9UNP0230SD_Erika_Janik_WordPress

- Good afternoon and welcome to History Sandwiched In once again. Today, we're quite lucky because we have our own Erika Janik here to speak. And when I say our own, she is the person in the Wisconsin Historical Society who has dominion over the really weird stuff. As a result, she's put out a book, "Odd Wisconsin." And this book is for sale over at our book store. And Erika, after the program, will be pleased to sign that book. Now, the strange things in history are the ones that interest me. The boring things, you can learn in school or from a textbook. But Erika has been collecting these bizarre stories and in conjunction with our exhibit on the fourth floor called Odd Wisconsin, where the stories come together with our artifacts. 

And if you haven't seen that, please do. But let me waste no more time, and introduce our speaker and give her a wonderful welcome. Erika Janik. 
(applause)
 
- Thank you. I want to thank you all for coming. I'm just going to say in advance, I have a little bit of a cold, so I'm going to apologize for any sniffling or coughing. But we should make it through okay. I'm just going to tell you a little bit about how this project came about. 

Then I'll tell you some stories. Feel free to ask me questions at any time. I actually did not grow up in Wisconsin. I grew up in Redmen, Washington. But I now know, embarrassingly, much more about Wisconsin than I do about Washington. And Odd Wisconsin really began as kind of a repository for all of this fun, interesting photos and diaries, and letters, that we were finding at the Historical Society. And so, in 2004, Odd Wisconsin became a blog that we really didn't think anyone was actually reading. It was just kind of for our own entertainment. But lo and behold, people were reading it. And in 2006, it became a column in the Wisconsin State Journal. 

And it's syndicated in a number of other papers around the state. Then last year, we put out a book of some of the favorites, a whole bunch of new ones. But Odd Wisconsin continues. These are the stories, like Paul said in the introduction, that are kind of the more fun things. And they're not just silly. All of these bizarre characters and crazy events are things that have made us who we are, and have made our state what it is. So, they're more fun, and the things that you didn't read about in your textbook, but really, these are good, important stories. This first thing, I just have to show you. It's my favorite picture. I don't really know a whole ton about it. 

This is the Cranberry Queen. This is 1947. She's harvesting cranberries in her bikini and hip waders. 
(laughter)
 And I just love it, so I have to share it with you. This next one is a women's suffrage poster. It's from Watertown, Wisconsin, in 1912. The thing that I really love about it is that it talks about giving women the vote would be a menace to the home, and men's employment, and to all business. But what it says there is that it would double the irresponsible vote. And it makes you wonder who that other half is. 

(laughter)
 This next thing here is a tall tale postcard. This is a very popular genre of postcards around the turn of the 20th century. And one of the masters of it was a man here in Wisconsin named Alfred Stanley Johnson, Jr. He lived in Waupun. He would pose his friends and family in these strange poses, and then he would superimpose large vegetables on top of them. These were all to try to talk about the abundance of our soils, and what a great place Wisconsin was to live. And this was very common all over the country. And you'll actually see images, like this one says, "How we do things at Waupun, Wisconsin." But you'll see things that say how we do things at Omaha, Nebraska, and it has this same image. 

Here's some of our really abundant carrots that we have here. 
(laughter)
 This here, they're putting some roots in the cellar. I don't know if you notice, there's a baby on the root cellar door, peering in. This next one will kind of show you how he did it. These are all from about 1912 to 1918. So here's some girls. They're holding a cardboard cutout. It looks like they're biting into maybe a melon, corn. And there it is, once he's put the vegetables in. 

This next story is called Death by Chocolate. As Ella Maly left a party in Richland Center on January 8, 1891, she was given a bag of chocolates as her parting gift. She ate several pieces on her way home, before collapsing in agony. After hours of convulsions and delirium, she uttered, "If this will be the end of me, I would be so thankful." And she died from strychnine poisoning. Her party host that evening had been a 24-year-old Sunday School teacher, who boarded with a widowed doctor. She was accused of murder. And at her trial, it was revealed that she was in love with the doctor, and had considered Maly a rival. Worse, further investigation exposed that the doctor's wife had also died from strychnine poisoning soon after the school teacher came to live with them. Her case drew national attention and the press reported that had she not been a woman, she would undoubtedly been lynched. 

