Explore Our Collections | Wisconsin Historical Society

Browse or search over 30,000 original documents from Freedom Summer, an effort by civil rights activists to integrate Mississippi’s segregated political system

digital library and learning center containing eyewitness accounts of early American exploration and settlement.

This digital collection contains the papers of Walter Eugene Leach (1857-1983), a Racine, Wisconsin, historian and curator of the Racine County Museum.

This collections contains page images and searchable text of 2,400 periodicals and other items such as pamphlets and posters created by or for U.S. military personnel during the Vietnam War era.

The papers of Elizabeth and Henry Baird from 1798 to 1937, prominent 19th-century Wisconsin settlers.

Lapham (1811-1875) was a biologist, archaeologist, engineer, and map-maker who helped found several major state institutions and the National Weather Service.

View the papers of Kander (1858-1940), sometimes called “The Jane Addams of Milwaukee,” including reports, correspondence, brochures, clippings, minutes of meetings, photographs and materials related to “The Settlement Cookbook”.

Detailed accounts of individual cities, townships, villages, prominent residents from 1850-1920.

More than 25,000 maps and atlases. Many focus on Wisconsin, the Great Lakes and North America. Most predate 1900.

Original documents and publications about the history of Cyrus Hall McCormick and the International Harvester Company.

The Wisconsin Historical Society’s ephemera holdings include a wide range of menus (mid-1800s to the present day) from restaurants and hotels; schools; specialized organizations and societies; private homes; and menus for special occasions such as commemorative and farewell dinners; trade conferences; political events; and meals offered during transit, such as passenger ships and trains.

The Wisconsin Historical Museum contains over 110,000 historical objects and nearly 400,000 archaeological artifacts documenting the history of Wisconsin from prehistoric times to the present. Browse selected subjects from the Wisconsin Historical Museum collections.

Both registers include buildings, sites, districts, structures, and objects that are designated as significant in national, state or local history. More than 2,300 listings are searchable on our website. Each listing has a digital record providing basic information about the property.

Hear the stories of 22 Holocaust Survivors and two American witnesses interviewed between 1974 and 1981.

Explore more than 7,500 pages of articles, press releases, and photos, plus 40 oral history interviews.

View and listen to interviews of 37 Wisconsin Latinas from the Somos Latinas (We Women) History Project (2012-2016).

Articles, images, books, manuscripts, and other eyewitness accounts of key historical events of Wisconsin’s history. Includes essays, lesson plans and reference tools for teachers.

The Vel Phillips papers, 1951-2009, document the life and career of Milwaukee’s Vel Phillips, whose work as a lawyer, city alder, civil rights leader, judge, and Secretary of State profoundly influenced Wisconsin’s civil rights history throughout the latter half of the 20th century.

Browse or search over 100,000 digitized photos, drawings, paintings, topical galleries and other materials. Learn how you can access over 3 million images in our physical collections.

Provides details on more than 133,000 historic buildings, structures and objects that reflect Wisconsin’s distinct cultural landscape. Each property has a digital record providing basic information about the property. Most include exterior images.

Contains examples of furniture, ceramics, textiles, and other 19th and early 20th century material culture artifacts from museum and historic site collections across Wisconsin.

Thousands of pioneer memoirs, archival records, original journals, explorers’ narratives, interviews, and other eyewitness accounts of Wisconsin’s past.

View Wisconsin state electronic records online.

Online archive of selected websites of state agencies, local governments, political campaigns for gubernatorial or U.S. Senate races, topical issues and online publications.

16,000 historical and biographical articles that were published between 1860 and 1940 from hundreds of Wisconsin local newspapers.

More than 2,000 feature articles and essays exactly as they originally appeared in the Wisconsin Magazine of History.

Paul Vanderbilt’s 96 thematic panels, containing 799 individual photographs, represent the culmination of a half-century of thinking about how pictures work.

Listen to stories and sounds of Wisconsin’s past, including oral histories, radio programs, advertising, political speeches, and more.

The Wisconsin Women’s History digital collection shares a selection of manuscripts and ephemera documenting the lives of women in Wisconsin.

Over 25,000 pages of original documents including soldiers’ letters, diaries, and memoirs; regimental histories and rosters; photographs, maps, biographies and battle summaries.