Innholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2023 i Wisconsin Magazine of History

Wisconsin Magazine of History|Summer 2023

Letter from the Editor

What could be more quintessentially Wisconsin than watching a water ski show at Wisconsin Dells, sampling beer at a local brewery, or savoring Door County cherries? This issue of WMH brings together three cherished traditions of summer in our state, but, as always, these are stories told with a twist—or, in the case of the Tommy Bartlett Show, with twists, swivels, and flips! Our cover article, by Society curators Alan Hanson and Tamara Funk, offers a first look at the newly acquired Tommy Bartlett collection, which was donated to the Wisconsin Historical Society after the Tommy Bartlett Show closed its doors in 2020. From rhinestone headdresses to wooden skis and photographs of kite skiers and clowns, this image essay brings back memories of sixty-seven years of performances at Lake Delton…

2 min

Wisconsin Magazine of History|Summer 2023

The Cherryland Problem

In the late summer of 1948, truckloads of Black workers from Louisiana and Mississippi made their way home south from Door County, Wisconsin. The men and women had been recruited with promises of a bountiful harvest and a lucrative temporary work opportunity picking the region’s cherries. Instead, they encountered unsanitary camps, wage theft, and mistreatment in and out of the orchards. Perhaps worst of all, most of them left Wisconsin having made just a few dollars after spending a month in the area. Dejected, many promised to never return to the state. As nineteen-year-old Sam Quin of McComb, Mississippi, told his local newspaper: “I’ve had enough. I want to stay home now. I don’t like being a cherry-picking refugee.”1 In the years following World War II, Door County had become…

31 min

Wisconsin Magazine of History|Summer 2023

Curio

This lead toy molding kit was purchased in about 1930 by Jane and Anton Asmuth of Watertown, Wisconsin, for their sons Anton Jr., Robert, and James. The kit included molds, paints, lead bars, and a ladle. The bars were melted in the ladle held over a flame or other heat source. The molten lead was then poured into the mold. Once it was cooled and removed from the mold, the figure could be painted and then played with. Lead toy molding was promoted as a father/son activity. During the Depression, kits were marketed as money-making ventures. Lead figures could be produced at home and sold for profit. Home casting waned in popularity during World War II as metals became scarce. After the war, less expensive plastics provided competition for small…

1 min

Wisconsin Magazine of History|Summer 2023

THE WOMEN OF WISCONSIN BREWING

On February 8, 2022, a group of women gathered in Green Bay, Wisconsin, to brew a batch of beer. These industry professionals from across the state represented the Wisconsin chapter of the Pink Boots Society, formed in 2007 to bring together women in the brewing industry. The beer, a weiss ale recipe featuring fragrant malted barley, white wheat, and a unique hop blend, was a tribute to a woman who, more than one hundred years earlier, had owned and operated a brewery on the opposite bank of the Fox River. Not only was Octavia Van Dycke the brewery’s president, the O. Van Dycke Company was the first brewing operation in Wisconsin to be named for a woman. The members of the Pink Boots who gathered to honor her—brewers, maltsters, managers,…

31 min

Wisconsin Magazine of History|Summer 2023

SAND AND FIRE

A tiny remnant of the millions of barrens acres that once covered the region, the Namekagon Barrens Wildlife Area lies in the heart of Wisconsin’s Northwest Sands, a band of pine and oak barrens stretching across northern Wisconsin from Bayfield to the Minnesota border at St. Croix Falls. In Sand and Fire, out this spring from the Wisconsin Historical Society Press, Dave Peters shares the natural and human history of the barrens—including the cycle of fire and regeneration that makes this fragile ecosystem home to sand-loving scrub oak and jack pine, blueberries and sweet fern, creating an ideal habitat for wolves, sharp-tailed grouse, and more. On a mild, sun-filled July morning, I was picking blueberries about a quarter mile south of the pristine Namekagon River in northwestern Wisconsin. The sky…

9 min

Wisconsin Magazine of History|Summer 2023

TOMMY BARTLETT’S WATER SKI SHOW

The name Tommy Bartlett is synonymous with Wisconsin Dells, water skiing, and family entertainment. Each summer for sixty-seven years, the Tommy Bartlett Show on Lake Delton thrilled visitors three times daily with a ninety-minute production consisting of high-speed boats, water ski stunts, and themed stage and sky performances. In addition to performing in the Dells, the show traveled across the country and abroad to appear at expositions and world’s fairs. In total, an estimated 18,700 water ski shows entertained about thirty million visitors from 1952 to 2019.1 Thomson “Tommy” Bartlett was born July 11, 1914, in Milwaukee, the son of Ferdinand Bartlett, an insurance agent, and Elizabeth Thomson Bartlett, who owned a linen shop on North Downer Avenue. Fascinated with technology from an early age, Bartlett began his radio career…

12 min

Wisconsin Magazine of History|Summer 2023

Letters

The William B. Hesseltine Award Each year, the William B. Hesseltine award is given to the author of the best original article in the Wisconsin Magazine of History. This year, rather than being determined by reader votes, the contest will be decided by a juried panel. In place of voting, we encourage you to offer comments on the articles at this website: http://wihist.org/hesseltine2023. The Hesseltine Award was established in 1965 in memory of historian and past Wisconsin Historical Society president William B. Hesseltine. The winner will be announced in the Winter 2023 issue and will receive a cash prize. Here are the entries for volume 106: Fall 2022 Helen Barnhill, Marlene Cummings, and the 1988 Republican National Convention, by Rachel S. Cordasco A Cure for Every Ill: John Till, Wisconsin’s…

3 min