Innholdsfortegnelse for Winter 2022 i Wisconsin Magazine of History

This issue of WMH spotlights the stories of three women from different eras and backgrounds: Yee Shee Wong, a Chinese American immigrant who settled in Beloit in the 1920s; Anna Ott, a doctor in 1850s Madison whose tumultuous home life played out in public divorce proceedings and institutional confinement; and, in our book excerpt, an enslaved woman named Courtney who lived in Prairie du Chien and sued for her freedom in a St. Louis court in the 1830s. Why, if we are centering the stories of women in this issue, do none appear on the cover? As far as we know, no image of Courtney was rendered during her lifetime, and if a photograph of Anna Ott was taken, it did not end up in the available records. Yee Shee…

At first glance, this decorative glass vessel might look like a perfume bottle or a formal beverage decanter. Attractive as it is, though, this bottle was made to be broken. The Harden Star Hand Grenade was an inexpensive firefighting innovation patented in 1884 by John J. Harden of Chicago. Fire was a major danger in an era when most homes and businesses were lit with gas light and heated with wood stoves. Often, a person’s immediate response to a fire was an ill-advised attempt to smother it or to douse it with a bucket of water. The grenade extinguisher contained either salt water or, after 1900, carbon tetrachloride and allowed the user to stand some distance from the flames. It was thrown into the fire where it would break and…

The Wong family’s path to Beloit, Wisconsin, was unlikely. During the long period of Chinese exclusion stretching from 1882 to 1943, it was nearly impossible to emigrate to the United States from China. Most Chinese men living in America were sojourners who claimed a family connection in the US. They earned money abroad but maintained a family in their home villages where their children would continue their family lines, remaining close to and venerating their ancestors. Sojourners would return home to make sure that their families were doing well and to engage in marital visits that would ensure additional children. Most would eventually resettle in China. Charles Wong chose a different path. Like several of his male family members, he had been claimed as a son by an uncle who…

The following is an excerpt from Enslaved, Indentured, Free: Five Black Women on the Upper Mississippi, 1800–1850, released this fall by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press. This excerpt follows two women, Courtney and Rachel, as they sued for their freedom, and the freedom of their young sons, in St. Louis in the mid-1830s. Both women were born into slavery around 1812. Through no choice of their own, they were removed from the care of their mothers and families, given or sold to strangers, and transported by white enslavers into territories where slavery was illegal. In 1834, Rachel petitioned for the freedom of herself and her son, James Henry, based on their prior residency in a free territory. Almost exactly one year later, Courtney did the same. Courtney had lived just…

At first glance, this decorative glass vessel might look like a perfume bottle or a formal beverage decanter. Attractive as it is, though, this bottle was made to be broken. The Harden Star Hand Grenade was an inexpensive firefighting innovation patented in 1884 by John J. Harden of Chicago. Fire was a major danger in an era when most homes and businesses were lit with gas light and heated with wood stoves. Often, a person’s immediate response to a fire was an ill-advised attempt to smother it or to douse it with a bucket of water. The grenade extinguisher contained either salt water or, after 1900, carbon tetrachloride and allowed the user to stand some distance from the flames. It was thrown into the fire where it would break and…