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Showing posts from September, 2019

Mary E Woodruff (1843-1920)

Mary Woodruff was born 1843 in Bohemia.  Her father was Martin Woodruff and she had a sister named Sophia(1842) and a brother, Frank(1851).  Mary and her family immigrated to Milwaukee in 1860.   1870 Census of Milwaukee, Wisc. She met and married fellow Bohemian Frank Peshek.  They had seven children together before divorcing sometime after 1882; Sophia (1863), Frank (1868), Mary (1869), John Albert (1872), William (1875), Robert James (1879), and Rose M (1882). By this time, they had moved north, to Green Bay. 1880 Census of Fort Howard, Wisc.   Mary Woodruff remarried sometime after Rose is born, to a Frank Joseph Jolley, who then adopts Rose.  It's unclear what happened between Mary and Frank Peshek, and why they separated.  The Federal census of 1890 was destroyed by fire, and the next census I have to go on is the state census of 1895.  In 1895, Mary Woodruff Peshek is now Mary Jolley and she is living in Appleton, a widow, wi...

Wisconsin State Normal Schools

Nineteenth century higher education was mainly reserved for men.  Victorian notions of separate gender spheres assigned rigorous academic pursuits to men. Professors were almost always male and passed on their knowledge to their male students.  As women defied these notions and entered classrooms, they were constantly reminded that they were outsiders in a male world.  In the 1870s, men and women studied separately in some subjects, and some classes segregated female students in the back of the classrooms. Any subjects that were vocational, such as surveying, navigation, agriculture, or engineering were not considered suitable courses for women to study.  In the 1880s and 1890s, women mainly studied in the "modern Classical" and "english" liberal arts courses. Normal schools were teacher-training schools and in the Midwest many normal schools functioned as all-around institutions of higher learning.  Almost always coeducational, state normal schools we...

Appleton

The territory where Appleton is today was traditionally occupied by the  Ho-Chunk  and the  Menominee . The Menominee Nation ceded the territory to the United States in the  Treaty of the Cedars  in 1836, with  Chief Oshkosh  representing the Menominee.  In the Menominee language, Appleton is known as  AhkŨnemeh , or "watches for them place".   Fur traders seeking to do business with Fox River Valley Indians were the first settlers in Appleton. Hippolyte Grignon built the White Heron in 1835 to house his family and serve as an inn and trading post. Germans, Dutch and Poles were some of the first immigrants to come to Appleton. Oneida Indians also live in the Oneida reservation just north of town.  Appleton shares its history with Lawrence University, for the two grew simultaneously.  With the financial backing of Amos Lawrence, the Lawrence Institute was chartered in 1847. Samuel Appleton donated $10,000...

Green Bay

Green Bay is located on Lake Michigan in Brown County, Wisconsin,  at the mouth of the Fox River .  The Menominee, Ho-Chunk, and other native peoples inhabited the area for at least 10,000 years, drawn to the area's rich soil and abundant fish, wild rice, and waterfowl. T he earliest reliably documented contact between Europeans and Indians in Wisconsin was i n 1634,  when French explorer Jean Nicolet (1598-1642) met the Ho-Chunk,   followed by missionaries Claude Allouez (1622-1689) and Jacques Marquette (1637-1675). The French named the area "La Baye," and it served as the main point of entry into the continent's interior.  In 1763, the British ousted the French and took control of Green Bay until 1783, when the Americans won control in the American Revolution. The Americans built Fort Howard in 1816 to control the entrance into Wisconsin.  The fort  had excellent transportation routes on the Fox River and Lake Michigan and the entire...

What happened to the Gigueres?

     In a previous post I revealed how I found Rose Peshek-Jolley's connection to the Peshek family through her nieces, Blanche and Ruby Gegay.  Let's take a look at the Gegay family, which is sometimes spelled Giguere.       Marriage register from the Wisconsin Historical Society Mary Peshek married Charles F. Giguere on August 8, 1889, in Oconto, Wisconsin.  They had four children, Charles D., Blanche Ellen, Ruby Mary, and Eva Muriel.  Charles is listed as a hotel keeper in the 1910 Census.   Charles' brother David worked at the hotel as a cook. 1900 Census Wausaukee, Wisc.   Charles Giguere ran the Wausaukee Hotel in Wausaukee, WI.  The Wausaukee Independent Newspaper from December 1, 1900 mentions an incident involving Charles and a drunken woodsmen. "Assault with intent to kill....George Belling, a woodsman, will have to answer to that charge. He pointed a revolver at Charles Giguere...