Wisconsin 101

OBJECT HISTORY: Sanitary Metal Kitchen Cabinet

Kitchens form a central part of the American experience. The Sanitary Metal Kitchen Cabinet, also known as the Mound City Kitchen Safe (circa 1906), fits into the history of American cookery, American kitchens, and American consumerism. Originally owned by members of the…

Pleasant Ridge: Southwest Wisconsin’s Integrated Pioneer Community

Pleasant Ridge was a rural agricultural community located near present-day Beetown in central Grant County that was founded in 1850 by formerly enslaved African Americans. Pleasant Ridge is unique in that it was one of the first fully racially integrated communities in…

Slavery in Wisconsin

It may come as a surprise to learn that during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries slavery existed in the region that would become the state of Wisconsin. Over this period, thousands of enslaved African Americans or enslaved American Indians lived and…