See more Recently Added Collections
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St. Norbert College Yearbooks
Another set of yearbooks has recently been added to Recollection Wisconsin, providing an interesting counterpart to the yearbooks now available online from Mount Mary College. […]
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Mount Mary College Yearbooks
Yearbooks from Mount Mary College in Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s oldest four-year women’s college, are now available through Recollection Wisconsin. This digital collection includes fully searchable issues of […]
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Alfalfa production at Cornfalfa Farms, New Berlin Historical Society
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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 […]
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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 […]
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Postcards from Middleton Area Historical Society
More than 60 postcards illustrating the city of Middleton, Wisconsin in the early 20th century are now available online from the Middleton Area Historical Society. […]
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Civil War letters of Francis Deleglise, Langlade County Historical Society
Francis Deleglise was a young man of 25, living in Appleton with his wife and children, when he enlisted in the Iron Brigade, Wisconsin’s most […]
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Crandon High School Yearbooks, Crandon Public Library
“The Cardinal endeavors not only to record a year in our School’s history, but to serve as a stimulus for recollecting our thoughts in future […]
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Senator William Proxmire Collection, Wisconsin Historical Society
When Senator William Proxmire retired in 1989 after 32 years in the U.S. Senate, he and his staff donated more than 200 boxes of office […]
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Jay “Ding” Darling Collection, Beloit College
This month we added the Jay “Ding” Darling Collection from the Beloit College Archives to our search engine. Jay Norwood Darling, better known as “Ding,” spent most […]
Crandon High School Yearbooks, Crandon Public Library
“The Cardinal endeavors not only to record a year in our School’s history, but to serve as a stimulus for recollecting our thoughts in future years. This book is merely a printed symbol; the memories which it represents are within us.”
Student staff for the 1951 yearbook.
This quote from the 1938 Crandon High School yearbook evokes the value of historical materials as something other than documentary evidence. Old yearbooks, scrapbooks, letters and photos also have the power to elicit personal memories and feelings. In fact, “a stimulus for recollecting our thoughts” is exactly what we hope the Recollection Wisconsin website will provide for our visitors.
The Crandon Public Library in the northeast Wisconsin community of Crandon (Forest County) has recently brought online a wonderful vehicle for inspiring personal recollections–yearbooks published by the local high school from 1938 into the 1960s. Every page of each yearbook has been scanned and made fully searchable, a great boon to genealogists with Crandon-area ancestors but also a compelling browsing experience for anyone who attended high school in Wisconsin in the mid-20th century.
We asked Crandon Public Library director Michelle Gobert to highlight a favorite discovery she made while digitizing the yearbooks. She wrote: “My favorite is the 1958 yearbook because the yearbook staff at that time thought it important to document the early history of Crandon. Imagine my surprise at finding historic photos of Crandon (1908) in the 1958 yearbook!”
Crandon High School class of 1908 in the 1958 yearbook.
Michelle also offered some words of wisdom to other libraries or historical societies considering making their local yearbooks or other historical collections available online: “The words ‘digitization,’ ‘metadata’ and ‘shared hosting’ may sound intimidating to some, but preserving local history and providing access to local history materials is a relevant, rewarding service for our community.”
To search and browse the Crandon High School Yearbook collection, visit http://content.mpl.org/localhistorycrandon. And stay tuned for a new digital project from the library: photos and correspondence between a Crandon High School teacher and her students in the year 1923 and their shared project to document the early settlers of Crandon.