Fred Lesher taught in the English Department at UW-La Crosse from 1965 until his retirement in 1996. Lesher had a life-long interest in ornithology, and from 1958 to 2002, he kept detailed journals of his birding. The journals, in 14 volumes with over 3000 pages, are important documents of birding in the Coulee Region of southwest Wisconsin, northeast Iowa and southeast Minnesota.
Manuscripts
Diaries, letters and other handwritten documents and personal papers.
Freedom Summer Digital Collection
The Wisconsin Historical Society has one of the richest collections of Civil Rights movement records in the nation, which includes more than 100 manuscript collections documenting the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project of 1964. More than 25,000 pages from the Freedom Summer manuscripts — enough to fill several file cabinets — are available online. In them you will find official records of organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); the personal papers of movement leaders and activists such as Amzie Moore, Mary King and Howard Zinn, letters and diaries of northern college students who went South to volunteer for the summer; newsletters produced in Freedom Schools; racist propaganda, newspaper clippings, pamphlets and brochures, magazine articles, telephone call logs, candid snapshots, internal memos, press releases and much more.
Gartner Diaries
Diaries of the travels of Austrian Norbertine priest Father Maximilian Gaertner of Wilten Abbey in Austria. Gaertner arrived in Wisconsin in 1846 and remained there until recalled to Wilten Abbey in 1858.
Helen Brace Emerson Correspondence
This collection includes letters written to Helen Brace Emerson from her cousin, suffragist and president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union Frances Willard, between the late 1860s and Willard’s death in 1898. Correspondence from other writers provide details about Willard’s final days.
Henry and Elizabeth Baird Papers Collection
Elizabeth Baird (1810-1890) and Henry Baird (1800-1875) were prominent 19th-century Wisconsin settlers. They were connected to most of the founders of modern Wisconsin through family ties, marriage, business interests and politics. This digital collection includes all the Baird correspondence and selected business, family and personal papers.
Historic Fort Atkinson
This digital collection contains two components: images of citizens and businesses along Main Street in the city of Fort Atkinson from the 1880s through the 1970s, and manuscripts, notes, letters, oral histories and photographs from or about poet Lorine Niedecker, who spent most of her life in the Fort Atkinson area.
Increase A. Lapham Papers, 1825-1930
This digital collection contains the complete manuscripts of Wisconsin scientist Increase A. Lapham (1811-1875) owned by the Wisconsin Historical Society, including letters, diaries, scientific notes, drawings and other papers.
Jay “Ding” Darling Collection
Jay Norwood Darling was a Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist who attended Beloit College from 1895-1900, where he served as art director for the college yearbook. The digital collection features illustrations Darling created for the 1899 yearbook as well as a selection of Darling’s letters and other writings.
Joseph F. Preloznik Papers on Menominee Termination and Restoration
Legal, administrative, educational and political documents, including correspondence and news clippings, describing events and people involved during the Menominee Termination and Restoration era, 1961-1973.
Kenosha County Digital Archive
These collections, from Community Library (Salem), Kenosha Public Library, and Kenosha County Libray System, feature photographs, documents, genealogy records, letters, and maps from Kenosha County cities, towns, and schools.
