Small-town newspaper wedding announcements often provide all sorts of details that might otherwise be lost to history. While scanning a box of photographs I discovered a 1958 clipping about my parents wedding from The Reminder-Enterprise, a weekly newspaper in Cudahy, Wisconsin. The late David D. Hanneman (1933-2007) and the former Mary K. Mulqueen (1932-2018) were … Continue reading Newspaper Article Details Parents’ 1958 Wedding
There was a time when letters were the primary means of long-distance communication for families and friends. Even short updates were dashed off on a card or a sheet of special stationery. Long-distance telephone calls were expensive and typically reserved for special occasions or emergencies. For family historians, finding old letters can unearth all sorts … Continue reading A Glimpse at Life Through Letters Home, 1958-59
Handwritten letters are a lost art, so it was particularly thrilling to find one inside a card from my paternal grandparents, Carl and Ruby Hanneman, sent for my first birthday in June 1965. My grandmother was a prolific letter writer, note scribbler and update scrivener. She wrote in a stream of consciousness. Sentences didn’t always … Continue reading A Card & Letter for Your First Birthday, June 1965
High school yearbooks are an excellent source for family historians to find sometimes-hidden facts and images from a loved one’s past. And as I discovered with my late father’s copy of the Mauston High School 1949 yearbook, it’s wise to stroll through the pages multiple times so as not to miss things. Mauston High School’s … Continue reading A Stroll Through the 1949 Issue of the MHS Hammer
The story of the Hanneman house in Mauston and its ties to the historic Mauston Brewery was retold in a 2019 issue of Breweriana magazine. The article was written by Mauston historian Richard D. Rossin Jr., a friend of these pages. In the brewery history magazine, Rossin tells the story of the Mauston Brewery, which operated … Continue reading Hanneman House, Tunnel Story Appear in Breweriana Magazine
When one of my sisters first showed me this photograph, I knew it was a major discovery. We know the occasion (Mom and Dad’s engagement party) and the time frame (June 1958). The task ahead is to identify every one of the 26 people in the photo. After discovering the medium-format negative, I scanned the … Continue reading Photo Detective: June 1958 Engagement Party
Many years ago when I first attempted to transfer old 8mm films to digital format, I made a series of “Glimpses of the Past” DVDs with footage from the 1950s and 1960s. Over the years, with several moves and changes in computers, the source material for those was lost. But now I located one of those … Continue reading More 8mm Video Shows Life in the 1950s and 1960s
The house was silent and the wooden bookshelves were empty, yet a small something caught my eye. In the corner of one shelf stood a tiny metal figurine: an Indian in headdress, from a cowboys and Indians play set from long ago. The man was kneeling with a rifle pointed off in the distance. The … Continue reading A House, a Home and a Wistful Goodbye
To borrow a phrase from the 1994 movie Forrest Gump, an old photo album is a lot like a box of chocolates: you never know what you’re going to get. That was certainly the case with a very old leather-bound album we recently acquired from a collector in Ohio. In it we found the first … Continue reading First Known Photo of Christiana Krosch Discovered in Old Album
A beautiful painting of three dogs in an ornate gold frame hung in our family’s living space and commanded attention for more than 50 years. Once belonging to Wisconsin Governor-elect Orland Steen “Spike” Loomis, the painting used to hang in the Mauston home of my grandparents, Carl and Ruby Hanneman. After a journey of 75 … Continue reading Gov.-Elect Orland Loomis’ Painting Comes Home Again to Mauston
The Hanneman Archive 