What families don’t have skeletons in their closets? To delve into family secrets and learn about unspoken family members and ancestors, the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library, 400 Eau Claire St., Eau Claire, is presenting a three-part series in November called Dirty Laundry: The Dark Side of Genealogy, which will focus on prisons, mental institutions, and the Ku Klux Klan in Wisconsin.
Kicking off the series on Saturday, Nov. 9, 11am-noon, is “Our Black Sheep Ancestors and Their Prison Records.” Presenter Eleanor Brinsko, MLIS, owner of Carlon Genealogical Services in Oshkosh, will show how to learn about ancestors our families won’t talk about by using prison and legal records, archives, online databases, and newspapers. Brinsko specializes in Scandinavian-American and Midwestern genealogy. She has presented lectures at the Wisconsin Historical Society, public libraries, and genealogical societies around the United States. Brinsko also has contributed to the PBS show Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr.
The second presentation, “The Blue Trunk, Genealogy Research & Historical Fiction: A Path to Healing” on Thursday, Nov. 14, 6-7pm, will feature Ann Lowry, an Eau Claire native from Fort Collins, Colorado. Lowry will share her debut novel The Blue Trunk, and how failing to uncover the secrets of her long-lost, great-great aunt Marit led to healing through historical fiction. Though fictional, the book was inspired in part by Lowry’s real-life search for an ancestor whose life story was taboo in family conversations. Marit may have lived at the Eau Claire County Asylum and Poor Farm, and Lowry’s search was hampered by lack of official records and family stories.
Concluding the series on Thursday, Nov. 21, 6-7pm, “Chippewa County, WI Klanswomen in the 1920s,” is the library’s very own Alyson Jones, MLS, MSc. Jones will present her research into membership of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in Chippewa County. Who were the local women who joined the second wave resurgence of the KKK in the 1920s? What do we know about their lives and their motivations? Jones will discuss how to supplement sparse membership records with primary sources, such as censuses, newspapers, and vital records, and use record linkage and family reconstruction to create profiles of these women in their communities.
Registration is required. To access the series and each program, please visit www.ecpubliclibrary.info/dirtylaundry