Despite her seeming link to the two deaths, nothing connected her in any way to strychnine. And nobody saw her poison any chocolates. She also cut a fine appearance in court and favorably impressed the reporters. The jury, however, found her guilty, unleashing fistfights between partisans, and widespread pleas for clemency. After six years in prison, Governor William Upham pardons her on his last day in office. In early 1897, she fled to a remote farm, miles from any train station, to spend the rest of her life in obscurity. This next one is a drawing of the Marquette and Joliet expedition. It's called Horrible Monsters. Somewhere near Marinette, Wisconsin, Father Jacques Marquette was in the prime of his life as he made his way down the west shore of Green Bay in May, 1673. With him, was Louis Joliet, a young philosopher turned trader, turned explorer, with the courage to dread nothing, where everything is to be feared. 

They stopped in late May to consult with the Menominee Indians about their plan to search for a great river to the south or to the west. Their hosts did their best to dissuade them by saying that the great river was full of horrible monsters that devoured men in canoes, that there was even a demon who was heard from a great distance, who barred the way, and swallowed up all who ventured to approach him. Fortunately, Marquette and Joliet were not deterred by these stories, and pressed on anyway, traveling thousands of miles into the interior of North America, and discovering that the Mississippi River did indeed end in the Gulf of Mexico. They did encounter at least one monster on their trip, however. According to Father Marquette's diary, he wrote, "We saw a monster with the head of a tiger, a sharp nose like that of a wildcat, with whiskers and straight erect ears." So what horrible monster did Father Marquette see in Wisconsin? Most likely, a catfish. 
(laughter)
 This next one here took place, actually, at the building that is right over there. It was not the current structure. 

This capitol that you see now is actually our third capitol. This one took place at our second capitol, which burned down. It's called the Cure for Longwinded Politicians. When Wisconsin's second Madison capitol was finished in 1869, an enormous chandelier was suspended from the ceiling of the West Wing. Lawmakers felt nervous sitting beneath it, though. So it was soon removed, leaving a hole in the ceiling. After 20 years, a small mountain of dust and grime had accumulated around the edges of the hole directly above the heads of the elected officials. One day, in the early 1890s, as a particularly verbose legislator droned on for hours, a bored colleague imagined how he could put all that dust to good use. He secretly instructed a page to lay a heavy plank across the hole, propped up on a stick, and to run a cord from the stick down to a nearby closet. The next day, when yet another speaker launched into an oration threatening to last for hours, the inventor snuck off to the closet and gave the cord a sharp tug. 

The plank crashed down with a deafening thud. And a stifling cloud of dust shot out from the hole and scattered over the members below. According to the newspaper, there was no more talking that day. 
(laughter)
 After that, the overhead silencer became something of an institution in the Wisconsin Assembly. A page was assigned to reset it regularly. And some lawmakers even brought umbrellas to their desk to protect themselves. As a result, legislators learned to express themselves in as few words as possible. And if any member left the room during a speech, the legislator with anxious glances at the ceiling, usually picked up the pace and brought his speech to an end. This next one, I don't have an image for, so you can think about the overhead silencer some more. 

It's called John Till and his Miracle Plaster. John Till was not your typical doctor. He wore farmer's overalls rather than a white lab coat. And he couldn't show you a college degree or a medical license. But at the start of the last century, people came from far and wide to be healed by his miraculous treatment. Till, an Austrian immigrant, arrived at a lumber camp at Turtle Lake in Barron County in 1898. And he brought with him a unique paste, which when applied to the back, would cure any ailment, from bunions to cancer. His theory was that illness was caused by poisons that seep into the body. And that plaster would draw those toxins out, and the patient would be cured. In the Autumn of 1905, a farm wife in the nearby town of Somerset, was near death from an infection. 

