Odd Wisconsin Archives: Odd Lives
When a shotgun blew a fist-sized hole in Alexis St. Martin's side on June 6, 1822, military physician William Beaumont was astonished that the young fur trader worker didn't simply die on the spot. Instead, he recovered -- though with a permanent opening through his muscle wall and into his stomach that required bandaging for the rest of his life.... :: Posted on May 8, 2008
This weekend marks the birthday of Wisconsin's most famous practical joker, Eugene Shepard (1854-1923). Shepard began cruising Wisconsin forests for lumber companies as a teenager in 1870. Over the next four decades, he mapped and assessed the market value of vast holdings of forest lands for lumber companies, making and losing more than one fortune. He was equally at home... :: Posted on March 20, 2008
"I will always be true to the working class," promised mayor of Milwaukee Daniel Hoan, who was born on this day in 1881. If that remark sounds odd today, how about this matter-of-fact one from press coverage of a party in his honor: "In February, the Socialist aldermen..." Plural? Not just a single socialist, considered a crack-pot utopian by the... :: Posted on March 12, 2008
This happened especially fast for Wisconsin pioneer Joseph Crelie, who was exhibited to spectators in 1864 as being 139 years old. Crelie came to Wisconsin in 1792, one of the early settlers in Prairie du Chien. He worked as a voyageur in the fur trade for two decades, doing the heavy lifting on canoe trips throughout the wilderness of... :: Posted on November 27, 2007
The Wisconsin women serving today in Iraq and Afghanistan follow in the 150-year-old footsteps of a handful of dedicated -- and clever -- predecessors. During the Civil War, women were forbidden from the military but that didn't stop some of them from disguising themselves as men and joining up. The Platteville Witness in March, 1864, noted, as if it were... :: Posted on September 23, 2007
"None but the oldest inhabitant of Madison will remember Pinneo," wrote George Hyer about 1870, "and little was known of him even by them. He was a vagabond naturally and a long life of dissipation had confirmed him in all his vagabond notions and habits. Pinneo came to Madison among the first and commenced work as a shingle maker or... :: Posted on September 2, 2007
Yesterday's New York Times ran a story about the difference online resources have made to genealogists. Called "Latest Genealogy Tools Create a Need to Know," it contains several first-hand reports of how people investigate their pasts using Ancestry.com and other Web sources. It's interesting, therefore, to look at how family history research used to be done. "In a modest... :: Posted on August 19, 2007
For a few minutes Sunday night, viewers of the debate among Democratic presidential candidates were treated to a discussion of the roles that former President Bill Clinton might play if Hilary Clinton is elected to the Oval Office. Husband and wife political teams are nothing new in Wisconsin politics -- albeit in a less prominent office. Wisconsin's first female sheriff... :: Posted on June 4, 2007
This week HBO premiered "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee," a film version of Dee Brown's well-known 1970 book about the massacre of the Lakota Sioux in western So. Dakota in 1890. The movie, which stars Aidan Quinn, Adam Beach, Anna Paquin, and August Schellenberg and will air almost daily over the next month, should help educate a new generation... :: Posted on May 31, 2007
Henry Hayden was a shooting star. After serving in the Civil War, he studied law in Oshkosh and in 1872 moved to Eau Claire, where he soon became the most powerful attorney in northwestern Wisconsin. He defended railroads and logging barons, bought up shares in local banks and businesses, and in 1885 brought his new young bride to a luxurious... :: Posted on May 14, 2007
John Till was not your typical doctor. He wore farmer’s overalls rather than a white lab coat, and he couldn’t show you a college degree or even a medical license. But at the start of the last century, people came from far and wide to be healed by his miraculous treatment. Till, an Austrian immigrant, arrived at a lumber camp... :: Posted on April 29, 2007
As a boy, Peter Custis of Sturgeon Bay was a slave herding livestock on a plantation in Virginia. If he tried to learn to read or write, he was whipped. On every New Years Day, he and his family risked being split up, sold off separately to new owners. The Civil War broke out when he was a teenager, and... :: Posted on April 18, 2007
Women were always a rare sight in logging camps, and women bosses were almost unheard of. "Old Mary Ann," long-remembered in northeastern Wisconsin, was the exception who proved the rule. Mary Ann McVane came to Peshtigo from Maine before 1870 and, after operating a boarding house in the town, she joined her husband in the woods. Although he ostensibly ran... :: Posted on April 8, 2007
This was the nickname given to attorney Moses M. Strong (1810-1894) in 1843 after his "spirited" defense of James Vineyard (1804-1863), the gun-wielding legislator who had killed his colleague Charles Arndt on February 11, 1842. The shooting of one lawmaker by another under the Capitol dome ranks high among odd Wisconsin events. The story is well-known, and has been featured... :: Posted on March 15, 2007
"I am trying as you will perceive, to make the most of this fearfully wearisome summer. . . I live in a retired manner in a private house on the outskirts of the town where there are no other borders and have all the advantages of the country. . . . I am so miserable over my great sorrows,... :: Posted on February 25, 2007
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