Showing 181-200 of 440 Entries
Author: H. Roger Grant
During the early years of the twentieth century, residents of greater Milwaukee were not immune from “interurban madness” that swept much of the United States, being especially intense in the Midwest. Once individuals, investors, and others grasped the potential of electric intercity railways, they recognized the advantages of this alternative to steam railroads for passenger…
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Author: Genevieve G. McBride
An advice columnist for more than half a century, Ione Quinby Griggs (1891-1991) became a beloved Milwaukee icon. Famed in 1920s Chicago’s “Jazz Age” as a front-page “girl reporter,” her reportorial reputation came from coverage of women of lesser repute, “murderesses,” and mobsters’ molls of Chicago’s most notorious decade. However, her reportorial range encompassed women…
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Author: Timothy McMahon
Irish and Irish-American residents have been an important part of southeastern Wisconsin since the 1830s, creating a distinctive subculture that combined engagement in civic and business affairs with attention to cultural and political concerns in Ireland. As early as 1839, Dublin-born lawyer, journalist and businessman Hans Crocker helped launch the Milwaukee Lyceum—the precursor to the…
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Author: Karalee Surface
Initially inspired by the success of Festa Italiana, Irish Fest blossomed into a world-renowned celebration of Irish culture and heritage. Local Irish musician and president of the Shamrock Club, Ed Ward, led the way in organizing the first Irish Fest in 1981, which met with strong community support. The festival grew to include not only…
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Author: Joseph B. Walzer
Jacob “Jake” Frank Friedrick (1892-1978) was a prominent labor leader and first president of the Milwaukee County Labor Council, significant public servant, and president of the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents. Born in Perjamos, Hungary (now Periam, Romania), Friedrick migrated to Milwaukee with his family in 1904. Friedrick began working as a teenager,…
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Author: Bethany Harding
Jacques Marquette (1637-1675) was a Jesuit missionary best known for exploring the upper Mississippi River with Louis Jolliet. Born in Laon, France, Marquette became a member of the Society of Jesus at the age of seventeen. He was assigned to the missionary outpost of Quebec in 1666. Having envisioned being a missionary since boyhood, Marquette…
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Author: Steven M. Avella
James Groppi (1930-1985) was the most famous cleric in the history of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee. He was born November 16, 1930, raised in a home attached to his family’s grocery store in Bay View, and attended nearby Immaculate Conception Church as well as Boys Tech and Bay View high schools. Feeling a…
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Author: Brian Mueller
Called “Milwaukee’s No. 1 philanthropist,” Jane Bradley Pettit (1918-2001) earned the respect of an entire city as a result of her selfless giving to educational, cultural, and entertainment causes. Jane Bradley Pettit was born Margaret Jane Sullivan to Dwight Sullivan and Margaret “Peg” Blakney Sullivan. After they divorced, Harry Lynde Bradley, a co-founder with his…
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Author: Bill Reck
The presence of Japanese immigrants and their descendants in the Milwaukee area has been a function of America’s complex political history with Japan. From the late nineteenth to the early 20th century, a small migration of Japanese settled on the West Coast and Hawaii. Racial restrictions to the naturalization of non-white immigrants made the immigrant…
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Author: Jenna Himsl
In 2015, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society—the publishing arm of the Jehovah’s Witnesses—counted a monthly average of 1,195,081 actively preaching Jehovah’s Witnesses in the United States. While the Society does not keep numbers for individual communities, a 2014 Pew Research Center survey estimated that roughly one percent of adult Wisconsinites self-identified as Witnesses. In…
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Author: Jane Avner
The Jewish Museum Milwaukee (JMM), a program of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation (MJF), has its roots in 1986, when Clarice Resnick and Kathleen Bernstein established the Milwaukee Jewish Archives (later Historical Society), which collected personal documents, institutional records, photographs, and artifacts. When the MJF undertook a capital campaign to modernize its buildings, plans included a…
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Author: Jane Avner
Who is a Jew? The difficulties of definition were apparent in two recent publications. In 2011, the Milwaukee Jewish Federation commissioned a study which concluded that there were approximately 25,600 Jews in the Milwaukee metropolitan area. A 2013 Milwaukee Magazine article, using a measure of synagogue membership, said there were fewer than 9,000. Defining Jews…
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Author: Bethany Harding
Only son of financier Alexander Mitchell and father of aviator William” Billy” Mitchell, John Lendrum Mitchell (1842-1904) was a prominent banker, Civil War veteran, philanthropist, and legislator. A self-described farmer, Mitchell’s interests included scientific agriculture, horse breeding, social reform, literature, and art, all of which he pursued at his Milwaukee-area estate Meadowmere. Mitchell was a…
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Author: Jenna Himsl
With operational headquarters in Glendale, Johnson Controls employs 150,000 people worldwide. As of 2015, Johnson Controls remains the largest public company in Wisconsin, with $42.83 billion in revenue for fiscal year 2013-2014. In three divisions, the company manufactures automotive batteries, automobile seats, and building climate and security control systems. A 2016 merger with Tyco moved…
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Author: Michael Pulido
Johnston Emergency Hospital, established by the city of Milwaukee, opened in its permanent location on the corner of Third and Sycamore (now Michigan) Street in 1894. It provided emergency medical care in a twenty-four-bed facility. The hospital earned a place in history on October 14, 1912, when a would-be assassin shot presidential candidate Teddy Roosevelt…
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Author: Joseph B. Walzer
Jones Island is a peninsula formed at the mouth of the Milwaukee River, shaped as much by the city’s development as the lake and river that surround it. With easy access to fish, wild rice, and mainland resources, the marshy strip became an important Potawatomi summer village prior to white settlement. As the frontier community…
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Author: Bethany Harding
Republican Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy (1908-1957) grew up on a farm near Appleton, Wisconsin. He moved to Milwaukee in 1930 to attend Marquette University, where he studied engineering and law. A mediocre scholar, McCarthy was active in student government, debate, and men’s boxing. He graduated with a law degree in 1935. He worked a long…
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Author: Genevieve G. McBride
Josette Vieau Juneau (1804?-1855), was the Métis “founding mother” of Milwaukee, who midwifed the settlement, literally and figuratively, in its formative years—and was the grandmother of a Métis U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, Paul O. Husting. Menominee and French Canadian, she was born in Green Bay—when still called La Baye, a vestige of its Nouvelle France…
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Author: Lex Renda
Joshua Glover was an escaped Missouri slave. In 1852 he settled in Racine working at a nearby sawmill. On the night of March 10, 1854, a posse consisting of two federal marshals, Glover’s former master (Benammi Garland), and four other men broke into his home and arrested him under the authority of the Fugitive Slave…
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Author: William I. Tchakirides
Social worker Nell Alexander and future Girl Scout organizer Alice Chester founded Milwaukee’s local chapter of the Junior League in 1915. Organized as a nonprofit, voluntary association, the Junior League’s mission is educating young women on contemporary social issues and training them to develop leadership skills and serve in the community. Milwaukee Junior Leaguers, or…
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