Her husband took her to Till, whose treatment appeared to cure her. The news of her recovery spread like wildfire. And before long, the little town of Somerset was taken by storm. There was even reports in northwestern Wisconsin that the plaster had been used to reattach a dog's severed tail, and that in ten days, the animal was healed and the tail once again was wagging happily. Till soon moved in with the family, who built a new wing onto their farm house to accommodate the influx of patients. His fame soon spread. And before long, trains were disgorging literally hundreds of sufferers each day. Till's plaster was a mix of kerosene and croton oil, which the encyclopedia defines as a poisonous, viscous liquid obtained from the seeds of a small tree, now considered too dangerous for medical use. The mixture was sponged on the back, which immediately began to boil and blister, supposedly lifting the toxins out of the patient's body. Till never charged for his services, but patients left behind gratuities never less than a dollar. 

The local bank reported that Till regularly deposited up to $3,000 a week in the first decade of the 20th century. Till's growing popularity and reputation eventually caught the eye of the state medical board, who several times had him arrested and brought to trial for practicing without a license. But he brought in so much money to the town of Somerset, that no jury would convict him. In 1908 though, he had a falling out with the family, and eventually left Somerset for New Richmond, Wisconsin. Till proved too unsophisticated to manage his own business, and in subsequent years, everyone from relatives and assistants, to business partners, and just outright swindlers took advantage of his lax approach to money. And as he moved around Wisconsin in search of greener pastures, lawsuits and damage claims followed him. Until finally, in 1920, the state medical board convicted him. In 1922, he was allowed to return to Austria on the condition that he never practice medicine in Wisconsin again. And he did stay away for a quarter century, returning to Wisconsin only in the 1940s, fleeing World War II, where he eventually died in 1947. This next story is about probably one of the stranger characters in Wisconsin history. 

His name is Aleezer Williams. He was born and raised among the Mohawk Indians. He was sent as a teenager to the missionary school that would become Dartmouth College. He became a Protestant missionary, and was very influential in the Indian and White communities. When he was in his 30s, Williams used these skills to help the Oneida and other Indian nations, who were rapidly losing their lands in the east, to find a new land here in Wisconsin. He led a delegation of them here to negotiate with the Menomonee for territory around Green Bay. These negotiations dragged on for a while. And in that time, Williams married an Indian girl, hoping to gain some influence, and did a few other nefarious things to try to make them end. When the negotiations finally did end, the Menomonee sent him packing. Aleezer had kind of imagined himself as becoming this great king of this Indian nation here in Wisconsin. 

But once they got their land, the Indians sent him away. So he spent several years wandering around Wisconsin trying to figure out what to do with himself. But in middle age, he came up with another idea of how to be king. He began to claim that he was the long lost child of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, who had been spirited away to America for safekeeping when they were be-headed during the French Revolution. His friends laughed at him, but Williams convinced some European aristocrats that he was heir to the French thrown, enough to create a string of transatlantic donations that helped support him in his final years. He even tricked his mother into swearing that he'd been adopted, and began issuing manifestos and signing letters, Louis Dauphin. When he died in 1858, his last words were about a dress in his possession, having been worn by Marie Antoinette. DNA tests subsequently confirmed what many people believed all along, that Williams was a liar and that the real Dauphin and indeed died in 1795. Does anyone have any questions so far? Don't be afraid. 

Any time. This next one is called the Voyageur With a Hole in His Side. On June 6, 1822, a shotgun blew a hole the size of a fist in young fur trader Alexis St. Martin's side. Military physician William Beaumont, who spent much of his career at Fort Crawford in Prairie du Chien, was astonished that he didn't simply die on the spot. Instead, he recovered, though with a permanent opening through his muscle wall and into his stomach that required bandaging for the rest of his life. Unable to support himself as a fur trader, St. Martin went to work for Beaumont as a live-in handyman, to chop wood and do other odd jobs, one of which was to open up the hole in his stomach. Through that window, Dr. Beaumont siphoned out gastric juices and inserted vegetables. 

