"This is a book with great meaning for those of us who grew up on farms, and a book to be shared with young people eager to know more about pioneer life." --Jerry Apps, author of "Old Farm: A History" and "Whispers and Shadows: A Naturalist's Memoir" "A Settler's Year" provides a rare glimpse into the lives of early immigrants to the upper Midwest. Evocative photographs taken at Old World Wisconsin, the country's largest outdoor museum of rural life, lushly illustrate stories woven by historian, novelist, and poet Kathleen Ernst and compelling firsthand accounts left by the settlers themselves. In this beautiful book, readers will discover the challenges and triumphs found in the seasonal rhythms of rural life in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As they turn the pages--traveling from sprawling farm to tidy crossroads village, and from cramped and smoky cabins to gracious, well-furnished homes--they'll experience the back-straining chores, cherished folk traditions, annual celebrations, and indomitable spirit that comprised pioneer life. At its heart "A Settler's Year" is about people dreaming of, searching for, and creating new homes in a new land. This moving book transports us back to the pioneer era and inspires us to explore the stories found on our own family trees.

Between 1850 and 1906, La Crosse, Wisconsin, was typical of Mississippi River towns that received waves of Black settlers who followed the promise of an expanding frontier and available paths to that frontier. This work on Black La Crosse provides biographical sketches of recorded heads-of-household and families that lived in La Crosse during this half-century and presents data in comparative forms respecting residence, occupation, and personal information for all known persons of African decent who lived in La Crosse before 1906 and a narrative analysis of that data. The author also includes reproductions of three articles respecting La Crosse's Black experience, written for and published by the La Crosse County Historical Society in its magazine, Past, Present, & Future.