Author: Staff

In 1858 Abraham Lincoln lost a contested election to Stephen A. Douglas for Senator in Illinois. But he won accolades and respect for his clever and shrewd campaign. The nation knew him as a rising politician. As a result, he was invited the following year to speak at the Wisconsin State Fair. At that time in 1859, the event was held on the Brockway ground at 12th Street and Grand Avenue. Today, that location is the Marquette University campus. A marker commemorating his address can be found at the corner of 13th Street and Wells Street. A year later,...

The transformative political activist Meta Schlichting Berger was remembered by a new generation of young girls, who memorialized the prominent educator’s lasting influence with a new memorial at Forest Home Cemetery on June 24. The members of Cudahy Girl Scout Troop 8617 worked over the past two years to raise the $800 needed to install a stone marker at Berger’s gave site. Buried alongside her husband and socialist politician Victor, she was documented by historians as expressly forbidding any memorials to her as “a frivolous expense.” But to the girls who were in the fourth grade at the time,...