Fullerton Public Library’s Genealogical Resource Center a wellspring of information that reaches across the country
There was so much to look through at the Library’s Resource Center it was hard to know what to pick out first. Seated is Rhonda Richards of Albion, while Deb Landauer of Albion (middle) and Marlene Laska of St. Edward scan through various items.-
Debby Bialas of Fullerton came upon a Krakow history book and was surprised when she found a photo in the book with members of her husband’s family.
I t was like going to a candy store for a group of genealogists who recently gathered at the Fullerton Public Library.
The group are members of the Boone-Nance County Genealogical Society. They met for their monthly meeting at the library to explore a large treasure trove of resources available at the library’s Genealogical Resource Center.
President of the Society, Pat Wagner of McCool Junction, noted: “I don’t think a lot of people realize that this library has this much genealogy material.”
Citing that most small town libraries don’t contain this abundance of facts and figures, Pat added: “This is a wonderful thing for a library this size to have so many resources. It’s great!”
The Resource Center contains a large collection known as “Bert’s Books” which were donated to the library by the family of the late Alberta McBride who lived in the Belgrade area.
“Most of the hardbound books are from the collection that Alberta had bought from a gentleman in Wisconsin,” Pat explained. “She had rented some books from him and he was getting ready to dispose of his collection, so she drove to Wisconsin and bought them from him, packed them home, and did a rental library at her home for a while. When she passed away, her daughter donated them to the library in Fullerton.
“Most libraries, if they have a genealogical section at all, it’s very local and there might be a couple of history books or two for the surrounding areas of general research and that’s about it.”
The McBride collection has information from all over the United States.
In addition, there is a copy of each Nance County Journal dating back to 1989, and abstracts that go back to 1881. There are Fullerton history, Genoa history, and Belgrade history resources as well as Fullerton yearbooks dating back to 1956; scrapbooks from the late Helen Fehrs, who lived by Belgrade, dating back to 1962; notebooks of obituaries and marriage records and much more.
An old map of the Sunset Cemetery at Cedar Rapids was found during the member’s exploration. There are also books compiled by Ruthie Imus and Alberta McBride of area cemetery records.
One shelf contains a series of Everton’s Genealogical Helper. This Genealogical Helper contained continuing education and research resources for both professional and amateur family history researchers. Since 1947, long before the web and community websites, the Helper offered invaluable aid to researchers. It was called the “bible” of the industry for sixty years.
“The Helper had people that would write in and leave queries,” Pat said. “They were looking for other family members and information. At the time, that was the only genealogical magazine that was available to buy and have in your home. Now there’s Family Tree and several other magazines that you can subscribe to. There’s also locality magazines like Scottish, German, Great Britain, that were not available at that time.”
While looking through some items from the Genoa Leader newspaper, Sharon Waters of Albion came across an intriguing and somewhat amusing article for this day and age. The article is dated February 28, 1913, and reads as follows: “Axel Swanson left the last of the week for Sweden to visit his old home. As we have intimated before, it is reported that he went over after a wife and now we learn that he has a commission from Lester Yelm and Sam Anderson to bring each of them one also, his commission to be $100 for any old wife and $200 if they are young and pretty.”
A later article stated: “Dollars to donuts he brings home a wife. Every man needs a wife and Axel will make an ideal husband.”
Clippings such as these brought rounds of laughter, and members could be overheard saying they wanted to search through more records at a later date.
“It’s a pretty cool thing for a library this size to have this many volumes of things that would go across the whole country, and they’re all early” Pat Wagner reiterated.
If you would like to do research at the Fullerton Public Library’s Genealogical Resource Center, call the library at 308-5362382. Material cannot be checked out, however, copies can be made at the library.