My research question was how people got to Wisconsin, why, and how did they like it when they got settled in?  However, I think that my question has changed just a bit because my research has become more complex.  My question from my research now is, how was life like in Wisconsin in the 1800’s and how has agriculture developed?  From my research over the past couple of weeks I have learned what life was like for three different families that moved to Wisconsin it the 1800’s.  I have learned what their struggles were, what advancements were made, and what they did to make ends meet financially.  From the research of the families, I continued to look into the history of agriculture and lumbering.  By continuing my research into the history of agriculture I was able to find lots of information about what happened with the crops that they started growing, and how we developed into the large dairy state that we are.  I’m just starting to finish up my research with the history of lumbering in Wisconsin because that had a huge impact on Wisconsin’s past.  Overall, I believe that this was an amazing journey to feel like I was stepping into someone else’s shoes.  It has made me appreciate the small things in life that we take for granted every day like internet, cell phones, cars, and technological advancements in medicine and agriculture.  However, I am still left with a few questions.  I still wonder about some aspects of the family life, including their education development.  When did they children start going to school?  How many grade levels were there?  Also, with the lumbering industry I wonder how many fatalities there were because it was very dangerous, and what did they do after the lumbering industry collapsed?

My third source that I chose to write about was from two website articles.  One was from  Wisconsin Historical Society website and it was an article about farming and rural life.  The other website was from the Historical U.S. Agriculture Collections and an article of Wisconsin History of Agriculture.  I selected these sources to get a deeper understanding of what farming was like back in the 1800’s.  From these websites, I would like to expand my knowledge and find out what the farmers started planting, what worked and what failed?  How did things develop in terms of what the planted and the foods that came from them.  This source will offer me a complete, and complex understanding of farming and rural life.

This website appeals to the audience by using logos.  The website shows this by telling us the causes and effects from different farming techniques and different crops.  It also provides us with a problem and solution.  For example, the wheat famine.  The wheat famine was a sometimes said to be a blessing in disguise because it lead farmers to figure out what they had to do to keep their soil fertilized and retain good nutrients.  One website was created by the Wisconsin Historical Society and one by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) which makes them very credible sources.  These sources are intended for older people to read, perhaps college students or just people looking to find out more information about Wisconsin’s farming history.  They both consist of a lot of text which makes it unappealing to youth.  The source from the USDA and NRCS was last revised in 2013, which makes it very current and useful to people using it for research today.  I was not able to find exactly when the other article was published but I do know it was sometime after 1996.  The purpose of these articles is to inform people about the history of rural life and agriculture in Wisconsin.  This includes a large audience perhaps from college students, to researchers, to farmers, or to agriculture teachers in high school.

At the first part of my research I thought everyone that immigrated to Wisconsin started as farmers.  As I read this article, I realized they did not.  Early European settlers who arrived in the 19th century were drawn into the underground mineral wealth.  Although, this period did not last very long.  Everything began to change when land was surveyed and people began purchasing their own land which lead to Wisconsin’s dairy life.  Wheat was the first and most important cash crop in Wisconsin because it was easy to grow and inexpensive.  However, despite the early success disaster struck Wisconsin wheat farmers when a disease called wheat rust and tiny insects known as chinch bugs destroyed crops.  The Wisconsin State Agricultural Society was founded in 1851 because of the crisis of the wheat farming.  Through this, the society let farmers report what happened and the conditions of their wheat farm.  This encouraged towns to hold state fairs and cattle shows to encourage the importance of soil rotation.    To keep a profit, farmers had to switch to something else.

What the farmers didn’t know is that this famine was perhaps a blessing in disguise.  They didn’t know that they had to rotate crops to keep nutrition balance in check.  The Civil War stimulated Wisconsin’s wheat production but it also provided a time for experimentation and specialization with other crops.  Many German-American families began dairying on farms abandoned by people who had left to seek unspoiled what lands on the Great Plains.  Many Wisconsin farmer’s began to turn to corn, oats, and hay to feed their cows that produced milk, cheese, and butter. From this came along milk production that created a need for cooperation among the farmers in processing and marketing.  Cheese factories were establish, and over time through years of education farmer’s developed new procedures for making fresh wholesome milk.  The Wisconsin’s Dairymen’s Association was founded in 1872.  This established boards of trade for dairy products and negotiated favorable freight rates for Wisconsin dairy products.   In 1890, Wisconsin ranked first, second, and third nationally in the production of rye, barley, and oats. One other big farming product was the production of cranberries and tobacco.

