Counting down the most-liked and most-shared posts on our Tumblr blog, Wisco Histo, for this past month. Women are at the center of all three images, which is appropriate given that March was Women’s History Month. 3. Sewing class ca. 1927 This glass negative from Milwaukee Vocational School (now Milwaukee Area Technical College) shows female students… Read More…
Stories from city directories
This exhibit highlights a selection of advertisements from Wisconsin city directories published between 1857 and 1930. City directories are commercially-published compilations of the names, addresses and professions of people in a particular town or city. The earliest formal city directories published in the United States document major urban areas on the East Coast and date… Read More…
Digitizing Milwaukee’s Polonia at UWM Libraries
The digital collections team at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries is in the midst of an ambitious project to digitize more than 25,000 glass plate negatives by Milwaukee photographer Roman Kwasniewski. From 1907-1947, Kwasniewski worked as a studio photographer in the Polish-American community on Milwaukee’s south side, documenting social events such as First Communions, Confirmations, graduations,… Read More…
Badger Highways, Wisconsin Department of Transportation Library
Wisconsin’s highways are an unremarkable part of everyday life for most of us in 2013, but in the 1920s, the expanding state and county highway system was exciting news, enough to warrant a monthly magazine devoted to the subject. Badger Highways, published by the Wisconsin Highway Commission from 1925-1929, included information about state and federal… Read More…
Recently Added: Collections from Antigo, Brodhead and Middleton
We add new content to the Recollection Wisconsin search engine every month. Some of the most recent additions include postcards from the Middleton Area Historical Society, photographs from the Brodhead Historical Society, and Civil War letters from the Langlade County Historical Society. Civil War letters of Francis Deleglise, Langlade County Historical Society Francis Deleglise, founder… Read More…
Brodhead Historical Society Online Image Archive
Recollection Wisconsin recently added the Brodhead Historical Society’s online image archive to our search engine. This digital collection features more than 1300 photographs from Brodhead and neighboring communities in south central Wisconsin. Pat Weeden, president of the Brodhead Historical Society, provided more details about this ongoing project in an email interview. When did you start… Read More…
Tumblr Top Three: February 2013
Counting down the most-liked and most-shared posts on our Tumblr blog, Wisco Histo, for the month of February. 3. A very close tie A charming snapshot of two friends at the Kenosha County airport just barely edged out a portrait of three imposing Platteville police officers (and police dog). 2. A story of migration and… Read More…
Awareness of Race
I was probably six or seven years old, 1966 or ’67. Summers were untethered for me in Racine, everyday, all day, at the Park & Rec program at Island Park in the beautiful old pavilion where I looked up to the teenage playground leaders. We bounced big red rubber balls loudly on the concrete or… Read More…
Bandolier bags
The beaded bandolier bag is a distinctive form created by American Indians in the Great Lakes and Plains regions beginning in the mid-19th century. These large, vividly colored and intricately beaded bags were a central element of men’s formal dress for dances and ceremonies. Wearing two bags at once, as Charlie Congray does in the image… Read More…
Milwaukee’s struggle for civil rights
This feature is curated by Mark Speltz, senior historian for American Girl. Mark began exploring the photographic record of the civil rights movement in Milwaukee as a graduate student in public history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. In the six years since, he has interviewed participants, politicians, and photographers and remains ever hopeful new photographs and… Read More…
