Pioneer Wisconsin

These children are doing a folk dance.

Can you guess what nationality it is?

Or what kind of costumes they're wearing?

I'll tell you about them today on Pioneer Wisconsin.

[Piano music] Pioneer Wisconsin, presented by the Wisconsin School of the Air.

A series of programs for intermediate grades, bringing authentic pictures of life in the early days of our state.

Their historian is Miss Doris Plant, the provisor of elementary school services of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.

Here to tell you about the Germans, Swiss, and Polish of the 1860s is Miss Plant.

Hello boys and girls.

Today we're going to talk about three of the largest nationality groups that came to the Wisconsin of the 1850s and '60s.

One of these groups was the Germans, another the Swiss, and another the Polish.

The Germans came to Wisconsin in two waves of immigration, one about 1840 to '60, and another 1880 to '90.

In 1852, the Wisconsin legislature established an officer of immigration, and they sent him to New York.

And this officer wrote many pamphlets describing the wonderful farms and homes in Wisconsin.

And they happened to be distributed mainly to German people who were still living in their own homeland.

All in New York, hotel keepers and railway agents urged people to come to Wisconsin when they arrived in New York and said, where should we go now?

Where should we make our new homes?

And in the Wisconsin of the 1850s and '60s, there were more Germans than any other group.

About 15% of all the state's population in 1860 was made up of people who had come from Germany.

The Germans were excellent farmers.

They bought over some of the lands that the Yankees had left, and they cleared the land very carefully.

They took out every stump, and they worked over the land and rotated their crops.

They didn't plant wheat only, but also vegetables and fruit orchards.

They took good care of their cattle and sheltered them in the winter time.

And they were going to keep their land.

They didn't intend to sell it.

Those farms were their own homes.

Another group of Germans were very skilled laborers.

They were tanners and builders and contractors and blacksmiths, and some of them knew how to blow glass and to spin metal.

Two crafts, which the Yankees, the Native Americans, didn't know very much about.

Those Germans settled mainly in Milwaukee, while the farmers were in Milwaukee County and Washington County and Ozaki County.

And a great many of them came to Watertown.

And one of the most famous Germans of them all came there in the 1850s.

His name was Carl Schurz.

Carl Schurz was an intelligent and educated man, and he was interested in politics.

He helped Lincoln in his campaign for presidency.

And as a reward, became later a minister to Spain.

But he was eager to fight in the Civil War, and so he returned and was a Brigadier general during the Civil War and fought bravely.

Later on, he was even the Secretary of the Interior under President Hayes.

And then he went to St. Louis, Missouri, and became a newspaper editor, and later a United States senator.

But perhaps his wife, Marguerita Schurz, is one that you have heard about more.

She is a lady who established the first kindergarten, not only in Wisconsin, but in the whole United States.

Can you imagine going to school without playing games?

Well, before the kindergarten day is that's what would have happened.

But when Marguerita Schurz established the kindergarten, children could play with colored balls of cotton.

They could dance and sing in school.

They learned how to weave.

They did little dances where they pretended they were birds or animals and had lots of fun.

And you did that in kindergarten, too, didn't you?

In Watertown, today, the restored building where the first kindergarten was held is on the grounds of the octagon house.

And maybe you'd like to go there and see it sometime.

The Germans were also interested in music and dancing.

And many of them were artists.

And they started operas and orchestras and all sorts of choruses.

And when they got together for some of their festivals and dances, these are some of the clothes that they might have worn.

Would you like to see them?

This is a very fancy hat that a lady might wear on the back of her head.

It's called a bun hat.

It would just fit over the bun or her hair in back.

And here is another hat.

This is a black velvet one.

And it has gold braid on it and a bow in back.

This wouldn't cover your whole head either.

It would just be pinned on top.

And here is a little waist, a laced waist that went with it.

It has some whale bones inside to make it stiff.

And I guess you'd have to have a very small waist to have this laced up.

See the little brass buttons on it.

Here are some dolls.

These are from the Darmstadt District of Germany.

The little boy has a blue coat with brass buttons and a red hat with fur.

The little girl has a green skirt and a black lace hat.

And look at these long flaxen braids that she has in back.

The Germans like to sing and dance and take part in plays.

One of them, Heinrich Kurtz, came to Milwaukee in 1869 and built a theater.

It was the first German theater in the Midwest.

It had 900 seats and it was called the Stadt or the Town.

And all sorts of fine actors from Central Europe came there and gave plays of Shakespeare and Ibsen and Shaw, but they spoke only German.

