FAMILY HISTORIES PROJECT
Our goals are to collect and archive local family histories; to inspire and help each other; and to create a new hallway bulletin board design for the museum starting next season and lasting a couple of years. We have several partial family histories at the museum that we hope to expand through this project. Most of us have tons of info stored somewhere with lots of family history but not a lot of organization or accessibility. We hope to improve on that for each of us personally and to the benefit of the museum. If all should happen to go phenomenally well, we might get to a point where we create a book. No matter, we will expand the museum’s knowledge and improve our personal family history archiving. And have some fun along the way!
Our First Meeting: 5/23/2024
Family Names Represented To Date:
(Years in parentheses are approximately when family arrived in our area)
Bedell (1879)
Bechtold (Frederick 1879; family 1880)
Dearborn
Dewey
Hubbard
Lessard (1898)
Reiley (1901)
Ruppenthal
Smith (1868)
Steiner (1894)
Watrous (1874)
Woodruff
Our Second Meeting: 6/20/2024
Featured Speaker: Sue Haadsma -Svensson
An excellent example of “If you want to get more done and /or learn more, ask a busy person.” As I researched Sue, I found she’s a Board member of Paddle Antrim, Secretary for Glacial Hills and I met her at 100 Women Who Care. She’s also developed expertise in researching family histories and built The Haadsma Dairy Archive and The Sue Haadsma-Svensson Archive (showing her genealogy books) on the website Permanent.org. At Permanent.org go to >Public Gallery and the to >The Haadsma Dairy Archive and/or >The Sue Haadsma-Svensson Archive
Our Third Meeting: 7/25/2024
Small but Mighty!
With a small attendance (it is summer in a resort town!), the group had fun and made progress. They reviewed the multiple resources available at the museum for researching families and celebrated the usefulness of the newspapers online: historical papers now online: Antrim County Herald 1881-1882; Antrim County Record 1930-1931; and Bellaire Record 1931-1955. Check it out at: http://digmichnews.cmich.edu.
Presentation plans for our upcoming Family Histories Bulletin Boards project (our new museum hallway display) got underway including the idea to reproduce old Plat Maps and show family’s original locations. Check out the area family names list above as we begin to identify when (at least approximately) families arrived in the area.
Our Fourth Meeting: 8/22/2024
The agenda, location and dates have been set for our next three meetings – click back to calendar and check them out! In trying to find ways to reach out to more people, it was agreed to begin family displays at. the library beginning in October in the Historical Society’s display case. Thanks to the library for supporting this! A display centered around a plat map locating early families and featuring one (1) page summaries and one (1) 3″ x 4″ picture was agreed upon for the museum’s hallway bulletin boards. Recognizing there will be much more information than one (1) page and many more pictures than one (1) per family, we will remind people with a sign at the bulletin boards that far more complete histories are on file within the museum.