Funding Public Libraries in Michigan

Over the last several weeks we have heard several times that the proposed funding of $7,500,000 for Michigan libraries is only 50% of what is required by law.

What law?

And if it’s a law, why is not complying with it subject of legal action by someone – there’s no shortage of lawyers that’s for sure!!!!

So I set out to try and find out just where this “requirement” is. It turns out that this was laid down in Act 89 of 1977 – State Aid to Public Libraries, which contains a list of the requirements that must be met by libraries in Michigan, categorises them based on the population they serve and lays out the amount of state aid that they must receive. See here, here and here for several presentations of Act 89.

From State Aid Guidelines on page 3 we see this list of the funding categories required in Act 89.

PA89, §13 Public library cooperatives shall receive 50¢ per capita for their served population.

PA89, §16(2) Public libraries shall receive 50¢ per capita for their served population if minimum standards are met.

PA89, §16(4) Public libraries that meet minimum standards and are members of a cooperative library shall receive 50¢ per capita to pay for services provided by the cooperative.
All or part of this amount shall be used to purchase these services.

PA89, §16(4) A cooperative shall receive $10 per square mile for the area it serves if the area has less than 75 persons per square mile.

PA89, §16(5) County public libraries serving a population of 50,000 or less with a director who meets educational requirements can receive a maximum of $400 per month or $4,800 annually for salary reimbursement. A form must be filed quarterly by the county library to claim the reimbursement.

So while I’m certainly no lawyer, one has to wonder why if there’s a law, then this law can’t be enforced?!?!

The main thing I got out of the Rally at the Capitol was just how important it is that Michigan Libraries receive $10,000,000 in funding – “only” 2/3rds of the required $15,000,000 – so that they then receive the $5,000,000 in Federal money which is what by and large seems to pay forMeL and MelCat. The Governor is proposing $7,500,000, while the Senate is proposing $10,000,000.

How hard is to to realise that for a further measly $2,500,000 they would be able to treble their money, since that last $2,500,000 would trigger the Federal $5,000,000. That’s a return on investment that it ought to be criminal to turn down.

This page MHAL – Significant Dates in Michigan Library History should be required reading for all decision makers before they decide to underfund the Libraries of Michigan, so that they might get even a small grasp of what they’re about to undo before they go and undo it!!!!

And finally (maybe) this from writer Anne Herbert

“Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries.”

MLA Rally at the Capitol

Thursday 10 September 2009 was the day of the Michigan Library Association “Rally at the Capitol” where Librarians and other interested parties from across Michigan rallied to express their displeasure at the proposed funding cuts to Libraries in Michigan overall and specifically the plans to dismantle and disperse the collections of the Library of Michigan, which have been being collected for more than 180 years.

The theme of the day was RED – people were encouraged to show their support for Libraries by wearing a red shirt – and there were a LOT of RED shirts. Thanks in no small part to Gale Group of Michigan who were giving out free red shirts that said on the front “Protect Michigan Libraries”. Others were wearing red shirts from the Grand Rapids Public Library that said on the back “I ♥ Grand Rapids Public Library”.

Roger Moffat and Shirley Hodges on the Capitol Steps

It was also the day chosen for Michigan Fire Services Awareness Day so there was a large presence of Firemen, and firetrucks present with displays of firefighting and HazMat equipment. I hope they knew we were coming, or else they got a large surprise when a crowd that was about the same size as the “Hands Around the Library” event a month earlier.

Below is a photo gallery of some photos from today with the “Sea of Red” or is that the “See of Read” perhaps?

 

Meeting the great great grandmother…

After our trip to The Henry Ford Museum (a separate post with photos of that is a day or 2 away yet), we stopped at Greenwood Cemetery in Fowlerville, Livingston County, Michigan on the way back to show Kyle and Zoe, and their second cousin Kathy where their great great grandmother Marie Christensen is buried. Marie was married to Octave Painchaud, and their 2 children were born as Harvey and William Painchaud. But after Marie divorced Octave on the grounds of “extreme cruelty”, and had married John Chancy Thomas, she had William and Harvey’s names changed to her maiden name Christensen. If not for this Kyle, Zoe and Kathy would have the last name Painchaud.

This first picture is of Lot 228 in Greenwood Cemetery where the only headstone is that of George E Thomas who was killed in action in World War II. But also buried here is Marie Christensen, and her 2nd husband John Chancy Thomas and Bobbie Macigewski (a grand-daughter of Marie ) who was born premature.

Kyle, Kathy and Zoe Christensen at headstone of their half great great uncle George E Thomas, who was killed in action in World War II. George's mother Marie Christensen is the great great grandmother of the 3 kids.

