If you have ancestors from Wisconsin or an interest in Wisconsin history, we are excited about the addition of new papers from the cities of Kenosha, Lake Geneva and Viroqua, Wisconsin!

Kenosha News – March 1, 1919

Kenosha is in southeastern Wisconsin, on the shore of Lake Michigan, and just north of the Illinois state line. We have issues from the Kenosha News, the Kenosha News Courier and the Sunday News that date back to 1895. Originally a Native American settlement, Kenosha’s access to transportation lines brought white settlers in the 1830s. Later immigrants from Italy, Denmark, Germany, Poland, and Ireland came to the area.  

In the early 1900s, silent movies were a favorite form of entertainment. In 1914, the Burke Theatre opened on Market Street. When the film The Silver Horde opened in 1920, managers launched a treasure hunt to publicize the film. They hid 10 boxes of silver around Kenosha. The promotion created a stir as residents hunted the treasure. Four years later, the Burke was the scene of another kind when a skunk decided to visit the theater causing pandemonium with the audience.

About 30 miles away from Kenosha is Lake Geneva, Wisconsin and home of the Lake Geneva Herald and the Lake Geneva Regional News. Today Lake Geneva is a vacation destination, but when the Lake Geneva Herald began publishing in 1872, the population was just over 2,000 and the town had one school, a few churches and a smattering of small-town businesses. After the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, Lake Geneva attracted wealthy business moguls who moved to the area while Chicago rebuilt. Beautiful mansions like Stone Manor, Glanworth Gardens and the Wrigley estate line the shore and helped the area earn the nickname “Newport of the West”.

Glanworth Gardens – The Driehaus Estate

Residents living around the lake receive their mail by boat, a tradition that began in 1916 when roads were very primitive. The boat travels at a steady 5 mph, while a “mail jumper” jumps from the boat, races up the dock and swaps the incoming mail with the outgoing mail before the boat has traveled out of reach.

The Vernon County Censor is based in Viroqua and we have issues dating back to 1856. The paper was published weekly, however, on June 28, 1865, a deadly tornado swept through town destroying the printing office and leaving the town devastated. Two weeks later, the paper published an account of the damage. “Large houses were sucked into the air like a feather and tossed about like a wisp of hay in the air.” If you had ancestors from nearby communities like Harmony, Chaseburg, Newton or Westby, search the Vernon County Censor for updates from those towns.

Start searching our new Wisconsin papers today on Newspapers.com!

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22 thoughts on “New Papers Added from Wisconsin

  1. That’s great to see.
    Your service is wonderful.
    However, what about other major papers in major cities of the globe? It’s great that you have The Age in Melbourne (Australia) but what about The Herald Sun?
    Not that it’s entirely up to you to archive our material.

    1. De Jeannette Kavanagh, do you work for The Herald Sun? We would love to expand our Australian collection!

  2. Really interesting I lived in Wisconsin for about 30 years but when I retired I couldn’t afford to anymore. Doesn’t mean I don’t love Wisconsin, my children are there but Tennessee’s cost of living is about 1/2 as much as Wisconsin. It’s worth it just can’t afford it. Will search internet right away for more info. Thanks Lady Belle Cardwell

  3. Thanks so much for adding Kenosha papers! I live in Milwaukee and have ancestors from all throughout SE Wisconsin.

    You have a fabulous collection of newspapers from all over–I use them almost every day and have often lost myself for hours reading stories from the past in their pages.

    Any chance you could ever add the major Milwaukee papers? They have been imaged, but aren’t readily available to most people and aren’t searchable. That would be the day if you could ever get the entire Milwaukee Sentinel, Milwaukee Journal, and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel into your collection.

      1. Sherrel, I just checked and we have numerous papers from Green Bay and Manitowoc (both around 25 miles from Brillion) though none from Brillion itself. When I did a quick search for Brillion from those nearby cities, both returned about 45,000 results. Might be worth a search!

