This is one of the finest statewide sourcebooks ever published, a remarkable compilation of sources and resources that are available to help researchers find their Michigan ancestors. It identifies records on the state and regional level and then the county level, providing details of vital records, court and land records, military records, newspapers, and census records, as well as the holdings of the various societies and institutions whose resources and facilities support the special needs of the genealogist. County-by-county, it lists the names, addresses, websites, e-mail addresses, and hours of business of libraries, archives, genealogical and historical societies, courthouses, and other record repositories; describes their manuscripts and record collections; highlights their special holdings; and provides details regarding queries, searches, and restrictions on the use of their records.

A mirror of great changes that were occurring on the national labor rights scene, the 1913–14 Michigan Copper Strike was a time of unprecedented social upheaval in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. With organized labor taking an aggressive stance against the excesses of unfettered capitalism, the stage was set for a major struggle between labor and management. The Michigan Copper Strike received national attention and garnered the support of luminaries in organized labor like Mother Jones, John Mitchell, Clarence Darrow, and Charles Moyer. The hope of victory was overshadowed, however, by violent incidents like the shooting of striking workers and their family members, and the bitterness of a community divided. No other event came to symbolize or memorialize the strike more than the Italian Hall tragedy, in which dozens of workers and working-class children died. In Community in Conflict, the efforts of working people to gain a voice on the job and in their community through their unions, and the efforts of employers to crush those unions, take center stage. Previously untapped historical sources such as labor spy reports, union newspapers, coded messages, and artifacts shine new light on this epic, and ultimately tragic, period in American labor history.

Details a century and a half of copper mining along Upper Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula, from the arrival of the first incorporated mines in the 1840s until the closing of the last mine in the mid-1990s. In Hollowed Ground, author Larry Lankton tells the story of two copper industries on Lake Superior-native copper mining, which produced about 11 billion pounds of the metal from the 1840s until the late 1960s, and copper sulfide mining, which began in the 1950s and produced another 4.4 billion pounds of copper through the 1990s. In addition to documenting companies and their mines, mills, and smelters, Hollowed Ground is also a community study. It examines the region's population and ethnic mix, which was a direct result of the mining industry, and the companies' paternalistic involvement in community building. While this book covers the history of the entire Lake Superior mining industry, it particularly focuses on the three biggest, most important, and longest-lived companies: Calumet & Hecla, Copper Range, and Quincy. Lankton shows the extent of the companies' influence over their mining locations, as they constructed the houses and neighborhoods of their company towns, set the course of local schools, saw that churches got land to build on, encouraged the growth of commercial villages on the margin of a mine, and even provided pasturage for workers' milk cows and space for vegetable gardens. Lankton also traces the interconnected fortunes of the mining communities and their companies through times of bustling economic growth and periods of decline and closure. Hollowed Ground presents a wealth of images from Upper Michigan's mining towns, reflecting a century and a half of unique community and industrial history. Local historians, industrial historians, and anyone interested in the history of Michigan's Upper Peninsula will appreciate this informative volume.

Challenging long-held patriarchal assumptions about Italian women's work in the United States Diane C. Vecchio's unique study considers the work experiences of Italian immigrant women and their daughters in the previously unexamined regions of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Endicott, New York, during the turn of the twentieth century. Using Italian and American sources and rich oral histories, this study reveals that women in Italy had economic responsibilities that often included work experiences outside of the home, including jobs as midwives and businesswomen. Demonstrating the regional variation of Italian women's work as well as the skills they transplanted to America balances the image of inexperienced and low-skilled laborers that dominates scholarship on Italian working women. Vecchio's research on Endicott sheds light on the gendered nature of life in a "company town" governed by welfare paternalism, while her research on Milwaukee emphasizes how Italian immigrant women turned to small business enterprise when local opportunities for wage-earning were limited. This comparative method helps to move beyond reductionist theories and conventional portraits of Italian women to explore the diverse factors that prompted them to seek certain kinds of occupations to the exclusion of others.

Arthur Thurner tells of the enormous struggle of the diverse immigrants who built and sustained energetic towns and communities, creating a lively civilization in what was essentially a forest wilderness. Their story is one of incredible economic success and grim tragedy in which mine workers daily risked their lives. By highlighting the roles women, African Americans, and Native Americans played in the growth of the Keweenaw community, Thurner details a neglected and ignored past. The history of Keweenaw Peninsula for the past one hundred and fifty years reflects contemporary American culture--a multicultural, pluralistic, democratic welfare state still undergoing evolution. Strangers and Sojourners, with its integration of social and economic history, for the first time tells the complete story of the people from the Keweenaw Peninsula's Baraga, Houghton, Keweenaw, and Ontonagon counties.

For more than 350 years, Italian immigrants have played important roles in the opening and development of the land that is now Michigan, from their participation in the French fur trade up to the present day. Through an emphasis on the family as the essential institution in ethnic group success, Russell M. Magnaghi celebrates the accomplishments of Michigan's famous and not-so-famous Italian sons and daughters as he documents their struggles and achievements. Through the tenacity and hard work of the immigrants and their descendants, Italians in Michigan have progressed from unskilled laborers to some of the highest positions in business, politics, culture, and education.