Showing 161-180 of 440 Entries
Author: Diana Belscamper
Henry Louis “Hank” Aaron became one of Milwaukee’s first major sports icons when he helped lead the Milwaukee Braves to their only World Series championship in 1957. Born in Mobile, Alabama, on February 5, 1934, Aaron began his baseball career with the Mobile Black Bears, a semi-pro team, at the age of seventeen. After briefly…
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Author: Karen W. Moore
Henry Clay Payne (November 23, 1843-October 4, 1904) played an instrumental role in Milwaukee’s late 19th century commercial and political development. Born in Massachusetts and rejected from military service, he moved to Milwaukee in his teens, working as a shop clerk and insurance salesman before entering politics. He led the Milwaukee Young Republicans and…
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Author: Karalee Surface
Born on Milwaukee’s North Side in 1912, Reuss utilized his Harvard law degree locally before serving in Europe during World War Two. Afterwards, he turned his attention to electoral politics, enduring several unsuccessful city and state campaigns. In 1954, Reuss finally won Wisconsin’s Fifth Congressional seat. Achievements in his twenty-eight year House career included advocating…
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Author: Bethany Harding
Henry W. Maier (1918-1994), Milwaukee’s longest serving mayor, led the city from 1960 to 1988. Born Henry Walter Nelke in Dayton, Ohio, Maier was raised by his maternal grandparents and moved to Milwaukee to join his mother and her second husband Charles Maier after high school. Taking his stepfather’s last name, Maier attended the University…
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Author: John Gruber
When the Milwaukee Road inaugurated its new high speed Hiawatha trains in 1935, it created a nationally recognized brand. The railroad purchased streamlined steam locomotives from American Locomotive Company, built modern passenger cars in its Milwaukee Shops, and launched an award winning advertising campaign. Calling itself the Route of the Hiawathas, the railroad named their…
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Author: Jenna Himsl
Over 6,000 Hindus worshipped in the greater Milwaukee area in 2010. Thanks to increased immigration from India in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Milwaukee’s Hindu community has rapidly expanded. While the Milwaukee Hindu community includes congregations of converts, the majority of the region’s Hindus are first or second generation immigrants from India. For…
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Author: Jonathan Schaefer
Like people all over the United States, by the late 1960s, Milwaukeeans were disillusioned with the continuous construction and expansion since World War II and were beginning to rediscover the value of older buildings. Historic Milwaukee, Inc., which is dedicated to education about and advocacy for the city’s architectural heritage, grew out of this movement…
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Author: Chia Youyee Vang
The Hmong came to the United States as political refugees from Laos beginning in the mid-1970s. As a result of their involvement with American military and humanitarian personnel during the war in Southeast Asia, more than 130,000 settled in the U.S. The 2010 census reported the U.S. Hmong population had risen to over 260,000. Almost…
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Author: Katie Steffan
Sponsored by the INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF WISCONSIN, the Holiday Folk Fair International seeks to help all citizens of Milwaukee “appreciate the Old World culture” and to “further a better understanding and appreciation of our neighbors.” The first Holiday Folk Fair took place at the Wisconsin Electric PUBLIC SERVICE BUILDING on December 10, 1944. It was…
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Author: Krista Grensavitch
The Basilica of the National Shrine of Mary, Help of Christians at Holy Hill, more commonly referred to as Holy Hill, is a minor basilica of the Roman Catholic Church and is located in southwestern Washington County. Holy Hill is perched in the Kettle Moraine at one of the highest points in southeastern Wisconsin, an…
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Author: Bill Reck
Hungarians migrated to Milwaukee in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and in a small refugee migration following World War II and the Hungarian revolt of 1956. In 1910, almost 8000 Milwaukeeans, or about 2 percent of the population, reported that their mother was born in Hungary. However, in the same census, only 1,306,…
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Author: Joseph B. Walzer
Before widespread use of artificial refrigeration, ice was an important part of processing, preserving, and consuming food and beverage products. Over time, an ice industry in and around Milwaukee developed to meet local industrial and residential refrigeration needs. Southeast Wisconsin proved an ideal location for the industry because its long, cold winters and extensive river…
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Author: Paul G. Hayes
Increase Allen Lapham (1811-1875), self-taught naturalist, and scientist of lasting influence, arrived at frontier Milwaukee in July 1836, when he was 25. One of thirteen children of a New York Quaker family, he worked on canals in New York, Kentucky, and Ohio, where he met Byron Kilbourn. Kilbourn, founder of Kilbourntown (one of three settlements…
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Author: Bryan Rindfleisch
In 1970, three Oneida women—Marjorie (Powless) Stevens, Marge Funmaker, and Darlene Neconish—took it upon themselves to offer an alternative education for disillusioned Native youth in Milwaukee. Born of their frustrations with the public school system, discrimination against Native American students, and a lack of cultural direction, the Oneida women opened their homes to indigenous children…
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Author: Aaron Kinskey
Held at Henry Maier Festival Park on Milwaukee’s lakefront each September, the Indian Summer Festival is one of the largest celebrations of Native American culture in the United States. Approximately 45,000 people attend this three day event. Butch Roberts, a Milwaukee police detective and an Oneida Nation member, started the festival in 1986 to celebrate…
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Author: Krista Grensavitch
In 1959, Mayor FRANK ZEIDLER called a public conference and assembled a group of community activists and researchers to discuss the “Social Problems of the Core of the City.” The group’s final report was issued on April 15, 1960. Titled “Mayor’s Study Committee on Social Problems in the Inner Core Area of the City” but…
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Author: Joseph B. Walzer
Forming in the years prior to the city’s charter, Milwaukee’s insurance industry became a key part of the city’s economy while several Milwaukee insurance firms grew into significant regional and national industry leaders. The area’s insurance companies not only provided important protection against calamitous loss of life, property, wages, and other investments, but also played…
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Author: Marcus White
Approximately a dozen leaders of major faith traditions in the metro Milwaukee area founded the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee in 1970. This religious diversity—Protestant, Roman Catholic, Jewish, Quaker, and Unitarian-Universalist—was unusual at a time when most ecumenical efforts were Protestant-only in their composition. Initially called the Greater Milwaukee Conference on Religion and Race, and…
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Author: Karalee Surface
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Wisconsin was a leading producer of farm implements. One of the major contributors to this growing industry was International Harvester, which was active in Milwaukee for nearly a century. Long before the Milwaukee plant became a part of an international conglomerate, it was Milwaukee Harvester—a local operation…
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Author: Katie Steffan
For almost a century, the International Institute of Wisconsin has had the mission of helping immigrants establish themselves in the Milwaukee community. The International Institute of Milwaukee County was founded in 1923 in Milwaukee by Edna H. Merrell under the auspices of the YOUNG WOMEN’S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION (YWCA). It was also later affiliated with American…
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