Green peas, sweet corn, cucumbers, snap beans, lima bean,s and beets also became very important commercial crops in the 1880s and Wisconsin soon led the nation in the production of vegetables for processing. As many farms were developing and prospering in the south, in the northern counties logging became a huge industry.  The lumbering industry in northern Wisconsin provided farmers with winter employment and profit.  However, by the end of the century,  exploitation of the forests eroded the the North’s economic base.  Overall, Wisconsin still remains to be a leader in agriculture in the nation but recently it is on the rise to become more of corporate farming rather than family farming.

I believe that these two sources were very beneficial for me.  I’m glad that I decided to pull information from both sources because then they gave me a well-rounded idea of what exactly agriculture was like back then and how it developed over time.  I believe both of these sources are very credible because they are from the USDA, NRCS, and the Wisconsin HIstorical Society.  I don’t have any doubts about anything that I read, I believe that the development of the different crops was a long, hard process of trial and error.

I learned that things didn’t come easy to the new comers.  They had to work very hard for what they wanted and had to put in a lot of time and effort just to make ends meet.  It was interesting to me that cranberries and tobacco were two major crops in Wisconsin with diary farming.  From the U.S. Agriculture Collections website, it only included a little bit about the history of lumbering.  For that reason, I will continue my research into the lumbering industry.  I feel like that was also a very, very important part of Wisconsin’s past and it provided many jobs for people that came to the area.

My second source is a secondary source that comes from wisconsinhistory.org.  This website was very helpful for attaining information about two different families that immigrated to Wisconsin in late 1800’s.  The stories help me get a better idea on how life was like for people in Wisconsin.  Before this, I only read diaries from one family in Wisconsin.  To expand my knowledge and get two different perspectives helps me gather all of the information I will need to truly understand how life was like back then.  They explain why they moved from over seas, their family, and what they did for survive on the Wisconsin frontier.

I think that both of these stories on the website provide the audience with pathos.  While I was reading both stories I was feeling emotions of happiness because one family were united after years of being apart and both families kept their children healthy with no deaths.  These articles makes the audience feel happy by providing them with positive answers.  For example, both families live a long time together and do not face any huge sicknesses or environmental struggles.  Their children also stayed healthy and grew up to be successful people with families of their own in America.  Having these emotions, it makes the article highly effective.  Before reading it, I expected to read about struggles they had and death in the family, but to my surprise nothing bad happened.  The information that I read is from a 4th grade history book, so it gives a very broad view about what happened and what life was like.  I made the choice to still use the information, but to expand on the information.  The intended audience for this piece is younger readers, since it is a fairly easy text to read with pictures.  Although, it provided me with really good information and a start to where I will take my research. The purpose for writing this text book was to teach children about what life was like for the immigrants that moved to Wisconsin.  The authors of this book were Bobbie Malone and Kori Oberie.  Malone is the former director of the Office of School Services at the Wisconsin Historical Society (1995-2011). With a master’s degree in elementary education, she taught school for ten years before taking a doctorate in American History. Bobbie has authored and edited many student books and teachers guides on Wisconsin history for the state’s classrooms.  Oberie  is a historical researcher, writer, and social studies instructional designer who has worked as an educator in museums, historic sites, and for public television.  With knowing this, I know that this site if very reliable and credible because both of these authors are very educated and knowledgeable.

