For multiple years, Recollection Wisconsin has been named one of the Best State Websites for Genealogy by Family Tree Magazine. The following tips for searching our site will improve your genealogy research results and help you discover your family history.
Sources for Genealogy Research
Some useful formats to consider include:
- City directories
- County histories and local histories
- Newspapers (full issues or clippings)
- Maps (plat maps, Sanborn maps)
- Records (military records, church records, marriage certificates)
- Yearbooks (high school and college)
Searching for Personal Names
To search for personal names within the full text of books or other documents, you’ll need to navigate to a specific item or collection and then run a second search within that item or collection. For example, if you’re looking for information about John Smith from Green County, you might start with a search for Green County. Choose the book History of Green County, Wisconsin from your search results and then search for Smith within the book to reach the specific pages where the name Smith is found.
Getting Creative with Searching
Another way you can use the resources you’ll find here is to establish a historical context for your ancestors – looking not at their own stories, but at the places and events that shaped their lives. This kind of research requires some creative thinking and also some creative searching and exploring of the digital collections.
With this approach, you might start with some questions:
- What did your family member’s hometown look like in the year he or she was born?
- Are there photographs available of the school or church he or she attended?
- What did he or she do for a living?
- What important events took place in Wisconsin during his or her lifetime?
What you’ll find – and what you won’t find
Our search engine points photographs, diaries, letters, maps, books, magazines, newspapers, postcards, oral histories, music and other historical resources from libraries, archives, museums and historical societies across the state. The search engine does not include resources such as cemetery indexes or vital records.
What we make available through Recollection Wisconsin depends on what our Content Partners have shared with us. That means some locations in the state are very well represented and others aren’t represented at all. The collection continues to expand as we add new Content Partners and as existing partners continue to add new resources to their digital collections.
Further Resources
- Genealogy Webinar, This 2021 DPLA webinar covers some DPLA basics, such as search techniques and a metadata overview, as well as genealogy tips and tricks, several case studies using DPLA resources such as primary source sets.
- The Family Research Guide to DPLA: DPLA is totally free to use and open to all. The collection, with items from many institutions, offers a unique research resource for family historians and genealogists.
- Wisconsin State Genealogical Society
- Wisconsin Historical Society Family History Records
- Getting Started Researching Your Family History, Wisconsin Historical Society
- Wisconsin Genealogy Index, Wisconsin Historical Society