Spring 2006 Issue
Volume 89, Number 3
Featured Story
A Life of Her Own Choosing: Anna Gibbons’ Fifty Years as a Tattooed Lady
Anna Gibbons, a farm girl from Portage County, found fame, fortune, and an interesting life as “Artoria,” one of the best-known tattooed ladies of her generation. Having made her choice to let her tattoo-artist husband decorate her body for financial considerations (though her various biographies tell other, more exciting stories), Anna spent the next fifty years of her life traveling the country with the Ringling Brothers, Hall and Christ Sideshow, and other famous circuses. Her story intertwines with the history of the tattoo and the sideshow, the evolution of personal expression in America, and the new options and choices which women like Anna helped make available for the next generation.
Table of Contents
An Interest in Health and Happiness as Yet Untold: The Woman’s Club of Madison, 1893 – 1917 (PDF, 1101 KB)
by Mark Speltz
Although they are little remembered today, the city of Madison continues to benefit from the efforts of the Woman’s Club of Madison to improve city health and install public playgrounds at the turn of the last century.
A Wisconsin Legend: Ole Evinrude and His Outboard Motor (PDF, 1463 KB)
by Ralph Lambrecht
Along with beer and cheese, the Evinrude outboard motor is one of Wisconsin’s quintessential products. Ole Evinrude found great entrepreneurial success with his invention and made multiple innovations in motor technology.
A Life of Her Own Choosing: Anna Gibbons’ Fifty Years as a Tattooed Lady (PDF, 729 KB)
by Amelia Klem
Anna Gibbons, a farm girl from Portage County, found fame, fortune, and an interesting life as “Artoria,” one of the best-known tattooed ladies of her generation.
The Rise and Fall of the Long white Baby Dress
by Leslie Bellais (PDF, 745 KB)
The Wisconsin Historical Society textile and costume curator, Leslie Bellais, guides readers through the peculiar history of the nineteenth century long white baby dress.
Book Excerpt (PDF, 153 KB)
Aztalan: Mysteries of an Ancient Indian Town
by Robert A. Birmingham and Lynne G. Goldstein
Aztalan has remained an unsolved mystery since the early nineteenth century when white settlers made a discovery along the Crawfish River, 50 miles west of the village called Milwaukee. The book is a comprehensive account of one of the Midwest’s most unique and famous archaeological sites.
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