The Koepsell family was the first family I read about that immigrated to Wisconsin from Pomerania, Europe.  Friedrich and Sophia Koepsell and their three children moved to Kirchayn, an area that was northwest of Milwaukee.  There they practiced their Old Lutheran religious beleifs and built their log house in 1859 on 40 acres of land.  In that same year Sophia gave birth to a second son.  Friedrich was both a farmer and a skilled carpenter.  He also built houses and barns for other families that lived around the same area.  During the first ten years, Friedrich expanded his farm from 40 acres to 130 acres.  He farmed some of it, and then perhaps did some logging.  He also used horses to farm, he grew hay and raised dairy cows, beef cows, sheep, and pigs.  This was the typical animals to have on a farm back then, as it is today.  He also grew a lot of barley, which he may of sold it  to local brewers to make beer.  The couple had three more children, which made them a family total of seven people.  The older kids helped Sophia take care of the apple trees, the large vegetable garden, and the large potato field.  In 1886, Friedrich was 67 and Sophia was 59, they sold the farm.  We do not know what happened after this time.

The second family I read about was the Ketola family.  In the spring of 1889, Heikki Ketola left Finland and traveled by steamboat to New York.  He left his wife, Maria, and their five children back home until he earned enough money to have them sent over.  It ended up being nine years before he had saved enough money to bring his family over.  He wanted to be a farmer, but worked at two different Lake Erie ports in Ohio for about three and a half years.  In 1892, Heikki moved to Oulu in northwestern Wisconsin and entered a homestead claim to 80 acres of land.  The Homestead Act was a national law of 1862 that gave people to opportunity to own land without paying cash for it.  In exchange for the deed proving ownership, they had to build a house and the land and live there.  Between 1893 and 1898, Heikki built and lived in a log house.  He also built a log barn for one horse and six cows.  In 1898, he had enough money to have Maria and his children sent to Wisconsin.  Soon after the settled in, Maria gave birth to three more children.  Their total family size at this point was ten people.  After being in Wisconsin for a total of 13 years, he built a home, bar, two hay sheds, and a large root cellar to store rutabagas to feed his cows and potatoes to feed his family.  Farming in northwestern Wisconsin was no easy task because the growing season was very short.  To make ends meet Heikki worked at a different job off the farm a few months every year to earn cash for things they couldn’t grow or build.  Then he gan selling telephones, cream separators, and farm equipment.  Finally Maria passed away at age 92, and Heikki died in 1954 at the age of 91.  Their sons, Oscar and Fred, continued to live in the log house on their parent’s farm.

I really enjoyed these two stories about the two families and their life.  I think it provided me with a lot of great knowledge.  Money was tough to make when you had to work all day just to keep your farm up and running and making ends meet.  Like the Ketola family though sometimes the husband got a second job.  Both families had animals and built log houses which was typical for most families back then.  Although since the articles were so short, I wonder if they faced some things that were typical to happen back then?  Perhaps sickness, or a famine to crops.  I wish that they had given a little bit more information but I still got a pretty good idea on their daily life.

This source contributes to the understand of my question because I received much more information on what other families did when they came to Wisconsin.  Having more than one example gives me much more background information on where to go from here.  After getting three examples of family stories I am going to shift my research to the history of logging in Wisconsin and the history of agriculture.  These were to two most valued things to make a profit back then so I feel like I need more understanding of how the two processes worked.  It makes me wonder, what exactly to the farmers plant? What gave them the best profit?  What was easiest to grow and what was the hardest?  Was it easy to farm without the advancement of farm machinery?  Also, it makes me wonder about the logging industry.  What were some of the different job positions that people held in the industry?  Was there a good profit in working for the mills?  What happened when production declined?

My source for my research on the history of family life in Western Wisconsin is a primary source.  It is letters that are written be Ellen Spaulding who moved to Eau Claire who wrote letters to family which were in New York.  I selected this source because I was very interested to look at person letter that were written about their journey and what the family went through.  The letters are written in the time span from 1870 to 1887.

I believe the letters provide a very intimate rhetorical distance with the reader because the letters are very personal.  Ellen, who is the author of these letters, probably did not think that people would be reading her letters in 2014 that were written in the 1800’s.  The purpose for writing these  letters was to keep in contact with her family who lived in New York.  However, the audience switches to students because the letters were saved and put into our University’s archive  selection.  These letters help with students doing research, like myself, on the history of family life in Wisconsin.  They talk about hard times that the family faced including illnesses including the mumps and money issues to buy land and start a farm.  Ellen’s husband worked for a lumber company and he provided all of their income, which was not very much.  Also the letters in general provide common ground because they moved to Eau Claire and I live in Eau Claire.  From her letters, she talks about how beautiful the land is and I can agree with her completely.