He dangled bits of beef on a string, pulling them out after one, two or three hours, to observe the rate of digestion. Once, he put in 12 raw oysters. For ten years, Dr. Beaumont observed human digestion through the aperture in St. Martin's side. In 1833, he published a small book that became a cornerstone of internal medicine. It also made the two of them famous, because until that point, no one had been able to figure out what happened after you put food in your mouth and chewed it up. Beaumont eventually left the military and moved to St. Louis, where he had a successful private practice. St. 

Martin lived 58 years with a hole in his side, marrying and fathering several children, and dying at age 86. This next one, this is an image of Mary Hayes Chynoweth. She was one of Wisconsin's most famous psychic healers. "I was crossing the kitchen with a basin of water when suddenly, some unknown force pressed me down upon my knees, helpless," Mary Hayes Chynoweth told her biographer. It was the spring of 1853 when she was a 27-year-old school teacher in Waterloo. "Of my own will, I could not move, nor see, nor speak, but a compelling power moved my tongue to prayer in languages unknown to me or to my father, who was reading the Bible in the same room at the time." The force told her that she would spend the remainder of her life healing others. And for the next half century, she devoted herself to the practice of spiritual medicine. Hayes Chynoweth was one of Wisconsin's best known mystics, during decades when spiritualism swept across the nation. Séances, spirits knocking on tables, communication with the dead, and other supernatural phenomenon caught the public interest in the mid-19th century. 

Hayes Chynoweth rejected most of these events, though, as hoaxes and distractions, relying instead on the unique powers that she felt were channeled to her by God. She explained that Divine power allowed her to see right through the human body, and other material objects, as though they were transparent, enabling her to pinpoint the cause of disease. To heal the ill, she would take the patient's symptoms into her own body, routinely breaking out in blisters, rashes and tumors while they themselves recovered. She prescribed a variety of herbs and water treatments for the sick, and taught that the keys to health were optimism, faith, a diet mostly of vegetables and grains, and total abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, coffee and tea. Throughout the Civil War, she crisscrossed southern Wisconsin, conducting healing sessions. Patients flocked for treatment to her home. Among those who believed in her skills and came for advice or healing was US Senator William Vilas, Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice William Lyon, and the director of the Wisconsin Historical Society, Lyman Draper. She never charged any fees for her services, but rendered them free to everyone who came to her, patiently enduring in her own body her client's painful symptoms. The power, as she called it, manifested itself in other ways than just healing the sick. Under its influence, she could speak in languages, like German, Polish, Danish, and an unspecified Indian language. 

She could foresee future events, including visitors that were coming to see her, economic depressions, and market prices, allowing her family to capitalize on its wheat crop in a time of crisis. In the spring of 1883, Hayes Chynoweth foresaw a great investment in mineral wealth in northern Wisconsin that made her family rich. She looked at these maps, figured out the exact spot that they should drill. And lo and behold, they turned out to be some of the richest mines in the area. She also, around these mines, established the town of Hurley, for which she felt personally responsible. When she saw that Hurley's tavern was growing rich by ruining the health of its workers, she established a school where they could learn to read and write. In 1887, she and her son, and many of her followers, moved to a large estate in San Jose, California, where they constructed a mansion with elaborate gardens that became a colony called Edenvale. Here she spent most of the next two decades, editing and producing a journal called "True Life," and overseeing the family's business affairs. In the early 1890s, she treated an average of 3,500 people a year, most of whom doctors had abandoned as incurable. Mary Hayes Chynoweth finally passed away herself, her body worn out emotionally and spiritually, in 1905 at the age of 80. 