And then in many of the meeting places, the German people would get together to dance.

Would you like to see a German folk dance?

We have some children here in the studio today who are going to give a German folk dance for you.

Let's watch them as they do their dance in costume.

[MUSIC PLAYING] These children are all third graders from the Holy Rosary School at Darlington.

They are members of the Pechotonic Appianiere Junior Historian.

And their names were Karen Geisbueller, Diane Saide, Robert McDonnell and Philip Sauer.

And they drove up with their parents and their sisters and didn't go to school today so they could come and dance for you.

Another group of immigrants who came to Wisconsin were the Swiss.

Perhaps you remember the story that in the Canton of Glerus in Switzerland, there were hard times.

People were starving.

Their farms were poor.

And they were looking for a new land.

And so the government financed two young men to come to America and look for a homeland that would be like their native hills and valleys and streams of Switzerland.

And in 1845, these two young men located a lovely place in southern Wisconsin, which was later called New Glerus.

And then the Swiss came about 108 of them and settled there.

And they brought their browns Swiss cattle with them.

And their goats and they bought horses.

And they started their farms.

They even made lots of cheese, although they made it at home.

They didn't have any cheese factories for a long time.

And then they wanted to make people here and know what things were like at home.

And so they brought many of their pretty costumes with them.

Here are just a few of the things that they brought along.

We have some of the wooden shoes.

These, of course, are tiny.

They're what the children wore.

And they have lovely carved flowers on the front.

And they have a little piece at the ankle, a little leather piece to hold them on.

And a little tiny heel.

Let's also carved them back.

And here is another pair of shoes.

These are blue.

And they have a silver buckle and a blue ribbon.

And again, they fasten around the ankle, carved toes, and the heels on the shoes.

Here are our Swiss dolls.

A little girl has a lace bonnet, black velvet, and pretty full sleeves on her blouse, and little blue buttons on her waist and a full skirt.

The little boy has a Swiss hat with a feather, and a little red felt vest, and white felt trousers.

And the Swiss people were dancing.

Of course, they like to have lots of music.

And they did blow their long Alpine horns, and they yodled and sang.

And here's one of the musical instruments that they played.

I wonder if you can guess what this is.

You know what this musical instrument is?

This was used by the Germans, as well as the Swiss.

It's called a zither.

I'll play a little bit for you.

[MUSIC PLAYING] After all, it hasn't been tuned lately, but you can have a little idea from that.

Every year, the Swiss people like to have a holiday when they can let other people into the vicinity know what their homelands were like.

They, of course, have a Swiss church there, and a pioneer school, and even a lovely chalet, which resembles the ones back in Switzerland.

This is called the chalet of the Golden Fleece.

And here, you can take a tour and go through just as you would tour any other historic site.

And then on Labor Day, these people give the Wilhelm Tell, or William Tell, pageant, the favorite story of how they escaped tyranny back in their homeland.

And on Sunday, they give this play in German, and on Monday, they give it in English.

And all of the people in the village take part.

It's given outdoors in a beautiful big amphitheater.

And if you're watching, you two sit outdoors.

And if it rains, well, you get wet.

And if it's hot, you're kind of hot, too.

But it's still fun to watch.

Then all of the people in the village dress in their native costumes, representing all the different cantons or districts in Switzerland.

They come in in a big parade, and some of them are riding on horseback and carrying banners.

Some of them are playing the parts of Wilhelm Tell, and the tyrant geysler, and the little sun of Wilhelm Tell, and all the parts that you know about in connection with the story.

The girls dance and sing.

As they do so, sometimes they bring in their cows and goats right onto this big living outdoor stage.

And finally, we have for the most important character of all, Wilhelm Tell, who shot the apple from his son's head.

And there he is with his wife and his little son.

And you remember, he was a very successful shot.

Although in the 1850s, there were only about 364 people from Switzerland in Wisconsin.

We now have the largest population of any state, except California.

So we do indeed have many Swiss people who may be considered our ancestors and ancestors of many of us.

A third group, which came to Wisconsin in large numbers, was the Polish.

And the Polish people came to Milwaukee, as well as to a few other portions of the state.

And they found it as sort of a community called Polonia.

We learned that in 1900, there were 50,000 Polish people living in Milwaukee.

Many of them bought farms, which had belonged to Yankee farmers, and started their own industrious and careful farming.

Most of the things I have to show you are gay holiday things, especially some of the wood carving.

Would you like to see some of that?

We have some here.

These are two Polish fighting cocks.

And they're on little wire feet, so they rock.

And the wings move up and down.

