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?
You did a really good job with this post, especially with your very detailed summary of the two different family’s. You talked a little bit about some rhetorical context when you talked about pathos, however I think you need to explore more rhetorical context. You could talk about who was the intended audience, what was the purpose for these, who wrote the stories on the two different families and what was the authors back ground. You could even try and see if the author had any situated ethos. I would also suggest looking into “with the grain and against the grain” points. Try and see if for any reason there may be some bias in these writings, or what were you expecting prior to reading them that was proven true when you did read them?
Farming in Wisconsin is very big, I found that it didn’t become as popular until mining died down in Wisconsin from my topic. Learning about the families who were a part of the agriculture makes it fascinating to see how it was passed down from the parents to their children seeing that they follow in their parents footsteps. You go in to great detail while writing this about the families, which helps learning a great deal about the history of agriculture in Wisconsin.