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From: "Melissa McLimans" <>
Subject: New Online Tools at Wisconsin Historical Society
Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2006 13:48:17 -0600


The Wisconsin Historical Society is very proud to announce the
Dictionary of Wisconsin History
(http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/dictionary/). The online dictionary
gives more than 2,000 brief lives of famous Wisconsin people (and many
not-so-famous ones). It provides the exact location of every community
and civil township in the state, and explains how every county and 800
cities and towns got their names. You can even display a map or
satellite image of any city, town, or village with a single click. The
dictionary includes mid-19th century descriptions of about 500 Wisconsin
cities and towns from contemporary gazetteers and travel guides, too.
You can imagine how this could help your genealogical research or just
give you some interesting facts about Wisconsin history. We also
encourage you to submit entries to help us grow the dictionary.

The Society has also been busy adding 3,500 entries to the Wisconsin
Name Index (www.wisconsinhistory.org/wni). For those of you unfamiliar
with the name index, it was started about 1870, when WHS staff made a
catalog card for every biographical sketch in each new Wisconsin county
history. They made a similar card for every obituary added to the
scrapbooks they called the "Wisconsin Necrology," and frequently added
cards for magazine and newspaper articles about Wisconsin residents.
After more than a century of such work, the data on the original cards
was typed into a database that you can search online today.

This time we have indexed Wisconsin World War Obituaries, a three
volume scrapbook, containing newspaper articles and obituaries about the
men and women of Wisconsin that served in the military during World War
II. The index is available for you to find listings of your ancestors
at your local library, through library loan or you can order copies from
our Wisconsin Genealogical Research Service
(www.wisconsinhistory.org/genealogy/ogrs).

Please forgive the length of this post. I hope you have found it
useful.

Best,
Melissa

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