I wish you could see the gay colors of red and aqua, and yellow wings, and the violet on the head of the cock.

There are many other lovely things that they've made of wood.

This is a miniature dowel chest.

Now, actually, there would be a bigger chest here for a girl to bring her wedding things to America.

But this is a lovely one in red with a yellow design.

Let's see.

I think we have something inside here, too.

Oh, yes, some carved wooden napkin rings.

This is a group that was made for a whole family, a half a dozen.

And you see the carving with the initial for the family.

And each one then would have his own lovely carved napkin ring.

And here is the plate.

This is also a carved wood.

And it has a sheaf of wheat in the center.

And this is a bookmark, or a letter opener.

I don't know whether you can see the design.

But again, it's a flower design here.

Now, we have a modern Polish newspaper.

Did you know that Polish newspapers were published in Milwaukee, as well as German newspapers?

You can read the words here of the Courier Polski, the Polish Currier.

And this is an edition from last Easter.

And it says happy Easter at the top of the paper.

And so you could still be buying and reading German and Polish newspapers in Milwaukee.

Along with the wood carving and other handy craft, we have some lovely handwork done on linens.

And this is a handkerchief case, sort of crash linens, a tan colored with a design in red and black.

And when you open it, you can put the handkerchiefs in each end of the case.

And this is a bookmark, again in linen, a white one with a colored design.

And we have our Polish dolls, a little boy with his fur hat.

And he has on a felt coat decorated in orange and green.

A little girl has a very colorful costume.

She has a bandana tied around her head and a jacket and a very gay apron.

And see her little shoes, they're lay-step.

And you can just imagine her, perhaps, doing a dance.

There are two other very interesting bits of folk art carried on by the Polish that I'd like to tell you about.

And one is the making of Easter eggs.

And probably, even though you've decorated eggs, you've never done one just like this.

We have some pictures here of the eggs that I'd like to show you.

We have some of the real eggs in the State Historical Society, but they were too fragile.

They decided we'd better not bring them over.

So we have the pictures here and also of the Polish girls who are making the eggs.

The girls dip these eggs in wax.

That's the process.

And they have a little pin put in a block of wood.

And they use candle wax or beeswax to trace the design.

They trace one design.

And then they dip the egg in a very light colored die.

Then they take it out, trace another design in wax, and dip it in a die of a deeper color.

And they keep repeating this until a whole egg is covered with wax.

Then they put it in the oven and melt the wax off.

And when they're finished, you have left the egg with a lovely stencil design on it.

Now these eggs are really too pretty to eat and lots of them are saved.

And sometimes the contents of the egg dries up and just becomes a sort of hard marble inside of it.

Sometimes the eggs are blown first, so the contents are gone.

And once in a while, they're made of wood, because those eggs wouldn't break then wood.

They would just be pretend eggs, and they could be kept for a long, long time.

Another very fancy piece of Polish folk art is the wichanki, which means a cutout made of paper.

These cutouts are made by folding a piece of paper over and over.

You've probably done something kind of like it in school.

Sometimes they're folded as much as 16 times.

And then you need some heavy shears to cut them out.

And so sheep shears are often used.

These beautiful designs decorate Polish homes.

They're pasted on the freshly whitewashed walls of cabins or huts, they were in Poland.

Sometimes they were even placed on the outside.

Often the design was a stylized tree.

And sometimes it had animals or flowers or stars in it.

This design is made out of one piece of paper.

And so is the circular one, a single sheet, which has been cut after it was folded.

There are also designs which are made of various colors.

Two or three colors are used.

And then the sheets of paper are pasted one over another to form the design and the colors that were finally used.

If you were going through Poland and saw a nice whitewashed hut with lots of wichankies on the outside, you might guess that there were some marriageable daughters who were very artistic and a good many of them lived there.

And probably some of them might be interested in looking for a husband.

All of those things together were the gay and colorful things that the Polish people could do, as well as the serious things, the farm things that they also did.

We again are lucky today in having some children with us who are going to do a Polish dance.

These children too are from Darlington and they're going to dance for you.

Shall we watch them now?

[music] These children were Dan McCartan and Teresa Thomas, also of the peccatonic pioneers of Holy Rose Reschool in Darlington, and we certainly thank them and also the children who did the German dance.

>> Miss Doris Platis, your historian on this series of programs, Pioneer Wisconsin, authentic pictures of life in the early days of our state.

Miss Platis Supervisor of Elementary School Services for the Wisconsin State Historical Society.

Pioneer Wisconsin is a presentation of the Wisconsin School of the Air.