Clayton County Genealogical Society has new building

ELKDADER - The Clayton County Genealogical Society has a new home.

To celebrate, the group will host an open house from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday at 119 North Main St., Elkader.

The group's materials previously were housed in the Elkader Public Library. But in April, the society was able to purchase the Main Street building, thanks to a $286,000 donation from the estate of Oakland and Irene Becker, who lived on a farm between Guttenberg and Millville.

Elkader resident Judy Moyna, a charter member of the society,said the new building is an important step for the organization.

'With the purchase of this building, we have everything in a centralized location and a central place where the Society can meet,” she said. 'We also have meetings in different locations during the year and host speakers that discuss the history of Clayton County and genealogy in general.”

Elkader resident Myra Voss, along with Moyna and a few other Clayton County residents first organized the society on July 14, 1982. Throughout the years, the group has accumulated a large collection of works on the history of the county.

Among the materials in the society's care are Clayton County newspaper archives, family histories, census reports, cemetery records and plat maps dating back to 1886.

There also are birth records from Germany, town histories and books about rural schools and students for most of the county's 26 townships.

An important part of the society's collection is a series of 65 books compiled by Dean Mallory, which includes obituaries, marriages and newspaper stories about people with Clayton County connections.

The society is associated with Ancestry.com. The public has the option of visiting the Main Street building to look up family histories on the site free of charge.

Moyna said se has records of more than 155,000 people connected to Clayton County that can be seen viewed online at www.rootsweb.com

'Our goal is to help genealogists in finding out about their families,” she said. 'Our goal is to preserve records. People are welcome to donate their own family histories to help these records grow.

To learn more about the society, contact Moyna at (563) 245-2117 or (515) 720-9773, or jmoyna@alpinecom.net.