        1. Appleton, WI papers also cover Brillion news. Always look at maps for cities surrounding small towns. I do a lot of newspaper research in southern central IL and have learned that my people are often in the Decatur IL papers, 25-35 miles away from the small towns in which they lived.

    1. Mary Robin Frank Most editions of The Milwaukee Journal and Sentinel can be found in the Google News Archive

      1. Yes I can access them through Google. However, the access is unreliable–sometimes available and sometimes not. For a couple of years it was taken off Google for who knows what reasons. Plus, the Google stuff is not searchable in any useful way. One has to know dates and do a lot of browsing. Believe me, I’m quite familiar with those papers, as my dad’s family was from Milwaukee and I’ve searched those papers for years. I think they’d be better on Newspapers.com, but I realize there are copyright issues that would have to be resolved.

      2. I’m sorry, Thomasz. I didn’t mean to sound unappreciative. Google is an excellent resource for papers. Thank you for reminding me. I shouldn’t write emails late at night!

  4. Thank you for every paper you add! Can’t wait until you get all the Baraboo,.Wisconsin, papers!!!

  5. I applaud you for your extended coverage.!am a Canadian,our Newspaper coverage is almost non-existent. Considering , Canada’s size this is hardly representative of the added cost to me. When I joined ,I was so looking forward for Canadian coverage.Very little interest for me at 1st level of subscription.tried with the 2nd level–only to tell me that was only available to me at the third level,if I needed it, again at an added cost. I can not again afford to pay the extra cost. I’m considering dropping it altogether. I would like to see what provinces etc. will be covered before I subscribe or cancel and look for Canadian coverage-.I have been with ancestry for many years.The prices increase but adequate representation,of newspaper coverage certainly does not. I hope that you are listening and care enough to respond adequately. Thank you.

    1. Nancy Jenkin, I only know of two levels. I have the part that is bundled through Ancestry and then I have Publishers’ Extra.

      You can click on the BROWSE tab and it will show you all that is in there now for Canada. The ones that require the higher-access level have an orange symbol with a white plus mark. Usually parts of some papers are available with the lower-rate sub, but the higher rate-sub covers additional years.

      I haven’t explored the Canadian papers yet, as I’m just starting to trace my Canadian ancestors (I only had a few).

    2. Hello Nancy, Mary Robin Frank is correct regarding the different plans we have here at Newspapers.com, the basic plan which is made up primarily of public domain content, and the Publishers Extra which adds publications and date ranges that are under copyright protection and for which we have worked out licensing with the copyright owners. Regarding the Canadian content, you are correct that the available number of papers is relatively small at this time, but this is something that we are working on. We are in discussions with several Canadian publishing groups as well as several archives to expand our coverage. If you do choose to end your subscription, please check back as the number of available Canadian papers will certainly increase. As Mary mentioned above, you can check available Canadian content at any time, even without a current subscription, by going here: https://www.newspapers.com/browse/Canada

  6. Thank you so much for adding more Wisconsin papers. I spent last night looking for my mother-in-law’s family in Kenosha and found several articles I did not have.

  7. Hello!

    Thank you for all the good work you do! Fingers crossed you can add the Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel to your collection in the future.

  8. I lived in Wisconsin in 1957.
    Monona hills
    Madison
    So many memories at a young age.
    Dairy farms
    Fairs
    Snow
    Cold
    Attended Various schools
    Burning trash
    Chicago
    Madison capital building
    Wisconsin Dell’s
    Storybook land
    2 of my relatives that came to Wisconsin were murdered later in life in New Jersey
    An uncle waited outside in the freezing cold for many hours until we got home…no cell phones

  9. Have searched the Fond du Lac, Ripon, Appleton areas papers and found a lot of interesting stuff about my relatives, but I am still looking for the West Bend papers; the West Bend Pilot and its successor the West Bend News.

  10. How long does a copyright last on newspaper articles?. . If a service copies newspapers articles and then posts it in a database on the Internet, is there also a copyright on the Internet content?.

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