In 1837, Henry Janes applied for a post office called Black Hawk for the southern Wisconsin settlement where he ran a ferry across the Rock River. The postmaster general, however, noticed a town already by that name in the Iowa part of Wisconsin Territory, and he assigned the name Janesville, with Janes as postmaster. Two years later, Janes moved his family west, but the community grew to become the Rock County seat, and by 1860 it was Wisconsin's second-largest city. Today more than 62,00...

“A fascinating political, racial, economic, and cultural tapestry” (Detroit Free Press), Once in a Great City is a tour de force from David Maraniss about the quintessential American city at the top of its game: Detroit in 1963.Detroit in 1963 is on top of the world. The city’s leaders are among the most visionary in America: grandson of the first Ford; Henry Ford II; Motown’s founder Berry Gordy; the Reverend C.L. Franklin and his daughter, the i...

Michigan's city with a strange name has an even stranger—and spirited—past. The authors of Ghosts of Grand Rapids share its chilling tales.Kalamazoo's violent and often anguished history has given way to myriad ghostly tales surrounding some of the town's most prominent places. From the tortured souls roaming the Asylum Lake Preserve to the infamous suicide of the amateur actress Thelma, who reputedly haunts the Civic Auditorium to this day, it is no small...

On the evening of June 15, 1920, in Duluth, Minnesota, three young black men, accused of the rape of a white woman, were pulled from their jail cells and lynched by a mob numbering in the thousands. Yet for years the incident was nearly forgotten. This updated, second edition of The Lynchings in Duluth includes a new preface by the author, additional research and notes, and suggestions for further reading."This account of racial violence in the early twentieth century is a genuinel...

This past January, the newly elected governor Scott Walker declared war on Wisconsin's progressive roots. Under the guise of budget repair, he and his Republican colleagues in the state legislature introduced a whole host of initiatives meant to roll back hard-won gains for workers and recast the role of government in the state to fit his own conservative ideology.In The Battle for Wisconsin, the labor historian Andrew E. Kersten shows just how far-reaching these "reforms"...

Soldiers in the Union Army volunteered for many reasons—to reunite the country, to put down the southern rebellion. For most, however, slavery was a peripheral issue. Sympathy for slaves often came only after the soldiers actually witnessed their plight.In November 1863, thirty-eight men of the Minnesota Ninth Regiment responded to a fugitive slave's desperate plea by holding a train at gunpoint and liberating his wife, five children, and three other family members who were being s...

Ottawa was founded in 1864. Located in the Marais des Cygnes River Valley, the area�s rich soil and lush grass made it well suited for growing crops and pasturing livestock. The community�s first cultural center was Ottawa University, which was chartered in 1865 and built on land exchanged by the Ottawa Indians for the promise of an education for their children. Two railroads later arrived, the Lawrence, Leavenworth & Galveston in 1868 and the Missouri Pacific in 1880, spurring industrial ...

Indianapolis' Crown Hill Cemetery is noted for its unique beauty and historic significance. Dedicated on June 1, 1864, the cemetery, at more than 555 acres, is the final resting-place to over 185,000 citizens and is one of the most historically significant areas in the city. Many of the country's great leaders, soldiers, entrepreneurs, and artists are buried within the cemetery's confines including: President Benjamin Harrison, Col. Eli Lilly, and the infamous John Dillinger, to name just ...

Through much of the nineteenth century, steam-powered ships provided one of the most reliable and comfortable transportation options in the United States, becoming a critical partner in railroad expansion and the heart of a thriving recreation industry. The aesthetic, structural, and commercial peak of the steamboat era occurred on the Great Lakes, where palatial ships created memories and livelihoods for millions while carrying passengers between the region’s major industrial ports of Chi...

Ferret out the haunts and habits of those who kept speakeasy doors oiled and politics crooked in the Twin Cities. If you take a tour of former blind pigs today, you will probably encounter nothing more dangerous than a life-long attraction to the 5-8 Club's Juicy Lucy Burger, but Twin Cities Prohibition will return you to a time when honest reporting like that of Walter Liggett was answered with machine gun fire. Clink glasses with notorious characters such as Kid Cann, Dapper Dan Hogan an...

On April 26, 1927, Lida Rogers, a Holland High School biology teacher, suggested an idea to members of the Holland, Michigan Women's Literary Club. The idea was that the city present a "Tulip Day" every spring. Two years later, on May 18, 1929, after scores of visitors viewed more than 100,000 tulips along Holland's curbs, Tulip Time became an annual event.The 1930 Holland Evening Sentinel banner headline read: "Tulip Reigns as Queen of City." Throughout the decade, motion picture and radi...

A culmination of decades of research on field notes, plats, correspondence, legislation, and observations of surveyors, cartographers, government officials, military commanders, Native Americans, early settlers, and land speculators, this volume is the first of its kind in nearly a century. Interweaving the history of Ohio and biographies of the individuals associated with surveying and mapping, Blazes, Posts and Stones is a must-read book about the non-sequential development of Ohio lands...