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Our Motto: Strange but true.
Our Mission: Amuse, surprise, perplex, astonish, and otherwise connect you with your past.
Our Method: Lower a bucket into the depths of Wisconsin history and bring to light curious fragments of forgotten lives.
Odd Wisconsin
In 1838, James Duane Doty (1799-1865) was elected by Wisconsin voters to represent them in Washington. He had already served in the Michigan territorial legislature (1833-35) and finagled having Madison chosen as Wisconsin's territorial capital. He went to Washington in 1838 to represent not only the voters but also absentee landowners, Eastern speculators, and capitalists trying to exploit Wisconsin's natural...
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Posted in Odd Lives on September 19, 2013
As large numbers of white settlers streamed into Wisconsin for the first time during the 1820s, the original inhabitants were puzzled by the exotic newcomers. One day in 1828, Ho-Chunk chief Dandy (1793-1870) was at Galena with some companions. Later that year they were going to Washington to meet with U.S. officials, and may have been familiarizing themselves with the...
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Posted in on September 12, 2013
Early in the last century, Jack Ryan kept a saloon for woodsmen at Mercer, Wisconsin. Fresh from a long winter in the forest, lumberjacks would often blow their entire season's wages on a grand spring bout of drinking, gambling, fighting, and debauchery. Ryan kept a pile of old gunny sacks in a corner where they could pass out on the...
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Posted in Animals on September 3, 2013
Today, Labor Day is coupled in all our minds with the phrase, "three-day weekend." It's become a symbol of the last leisurely break before kids have to hit the books again and parents begin the long work-a-day grind that stretches from late-August to late-November, when the long Thanksgiving weekend rolls around. But it wasn't always like this. A Day to...
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Posted in on August 29, 2013
At the battle of Wisconsin Heights in 1832, Sgt. John McNair took a bullet in the behind. Although it was just a flesh wound, he complained loudly about it and insisted he could no longer ride his horse. His comrades thought he was milking a minor injury for all it was worth and teased him mercilessly, as young men will...
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Posted in Animals on August 22, 2013
The first visitor to leave a written account of the isthmus that would become Madison was Ebenezer Brigham, who crossed it in May of 1829 while returning from Portage to Blue Mounds. He later told an acquaintance that "The site was at the time an open prairie, on which grew dwarf oaks, while thickets covered the lower grounds." Struck with...
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Posted in Madison on August 11, 2013
Printing presses were not something that pioneer settlers wanted to carry west. They were made of cast iron and weighed as much a winter's worth of provisions. To be useful, they had to be accompanied by an equally heavy load of lead type. Hauling them overland was impossible and shipping them down the Great Lakes was problematic. So it was...
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Posted in Curiosities on August 7, 2013
After a long weekend up north recently, we hunted down some memoirs by Wisconsin loggers. Everyone knows the stereotype -- flannel shirt, heavy boots, cheap tobacco, hearty appetite, maybe a blue ox -- but what was the reality? Among the best recollections was one by James Holden, who started his career in the Chippewa Valley in the winter of 1862....
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Posted in Curiosities on August 1, 2013
Wisconsin had both real giants and mythological ones. The best known of the latter was probably Paul Bunyan, but 1,000 years earlier the Ho-Chunk had crafted tales about the hero Red Horn battling a race of giants: "In the early days there were Giants tall as trees and their bodies in proportion to their height; and their especial food seemed...
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Posted in Curiosities on July 18, 2013
To many of us, hot summer afternoons mean beer. In fact, one recent study found that Wisconsin residents each drank, on average, more than 36 gallons of beer last year. This is nothing new, since beer has been part of our cultural life for at least 150 years. In the 19th century, Germans often spent weekend afternoons with family and...
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Posted in on July 12, 2013
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