Women’s Wisconsin

Women’s Wisconsin introduces readers to dozens of compelling women, such as Ho-poe-kaw (Glory-of-the-Morning), an eighteenth-century Ho-Chunk woman chief; Juliette Magill Kinzie, whose memoir Wau Bun, the “Early Day” in the North-west describes her life at Fort Winnebago (Portage) in the 1830s; Lavinia Goodell of Janesville, the first woman lawyer in Wisconsin; Nellie Sweet Wilson, an African American single mother; and Alice DeNomie, a young Ojibwe woman awaiting the return of her soldier sweetheart, both of whos worked in the defense industry in Milwaukee during World War II.

Editor and historian Genevieve G. McBride provides the contextual commentary and overarching analysis to make the history of Wisconsin women accessible to students, scholars, and lifelong learners.

“An impressive compendium of women’s contributions to Wisconsin history. . . . As enjoyable for lay readers as it is informative, Women’s Wisconsin is an excellent contribution to both library and private history shelves, and a valuable resource for state history teachers.”

—Midwest Book Review

“No serious student of Wisconsin history—male or female—can afford to ignore Genevieve McBride’s carefully compiled anthology of writings by and about Wisconsin women. [It] not only provides new answers to old questions, but also generates a sufficient number of new queries to broaden our concept of what constitutes history in the New Millennium.”

—John D. Buenker, Professor of History, University of Wisconsin–Parkside

“Women’s Wisconsin is a wonderfully engaging narrative with a comprehensive overview of specific times and historic events enhanced and authenticated by the use of women’s journals, letters, and other primary source documents. . . . The rich collection of historic pieces woven together by the author’s presentations of the historic context greatly adds to the developing story and chronology. . . . This is an excellent read for citizens of every state.”

—Molly Murphy MacGregor, Executive Director and Cofounder, National Women’s History Project

“A wonderful compendium of the women of Wisconsin—famous, infamous, and simply interesting—that uses their lives as a window to the history of the state, the nation, and the world. McBride and the many contributors make clear the ways in which local history is connected to global events—colonization, immigration, epidemics, world wars—while never losing sight of the personalities that make investigating women’s history so fascinating.”

—Merry Wiesner-Hanks, Professor of History and former Director of Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee