Wisconsin Hometown Stories

of the Wisconsin Historical Society and Wisconsin Public Television.

Man: I'd like to welcome you guys to the History Harvest this morning.

What we're doing, is we're collecting information.

All the stuff that's collected will be available to us after it's done.

So you don't want to leave your form with a visitor.

You keep that at your table.

Have fun today.

If you have questions, we'll do our best to answer it.

Narrator: In this place, on this day people have come to share their past with the history keepers of Green Bay and Brown County.

Everyone has a past.

Every family, every city every nation.

But for the past to become history it needs a keeper.

An event like this could happen in any community, big or small.

But it is happening here, because more than a century ago dedicated women and men began to nurture the belief that history matters.

And because that legacy has been embraced down through the generations this place is today, enriched and illuminated by yesterday.

This is the story of the people who recorded and preserved the past so that it could be pondered and interpreted far into the future.

And people who continue to make it possible for those yet to come to learn from those who came before.

This is the story of "The History Keepers."

Funding for The History Keepers was provided by lead gifts from Irene Daniell Kress and Patricia Baer; with major support from Philip J. and Elizabeth B. Hendrickson; Wisconsin Public Service; Associated Bank; the Kress Family Foundation and Green Bay Packaging; the Robert T. and Betty Rose-Meyer Foundation; the Long Family Foundation.

Additional support from the Joseph and Sarah Van Drisse Charitable Trust; John and Gisela Brogan; Vincent Zehren; and the Wisconsin History Fund supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

In early autumn of the year 1824 the writer, with friends, arrived at Green Bay.

There were about 30 houses in the place and two stores.

We were a happy band, united in all social feelings without jealousy, or envy not made unhappy by the riches of a neighbor for riches were possessed by none of us.

We were about equal in worldly goods.

None very poor, and none rich.

Life was fresh and bright.

We all had to work hard.

But we were young.

The popular amusement it seems almost unnecessary to say, was dancing.

Narrator: Like all floods, it began with a trickle.

When Elizabeth Baird penned her early recollections for the Green Bay Gazette in 1882 she sparked a local love for history that has grown steadily as it flowed down through the generations in a state that had established its own historical society even before statehood Green Bay's growing interest in its roots stood out.

Mary Jane Herber: When the State Historical Society started to branch out and decided to have these affiliate societies and create actual historical societies around the state the Brown County Historical Society is the first.

Green Bay-- It was the Green Bay Historical Society then.

It was the first affiliated Historical Society in October, 1899.

Narrator: As the 19th century became the 20th it was mostly a man's world.

But one place where women were welcome was the Historical Society.

While the men were making the history the women were busy recording and preserving it.

In Green Bay, those women were led by Deborah Martin.

Mary Jane Herber: She was an interesting woman because she had this close group of women that worked together to get things done.

And there were about, oh, anywhere between six and ten women that were about the same age.

And they worked on all different kinds of projects.

Some of them were interested in history.

Some of them were artists.

Frederika Crane was a wonderful artist.

So when they needed a drawing of a building for a book they were publishing they'd get Frederika to go out and do a pen and ink drawing of something so that they could have an illustration.

Narrator: Deborah Martin was a prolific writer, a librarian and an avid preservationist working tirelessly to keep the riches of the past from being lost.

Her major work was the 1913 History of Brown County.

Mary Jane Herber: It's still the best source for the history of Brown County.

Debbie Martin was just wonderful.

She really was.

And it was because of her that many of the early buildings were saved.

The Tank cottage was moved off of the riverfront because of the lumber companies wanted to be in that riverfront.

There was this long history of this building.

For a long time, it was considered to be the oldest house in Wisconsin.

She was right on the ball.

She knew that those buildings needed to be saved.

She figured out how to get them moved back off the river.

How they ever, I don't know how they did it.

They would've had to have done it with horses and wagons and all of that stuff.

Then they put a library in it.

She made the buildings usable you know, rather than just being this empty shell.

She made it so it was an asset to the community in another way than just being this historic building.

She was so bright.

Narrator: Houses were the largest though certainly not the only things Deborah Martin and her friends were saving for the future.

But what is the good of keeping history if you can't share it with others?

Another small beginning was about to launch a lasting institution.

The Neville Public Museum of Brown County.

In 1915, a group of women, all women and from very prominent Green Bay families wanted to raise money to put a new flag pole on the courthouse lawn.

So, in order to do this they said, okay, let's have an exhibit of old things.

They collected shawls and spinning wheels and various old things from around Green Bay.

