James L. (Jim) Hansen (b. 1948) retired in 2014 from a 40-year run as genealogical reference librarian at the Wisconsin Historical Society. During that run he was an active genealogical lecturer, writer, and editor/proofreader for numerous genealogical books and periodicals. After a normal beginning in genealogical research in the early 1970s, tracing his own family (Norwegian, French-Canadian, New England, and German), and his wife’s (across virtually every state east of the Mississippi), he became particularly involved in tracing some of the earliest (mostly French-Canadian) non-native settlers of the Upper Mississippi River Valley, especially Prairie du Chien. He may be reached at jlhansenwi@gmail.com but does not take clients.

Selected Publications:

“The Family of Hendrick Van Der Werken,” New York Genealogical and Biographical Record 118 (1987), 1–13. (A New York Dutch/French-Canadian fur trade family, 1675–1710.)

“The Lootman/Barrois Families of Canada, New York and Points West,” The American Genealogist 66 (1991), 1–9, 89–92, 169–75.

“The Origins of the Montross and David Families of Tarrytown” New York Genealogical and Biographical Record 122 (1991), 193–201, 123 (1992), 30–34.

” ‘Half-Breed’ Rolls and Fur Trade Families in the Great Lakes Region—an Introduction and Bibliography,” in The Fur Trade Revisited: Selected Papers of the Sixth North American Fur Trade Conference, Mackinac Island, Michigan, 1991 (East Lansing, Mich.: Michigan State University Press, 1994), 161–169.

“The Ancestry of Joan Legard, Grandmother of the Rev. William¹ Skepper/Skipper of Boston, Massachusetts,” The American Genealogist 69 (1994), 129–39.

“The Origin of the Roc/Rock Family of Prairie du Chien and Wabasha: Frontier Genealogy among the Voyageurs” The Genealogist 11 (1997), 3–36.

“The Family of Joshua and Abigail (Weeks) Brackett of Greenland and Falmouth,” New Hampshire Genealogical Record 20 (2003), 1–3.

“Catherine Barekman, Wife of John Dousman and Augustus Leaphart of Allegheny County,” Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine 47 (2011), 16–24.

“Crawford County Wisconsin Marriages, 1816–1848,” Minnesota Genealogical Journal 1 (1984), 39–58. (Publication of “lost” marriage records from a territorial Wisconsin county.)

“A List of the Mixed-Blood Chippewa of Lake Superior, 1839” in Lost in Canada?: Canadian-American Genealogical Journal 16(1) (1991), 27–45.