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Who is Robert M. Dessureau?

Posted on by aallord

Random thoughts from today, researching Who is Robert M. Dessureau?

The question arriving as I start to put fingers on the keyboard to write Book 2 – History of Deerbrook, Langlade County, Wisconsin.

Of course for me writing involves double checking facts I’ve found, facts supporting the stories I tell. So, turn to AI, because it can search, compile and pattern match faster than me. I don’t have a month to produce results manually.

Primary reference pattern for reference use in historical accounts of Langlade County reveal:

  1. Dessureau (1922)
  2. Langlade County Historical Society
  3. Michael Clay (2025)
  4. Wisconsin Historical Society
  5. Genealogical Collections (WSGS)

So I ask who is Robert M. Dessureau? AI again because this time my search gave no real connection to who this man is… Findings

What is not well documented

There is very little independently published biographical information about Dessureau himself:

  • No widely available birth/death dates in standard references
  • No detailed personal biography or career timeline found in major historical databases
  • No clear record of other major works beyond this county history

Still no real information to form any kind of details about who this author is.

His work, unsourced yet the most widely used reference. Others, rely on Dessureau including Langlade County and Wisconsin State. So history of this area references a source of Dessureau for fact; where the author himself didn’t indicate record source of anything written?

We can conclude, yes it was extensive, yes he had used local source records on some level. Clearly assumed from details he writes. But no way to know where the record of source came from? How can a historical writer consider unsourced work as source of fact?

For me, Dessureau is why I dug for 27 years, to find fact with source references; allowing others to know where to find what I present. Those support the stories, stories are the lives of those who lived it.

My research also will reveal a different story with supporting facts. It doesn’t tell anything close to what history is calling the most authoritative today. Far from it.

This is also why I don’t challenge or change what anyone wrote before me. My sources are not their sources. This is why I used AI to find those most referenced. To reveal to myself did they use sources I already know. This allows me to build assurance of the stories I found.

My sources are much deeper to find. Sources requesting documents from NARA, using tex-search to search for keyword in massive microfilm files as images on FamilySearch and other sites. Things not yet indexed for researching.

My sources include diaries, authors unknown but the entry gives statements I then validate with source. Probate records, etc. all found on images not yet indexed. At times being able to find the source title. In the cases of books, deep research to find archives of those books.

All these questions, the time to find sources is how history can take 27 years before writing the prior post. “Deerbrook – Welcome Home”…