Wisconsin 101

Mepps Lures: The Antigo Connection

A chance encounter of an American G.I. in France after World War II with a local fisherman led to the development of a major industry in Antigo, Wisconsin and put Antigo on the sports fishing map. Frank Velek discovered a fishing lure…

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May 24, 2018

Brown County / Region 5 - Center East / 1600-1800 / Green Bay / Le Maire Sundial / Related Stories / Manufacturing & Trade / Politics, Society & Government / Science & Medicine / Religion / Global Connections

French Wisconsin at Fort la Baye

French explorers, voyageurs (fur traders), Jesuit priests, and other settlers began arriving in the Upper Great Lakes region of North America in the mid-1600s. Jean Nicolet supposedly landed near present-day Green Bay, Wisconsin in 1634, naming the waterway La Baye des Puants, literally “Bay of…

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May 24, 2018

Brown County / Region 5 - Center East / 1600-1800 / Green Bay / Le Maire Sundial / Related Stories / Science & Medicine / Nature & Environment / Religion / Global Connections

French Cartography in the Great Lakes

French mariners and explorers using the Le Maire Sundial Compass depended on both their own specialized navigational expertise and maps produced by French cartographers. Many such maps were created based on explorer accounts of the navigable waterways between the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi…

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May 21, 2018

Read more about the article The Settlement House Movement

Scene from Poale Zion Chasidim, an Americanization pageant held in the Milwaukee auditorium to welcome Milwaukee’s new citizens, 1919. Image courtesy of the Wisconsin Historical Society, ID: 5348.

Settlement Cook Book / Related Stories / Home Furnishings / Food & Cooking / 1880-1900 / 1900-1920 / 1920-1940 / Ethnicity & Identity / Religion / Global Connections

The Settlement House Movement

Mass immigration from eastern and southern Europe dramatically altered America’s ethnic and religious composition around the turn of the twentieth century. Unlike earlier immigrants, who had largely come from western European countries like Britain, Germany, Ireland, and Scandinavia, the new immigrants came…

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May 1, 2017

Milwaukee County / Settlement Cook Book / Milwaukee / Region 8 - South East / Related Stories / Food & Cooking / 1880-1900 / 1900-1920 / 1920-1940 / Ethnicity & Identity / Religion / Global Connections

Elizabeth “Lizzie” Black Kander

The first generation of women—mostly white and middle- or upper-class—to graduate from college in large numbers left school full of promise and enthusiasm, but were largely denied employment in medicine, law, or business. Rejected by the professional world, many focused their energies…

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May 1, 2017

Read more about the article Roots of Milwaukee’s Settlement House

Northern Wisconsin Center Home Economics Class, c. 1930. Image courtesy of Wisconsin Historical Society, ID: 99239

Milwaukee County / Settlement Cook Book / Milwaukee / Region 8 - South East / Related Stories / Home Furnishings / Food & Cooking / 1880-1900 / Ethnicity & Identity / Global Connections

Roots of Milwaukee’s Settlement House

By 1890, the majority of Milwaukee’s Russian and Polish Jews lived in the city’s Second Ward, also known as the Haymarket District. Lizzie Black Kander worked as a truancy officer from 1890 to 1893, which gave her a front-row view of conditions…

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May 1, 2017