I have Wisconsin Land Records for two of my ancestors, Mathias FIRMENICH and Jean Baptiste LAURENT. I will use Mathias’ Land Record for this example. You can view his Land Record on my Mathias site’s “Land Purchase” entry.

Step one is to find the spot on the record that lists the exact location that your ancestor purchased from the US Government. On Mathias’ record, in the first paragraph, it reads

..the claim of Mathias B. Firmenich has has been established and duly consummated in conformity to law for the southeast quarter of Section 18 in Township 46 north of Range 4 west of the 4th Principal Meridian in Wisconsin containing 160 acres.

To most people, this just looks like gibberish. It did to me at first. I knew what it meant, but I had no idea where to even start to look for it.

By some luck, I happened to find Wisconsin’s Public Land Survey System website. The site provides “County and regional Public Land Survey System (PLSS) Township indexes for the state of Wisconsin.” Wisconsin’s PLSS is measured from the Fourth Principal Extended Meridian, which is part of the “4th Principal Meridian” mentioned in Mathias’ record.

Once I had found this site, I was able to view the Northwest section of the state, which is where I assumed Mathias purchased his land. I looked at that map and found Township 46 listed on the right side of the map and then Range 4 listed at the bottom of the map and traced it to its location in Ashland County. This information would be used on the next website that I found.

It’s a pleasant surprise that the Wisconsin DOT website has a section that includes very detailed maps of every single county in the state. These maps are multi-megabyte PDF files that contain a lot of information about each county. For example, here is the map for Ashland County (PDF). If you’re looking at the Ashland County map, you will see their marking for Township 46 North (T-46-N) on the sides and also Range 4 West (R-4-W) on the top and bottom. If you follow these, you will end up at the town of White River. It’s tough to see, but the town boundaries are drawn in a reddish, pinkish dashed line.

Now, the next step is to find the Section in the Township. Mathias’ section is Section 18. Not all of the sections are numbered in the town. Each town contains 36-one square mile sections in a 6×6 box. Only the four corners are labeled: 6, 1, 31, and 36 to help you navigate. They number them starting at 1 at the northeast corner, traveling to the west to number 6, then south to number 7, and then to the east and so on, back and forth, until Section 36. There is a small diagram on the right side of the map to help you out. Section 18 is 2 sections south of Section 6 on the map.

Once I found Section 18, the Land Record than says that he purchased land in the southeast quarter. Each section contains 640 acres and each quarter is 160 acres. Mathias then would have purchased the bottom-right corner of Section 18 in 1893.

To convert this into a physical location that can help you better visualize it takes some more work. What I did was keep the county map open while going to Google Maps in another window. What you need to do here is find any roads, highways, or other physical features on the county map and find them on Google Maps. Mathias’ land was bordered to the south by Maple Ridge Rd. Section 18 itself was bordered on the north by Deer Creek Rd, so I just needed to guess about 160 acres to the south of that (or halfway between the roads) for the north side of Mathias’ land. It seems Section 18 also crossed Highway 112 a little bit, which means Mathias’ land did also. It’s doubtful that the full highway was there in 1893.

I then used Google Maps’ My Maps section to draw a box around Mathias’ land to make it easier to see. The final product is this map of the land purchased by Mathias FIRMENICH in 1893.

View Corrigan/Firmenich in a larger map

This also matches up with the 1898 Ashland County Plat Map that lists Mathias’ land.

You may run into some issues if your ancestor purchased land that is now part of a larger city since these county maps do not go into detail inside of cities. I hope this is helpful to someone with Wisconsin ancestors. I know it was neat to see exactly what land my ancestor purchased and lived on in the past. Using Google Maps, you can now share this information and also view it closer using Satellite and even Street View, if applicable.

Helpful Links from the post:

• Wisconsin Public Land Survey System Township Indexes
• Detailed Wisconsin County Maps on the DOT website.
• Google Maps
• Finding Wisconsin Land Records
  • Ancestry.com’s Wisconsin Land Records search – does not include actual record, but does include land detail and location information. Subscription required.
  • Rootsweb’s Wisconsin Land Record search – basic search by name, no land detail or location information. Free.

An interesting thing about Milwaukee is that it went through a massive addressing overhaul in 1931, so a lot of the address information from census records is different today. Fortunately, I found a website that has some basic conversion tools and was able to (hopefully) pinpoint these addresses. Give it a try sometime. It’s neat to see how your family moved around.

View Milwaukee Locations in a larger map and access to the legend.

A pączki is a deep-fried piece of dough shaped into a flattened sphere and filled with confiture or other sweet filling. I bet you’re like, “Wait! Isn’t this just a donut?” According to Wikipedia, although they look like bismarcks or jelly doughnuts, pączki are made from especially rich dough containing eggs, fats, sugar and sometimes milk.

Sadly, I didn’t get one today. No one brought any in to the office and I didn’t think driving that far for one was worth it. Though, I am always for any sort of ethnic celebration that includes eating lots of donut-like foods.

Courtesy of britmum@Flickr

I tried, but I couldn’t come up with a joke for that. “Polish Flats” are common here in the Milwaukee area. I’ve recently been exploring the area where my great-great-grandfather, Frank Zalewski, and his family resided when they immigrated to Milwaukee in 1891. Frank and his family’s first house was located at 902 Pulaski Street in Milwaukee. They are noted to live there until about 1898 when they moved to 900 Fratney Street.

