The beaver felt hat was one of the main reasons for the success of the fur trade in northern states, such as Wisconsin, and Canada. But why was this hat more popular than others? Clothing …
Economics
Wisconsin Bicycle Tourism
M.C. Rotier, the publisher and editor of The Pneumatic, a Wisconsin periodical and trade journal dedicated to bicycles in the 1890s, called bicycling “the most independent, healthful, rapid, and convenient mode of travel” in the …
OBJECT HISTORY: Pasty
The lead mining industry of the 1830s and 1840s brought miners from Cornwall, England to southwestern Wisconsin. The miners brought Cornish traditions like the pasty, a filling food for hungry miners. The availability of pasties today demonstrates the lasting traditions of early European immigrants in Wisconsin. Pasties are folded pastries filled with meat and vegetables.…
OBJECT HISTORY: Log-Marking Hammer
Between the 1840s and the 1890s, logs meant money. Wisconsin had a large supply of trees. Lumber mills made money by cutting down trees. Logging was one of the largest industries in Wisconsin. There were more than 450 lumber camps across Wisconsin. If we study this log-marking hammer and think about the people that used…
OBJECT HISTORY: Fiddle
As the lumber industry flourished in Wisconsin beginning in the 1840s, immigrants from all over Europe and Canada came to live and work in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. All winter, men called lumberjacks would cut down pine trees, preparing the timber to be used as building material, or sometimes to be turned into pulp or…
OBJECT HISTORY: Bark Spud
The bark spud is an iron tool used to remove bark from cut timber. Most bark spuds have a steel head with a hard wooden handle. The head is rounded or dish-shaped and has one cutting edge. The sharp wedge on the end of the bark spud slides between bark and wood on a log…
OBJECT HISTORY: Nash Car
By the beginning of the twentieth century, horses and wagons were quickly giving way to new horseless carriages, or automobiles—and the landscape of Wisconsin’s towns and roadways began to change as well. Wagon shops, once part of one of the largest industries in Wisconsin, began making automobile parts instead. By 1925, motor vehicle manufacture had…
OBJECT HISTORY: Migrant Worker’s Cabin
This cabin, once occupied by a family of migrant workers employed by the Bond Pickle Company, is located at the property of Thomas and Jamie Sobush of Pensaukee, Wisconsin. The cabin was originally one of many other small cabins, clustered together at the Bond Village Migrant Camp on Van Hecke Avenue in Oconto, Wisconsin. The…
The Works Projects Administration – An Answer to the Great Depression
In 1929, the United States fell into the deepest economic hole the country has known: the Great Depression. Over the three years following the economy’s collapse in 1929, 3,392 banks across the country closed their …
The Evolution of a Swiss Barn
The expansion of Wisconsin’s dairy industry in the 20th century not only altered the economy of the state, but it also influenced the structure of the very barns that housed the bovine champions of the …