Lee Newspapers

More than 40 years ago, Marilyn Hassel did the best thing a genealogist can do: She started young.

In 1960, while still in her teens, Hassel began doing family research by writing to her relatives to get details about their lives and the lives of their ancestors. Four decades later she has traced her roots back to the parents of what was certainly the first European girl born in what is now New York State, possibly the first child of any gender.

Could she have done that by this point in her life without starting in her teens? Maybe, especially with all the genealogical resources made available by advancing technology and the Internet and with the growing number of family histories to tap into.

But she would not have scaled those genealogical heights without first going to her living relatives and getting details: full names, maiden names, dates and places of birth, marriage dates, plus as many of these tidbits as their living relatives knew about their forebears.

"That's where you want to start," said Hassel, who lived with her family in the town of Onalaska until moving to West Salem about five years ago.

The big advantage for people diving into genealogy while they're still young is they have more relatives alive and in good memory, and they are able to fill in more pieces of the family history puzzle. And it is a puzzle, Hassel said, and genealogists are puzzle solvers.

"It's kind of like being a detective," she said.

These days, Hassel is the equivalent of the chief of the local genealogical detective squad. She is in charge of the Family History Center at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Onalaska. A visit there n or one of the more than 1,800 other such centers across the country n might be a good next step for budding genealogists after they've gotten all the clues they can from their relatives.

Hassel will explain all about the Family History Center and its resources at the next monthly meeting of the La Crosse Genealogical Society, which starts at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 27, at the La Crosse Public Library Main Branch.

The Family History Center in Onalaska has been in place almost 20 years, getting its start in 1985. The resources there have grown by leaps and bounds, but so have the opportunities to access information through the Internet. Because of that growth in online resources, the center isn't as busy as it once was, even with the growing number of people interested in researching their family histories.

There are some things people can get at the Family History Centers that they just can't get online, though. For one thing, the centers offer access to the Mormon Church's unbelievably large store of microfilmed documents, kept in a huge vault in a mountain outside Salt Lake City, Utah. "They've got millions and millions of microfilms," Hassel said.

For $3.25, little more than the cost of postage, anybody can request a microfilm be sent to their nearest Family History Center, giving them a chance to examine firsthand records dealing with birth, death, marriage, property ownership, taxes, military service and more. Records from family Bibles have even been microfilmed. The microfilm, which is a copy of the original kept in the mountain vault, is then available for viewing for three weeks at the center, with an extended loan possible.

The Onalaska Family History Center also has microfiche files that index United States census records, which could be very helpful to those who know an ancestors' names but don't know where they lived. If those ancestors are found, the AIS index also can pinpoint a page number in the census where a pertinent record can be found. That, Hassel said, can be a huge time saver.

If it sounds like the Family History Center is a bit like a library, it's no coincidence. The centers are like branches of the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, and they have indexes to all the genealogical resources there.

For example, at the center you could find the Family History Library Catalog, which has a section listing authors, surnames and subjects of genealogy books and a second section that tells what kind of records have been microfilmed from what localities. This catalog also is available online at www.familysearch.org.

The centers also have the International Genealogical Index, also available at that Web site, which boasts a list of names that have been previously researched, coupled with birth or marriage information. Finding ancestors' names on this list could save genealogy researchers many hours by alerting them to research already done by others.

Hassel said genealogists might find valuable clues in other people's work, but it still should be verified through firsthand examination of official records. . "Some people find a name and say, ‘Oh, that's them,' and write it down," she said. "If it's someone else's research, you still have to check it out."

The ultimate goal in family history research is to go back as far as you can. A lot of people, Hassel said, hit dead-ends in the 1800s because of missing records. "There were a lot of wooden courthouses and fires," she said.

Other times people are done with their genealogical research a few generations back because their ancestors came to this country in the 1800s, which often means a language barrier to finding more family members in the "Old World."

Even if language weren't a problem, once you get back in time a ways, records weren't kept of most people's milestones, except maybe in Bibles that have by now turned to dust. "If you're going to go back real far," Hassel said, "you're going to have to tie into a royal line."

Hassel was able to trace her relatives back to the early 1600s because the settlers in colonial New England kept great records, and its safe to say she knows more about the first generation of her family to come to the "New World" than she does about most of the nine since then. That's because those first relatives were historically prominent.

Joris Jansen de Rapelje, the 19-year-old son of a renowned Dutch painter, embarked for this country on Jan. 25, 1624 n 380 years ago on Sunday. He came with his French wife of four days, Catalyntje, and about a dozen families.

Rapelje, like many early settlers, came to North America seeking religious freedom. He was a Huguenot, a French protestant sect that had been persecuted by the Catholic church. He and the others sailing aboard the Unity dropped anchor about 130 miles up the Hudson River at Fort Orange, near present-day Albany.

At this time, there were three European settlements in North America: the Plymouth colony in Massachusetts, the Jamestown colony in Virginia, both English, and the Dutch one in Fort Orange. There were barely enough European settlers to fill the seats on the La Crosse County Board.

The Rapeljes produced a daughter, Sarah, born on June 9, 1625, the first recorded European girl born in what would become New York state. It is believed a boy was born at Fort Orange before her, but no records survive to confirm it.

While most people want to find relatives as far back as they can n and preferable somebody famous n others also get a kick out of tracing their family branches in the present and finding distant cousins.

Whatever people's goals in genealogy, it's important that they not put off getting the information from their elders. Hassel has heard enough horror stories about researchers missed opportunities to doubly emphasize the importance of not procrastinating.

Once that first step is done, there's always the Family History Center. "If you don't know what to do, go ask for help," she said.

AT A GLANCE

WHAT: La Crosse Area Genealogical Society monthly meeting

WHEN: 7 p.m., Tuesday, Jan. 27

WHERE: La Crosse Public Library Main Branch, 800 Main St.

SPEAKER: Marilyn Hassel of the Family History Center at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Onalaska.

FAMILY HISTORY CENTER

WHAT IT IS: A branch of the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, kept by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

WHERE: 701 Well St., Onalaska

NUMBERS: There are more than 1,800 Family History Centers in the country, but only 14 in Wisconsin.

HOURS: The Onalaska Family History Center is open from 9 a.m. to noon on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. The center also is open from 6 to 9 p.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

ON THE WEB: Many of the resources available at the Family History Center also are available on the Internet at www.familysearch.org.