According to researchers at UWM in Milwaukee, “A ‘Polish flat’ is an American workers’ cottage that has been raised to create a new basement floor, thus becoming a modest two-story flat.” [More information here.] The Pulaski street area is full of these types of houses. They even built them two or three-deep at certain points, so it makes finding the right house a mess. You can see on this Google Maps link just how crowded they built these houses.

I assume the house on Pulaski street is still standing. Unfortunately, the city of Milwaukee underwent a massive address overhaul in 1931 and most of the addresses in that area have changed. There is no common mathematical equation used to figure out the new address, since they based it on measurements. I did find a guide on how to find the general range of the new address, which should be in the 1800 range now.The 1930 census still lists the old addresses, so that doesn’t help.

From the 1900-1930 census, the family of Jacob Zalewski lived at 902 Pulaski. This is the man I assume is some relation to Frank, possibly a brother, since they both lived there for years. Jacob passed away sometime between 1913 and 1920 according to census records. His wife Pauline was living there in the 1930 census with her children. The earliest city directory available at Ancestry after 1930 is the 1937 directory. I checked under Zalewski and it lists Pauline as passing away on December 30, 1936 and lists no address. There are three listings for Zalewskis on Pulaski street: Jacob G, Leo, and Joseph. These are three names of Jacob and Pauline’s sons, though they are also popular Polish names. They all live from 1758 to 1762 Pulaski Street. If I had to take an educated guess, this is probably where Frank Zalewski lived when he came to Milwaukee. Here is a view of it at Google Street View (you’ll need to find the house pushed way back, Google doesn’t automatically point at it.) I also happened to find another photo of it while searching for Pulaski Street information.

I drove through the area at my lunchtime on Monday since it’s only a few miles from where I work. It’s very hard to get around if you don’t know the area due to a lot of one-way streets. Now that I have a better idea, I may make another trip for some photos.

Photo:

Ancestry has a lot of Milwaukee City Directories online scattered from like 1880 to 1939 with most of 1880-1900 available. I started with 1889 to see if the ZALEWSKI family made it there yet, but they did not. I first found Frank ZALEWSKI in the 1892 (well, two actually, go figure.)

1892 Milwaukee City Directory

I first thought that the Frank ZALEWSKI at 28 Wright St was my Frank, since that is in the same area that the family finally settled throughout the next 50 years. I then remembered a post I made a few weeks ago about finding another connected family that came to visit “Franz Zaleski.” That post had some pretty good first-hand evidence that my Frank ZALEWSKI was living at 902 Pulaski St. I also traced the ZALEWSKI list in the directories up until 1900. While the Frank ZALEWSKI on Pulaski seems to move to 900 Fratney St in about 1898, the “butcher” at 28 Wright moves down a block at at earlier point. Long story short, it points to the Pulaski Frank ZALEWSKI being my great-great-grandfather.

One interesting piece of information I see in this listing, and a few others, is the mention of a Jacob ZALEWSKI also living at 902 Pulaski St. Frank did not have a son named Jacob (not even a son, period, in 1892.) My (first) guess is that Jacob is at least family, maybe even his brother. I found Jacob and his family living at 900 Pulaski St in the 1900 Census, incorrectly transcribed as Jacob Falewski (see what I have to deal with.) It lists his birth year as 1863, which matches up as a possible sibling of Frank (born 1858.)

Now, it’s just a possibility. I have a lot more research to do, but it does open up a whole new avenue of ideas. Another moral here, check all types of records. Even these small ones can do wonders.

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This is a photo of my great-great-grandparents, Joe & Clara (SZULTA) TROKA on their 50th wedding anniversary. The date of this photo would be somewhere around 29 Jan 1944 since they were married in 1894. They were married at St. Hedwig’s Church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. There is a very nice writeup and history for St. Hedwig’s at Wikipedia. Here is a closer photo from the “Polsih Churches of Milwaukee” website.

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This ia photo from my wife’s collection. The photo label says that this is her grandmother’s class at “country school.” We can’t specifically pick her out, but we have some ideas. I like how all the boys are in overalls. they probably need to go back and finish up their farm work when school is over. This school is probably located in the rural areas of southwestern Wisconsin, which is where her grandmother grew up.

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According to the note for this photo, this is a picture of my grandfather, Richard Zalewski (middle), with his sister Irene to his left and Eugene Nowiski to his right. I don’t know off-hand who Eugene Nowiski is, but it does look like he’s ready to change someone’s oil. Multiple people have said that my grandfather looks a bit like me in this photo when I was a kid. I can see it. I assume the photo was taken in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as Richard lived there most of his life.

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There was also a writeup after his retirement in 1951. (Sorry for the blurriness. It’s tough to scan since it’s taped to the back of a picture frame, so the reflection and angles made it hard to position.)

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Wordless Wednesday’s Photo is labeled “trokas&szultas” in my list. Unfortunately, when I first scanned a few photos from my grandmother, I didn’t label them very well. Though, it was probably labeled something like that in the album itself. There are only two people I think I can pick out. My great-grandfather, Joseph Zalewski, in the middle of the back row and my great-great-grandmother, Clara (Szulta) Troka, third from the left in the middle row. I’m hoping to meet with my grandma and maybe go over some of these photos and see if she knows who they may be.