Start Here (RTFM🙄)

Purpose

This archive is the start of a genealogical history of the O’Donnell family branch created by the marriage of James O’Donnell and Margaret Kortsch in 1944……

The historical biographies of the earlier generations of the O’Donnell and Kortsch families in Milwaukee are attempts to turn the documentary evidence into narratives that bring some features of their subjects into the light. They are imperfect, limited by incomplete records, missing records, records not yet online, and undoubtedly mistakes. But they are a starting point, and offered with the hope that some future family archivist/historian will complete the work begun here. 

…..They may also be read as illustrating some of the difficulties in piecing together historical records into a coherent story……

Searching

Posts=Pictures + Information

The main entrance to the archive is through its posts. There are three ways to view them:

• Just scroll down the main page. They’re laid out in reverse chronological order without being fussily precise about it, an impossibility in some cases. Many of them, especially the historical ones, contain biographical, genealogical, or contextual information.
• [Temporarily disabled during the site renovation] The posts You can also use the thematically organized navigation bar at the top of the page. To simplify the navigation bar many of the thematic categories will open up to show multiple posts. For example, click on ‘The Family’→’Special Events,’ and you’ll see 15 posts there, including events like ‘Dad’s Retirement Party,’ ‘Confirmations,’ ‘Graduations,’ ‘Mom and Dad: Celebrations,’ and more, which you can then open to explore. It’s more complicated to explain than to do, so just dive in and you’ll quickly get the hang of it.
• Alternatively, the right sidebar (appears on all but the home page) alphabetically lists all the individual posts without any nesting. On mobile devices they’ll usually appear at the bottom.

Index=Overview

The second way to view the contents is from the balcony. Click on ‘Index’ in the top navigation bar for a listing of all of the archive’s posts.

So,

• The posts contain the archive’s pictures and information. You can find them:
  • chronologically arranged (scroll down the main page),
  • thematically arranged (top navigation bar),
  • or alphabetically (sidebar).
• The index contains a complete list of all the posts.

Other Information

Quotation marks in the picture captions are used to signal information written by Mom, Dad, or someone else. Caption information not in quotes was added by me.

Comments can be made on individual pictures. Just click on the picture and an enlarged view will open. You’ll see a comment box below the picture.

Comments can also be left in any of the posts. Near the bottom of any page you’ll see a blue circle; just click on it and a comment box will open. Alternatively, hover over–or tap–anywhere in the text and a ‘+’ symbol will appear in the margin. Click on the symbol and a comment box will pop up. When you’re done, press ‘Post Comment’ and it will appear on the bottom of the page.

All the comments anyone has made can be reviewed in the Comment List in the navigation bar at the top of the page.

Helpful Hint

It has long been customary to name children after living members of the family, the most frequent convention naming the first boy after the father and first girl after the mother. Our ancestors followed custom, so when performing a search for a person–e.g., ‘James’ or ‘Margaret”–you’ll find a number of people you weren’t looking for.

To disentangle the results it’s helpful to put first and last names in quote marks. If you’re searching, for example, for pictures of Annie, put quotes around “ann norman” or “ann o’donnell” and the non-relevant results, like “Ann Guiney Kortsch” and “announcement” will be filtered out. You can search for topics other than names, like ‘confirmations’ or ‘vacations’, and get the relevant results without the quote marks.