How many of you have read "Tarzan"? Does anyone remember the Wisconsin connection? Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote one of the most famous pulp novels in American history in 1914. In it, there's a quote, "She had been carried off her feet by the strength of the young giant. When his great arms were about her in the distant African forest, and again today in the Wisconsin woods..." Near the end of the book, we learn that Jane Porter had spent her earliest years on a farm in northern Wisconsin, before venturing with her scientist father across the Atlantic. After Tarzan rescues Jane in the African jungle, and learns both English and French, she abandons him by agreeing to marry an evil creditor of her father. She goes to live with that villain in a farmhouse left to her by her mother, in northern Wisconsin. Of course, the story doesn't end there. And a forest fire that sounds a lot like the Peshtigo Fire, is introduced to liven up the narrative. 

Just as her childhood home, and Jane herself, are about to be consumed by the flames, Tarzan miraculously appears, swinging limb to limb through what is today is the Nicolet National Forest, to pluck her from danger. All this occurs in the book's penultimate episode, Chapter 27, in which Tarzan also proposes marriage. Does Jane accept this jungle waif? Could this good Wisconsin girl truly find happiness with a husband whose life had been spent in the treetops of Africa? You'll have to read the book to find out. This one is Hermit and Snake Slayer. In 1906, middle-aged Sarah Hardwick went into seclusion on five acres of remote woods along the Mississippi River. No road led to the top of the bluff, where she set up housekeeping in a crude shanty. She came and went from the river along a foot path worn through the brush. There, she grew vegetables amidst the trees, and got cash for other necessities by clubbing rattlesnakes to collect their bounties. 

Hardwick had settled near the spot where Josiah Cleveland had made his name capturing rattlesnakes on the tip of his forked stick, and selling his catch as a sure cure for rheumatism many years before. After his death, snakes still infested the woods in such numbers that they drove even the hunters away. Waves of venomous snakes passed by her cabin at times, and she had even killed them beside her bed, where she kept a club. For 25 years, she said, she was always watching, always listening. A reporter visited her in 1931, when most of the rattlesnakes were gone, and she was supporting herself by raising ginseng. Having gathered seeds from a few wild plants some years before, she was able to cultivate a substantial crop, at $15 a pound, and sell enough each year to purchase the few store-bought things she wanted. Of course, her needs were simple. She rarely came out of the woods, and was proud of her solitary life. "I like to live away from town and be independent," she explained. When she did leave her cabin in the woods, it was usually to go down to the river and pick up a newspaper from a passing boat. 

"I like to read about England. My people came from there. My grandfather was an English bishop," she said. Although the newspapers might be several months old, "I read everything in them. I want to keep up with what is going on with the world." She just didn't want too much personal connection with it, as she rarely bothered to leave the woods. Sarah Hardwick died here in her cabin, thankfully without the snakes. This one is called No Snooze Button. Today, John Muir is best remembered as the quintessential nature lover, riding out hurricanes in tree-tops and disappearing for months at a time in the trackless wilderness. But he was also a clever inventor. 

And as a teenager, would spend many hours whittling machine parts out of wood, some of which he kept in his dorm room in North Hall, at the University of Wisconsin in the early 1860s. In a letter written years later, a woman recalled a visit to Muir's room, where she encountered one of his inventions, a combination bed-alarm clock that tipped him onto the floor at the appointed time each morning. At the same time, another mechanism would strike a match and light a candle at the foot of the bed. Muir's room was full of innovative gadgets to help him maximize his college experience. And many of them could prove quite useful today. One invention was the bookstand, that revolved after a pre-set time studying. That's what you see here. Describing the desk, Muir wrote: "I invented a desk in which the books I had to study were arranged in order at the beginning of each term. The first book to be studied was pushed up from a rack below the top of the desk, thrown open, and allowed to remain there the number of minutes required, and so on, all the day being divided according to the times of recitation, and time required and allotted to each study." This desk is now in the lobby of the Wisconsin Historical Society headquarters, at the other end of State Street, if you want to see it. 

