminated my access to my account there. 😇

Tuesday, August 5, 2025

A 'Deutsches Haus' in Germanic Milwaukee? Couldn't be built: the German 'community' was too divided.



A "German Haus" built in Milwaukee? An old question dating back to the 1930s
You would think that Goethe Haus' 30 years of residency at the Milwaukee Public Library was a logical answer to this question. But that residency never produced a single project or event, not a pamphlet, not a poster, celebrating Milwaukee's huge, diverse, German immigrant working-class community. Nothing was done in conjunction with the Milwaukee Public Library, nor with the Milwaukee County Genealogical Society also in residence there, nor with any of the then-fading German cultural groups.

Thursday, July 10, 2025

Der Volksfreund in 1848... The Peoples' Friend, "Devoted to Equal Rights"

An old "German guy" - a naturalized US citizen - had a beer-scented complaint for me about my display at German Fest: "The first German paper was published in 1944, NOT 1844!" he stated emphatically. "Nope" I said, "publishing in Milwaukee spanned 1844 to 1950." "1944!", "1844", "1944!", "1844". He eventually walked away. Another contradiction by other German Fest attendees followed. They had delivered the old Milwaukee Herold in the city AFTER 1950, one even worked in the office! But the publisher had left the City of Milwaukee in 1950 or shortly thereafter, but keeping the name of the paper.