Hi Folks, I am really excited to tell you about the new additions that have been made recently (yesterday and today) on the Barron Co. WIGenWeb site. I am hoping you will find these to be of interest to many of you. One of these additions (or should I say much - as there are 57 new pages and 3500 new names included in this one addition all by itself!) is the 1914 Barron Co. Plat Book and Landowners Index. These items have been donated by a very good friend of ours, Alice Hain, who spent her vacation scanning every page to preserve this history in a digital format. She has worked with these images over time, cleaning them up, and I think you will agree with me that they are the nicest and most colorful plat maps that I've ever seen! You can see them for yourself in our newly added Maps section - http://www.rootsweb.com/~wibarron/maps.htm and click on the link to the 1914 Barron Co. Plat Book. The index that came with this plat book is also one of the most unique indexes that I have ever seen for a plat book. It is almost as good as a census, in that it lists the wives names and the children's names and how long they resided in the county, along with the pertinent land information. Since this has such a census-type feel to it, I thought it would be best to put it in our Census section - http://www.rootsweb.com/~wibarron/census.htm and, again, click on the 1914 Barron Co. Platbook Index. I think you'll come to find this useful in your research too. Upon further investigation, you will see that the above index is not complete, so if you don't find a name that you are looking for, that doesn't mean they didn't live in Barron Co. at that time. There are many, many names that are on the maps that are not in the index. These materials are presented to you in "as-close-as-the-original-platbook" format as possible. That includes name spellings also. I have made a note on each map that corrections will not be made. It is almost impossible for me to go back and make additions and corrections to this because of the size of the project that it is/was. Therefore, I have decided it would be best to leave it in it's original condition. I hope you will all understand. Secondly, several great stories were added to our Community Histories page <http://www.rootsweb.com/~wibarron/communities/histories.htm> today. These great stories were contributed by Timm Severud and I think you will find them interesting also. The first one is about a logging camp fire that occurred in Cameron in 1862, while the second one is about the aborigines in Barron Co. along with their burial mounds. Very interesting reading. Not only is this one linked on the Community Histories page, but also on our Cemeteries page <http://www.rootsweb.com/~wibarron/cemeteries.htm>, as this is a great explanation of the ritualistic way that the Indians buried their dead. The descriptions of the mounds is very interesting. A must read! If you are a regular user of our search engine, you will see that I've added a new feature onto that also. You can now search by "all words", "any words", or an "exact phrase." This will help you to pinpoint the info that you are seeking faster and easier. So, as you can see, it's been a busy time for the Barron Co. WIGenWeb site. My special thanks to each of the contributors and to the many visitors who email me telling how useful the information is to them. I hope you will find all / part of this new info to be useful to your research. Good luck! Nance Barron Co. WIGenWeb coordinator and list mom