- Yeah? 
- Does it still work? 
- That's a good question. I don't know if it still works. It's in that glass case. 
(inaudible)
 I don't know, maybe if you ask really nicely. They might let you touch it. 
(inaudible)
 Not that I know of. 

(inaudible)
 I don't know. That's a very good question. He invented all kinds of things. He won lots of ribbons that the State Fair for his inventions. This next one, I also don't have a picture for, but that might be a good thing. It's called Spurned Inventor Creates Suicide Machine. Denied credit, profit, riches, rest or peace, a neglected inventor employed his professional skills to make a dramatic exit from the world. Howard E. Harbaugh had moved to Kenosha from Illinois in 1892, and quickly put his aptitude for machinery to work for local industries. 

Among his inventions was the first automatic circle knitting machine, used in many knitting mills, and a machine that wove wire springs for mattresses. Harbaugh also worked as a contract inventor for the Chicago Rockford Hosiery Company. Retiring with no fame or wealth to his name, Harbaugh had become an eccentric character, often seen doddering around town with a cane in hand and spectacles slipping down his nose. In the end, Harbaugh used his splendid genius for destruction on himself, placing a 12 gauge shotgun in a vice, then attaching a slender strap to the trigger. He ran the strap backward and upward, over and awl driven into the wall to create a direct pull, and pulled the trigger. One more hermit story. This one is The Dodgeville Hermit. A century ago, Archibald McArthur was a celebrity of sorts. He arrived in Dodgeville just after the Civil War without a penny, but soon became a successful young attorney and amassed a fortune. He dressed in the latest fashions, owned the finest horse in town, started a newspaper, and became a mortgage lender to the citizens. 

Then, one day in middle-age, he had a change of heart. He gave away his finery, sold off his newspaper, refused to practice law, grew a beard, became a vegetarian, and entered into a hermit's life. He took a private vow of poverty, shunned alcohol and tobacco, and dressed in tattered overalls. He spent much of his time in the village cemetery, and claimed to be able to communicate with spirits. He kept to himself. Everyone knew who he was, but no one really knew him. In 1922, at age 78, he abruptly bought an automobile, loaded his few possessions in it, and drove himself to Florida to live out his remaining years. By then, he was worth more than a quarter of a million dollars, or about $3 million today. When he revised his will, he left each of his surviving relatives five dollars. He gave nearly all the rest of his fortune to a stranger who befriended him on a park bench. 

McArthur never married, left no children, appeared to have no close friends, and never explained his motives or his actions in writing. He simply lives on as the "Dodgeville Hermit." Now these are actually upstairs in the Odd Wisconsin exhibit, if you want to take a closer look. Frederick Randall may have been Wisconsin's largest resident. Known as the Scotch Giant, Randall was recognized throughout the lead region of Mineral Point for his conspicuous size and strength. Seven feet, four inches tall, he could twirl a plow over his head like a club, and carry a dozen eggs in one hand. He even married large. His wife, Jane, was also over seven feet tall. At times, Randall traveled with the circus, but his main occupation was as a teamster. But it's his mammoth shoes that have come down through history. 

This foot-shaped form on which his shoes were made, were donated to the Historical Society. They measure 13-1/2 inches long, and almost four inches wide, a size 21 in today's sizes. He was a very large man for the 19th century. 
(inaudible)
 I don't know if he had any children. It would make sense that he would have. Buying the farm took on a literal meaning in the early 20th century, when banker and land developer Benjamin Faast, organized the Wisconsin Colonization Company in northern Wisconsin. In 1917, Faast purchased about 50,000 acres of land in Sawyer County. He divided the land into farm sites, and began to offer them, ready equipped to immigrant farmers. Although this wasn't his first development scheme for northern Wisconsin, his plans for Sawyer County were scaled to a whole new level of magnitude. 