Kyle, Kathy and Zoe Christensen at the headstone of their great great uncle William Christensen, and his wife Florence Krumm.

Pure New Zealand

Following on from Randy Seaver’s 8 August Saturday Night Genealogy Fun where he asked people to list their 16 great grandparents [sic] (it should be great great grandparents), and figure out what percentage of each ethnicity/nationality they are, I thought of a twist on this that I’ll suggest he offer next week (since far more people read his Musings than read my Ramblings).

The proposition is to figure out the percentage of your nationality/ethnicity you are at each generation back starting with yourself, with the aim of identifying at what generation you became 100% of the nationality that you identify with today.

So for me

1. born in New Zealand = 100% Kiwi
2. both parents born in New Zealand = 100% Kiwi
3. 4 grand parents born in New Zealand = 100% Kiwi
4. 8 great grandparents – now it’s a mixture:
   • 1 great grandparent born in Australia
   • 2 great grandparents born in New Zealand
   • 2 great grandparents born in England
   • 3 great grandparents born in Scotland
   • = 12.5% Australia, 25% Kiwi, 25% English, 37.5% Scottish
5. 16 great great grandparents – less mixed now:
   • 10 great great grandparents born in Scotland
   • 6 great great grandparents born in England
   • = 37.5% English, 62.5% Scottish
6. 32 great great great grandparents – now the list is not completely known:
   • 17 great great great grandparents born in Scotland, plus 1 almost certainly = 18
   • 8 great great great grandparents born in England, plus 2 almost certainly = 10
   • 2 great great great grandparents probably born in Ireland^[1]
   • 2 great great great grandparents unknown – their daughter was born in England^[2]
   • = 56.25% Scottish, 31.25% English, 6.25% probably Irish, 6.25% Unknown

[1] – I haven’t tracked down Peter Mulvey’s parents yet, but in the 1841 and 1851 Census for Haddingtonshire where Peter was born, a large number of the Mulveys listed indicate born in Ireland.

[2] The births of Thomas Jennings and Ann Burgoigne have not been actively searched for yet.

So how many generations of this can you complete for your family, and how far back can you go and still be 100% of the nationality you identify with today? For me it’s 4 grandparents all born in New Zealand. Their parents were born in New Zealand, Australia, England and Scotland.

16 Great Great Grandparents

Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings asks:

1. List your 16 great-grandparents (of course there are only 8 great grandparents, so since he mentioned 16 I’m assuming great great grandparent) in pedigree chart order. List their birth and death years and places.
2. Figure out the dominant ethnicity or nationality of each of them.
3. Calculate your ancestral ethnicity or nationality by adding them up for the 16 – 6.25% for each (obviously, this is approximate.

So mine can be seen here

The results are:

8 Paternal great great grandparents are all Scottish

6 Maternal great great grandparents are English

2 Maternal great great grandparents are Scottish (something only fairly recently discovered – I’d always “known” that my mother’s ancestry was all English).

So the end result is that at the great great grandparent level I’m ¹⁰/16 (= 62.5%) Scottish and ⁶/16 (=37.5%) English.

Of course since I was born in New Zealand of New Zealand born parents I consider myself 100% Kiwi!!

Hands Around the Library

This is a photo gallery of some pictures taken during today’s “Hands Around the Library” Rally at the Michigan state Capitol, and the Michigan Library and Historical Center.

The count of 494 in the circle didn’t include everyone who was there, so it’s safe to say a crowd in excess of 500 was there to show their thoughts on Governor Granholm’s Executive Order which would see the Michigan Department of History, Arts and Libraries dismantled, and its components scattered hither and thither.

Thanks to Kyle and Zoe (my 1st cousins once removed-in-law) for being the banner bearers for much of the day.

Added 7 August 2009 – “borrowed” from Cindi Shearer who posted it as her facebook status, and first coined by writer Anne Herbert…

“Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries.”

 

Library of Michigan – Whither not wither

Michigan, like most other US states is in dire economic troubles. For Michigan perhaps more than other states, it has been going on for a long time, perhaps too closely tied to the US auto industry.

In early July, Governor Granholm issued her Executive Order 2009-36 breaking up the HAL – the department of History, Arts and Library. Unless this order is vetoed within 60 days by the Michigan Legislature, it will take effect on 1 October. At this time the Library will fall under control of the Department of Education, whose Superintendent is instructed to take further cost saving steps.

Much has been written and postulated about what this might mean: Read the rest of this entry »

FamilySearch Indexing on Macintosh

A few hours after I wrote the below…

FamilySearch Indexing support replied to my eMail(s) to them with this link

https://help.familysearch.org/publishing/202/104450_f.SAL_Public.html

which covers both Mac OS X 10.4 and Mac OS X 10.5.

