Primary sources, including eyewitness accounts, images and objects documenting key events in Wisconsin history. Resources are divided into ten topic categories: early Native peoples; early explorers, traders and settlers; the territorial period and statehood; immigration and settlement; the Civil War Era; mining, lumber and agriculture; the Progressive Era; 20th century wars; industrialization and urbanization; and 20th century change.
Manuscripts
Diaries, letters and other handwritten documents and personal papers.
UW-La Crosse Commencement Program Collection
This collection features every University of Wisconsin-La Crosse commencement program that is housed in Special Collections, dating back to the “First Annual Commencement” of the State Normal School in La Crosse, Wisconsin, on June 23, 1910. Additional materials are available for select years that may include everything from speeches and scripts to invitations and graduate lists. Each year expect that this collection will include the most recent commencement programs.
Waukesha County History 1870-1920
The materials in this digital collection depict the industries, people and structures important to the development of Waukesha County from 1870-1920. Many of the images come from the collection of Warren S. O’Brien (1898-1988), a prolific Waukesha photographer.
Wisconsin Arts Projects of the WPA
This digital collection provides access to primary sources documenting the activities and output of Works Project Administration (WPA) arts projects in Wisconsin from 1935-1943, especially the work of the Milwaukee Handicrafts Project. Materials include design portfolios, oral history interviews with artists and selections from the papers of Elsa Emile Ulbricht, director of the Milwaukee Handicraft Project, and Charlotte Russell Partridge and Miriam Frink, co-founders of the Layton School of Art.
Wisconsin Goes to War: Our Civil War Experience
First person narrative accounts of Wisconsin soldiers and citizens during the Civil War, including letters, diaries, poems and other records.
Wisconsin in the Civil War
To mark the 150th anniversary of the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865), the Wisconsin Historical Society created this digital collection containing dozens of diaries, regimental histories and book-length memoirs, thousands of soldiers’ letters, hundreds of newspaper articles and more than 1,000 photographs, maps and other images.
Wisconsin Pioneer Experience
A digital collection of diaries, letters, reminiscences, speeches and other writings of people who settled and built Wisconsin during the 19th century. These materials were selected from the collections of the Wisconsin Area Research Centers (ARCs) as well as the headquarters of the Wisconsin Historical Society.
Wisconsin Women’s History
A selection of manuscripts and ephemera documenting the lives of women in Wisconsin, focusing on women who were active in social movements such as suffrage, temperance, abolition, civil rights and other efforts to reform society as well as women who ran for public office.
World War II Veterans of Mount Horeb
This collection brings together books, photographs, audio interviews, slides, personal scrapbooks and memorabilia collected from Mt. Horeb-area veterans of WWII.