Promotional literature, like you see here, promised that each farm came with land, an attractive house and barn, a cow, two pigs, six chickens, clearing tools, clover and Timothy seed. Houses came in four styles and were, according to the brochure, attractively painted in striking contrast with the average tar paper shack of the pioneer. Beautifying the town and home site was of the utmost important to Faast, who believed that the happiness of the townspeople was directly tied to its aesthetic beauty. By providing seeds and garden plants, Faast encouraged settlers to contribute to the overall appearance of the community with flowers and vegetable gardens. The farm sites were really only the beginning of his vision. he also mapped out what he hoped would become the centerpiece of the colony, a prosperous city named Ojibwa. The plan for Ojibwa included a zoo, parks, streets with sidewalks, a restaurant, a large general store, and neighborhoods that took advantage of the natural beauty of the area. Unfortunately, Faast's dreams began to bottom out soon after they began, and the Wisconsin Colonization Company, like many companies, went bankrupt in 1929. Any other questions? All right, I'll share a few more stories with you. 

This one is about Wisconsin's only spiritualist school. It's still in existence. You can still go there today. When religion and science clashed in the 1850s, reactions were varied. Some people thought that science might help them discover the truth about the soul, life after death, and other spiritual questions. Wisconsin was not immune to this fervor, and one of the movement's best-known advocates was Morris Pratt of Rock County. Born in 1820 in New York, he moved to Milton as a young man, and built a successful farm. In the 1850s, when séances, spirit knockings, mediums, and trances came into fashion, Pratt embraced these new revelations enthusiastically, and vowed that if he were ever wealthy, he would give his fortune to support the scientific teaching of spiritual truths. Long after the general public had concluded that spiritualism was unsound or just plain uninteresting, small colonies of devotees remained in Whitewater, Lake Mills, Waterloo, and other southern Wisconsin towns. And Morris Pratt could always be found at their meetings. 

Around 1884, Pratt, one of the fortunate friends of the Wisconsin psychic I previously told you about, Mary Hayes Chynoweth, she used her psychic powers to advise Pratt on some financial investments. He invested his savings in property in northern Wisconsin. The land turned out to contain some rich iron ore. And within a few months, Pratt was able to sell his shares for more than $200,000. He became wealthy overnight. True to his word, Pratt began building an $80,000 edifice in downtown Whitewater to house a spiritualist institution. Known locally as "Pratt's Folly," the building was finished, but not occupied until after his death in 1902, when the Morris Pratt Institute registered its first students. Its curriculum consisted of the typical slate of conventional courses, English and Math, but was augmented with classes in psychic studies, mediumship, and the science of séances. The school still exists today, relocated to Milwaukee. You can enroll there to study clairvoyance, telepathy, mediumship, and psychic surgery. 

Its graduates go on to serve as clergy in one of dozens of churches that belong to the National Spiritualist Association. Yeah? 
(inaudible)
 Unfortunately not. It was the most beautiful building, but they have torn it down. The school is located in a historic building in Milwaukee, though. Not as beautiful as that, but still a beautiful building. And the school has about 900 students currently enrolled. Yes, to become spiritualists. Yeah? 

- There's a spiritualist camp held every summer. Is that connected with this group at all? 
- They are connected. They are part of the same National Spiritualist organization. And some of the people that can preach at that camp are graduates of the Morris Pratt Institute. Yeah? 
- What do they preach? 
- Well, mostly, the whole idea behind spiritualism is communication with the dead. And so, it's creating circumstances in which those that have passed on will be able to communicate to you. 
(inaudible)

 
(laughs)
 In some quarters, yeah. It's certainly not as popular as it was in the 19th century, but they still do have active followers. There is actually a Spiritualist Church here in Madison. There's four in Milwaukee. So they do. It's not a huge following, but there's definitely people that are still adhering to Spiritualism. Open any hotel nightstand drawer and you're bound to find a Bible placed there by Gideons International. The Gideons have been around for more than 100 years, and actually began in a hotel room in Wisconsin. 

