Tools of the trade: Researching Wisconsin, local history is easy once you know where to look – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

John Gurda| Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Where do you get all that stuff?, Im sometimes asked. Particularly after a talk, some interested (or skeptical) member of the audience will come up and inquire how I knew that Allis-Chalmers had 24,862 employees at the peak of war production in 1943, including 434 Black workers. Or where I learned that in 1886 the champion brewery hand at Schlitz could down 100 short glasses of beer every day nearly a case and a half at a time when free beer (on the job!) was a coveted fringe benefit. Or that Emil Seidel, Milwaukees first Socialist mayor, once summed up his partys platform as clean fun, music, dance, song and joy for all.

The answer, of course, is research the process of finding salient facts, corroborating them with other data, and coming to informed conclusionsor sometimes just stumbling on cool things to share.

Ive always enjoyed research more than writing. It feels to me like gathering pieces of a puzzle whose exact dimensions and precise subject are largely unknown. Once those pieces are spread out before me, or at least safely in my laptop, I find the process of assembling them into a coherent whole that will attract and hold someones attention writing, in other words much harder. But, as more than one author has said, I love having written.

Given the wealth of historical resources in our community, the real problem is knowing when to stop. Those resources are there for everyone to use. Most of what I know practically all of it, in fact has been gleaned from materials readily available online or in local archives. Although Ive never written a how-to column in the 28 years Ive occupied this space, Id like to share a handful of my favorites, a trio of resources that are easy to find, easy to use, and quite possibly addictive.

At the top of my list in recent years are historical newspaper databases, two in particular. The 19th-Century Newspapers Database is a national resource with an especially strong Milwaukee presence. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Historical and Current Database is entirely local but has a broader chronological span. Both resources are fully searchable by keyword, and searches can by narrowed by date, newspaper section, and article type.

The results can be astounding. When I was working on a history of the local Jewish community for the Jewish Museum Milwaukee in 2008, I entered the keyword Jewish on the 19th-Century Database and got over 5,000 hits. I dutifully scrolled through every one of them and unearthed gems that probably hadnt been seen since the day they were published. The highlights included an 1882 account of assimilated German Jews housing their strictly observant Russian brethren in temporary quarters just after they immigrated to Milwaukee and then calling in barbers to relieve the males of their barbarous superfluity of hair. One Orthodox immigrant resisted so strenuously that a policeman was summoned to make him cooperate.

If youve always been curious about that saloonkeeper ancestor of yours or wanted an eyewitness account of the 1892 fire that leveled much of the Third Ward, the newspaper databases are for you. And how do you access them? As always, your library card is your key to untold riches. My Milwaukee Public Library website is a portal to both databases; check with your local system if you live outside Milwaukee County.

Maps are another indispensable research resource. My terminal degree is in geography, not history, and maps are the quintessential geographers tool. Fire insurance atlases are particularly helpful for studying urban history. Rather than paying inspectors to compile risk reports on individual buildings, the insurance companies found it cheaper to create multi-volume atlases that included all of them: every structure on every lot on every block in a particular city, along with information about construction materials, types (and frequently names) of businesses, and the location of the nearest fire hydrants. These Sanborn maps, as they are usually called, are analog prototypes of Google Earth. With a little imagination, you can practically walk through your old neighborhood or the vanished neighborhoods of your ancestors.

I find it most efficient to use the original atlases at the Central Library, where they are on open shelves, or at the County Historical Society. (Handling the massive volumes could almost qualify as aerobic exercise.) If you prefer to do your research at home, online versions of the 1894 and 1910 Sanborn series are available through the Wisconsin Historical Society, the UW-Milwaukee Libraries, or the Milwaukee Public Library. You might find it helpful to start at mpl.org/local_history/maps_atlases.php.

City directories contain a different type of information. Beginning in 1847, just one year after Milwaukee incorporated, and continuing to the present, private companies have published annual directories that list every adult male (women appeared only as spouses or widows for many years), every business, and every institution in the city. The individual listings include home addresses and usually occupations, and a classified directory in the back of each book is organized by business and profession. (Want to know how many euphemistically named soft drink parlors Milwaukee had in 1922, near the midpoint of Prohibition? A total of 1,358.)

An extremely useful feature was added in 1921: a reverse directory of streets listing every occupant of every address in the city. You can compile the names of all the residents of a given area and then, if you like, cross-reference them by occupation. For a 2019 column, I used the 1925 city directory to identify every occupant inside the two-block footprint of Fiserv Forum. The tally included seven soft drink parlors, sixrestaurants, threereal estate offices, two leather stores, twomachine shops, two auto repair shops, a horseshoer, a tea shop, a plumber, a printer, a shirt manufacturer, a clothes presser, a carpet cleaner, a billiard hall, an undertaker, a junk dealer, 103 households, and, at what is now center court, the Ambrosia Chocolate plant.

Although you can find selected city directory listings on Ancestry.com, the full series is currently available only on microfilm or microfiche at the Central Library or in hard copy at the Central Library or the County Historical Society. The publishers didnt waste money on expensive paper in most years; the older copies are slowly dissolving into piles of yellowed crumbs.

Newspaper databases, Sanborn maps, and city directories are obviously only three bright stars in a vast constellation of local history resources. There are innumerable others. Want quick but incisive information on nearly 700 Milwaukee history topics? Try UWMs online Encyclopedia of Milwaukee. Interested in a visual record of Milwaukees marine history? Google Milwaukee Waterways, a Milwaukee Public Library collection. Want to learn more about the local civil rights movement? UWMs March on Milwaukee is a great database. How about brewing history or the Socialist movement? The Milwaukee County Historical Society has excellent materials on both.

Although the balance is shifting to the digital side, local history research will be a hybrid of online and in-person study for the foreseeable future. Digital materials have the enormous advantage of being pandemic-proof. I still find it hard to believe that I spent more than a year without seeing the inside of a library, probably the longest stretch since I was an infant. During the worst of the shutdowns, when I was feeling like an orphan, online resources were a godsend.

But I think Ill always have a preference for in-person research. Not only do I love the smell, the atmosphere, and the silent camaraderie of libraries, but Im also a firm believer in adjacencies; browsing is most productive when all the materials you need are in one place and close at hand. Milwaukee has two excellent and indispensable historical archives: the Frank P. Zeidler Humanities Room on the second floor of the Central Library, 814 W. Wisconsin Ave.; and the research library of the Milwaukee County Historical Society, 910 N. Martin Luther King Drive. Both are open again, thank goodness, but their hours are still limited; check online for details.

Whether youre a student, a genealogist, an armchair historian, or a budding professional, unearthing new facts and developing new insights about the history of our community is a delight like no other. There are countless trails to follow. As you blaze your own, happy hunting!

John Gurda writes a column on local history for the Ideas Lab on the first Sunday of every month. Email:mail@johngurda.com

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Tools of the trade: Researching Wisconsin, local history is easy once you know where to look - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel