New Acquisitions
- Details
- Category: Curator's Corner
Recent Acquisitions
By Peggy Derrick
During the past year LCHS has taken in donations from two families with long histories in the county. The donation from one family includes personal items that reflect the influence of world history on local life, while the other is a donation of historic city documents which had been held in trust by the family for many years.
Germania Hall Donation
Wilma Viner has donated to LCHS a collection of documents that had been found in a time capsule in the cornerstone of Germania Hall, at the corner of Ferry and Fifth Streets, when it was razed in 1966 by her husband’s company. These include business cards and advertising for local businesses, an 1891 copy of the La Crosse Daily Press newspaper, and a booklet in German with the rules of the Deutscher Verein, or German Club, of La Crosse. Also in the donation is a small handwritten document in colloquial German, for which we have yet to find a translator. Titled “In Memoriam,” it includes local names, early La Crosse dates, and amounts of money, all of which lead us to think it may be a history of the German club in La Crosse, with acknowledgement of the donors for the building, Germania Hall.
See objects in our collection on the Web
- Details
- Category: Collections
LCHS has added artifacts to the Wisconsin Heritage Online data base: go to http://content.mpl.org/lacrosse to see images of historic artifacts in our collection, including the Brekke collection: momentos of a Norwegian farm boy from Coulee country who saved uniforms, letters and other souvenirs from his time as a soldier fighting in North Africa and Italy during WWII.
As time allows we will be adding more items from our collection to the WHO website.
Item Donation
- Details
- Category: Collections
LCHS Donation Policy
The La Crosse County Historical Society acquires and maintains artifacts of past, present and potential future historical interest which are relevant to its mission to:
Preserve, interpret and display the history of La Crosse County and to educate regarding the importance of that history.
The Society cannot accept all donation offers. The cost of acquiring, processing, conserving, storing and providing access to collection items is large.
Heileman Shawl
- Details
- Category: Curator's Corner
Checking Out an Artifact’s Story
When I began as curator, The La Crosse County Historical Society had a crocheted shawl which was waiting to be catalogued. The deed of gift accompanying the shawl explained that it had been handed down in the donor’s family, with a note stating that Johanna Bantle Heileman had worn it while “at sea” on her journey to America in 1852. Someone had jotted a comment on the deed of gift, wondering about the authenticity of the shawl, and whether it could really be that old. Good question! While family stories always have at least a kernel of truth in them, over time details get forgotten, or get varnished in the retelling. But there is always information to be gotten from the object itself and sometimes that information can bolster a family’s story or prove it incorrect.
Donations 101
- Details
- Category: Curator's Corner
An explanation of the donation process, based on an actual example
Part One: Contact
When someone calls the Historical Society regarding something they want to donate I am the one they need to speak to; as curator I apply the criteria for acceptance and decide whether to accept the item. If I think the article should be accepted I will bring it to the collections committee for approval. But now and then something comes along that is so wonderful and so clearly a part of local history that I have no hesitation taking the item on my own.