On a September evening in 1898, two traveling salesmen met by chance in a Boscobel hotel. With the hotel crowded to its limits, the manager asked John Nicholson of Janesville and Samuel Hill of Beloit to share a room. In room 19 of the Central Hotel, the men discovered that they were both Christians. They prayed and read the Bible together before settling down for the night. And they reflected on the fate of salesmen spending long days on the road, and lonely nights in strange beds. They talked about starting an organization for Christian traveling men like themselves. They parted ways before they made any plans. A chance meeting of the two men at a Beaver Dam hotel in May, 1899, rekindled the idea of an association. Faced with bar rooms and worse temptations in towns across the country, Nicholson and Hill vowed to "surround the arch enemy of our souls and give him a black eye." They held their first meeting on July 1, in Janesville, and founded the Gideons, named for the man who was willing to do anything God wanted. 

As traveling men, the question of how best to serve God in the hotels where they spent most of their time naturally arose. They soon came up with the idea of putting a Bible in every hotel room, with specific passages recommended to their era's equivalent of the jet-lagged businessman. Three decades later, a survey of hotels discovered that many of these books were being used simply to prop up windows on a hot summer night, or to steady a wobbly bedframe. But many others showed well thumbed pages and worn bindings. And in one Milwaukee hotel, a battered copy bore the inscription, "God Bless my mother who is so far away." The Gideons are still alive and well, handing out more than 60 million Bibles each year, in 181 countries. 
(inaudible)
 Yep. 
(inaudible)
 Yep, same place. 

One more story I'm going to share with you, called the Healing Waters of Waukesha. On a hot August afternoon in 1868, Col. Richard Dunbar drank a glass of water that not only quenched his thirst, but saved his life. And in the process, transformed a quiet village in southeast Wisconsin into the Saratoga of the west. Although the area around Waukesha had long been known to the Potawatomi Indians as a place of sweet water, Waukesha's rise to international renown began when Col. Dunbar, a title he conferred upon himself, drank from a spring on a pasture owned by his sister-in-law. Suffering from incurable diabetes, and bewildered by the heat, Dunbar drank cup after cup of the water he proclaimed the most delicious, the most grateful beverage that entered my mouth in years. The next morning, Dunbar awoke and declared himself entirely cured. Dunbar soon acquired ownership of the miracle spring, named it Bethesda, after the Biblical pool in Jerusalem, and launched a nationwide campaign to publicize his restorative water. His efforts ushered in a 35-year period of fame and fortune for Waukesha. 

Soon, elegant hotels and beautiful parks lined city streets that attracted both the afflicted seeking cures for a wide range of diseases, and the wealthy, particularly southerners escaping the southern heat. The number of patrons became so vast that in the 1880s, during the peak of the summer season, 25 trains a day arrived from Chicago. Those that couldn't make the trip could buy Waukesha water from companies that each proclaimed themselves to be the city's best most healthful water, in bottles shipped around the world. Waukesha was not without its competitors in Wisconsin miracle water, though, as towns like Oseola on the St. Croix River, pinned its hopes on Bethania Mineral Springs, which bottled water as well as sodas, fruit drinks, and a unique beverage called Alfaloosa, made with alfalfa. Probably the best known Waukesha bottled spring water company was White Rock Spring. As famous for its water, as for its trademark symbol, a topless psyche admiring herself in a pool of water. Legend has it that Edward VII of England diluted his wine with White Rock water at his coronation, and Charles Lindbergh broke a bottle of White Rock over the nose of the Spirit of St. Louis in 1927. Waukesha's popularity as a health resort and spa began to decline in the 20th century. 

And today, many of the town's famous springs have dried up, disappeared, become polluted, or been capped. Ironically, Waukesha is today involved in another water dispute, but this time to get water, rather than to send it out. This last one is just another image that I like. 
(laughter)
 I don't really know a lot about it, but the caption on the photo just capitalizes that it's Miss Mary Barnes and the hat. And that is quite a hat. These are the kind of fun and interesting images that the Wisconsin Historical Society has. It's hard not to be captivated by them. I want to thank you for coming. Does anyone have any questions? 

(applause)