They got permission from folks at the Carnegie Library to have a couple of display cases and show it.

It cost a quarter to get in.

And that was the origin of the museum.

This was such a popular thing.

It was supposed to run for like a weekend then a week, a month, it just kept going.

So many people wanted to see this stuff.

They decided that they should really have a museum here.

And that's how it all started.

By 1916, you've got this guy, A.C. Neville, who's shown up.

A lawyer and a very dedicated amateur historian who was obsessed with all things historical.

His second wife was Ella Hose-Neville.

And Ella Hose-Neville was a force to be reckoned with.

You could either like her or hate her but you could not ignore her.

When A.C. died, Ella Hose-Neville hired Henry L. Ward, their first professional director.

He was really steeped in sort of a natural history background.

He thought it was important to collect local bird specimens and geological things as well as Native American stuff.

He felt that was very important.

Local photographers donated their collections to the museum.

One of the guys, Otto Stiller carried a camera when he went through Green Bay.

He had wonderful candid shots, beautifully framed and exposed of people going around their daily business.

And you don't get to see that very often.

But over time, the collection really grew exponentially.

Now we have about a million artifacts in the collection and well over a million photographs.

Narrator: It is one thing to recognize the value of historic objects.

It is something else again to hold onto them.

Fortunately, there was no shortage of strong women in Green Bay, and vicinity.

One of the strongest was Jessie Buchanan.

She herself preferred to be behind the scenes.

She was a moving force in encouraging others to become involved and to make a difference in the community.

Jessie was born in 1877.

Two young doctors came to Green Bay.

She and her sister married these doctors.

And this was the time of the "Grand Tour."

So they traveled extensively in Europe.

At that time, Jessie became interested in collecting antiques.

After the grand tour, she lamented to her friends Sarah Martin and Deborah Martin-- they were neighbors, as well as good friends that she needed something to do.

And they said to her, with all of your interest in history why don't you look into the history regionally, of the Green Bay area.

Well, Jessie never did anything half-hearted.

She plunged in with a vengeance.

And soon, she was just absolutely immersed.

She really wanted to make Green Bay the Mecca of history.

She found out that there was going to be an estate sale of the Tank cottage furnishings.

And she rallied a group of women to let them know that these artifacts and furnishings from our early families that they were finding their way into the Chicago art market.

And she said we need to find an organization willing to ensure that these artifacts and treasures, and furnishings, stay in the community.

So that was the founding of this group of women who established the Green Bay DePere Antiquarian Society.

The reason it was Green Bay - DePere was because her sister was there.

I have never, in my studies and research found another organization statewide or regionally that does this type of thing whose purpose is to more or less support the efforts of other historical entities by providing funds to restore, preserve to find and retrieve, and place in the historical buildings actual artifacts from that time period.

So this whole period of Deborah Martin and all these wonderful women certainly took charge in their own way and made things happen.

Very influential.

Narrator: With a growing love and enthusiasm for local history it was practically inevitable that some of the Green Bay history keepers would begin to set their sights on a larger target.

It was time to go national.

Michael Telzrow: When the rail first came to Green Bay to this area in 1862, the "Green Bay Advocate" the newspaper, likened the sound of a locomotive to Gabriel's trumpet awakening the dead and ushering in a new era of progress.

So it's hard for us to understand today what rail meant to those people back then.

It was technologically equivalent to a spaceship.

The Railroad Museum really began as an idea.

Several local businessmen thought it would be a great idea to bring a locomotive and put it in a park in Green Bay.

But it grew from there, and it got additional trains additional locomotives, additional cars.

Then they were able to get the designation as a National Railroad Museum, as a Congressional Act.

And now, 75,000 visitors a year, on average from all over the world.

I've lived in other communities.

I've never lived in one like this that has that sense of history that the history here is special.

And there's a great deal of ownership in the history of this region.

And there's a great sense that it needs to be passed on to successive generations.

So it's not surprising that Green Bay would've been selected by these gentlemen as a site for a National Railroad Museum so that those kids and those individuals who don't know anything about trains get a sense of what rail meant to America.

Narrator: Part of keeping history is handing it down from generation to generation an unbroken line into the future.

But once in a great while there's an opportunity to pass that history along to an entire community.

In Green Bay, that opportunity came to Jack Rudolph.

Mary Jane Herber: He went to West Point.

He was a Colonel during the second World War.

He came back after the war and started writing for the "Press Gazette" local history articles.

