I have been doing genealogy since 1988, a year before my mother died. My mother started getting pictures of our family, but that is all we accomplished before her death.

I didn’t really get any information on my ancestors from her, just the pictures, which were wonderful.

At the time I had a library patron named Gerald Ricard, who is a great genealogist from the Grosse Point, Michigan area. He would come into the library every summer and ask me when I was going to start my genealogy. I always told him that I was too busy because my children were still in school. I really wanted to do it, but couldn’t find the time. Then suddenly my mother passed away at 69, and two of her sisters followed within a three month period. Mr. Ricard told me that if I didn’t start right away, all the people in my family would be gone and so would our history. I immediately started talking to my other aunts and uncles about their lives. I found out wonderful information from them that is still helpful to this day.

I started working as the assistant library director at Deckerville Public Library in 1987. I had been there for seven years when Jeanette Kursinsky, the library director, decided to retire. I applied for her job and started to work as director in 1994. There was a lot to learn, but Jeanette helped me so much.

We became automated in the next few years, so I had to learn to use the computer and all the technology that went with it. Librarians had to become tech savvy very fast. I found out that I loved everything about computers and what they could offer us in the library.

I wanted to do a library web site, but at that time I just didn’t have time to learn HTML, so I purchased Microsoft FrontPage 2000. I took two FrontPage classes online, and they helped me very much. If you have the time and use a software program to do your web site, I suggest that you take some classes. In addition, I went on the web and read what I could about designing web pages. I looked at every library site I could find to see what I liked and wanted on our website. I did a lot of homework before I actually started the website.

To get started, I thought, “Who in the world would want to come to the Deckerville Public Library web site? How can I get people to come to our site?” I decided the answer to both questions was genealogy and local history.

Our library has a wealth of information that people living in other states and other countries would be interested in seeing. The first thing I thought of was doing pages for all the counties in the Thumb of Michigan. I did a page for Sanilac, Tuscola, Huron, St. Clair, and Lapeer counties. I searched for people that had websites that dealt with any of these counties. I looked at a variety of sites that I could link to from our library site, such as historical societies, museums, family history websites, mailing lists, vital records, county web sites , county census sites, county clerks, cemeteries, libraries, civil war sites, local newspapers, marriage and death records, local maps, and obituaries. There is so much information on the Internet that I am always trying to update the website as much as I can.

Once I created the county pages, I thought it would be great to scan our local history books into the computer and then upload them to our website. I first called everyone that had written all our local history or family history books to make sure they wouldn’t care if I scanned their materials, especially because of the copyright laws. I was very excited when everyone involved liked my idea and gave me permission to proceed.

The first book I scanned was the Trodden Pathways, a history of Deckerville. I chose the Trodden Pathways as our first local history book to put on-line because many people wanted to purchase this book, and it is no longer in print. It took many hours to finish, but it was worth every minute. I scanned in one more book and then decided to have someone transcribe the others I have. We now have five books on-line and there are many more to come. I cannot thank Janette Preimusberger and Kim Trowhill enough for transcribing the books for me.

I am now working on putting the Decker Family History by Chrystol (Holmes) Lindsey on our site. Chrystol is the descendent of Charles Decker, the founder of our town. This book is taking me a long time to add to the library website because I have to do an index and have to scan in many pictures before I can put it up on our site. I hope to get it completed by the summer of 2003.

Genealogy has brought so many people to our web site that I thought I should put up some message boards, so people can help each other, and I also can help them with what I have at our library. I have already completed a message board on the Sanilac County page and one on the Huron County page. In the future I plan message boards for Tuscola, Lapeer, and St. Clair Counties. I use a website called bravenet.com to put up my message boards. It gives good advice to help you with putting up guestbooks, guestmaps, message boards, site search, webrings, and much more. It is all free, so that is a plus.

I learned so much through my library experience that I have volunteered to do two other websites. I do the Village of Deckerville web site http://www.deckervillemich.org and

the American History and Genealogy web site for Sanilac County , Michigan http://www.usgennet.org/usa/mi/county/sanilac/ web site.

One of the unexpectedly enjoyable side effects of our website has been the many people from all over the world who have sent emails, have called, have written to me, or have visited our library after using our website. Having them come to our site is worth all the work we have done.

I have so many plans for the web site that I have no problem with ever getting bored. I love what I am doing, and it is a pleasure doing it.

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Web Design by Kathy Wedyke deckervillelibrary@yahoo.com

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Disclaimer: Although every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy and reliability

of the information on these pages, all transcriptions are subject to human error, and

researchers should always check the original source of any list.

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