The Annual Convention of the Wisconsin Council for Local History

The Annual Convention of the Wisconsin Council for Local History was held this weekend in Madison, Wisconsin. The regular business agenda was accompanied by fascinating programs on local history subjects.

The first program was presented by Dr. Loren Horton who has researched the westward movement of Americans by studying overland trail diaries. The second program,"How We Worked" , was presented by Judy Wilmes of the Vernon County Historical Society.

"Westward from Wisconsin" outlined the migration of people looking for new opportunity and better lives on the western frontier. Wisconsin was the edge of the unknown in the early 19th century, a jumping-off place for pioneers and gold seekers. Dr. Horton has studied over three hundred diaries in the United States, fifteen of these found in the collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. These daily journals were recorded by men, women, and young people.

One 16-year-old girl recorded daily travel distances of five to twelve miles and the fares for river crossings in our region of the Minnesota Territory for her party-- her parents, younger brother, and sister. She also kept track of the prairies and forests they passed through. A seventeen-year-old man kept a humorous and interesting journal of each day's travel and much information about his associates, including in great detail, the equipment that they packed in their wagons (commonly spelled waggons in those days). I was surprised to hear that the travellers carried a stove and baked bread along the trail. They even ironed their clothing--on the wagon seat! He recorded their meal menus and the musical instruments that they used in their campsites sing-a-longs.

People kept track of clothing worn, the political atmosphere, and the perils of daily life on the trail. During the question and answer period, the question was asked as to how they knew how many miles they traveled each day. The answer was a new invention called the Road-o-Meter, invented by William Clayton in 1846. This tool attached to the wagon wheel and measured the mileage by the number of revolutions of the wheel.

The Vernon County Historical Society presentation was about a program that they developed using a grant from the Wisconsin Humanities Council to collect and preserve the story of rural life on the farmsteads around their county. Part of the project involved taping oral histories of farmers and making video documentation of working machinery. Judy Wilmes showed slides and an exhibit of their work. She also talked about the process of applying for the grant.

During the afternoon my sister Ina Bousselot and I had the opportunity to go to several workshops. I learned about Wisconsin Humanities Council Grants by the program director Dena Wortzel while Ina took notes and tape-recorded a program on managing archival collections by Peter Gottleib, State Archivist and Helmut Knies, Collection Development Archivist at the State Historical Society.

Ina and I compared notes and we decided that we have to change a few practices at the Museum and also seriously look into projects and programs that would improve our Society.

As a footnote to our trip, we took a sidetrip to the Belille Cemetery to view the situation there before visiting the office of the State Burial Sites Archaeologist, Shawn Phillips. I hope to provide his office with many salient details about the Belille Cemetery and then provide him with information supplied by the Anderson Nathan Funeral Home about the many cemeteries and burial sites in Sawyer County. The Society will work with several genealogists already working on cataloging the cemeteries and having Sawyer County fully registered with the State of Wisconsin. In this way we may be able to prevent these disasters.