And then, in 1958, the "Press Gazette" gave him the Saturday editorial page.

And he would write an article every Saturday about local history.

He would spend hours in the library reading microfilm.

We had a running tab for him.

So because he wrote those articles people all over the community every week, got a piece of local history in their newspaper.

And when I first started working at the library I used to get scrapbooks in of those articles that had been saved and glued in scrapbooks because the series ran until 1970, 650 articles.

That's the reason why people in Green Bay have such a basic knowledge.

It came to them free every week with the newspaper.

They all knew about Tank Cottage.

They all knew about all of those different aspects of the community, and the fur trading and Marquette and Joliet and just the whole thing.

He wrote about all of it.

It was great.

Nobody will ever do it again.

It'll never be done again that anybody that works for a newspaper will have the latitude to be able to write like that for 12 years.

Narrator: The interest in history just kept growing.

Suddenly, the history keepers had a big problem and an even bigger solution.

Deborah Martin and her friends had preserved so many historic structures spread over such a large area that they were getting difficult to maintain.

The buildings had already been moved from their original sites so why not bring them all together in one place, where they could be lovingly cared for and easily visited.

That very special place as called Heritage Hill.

Barbara Miller: I think the most important thing about Heritage Hill is it's a living history experience.

It's a window to the past of Green Bay.

It's an insight into the immigrant spirit and the multi-cultural beginnings that Green Bay had.

Mary Jane Herber: Jack Rudolph's articles helped with knowing that all these buildings were important because he had been writing about them for all those years.

There was a whole group in the '60s and into the '70s pushing for the establishment of Heritage Hill and getting them all in the same place.

You'd always see, basically, three women together.

It was Dorothy Straubel Wittig Amanda Cobb and Jane Hasbrook.

Barbara Miller: And I have a photo of them hanging over my desk.

That usually reminds me of why I do this on a daily basis.

They spent countless hours.

There were many other people involved a tremendous amount of debate over whether this should happen or not.

We still have yard signs that say "Vote Yes."

They started moving buildings, some by land, some by river.

Tank Cottage was moved on a barge.

Mary Jane Herber: They put them on barges and floated them down the river.

They did some of it in the winter.

And I, honest to God, thought I've got to take off a day of work because at some point in time when somebody says, "Tank Cottage ended up in the river," I would be able to say I saw it go!

( laughs ) Barbara Miller: It was just really neat to see the kids because it's a very different experience from any other.

It's one thing to read about it in a book, or see a picture or look in a case and see something that's from our past.

But to be able to touch it and feel it and experience it, or do it yourself is truly learning, in my mind.

That's exciting to see them do that.

I think I'm privileged and blessed to be part of a tradition of people in our community who have found it important to tell the story.

And every time a building is preserved or an artifact is retained we have the privilege of holding that for the future and sharing that with the community.

I'm thankful that that's happened.

I'm thankful that I'm able to be a part of it.

You know, all these kids that come into the park as the future history keepers.

So all those mothers who say "You're going to be a history major in college?

What are you going to do with that?"

Come and work at Heritage Hill.

We need you!

Narrator: Keeping history in Green Bay and Brown County is no longer remarked upon.

It is simply an accepted part of the community fabric.

Everywhere you turn, there are history keepers busy continuing the tradition of preserving and promoting the local history.

Once such place is the Area Research Center at the University of Wisconsin Green Bay.

Deb Anderson: The collections or materials, or many of them are owned by the State Historical Society.

And then, we administer them.

What that means is that we are responsible for housing and providing answers to questions for things from northeastern Wisconsin.

So we might have a diary of an immigrant letters of a woman suffragette, original court cases, business records, and so on.

We have all kinds of materials in their original format.

I say that this job is the best job, because there's always variety.

When the door opens you never know what that person who's coming in is looking for.

I can save everything.

But if I can't find a way for somebody to use it and match a user with that thing it was all for naught then, what's the point of saving it?

That's what I think my job is, really, as a history keeper is to match the person and their research need whether they know if they have it or not.

So the door is always open.

I've been accused of being an "archivist evangelist."

I go out, and I can almost always find a reason to bring somebody into the archives.

You know, you could use this, or wow, you could do that.

Or, have you ever thought about teaching your class with this set of records.

Or, you know, this might work.

Or, I can tell you how old your house is, or whatever.

So I'm always out there promoting, and recruiting, and evangelizing.

Come to the archives, there's something for everyone.

Man: Seven Oaks is it?

Looking out the window... Narrator: And just up the Fox River, the DePere Historical Society is making history a favorite community pass-time with "The Picture Show."

