The Fellows observe, with sadness, the death of James L. Hansen, FASG, on 22 June 2025.

Born in 1948, Jim Hansen served for forty years as genealogical reference librarian at the Wisconsin Historical Society, retiring in 2014. During that period he was an active genealogical lecturer, writer, and editor/proofreader for numerous genealogical books and periodicals. After a conventional 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.