========================

I noted with some excitement last evening that FamilySearch Indexing had a project underway with a New Zealand flavour to it – “New Zealand—Passenger Lists, 1871–1915″, so I thought this was the incentive I needed to get back to indexing – something I hadn’t done in quite a few months. But alas I couldn’t get the FamilySearchIdexing application to start up – no matter what I tried it generated an error “Unable to start the Application”.

Some Googling led me to this page https://help.familysearch.org/publishing/301/103757_f.SAL_Public.html which provided the hint as to where to look, but unfortunately those directions aren’t directly applicable to Mac OS X 10.5.7 which I’m running.

So this page lists what I did to fix this problem. NOTE – these instructions apply to Mac OS X 10.5.x

Go to your Macintosh HD ——> Applications ——> Utilities folder and find the icon “Java Preferences”. Double click that to open it, and then click on the Network tab

Read the rest of this entry »

An Ancestor Honoured…

Yesterday in my partial stupor of fever and other side effects induced by an insect bite, that looks likely it was a deer tick bite with the ensuing Lyme Disease I watched “Gods and Generals” – the first of the 3 epic parts of the book series by Jeffrey Shaara and his father Michael Shaara that covers the Civil War. Some years ago I had seen Gettysburg which was from the book by his father. Gods and Generals was written as a prequel to this.

The last major battle portrayed in Gods and Generals is The Battle of Chancellorsville which Lisa’s great great grandfather Frederick Heinrich Tönsing took part in as a Private in Company B of the 107th Ohio Volunteer Infantry – an all German outfit, with initially at least all German Officers that was raised in Cleveland during the Summer of 1862. Later in the War the German (speaking) Officers were replaced with English (speaking) Officers.

The Flying Dutchmen

The overall impression from his Civil War Pension file was that he spent the rest of his life until 1918 arguing with the Veterans Adminstration that his pension was insufficient, and that the artificial legs they provided were of no use because the stump was too short for him to be able to wear the legs.

Frederick Heinrich Tönsing’s page on Lisa’s genealogy can be found here.

In 2006, while on a trip to Richmond, Virginia for the Clan Moffat Society AGM we visited the site of the Battle of Chancellorsville for a morning on our way back home, touring the area, and visiting the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park Visitor Center at Chancellorsville.

Lisa reading a Descriptive Sign

The Mighty Oak at Chancellorsville

Giving a little back…

During February 2008 I spent a couple of weeks furiously researching the genealogy of a friend of my wife’s from her work. Pat is a descendant of slaves that lived in Mississippi, and the occasion was “Granny’s” 91st birthday (Granny is Pat’s mother), with a big celebration planned for her at her home in Copiah County, Mississippi in March of 2008.

Granny’s Gathering Place

Pat knew enough about her ancestry to point me in the right directions – helped immensely by the fact that I could find her mother listed in both the 1920 and 1930 Censuses.

Once I’d pushed the various families back as far as I could with the US Census Population Schedules, one of the other things I did was pore over the slave schedules and search results from Ancestry.com for both the 1850 and 1860 Slave Censuses of Copiah County trying to see if I could find these families as slave groups with any of the slave owners in Copiah County.

In order to help with that I came up with these 4 pages – 2 each for 1850 and 1860 that show the slave owner names, and the ages of their slaves as enumerated. One list is in slaveowner alphabetic order, the other is in enumeration order, which might be helpful in determining neighbours.

1850 Copiah Co., Mississippi – Slave Owners Alphabetical
1850 Copiah Co., Mississippi – Slave Owners Enumeration Order
1860 Copiah Co., Mississippi – Slave Owners Alphabetical
1860 Copiah Co., Mississippi – Slave Owners Enumeration Order

One of Pat’s ancestors that I’m fairly confident I found the slave owner for (the assumption made is that the slave took her owner’s surname upon Emancipation) is Harriet Harrel (one of Pat’s great grandmothers) – born in North Carolina about 1848. The 1860 Slave Schedule lists a Martha Harroll as the Owner of a 13 year old female slave, and there is an 1866 Marriage Record for Harriett Harrel to George Lynch, and in the 1870 Census George Lynch and Harriett have 3 children.

Martha Harroll herself on the 1860 Population Schedule lists the birthplace of her and her children, including a 1 year old as North Carolina, which means that by 1860 this family had only recently moved from North Carolina to Copiah Co., Mississippi, bringing with them only the 1 female slave. Investigations continue to try and find this family in North Carolina in 1850.

I hope you find the lists useful