McKim Boyd: At a board meeting Joe was sitting with his laptop.

I'm watching him as he's looking at old photos that he had scanned onto the computer.

As I'm sitting there, I thought, wow we could project these photos up on a screen to a crowd and maybe get some information that might be lacking.

And people could bring in some of their photos.

The initial thought was if we could interest eight to ten people we thought that would've been great.

Put it in the newspaper, inviting them to come.

We ended up having, I would estimate, 60 to 70 people.

So it was fun.

And they really enjoyed it.

We do it in a format that is really interactive kind of just shove it out type of a thing.

I think it's exciting.

A lot of the people see something from their past.

It's great when we can put up a photo of something that everybody in has forgotten.

I can think of a gas station on Broadway.

We put it up, and they're like wow, we forgot all about that place.

McKim Boyd: After the first show another couple offered to come in and scan photos if people would bring them in.

They started to scan photos in the back of the room.

At that point, what we were able to do was document all the information on the photos with the person sitting right there.

We estimated that we've added close to 9,000 photos since we started.

We have a lot of fun, the give and take, back and forth.

Maybe even arguing over who's in a photo or what the photo is of generating not just interest, but also documenting facts when it comes to the photos.

We figure, if we can get three or four people to agree, we can pretty much put it in stone.

Narrator: And yes, even that football team that calls Green Bay home is proud to share its history.

Tom Murphy: The Hall of Fame started as a summer tourist attraction.

Out of that, it grew into what it is today which is one of the nicest sports museums in the country.

Our history is very important to us.

It's the charm of the Packers.

It's the history.

How we survived in this little community all those years.

When people come to these games on weekends and you see them tailgating how many of the people really know who Curly Lambeau was and what he did?

And the tough times that it took to get to the extravaganza that we have today.

So part of our job, I think at the Hall of Fame, is to help educate people where we came from, how we got here.

It's an incredible story.

And to do it through the museum, visually I think is the best way to tell that story.

We were able to build this collection.

I mean, the archives that we have here are incredible.

We have them valued somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 million.

But all of that's been donated by fans.

This is a ball that we received, just within the last year.

And it's a terrific piece from 1934 to 1935 signed by the Packers' teams from those two years.

So they had some great players on these teams.

It's all hand-autographed.

The fellow that donated it, his name is Jim Miller.

His mother was the manager at the Aster Hotel in Green Bay where a lot of the players stayed.

And it's been in the family for all these years.

There you can see E.L. "Curly" Lambeau's signature just as clear as can be.

I'm amazed at some of the significant donations we get.

When you look at the real value involved and not only the willingness to donate these things to the Packers Hall of Fame but Packers fans look upon it as a privilege that their items would be accepted by the Hall of Fame and would be exhibited for the public.

Narrator: This is a place pregnant with history.

And it continues to give birth to new history keepers.

I think everyone has a unique passion and a desire to contribute to their community and society.

When I look at the Antiquarian Society and the Brown County Historical Society the DePere Historical Society there are many existing historical societies and there continue to be more all the time.

Howard-Suamico just began a Historical Society.

Allouez is beginning their own Historical Society.

We've recently had a number of them band together to create a Brown County Federation of History Museums so that together, we can promote the history of Green Bay.

Narrator: It wasn't magic.

It wasn't fate.

It could happen in any community.

All it takes is for somebody to begin.

The celebration of local history happened in this place because those early history keepers attracted others with their passion and passed along the understanding that what led us to where we are is an essential part of who we are.

Barbara Miller: Studying history gives us an opportunity to hopefully learn from our mistakes, but I doubt we do.

But I think there will constantly be a desire to understand more about who we are.

And the easiest way to do that is to look at our past.

Are calling me Come hither Calling, calling Calling me Come home Do you remember Those days long ago Voices will bring back The past Stories of life And of death So long ago Will echo the times In our minds So here they are today Recalling all those stories Calling, calling Calling me, come home Funding for The History Keepers was provided by lead gifts from Irene Daniell Kress and Patricia Baer; with major support from Philip J. and Elizabeth B. Hendrickson; Wisconsin Public Service; Associated Bank; the Kress Family Foundation and Green Bay Packaging; the Robert T. and Betty Rose-Meyer Foundation; the Long Family Foundation.

Additional support from the Joseph and Sarah Van Drisse Charitable Trust; John and Gisela Brogan; Vincent Zehren; and the Wisconsin History Fund supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities.