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 (née 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.
