Since it had first become accessible to the public more than twenty years ago, the Old World Wisconsin museum in Eagle, Wis., has shown visitors historical examples of the state’s origins. The museum indicates what life was like from the 1840s to 1950s. There are five hundred seventy-six acres of a living museum, including country villages, farms and shopping. Old World Wisconsin is second only to Colonial Williamsburg in size.
The initial inhabitants were American Indians. The following occupants were primarily foreign-born in the 1800s. The Wisconsin State Historical Society noted it was Yankee territory in 1836. The Yankees originated in Britain and migrated to the eastern coastal region of the U.S., before moving to Wisconsin. Most of the study and survey of the land was done by Yankees, who were known to walk every square mile of the state, according to the Federal Land Survey System.
Within the years of 1839 and 1885, the Germans began arriving and were followed by those from the British Isles and Scandinavians. From 1885 through the 1920s, Eastern and Southern Europeans moved to Wisconsin because of the overpopulation of their area.
Wisconsin was expansive and inexpensive. They brought their own styles and influences to the state in architectural style. One-room log homes were the first homes with Yankee occupation. They were timber buildings with straw-hatched roofs and walk-in cooking and baking units. The Greek revival period followed with the Europeans influence. The homes had frame structures painted white in the simplest of styles. The more affluent homes were brick with wood. The columns were wood and hollow. However, architecture was only one part of the new colonization.
The Temperance Rally was a time of songs, poems and testimonials. There was a Civil War Reenactment centered around the politics of the time. Prisoners were brought up the Mississippi River to Madison, WI. It was a time of those called “tramps”, the unemployed. The farm laborers found themselves without work.
Waukesha county was an anti-slavery part of Wisconsin. Issues about slavery and free land were social issues of the time. By the 1840s, slavery had increasingly become a political issue tied to a number of other political objectives. The Free Soil Party and its candidate, Martin Van Buren, expanded the party’s appeal to include such goals as free homesteads to settlers, federal aid for internal improvements, and the putting a halt to the extension of slavery.
The 2005 ITC Convention in Waukesha will allow you to explore this historical site. Old World Wisconsin provides a kaleidoscope view of scenes in farm and village life re-created by real-life characters out of the past. Farmers still plow fields with antique farm machinery lugged by teams of oxen and horses. Women and children work alongside the men on chores that change by season. Today, the museum has grown to include more than 60 historic structures, from ethnic farmsteads that include furnished houses and rural outbuildings to a crossroads village with its traditional small-town institutions. Register for the visit to Old World Wisconsin on your registration form for the 2005 Convention. Stay tuned for more details.
Sources used: “Old World Wisconsin” (1997). Videotape published by Public Television WMVS/WMVT, Milwaukee, WI.
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/
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