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Filter: Categories of Odd Wisconsin Stories
Filter: Year of 1800-1899
Filter: Year of 1850-1859
| A Disappointment that Created a Community |
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| Learn about the most successful Utopian community in Wisconsin, born of a failed doomsday prediction. |
| A Dishonest Democrat and a Radical Republican |
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| Learn about the election that was so close that Wisconsin briefly had two governors until one was exposed for tampering with ballots. |
| A Popular Speaker Sways Opinion |
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| Discover the connection between P.T. Barnum and the 1853 statewide referendum on liquor sales. |
| A Good Mother, a Good Friend and a Good Woman |
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| Discover Juliet Severance, the free-thinking Whitewater physician who was involved with the anti-slavery movement, temperance and women's rights. |
| The Amusing History of the Scots Influence on Wisconsin |
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| Discover the rich history of the sport of curling in Wisconsin. |
| How Wisconsin Eliminated the Death Penalty |
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| Read about the final person to be executed in Wisconsin before the state prohibited the death penalty. |
| Madison's Oldest Resident |
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| Born into slavery, Hettie Pierce lived 115 years and was able to fully experience both life before and after emancipation. |
| Discover the effects that the Panic of 1857 had on La Crosse. |
| The Midwestern Heritage of One of the 20th Century's Greatest Poetic Innovators |
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| Discover literary giant Ezra Pound's connection to the frontier wilds of Wisconsin. |
| From Sacred Calumets to Ashtrays |
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| Discover the important role that tobacco and the Peace Pipe have played throughout Wisconsin's history. |
| An Old Man's Tall Tale |
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| Wisconsin pioneer Joseph Crelie was said to be 139 years old when he was exhibited to spectators in 1864. But how old was he really? |
| The Rise and Fall of Isaac Walker |
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| Discover the story of Isaac P. Walker, the first Wisconsin presidential contender in 1850. |
| Buffalo and O-Sho-Ga Protest Forced Removal |
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| Discover how two Ojibwe chiefs traveled to Washington DC and negotiated with President Millard Fillmore to keep rights to their land. |
| The Virgin Mary Appears to an Illiterate Peasant Girl |
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| Learn about the first and only manifestation of the Virgin Mary in the United States near Green Bay, confirmed by the Vatican. |
| A History of Disease in Wisconsin |
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| Read this informative collection of all the outbreaks and epidemics in Wisconsin's history. |
| Spirits Lead a Woman to Fortune |
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| Morris Pratt was a well known psychic medium whose legacy is his eponymous spiritualist institution in Whitewater, known locally as "Pratt's Folly." |
| From Bear Hunting on the Capitol Square to a Fully-incorporated City |
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| Discover how Madison went from a small village in 1836 to being organized and governed as a city in 20 years time |
| An Ordinary Woman has an Extraordinary Encounter |
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| The story of Mary Hayes-Chynoweth, one of Wisconsin's most famous mystics who also predicted the future on a number of occasions. |
| The Remarkable History of the Telephone |
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| Learn how Wisconsin resident Richard Valentine's invention would change the world |
| Two Lawyers Spur Abolitionist Reform and Universal Voting Rights |
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| Learn how Byron Paine and Halbert E. Paine used the power of law for radical abolitionist reform in mid-19th century Wisconsin. |
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