Odd Wisconsin Archives: Odd Lives
This week public television aired the first episode of a new British series dramatizing the life of Wisconsin native Harry Gordon Selfridge. The producers call him, "the flamboyant entrepreneur and showman seeking to provide London's shoppers with the ultimate merchandise and the ultimate thrill." That may be hyperbole, but in fact much of the consumer culture that surrounds us began,... :: Posted on March 31, 2013
"In my boyhood days" recalled Augustin Grignon* in the summer of 1857, "there was an aged Chippewa woman named 0-cha-own. She was a great huntress, and spent each winter with her dogs in the woods the same as any Indian hunter, and was quite as successful in killing bear, raccoon and other game. Beside a gun,which I presume she used,... :: Posted on March 14, 2013
Here's a story for Women's History Month about a Wisconsin woman who was once well-known but is now all-but-forgotten. She embodied New Age spirituality a century before that term was invented. Here are her own words describing how it all began. "I was crossing the kitchen with a basin of water when, suddenly, some unknown Force pressed me down upon... :: Posted on March 7, 2013
Born into bondage in North Carolina on Jan. 1, 1829, Mrs. Hattie Pierce, of 1442 Williamson St. in Madison, personally experienced the dramatic social upheavals that most of her neighbors only learned about in schoolbooks. By the time she passed away, slavery had become just a distant memory and horse-drawn wagons had given way to jet airplanes. 'Gone with the... :: Posted on February 14, 2013
It's inauguration time again, which called to mind the peculiar fate of Nathaniel Tallmadge (1795-1864). He was Wisconsin's third chief executive, but he could have been the tenth president of the United States instead. Tallmadge was admitted to the bar in 1818 and served in the New York legislature before going on to two terms in the U.S. Senate (1833-1844).... :: Posted on January 17, 2013
In 1837 two entrepreneurs erected a grist mill on the banks of the Wisconsin just below Portage. All across southern Wisconsin, new communities were springing up from the prairie like mushrooms after a rainstorm. This was the only mill for 40 miles, and pioneer farmers from as far away as Baraboo, Columbus or Madison carted their wheat to the hamlet... :: Posted on January 8, 2013
Isaac Van Schaick (1817-1901) came to Milwaukee in 1861 to help run his brother-in-law's flour mill. He got rich, and was well-liked; the secret to his success, he later said, was "being one of the boys." A Politician Liberal with His Money In 1871 the boys in Milwaukee persuaded him to run for the Common Council, and two years later... :: Posted on November 7, 2012
This was long thought to have been Wisconsin pioneer Joseph Crelie, who was exhibited to spectators in 1864 as being 139 years old. His Frontier Adventures. Crelie came to Wisconsin in 1792, as 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... :: Posted on November 1, 2012
Strangely enough, the vice-presidency used to be considered so insignificant that many politicians turned it down. Paul Ryan and Joe Biden are competing for an office that FDR's vice president said was "not worth a bucket of warm..." Wait. We probably shouldn't say that on a family-oriented Web site. If elected, Rep. Ryan will be the first vice president from... :: Posted on October 9, 2012
When the Republican Party convention gets underway this week in Tampa (weather permitting), Wisconsin will play a prominent part. We were also close to the center of the party 150 years ago. The best-known Wisconsin Republican of that day was Watertown resident, Carl Schurz (1829-1906), a friend of President Abraham Lincoln. Early Life As a student in Germany in the... :: Posted on August 23, 2012
Rep. Paul Ryan's selection as the presumed Republican vice-presidential nominee prompted us to investigate the first Wisconsin resident whose name was floated for vice-president or president. That appears to have been Milwaukee attorney Isaac P. Walker (1815-1872) and, as is often the case, his story has some strange twists. Anti-Slavery Southerner Walker was born in Virginia but came west and... :: Posted on August 13, 2012
Most Americans probably know Alexander Hamilton only as the face on the $10 bill. But as a young assistant to George Washington and later, as a defender of a strong Constitution and as Secretary of the Treasury, he helped create our nation. Despite his revolutionary politics, he was a New York aristocrat who hob-nobbed with heads of state and wore... :: Posted on July 6, 2012
Tim Berners-Lee is generally credited with inventing the World Wide Web in 1990 when he created HTML. That's the programming language that enables hyperlinks connecting one computer file with another (like the one on his name, above). Unlike most inventors, though, Berners-Lee didn't patent and license his software for profit. He gave it away for free. Programmers around the globe... :: Posted on June 28, 2012
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. Unfortunately, the medical profession and state regulators were not... :: Posted on May 2, 2012
We grow up with the idea that all our pioneer ancestors were church-going pillars of the community. That's because those were the people who wrote the histories. But they actually shared the world with disreputable bullies, gamblers, thieves, and drunks, just like we do. Like every frontier town, Madison attracted disreputable characters fleeing from civilized society back East. One of... :: Posted on March 21, 2012
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