Nineteenth Century America
Eugene V. Debs: Socialist for President, Over and Over Again
Labor organizer Eugene V. Debs was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1855. He left home when he was fourteen to work for the railroad—not unusual for the time. In 1875, he helped organize a local lodge of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Fireman, a fraternal benefit society which gradually took on the role of a…
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Road Trip Through History: The Sawmill Museum at Clinton, Iowa
The Sawmill Museum at Clinton, Iowa, was our last stop on this year’s Great River Road adventure—and a fitting stop it was. Logging was a recurring theme this year and last year. Beginning in Lake Itasca in Minnesota almost every local historical museum or GRR interpretive center has had at least one panel on logging.*…
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Road Trip Through History: Button, Button, Who’s Got the Button
The nineteenth century button industry based on fresh-water mussels was a recurring theme of our ten days on the Great River Road this year. In 1891 a German button manufacturer named John Frederick Boepple opened a button factory in Muscatine, Iowa, after a change in tariff laws caused his business in Germany to fail. Shell…
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