The sources content consists of all letters.  They first start out as Ellen writing about them struggling with money to buy a farm, then saying how her husband is working for a lumber company.  Her daily routine is mostly tending her garden, knitting, and cooking.  Which was typical for a woman to do back then.  She also talks a lot about the different plants she planted, and that she wishes her family would write more often.  For starting a farm, it was very cheap a cow was $100, a calf was $25, and a pig was $10.  This is very different from what people pay now days!  For fun, they had dances on the weekends in a large Music Hall.  I thought this was pretty interesting because today, that is typically not what families do.  They either go to the movies, or out to dinner.  Later in her letters, she talks about how many schools had to be closed down because of illnesses going around.  Some of the illnesses included diphtheria, measles, chicken pox, and scarlet fever.  Ellen died between 1880-1885 with an unknown cause of death.  The rest of the letters are between a few different family members talking about their kids and school, farming, and the weather.  To me, these were not that important because they were very confusing to follow.

I found the source interesting to read because you got a good feel to what life was like back then.  Things were cheap, but for what people were getting paid, it was sometimes hard to make a living.  It also was difficult dealing with the sickness because they did not have the technology and medicine advancements to cure people.  I was a little disappointed that most of the letters just consisted of her daily life of planting flowers and asking her mother and father to send her more things and write more.  I feel like she was a child that was left out from the rest of her family.  It was still interesting to learn about all of the family relations, but after many letters it got a little boring.

I learned that life back then was not easy, you had to work for many things in life that you wanted.  Money was tight and people always did the best they could with providing themselves with only the bare minimum of needs.  Although, it was nice that they had a relaxing life as well.  They didn’t live a life as we do today with always being on the go.  Sunday’s were often relaxing and a family day.    I think that the Spaulding family had a pretty good life, they were not very rich but they were not poor either.  They had what they needed, they were happy and stayed very healthy.  From here, I would like to more about the lumbering business in Eau Claire because I know that was one of the biggest industries here.  I also would like to look into what other families faced instead of just one family. I had a general idea about the life of farming families before I read these letters, but the letters gave me much more information in detail about what they went through.  I still have questions though about the lumbering industry, and what the children did to help around the farm.  I think that looking at the children’s life is also important and interesting.

This is a picture of a typical family in the 1800’s.  It shows that families back then had large families so that they had lots of help on the farm to help the family prosper.

My research question is about what the average life was like for people who came to live in northwestern Wisconsin.  I am very interested in this topic because I love to read about the past and learn about what our elder generations went through.  I believe the history of our land is important to learn about so we can do the best to protect it and understand it’s historical importance.

Western Wisconsin has gone through many technological advances, changing societies, and faced hard struggles between sicknesses, money, and farming.  I want to find out more about how people got here, why, and how did they like it when they got settled in.

I believe the question is worth exploring because it builds community.  As our writing class at UWEC, we all share common ground of coming to Eau Claire for a purpose.  We can possibly relate to some of the things that they went through or find out new challenges they faced.  I think that Wisconsin is very interesting to read about before everything was infused with technology.  Between writing letters, no cars, Internet, TV or cell phones our ancestors led a very different lifestyle than we do today.  They had to write letters to communicate and wait days upon weeks to hear back from a family member.  Today, we can get a hold of someone on our cell phone in the matter of seconds. Looking back, I think I would be very stressed if I could not communicate with others over the telephone.  Waiting for a letter in the mail can be very difficult and stressful because I would worry that something has either happened to the person I wrote or if my letter got lost.

I do not currently have a satisfactory understanding of my topic at this time because I have not read that much about it.  I still have questions about what exactly people did to make a living, domestic life, family relationships, economic conditions, lumbering, religious revivals, and how they survived through famines and plagues.