|
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
This month, Wisconsin abolitionist Jonathan Walker will be inducted into the National Abolitionist Hall of Fame in Petersboro, N.Y. Known in his own day as "The Man with the Branded Hand," Walker is finally getting national recognition more than 150 years after his dramatic act. At the time, the poet John Greenleaf Whittier honored him with the following lines: "With...
read the rest.
Posted in Odd Lives on October 1, 2013
"How's fishing?" That's the question that greeted Rev. A.A.A. Schmirler as he paddled the rivers of northern Wisconsin during the summer of 1959. The historian-priest was not fishing, however, but retracing the route of the first missionary to visit Wisconsin almost exactly 300 years before. Father Schmirler was trying to discover the exact location where Fr. Rene Menard died while...
read the rest.
Posted in Strange Deaths on September 25, 2013
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...
read the rest.
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...
read the rest.
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...
read the rest.
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...
read the rest.
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...
read the rest.
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...
read the rest.
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...
read the rest.
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....
read the rest.
Posted in Curiosities on August 1, 2013
|
