Genealogy Research of the Families of
Tomah, Monroe County, Wisconsin
Welcome to a website that contains extensive genealogical research of the families that settled in and around Tomah, a city in Monroe County in west-central Wisconsin. This website is the result of nearly 35 years of research of the ancestors and descendants of more than 400 families who made their home in the Tomah area or are related by marriage to those who did.
The research began in the 1930’s, when my maternal grandmother, Auguste Lydia (Kewit) Pergande, began to clip and save the obituaries and selected articles from Tomah-area newspapers. After her death in 1971, the collection was continued by Lydia’s oldest daughter, Bernice (Pergande) Griggs, until she passed away in 2000.
There are nearly one thousand obituaries in the collection, which is now in the possession of Bernice’s oldest son, Gary. Because of the distance between Tomah and my home in Pawleys Island, for the past fifteen years or so the obituaries have been downloaded from the online websites of the Tomah Journal and the La Crosse Tribune and entered into a RootsMagic genealogy database.
In addition to information from the obituaries, the database contains extensive research from online sources such as census records, Social Security death records, several genealogy research sites, and contributions from people who have contacted me after finding my previous website. As a result, the database now contains more than 60,000 people with direct or indirect ties to the Tomah area.
Listed below are links to various sections of research that are located on this website:
Tomah Family Trees Reports of the descendants and marriage-related relatives of more than 400 families who settled in the Tomah area of Monroe County in the mid- to late-1800’s.
Tomah Mayflower Families Reports of the descendants of nine passengers on the Mayflower during its voyage to Plymouth Rock in 1620 who have direct descendants in the Tomah area.
Oak Grove Cemetery Reports of the decedents, burial dates and grave locations of nearly 7,000 interments that took place in the cemetery between its opening in about 1860 and the end of 2002.
St. John’s Parish Register Reports of the people whose birth, baptism, confirmation, marriage, death and/or burial are recorded in the original Parish Register of St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, Ridgeville. The records include the Book I register entries between 1861 and 1889. St. John’s was the home church of Lydia and Bernice while they lived on The Ridge.
Griggs and Pergande Families Reports of the direct ancestors of my Griggs and Pergande families.
I hope that you enjoy the research that is contained in the above reports. This information is by no means complete, so if you have information that you would like to correct or add to any of the reports, please contact me at the e-mail address below.
To view the information, click on the section links below. Once you are in a particular section, click on its various links to see the listed reports or other websites. IMPORTANT: To navigate within a section or to go to another section, click the “Back Arrow” or the “Home” link in the upper-left-hand corner of the various pages. Also, if you see a “Black Camera Icon” next to a name, click on it to see a picture related to that particular person.
· Griggs and Pergande Families
Gary Griggs
Pawleys Island, SC
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