Odd Wisconsin Archives: Strange Deaths
August 21st marks an important Wisconsin anniversary. Our last execution took place on this date more than 150 years ago, when John McCaffary was hung in Kenosha for drowning his wife. The restraints that bound his arms and legs that day ultimately came to the Society's Museum collection as documentation of the last public execution in Wisconsin. It was a... :: Posted on August 20, 2009
In the summer of 1834, Rev. Cutting Marsh of Kaukauna journeyed across Wisconsin into Iowa, keeping a daily diary as he went. On the Mississippi he heard about the recent death of "a very wicked man" named Nadeau, whose fate was worthy of a story by Edgar Allan Poe: "It was said," Rev. Marsh wrote on August 23rd, "that he... :: Posted on April 30, 2008
"How's fishing?" That's the question that greeted Rev. A.A.A. Schmirler as he paddled the rivers of northern Wisconsin during the summer of 1959. The historian-priest was not fishing, however, but retracing the route of the first missionary to visit Wisconsin almost exactly 300 years before. Father Schmirler was trying to discover the exact location where Fr. Rene Menard died while... :: Posted on June 17, 2007
In honor of Halloween, we offer a little-known Wisconsin ghost story. John Hille came to America from Germany in 1837. Skilled in cabinet making, he made his living as a carpenter and married fellow immigrant Magdalena Jaquitard. The pair soon settled in Waukesha Co., where Hille built them a beautiful farm house and they raised six children. For decades they... :: Posted on October 30, 2006
This weekend's showing of Orson Welles' 1963 film The Trial (1:30 Sunday, at the Society headquarters in Madison) faithfully recreates the surreal tale of a man who finds himself accused of a capital crime but cannot learn what he's charged with, and who gets ever more hopelessly entangled in a sinister bureaucracy as the story progresses. Such existential dilemmas were... :: Posted on January 19, 2006
The first permanent buildings on the site of modern Milwaukee were constructed by fur trader Solomon Juneau. In 1816 he began his career as a clerk for Jacques Vieau, who had only a seasonal trading post on the Menominee River. In 1819 he bought out Vieau's post, in 1822 he built the first log house in Milwaukee, and in 1824... :: Posted on June 9, 2005
When Abraham Lincoln was gunned down on the night of April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth was seen fleeing Ford's Theater by W.D. Kenzie who heard gunshots and saw the actor-assassin leap from the balcony and get away. Another Wisconsin man, W.H. De Groff, was outside the theater and saw Booth escape on horseback. Kenzie was acquainted with Booth and... :: Posted on April 14, 2005
According to local legend, fur trader Michel Brisbois (1759-1837) had himself interred high on a bluff over Prairie du Chien so he could forever look down on his rivals. Brisbois was an independent trader who arrived in Wisconsin in 1781. For the next 40 years he paid little attention to the wishes of the authorities, undercutting more prosperous traders and... :: Posted on April 1, 2005
The Weather Channel is currently airing a half-hour movie about the Wisconsin schooner Rouse Simmons. Built in Milwaukee in 1868, for many years it brought Christmas trees from northern Wisconsin to Chicago each Thanksgiving. Its captain Herman Schuenemann even became affectionately known as "Captain Santa" and the arrival of the city's Christmas trees became an annual Chicago event. His voyage... :: Posted on November 26, 2004
Dateline: Dallas, Texas, Nov. 22, 1963. It is once again the anniversary of the most famous assassination of our times. November always brings the conspiracy theorists, the forensics experts, and the Zapruder film back into our living rooms, until we risk remembering the Kennedy era only as violence and funerals. Young people could be forgiven for seeing it as simply... :: Posted on November 19, 2004
Dateline: June 19, 1913. On this day, the press reported that relics of the last execution in Wisconsin were to be given to the State Historical Museum in Madison. They are handcuffs worn by John McCaffry, the last person executed by the state before Wisconsin outlawed the death penalty in 1851, and as brutal a murderer as most on today's... :: Posted on November 12, 2004
Dateline: Easter, 1675. Father Jacques Marquette, for whom we have named Wisconsin towns, schools, parks and even shopping centers, made his final trip through our state 330 years ago. Dying from typhoid, with two companions he journeyed down the shore of Lake Michigan from Green Bay, passed through the swamps that would become Chicago, and came to rest on the... :: Posted on April 5, 2004
Dateline: Milwaukee, Wis., March 2, 1876. Dr. John Garner has a vivid premonition of his impending murder and is shot dead an hour later when he opens his front door. Find the gruesome story in Wisconsin Local History & Biography Articles... :: Posted on January 26, 2004
Dateline: Kenosha, Wis., 1930 Denied credit, profit, riches, rest or peace, a neglected inventor employs professional skills to make a dramatic exit from his Vale of Tears. Read the sorry tale in Wisconsin Local History & Biography Articles.... :: Posted on January 12, 2004
Did You Know?
The Wisconsin Historical Museum is currently featuring Odd Wisconsin objects in the latest exhibit: Odd Wisconsin. And don't miss the Odd Wisconsin book by author Erika Janik published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press.
|
