A series of later letters describes the writer’s experience in the work of the Christian Commission during the Civil War.
Taken as a whole the Dinsdale Papers are a valuable addition to the collections of our Society, illustrating as they so well do the experiences of an intelligent, educated immigrant during the formative period of territorial days. It is to be hoped that many more such groups of papers, now preserved in private hands, will ultimately find their way into our custody where they will be of value to the history of this state.
THE LADD PAPERS
Dr. Otto L. Schmidt, of Chicago, a life member of the Society, has presented an important collection of letters and documents received by Dr. Azel Ladd while serving in 1851 and 1852 as state superintendent of public instruction. For the most part they consist of appeals to the state officer to interpret the school law for local communities, and the resolving of disputes and difficulties between the teachers and the officials. Many of the letters are requests for information with regard to the allotments of school money, and a few have to do with the lease or sale of school lands. A considerable number carry the endorsement “Library returns.” These contain reports of the number of books in the school libraries under the law requiring one-tenth of the state allotments to be expended for books. Incidentally from these letters much may be learned of the early educational history of our state—the short terms of the schools, the qualifications and salaries of the teachers, the number and conduct of the pupils. From some of these letters may be seen the educational conditions among our foreign immigrants. Complaints are frequent of teachers that cannot write or speak English. One letter asks the question, later so pertinent in our educational politics, whether the reading of the Bible constitutes a breach of Section 3, Article 10 of the Wisconsin Constitution. Another writer, defending the character of his daughter, a school teacher at Moundville, sends the Superintendent a specimen of her efforts in verse, which have been much admired. There are nearly a thousand papers in the collection, which constitute an important guide to the early history of education in Wisconsin. Practically all of the letters belong to the years 1851 and 1852.
SOME RECENT PUBLICATIONS
Holand, Hjalmar R., History of Door County, Wisconsin. The County Beautiful. (Two volumes, 459, 480, $21, Chicago, 1917.)
This is a good example of the type of county subscription history which flourishes in the Middle West. The author had at his disposal an unusually attractive storehouse of material from which to construct his narrative; the field was a virgin one, no history of Door County having ever been written before; the writer is a man of university education, a long-time resident of the county, and an enthusiast on the subject of local history. With such conditions prevailing it is not surprising that the work which has resulted should constitute a good example of the type to which it belongs.
The second volume of the two is filled with the usual collection of commercial biographies, for which the promoters of the work are responsible rather than the author of the history. Volume one, in which alone his name appears on the title-page, contains the history of the county which gives title to the work. It comprises fifty chapters and an appendix. The first nine chapters deal with the usual preliminary topics pertaining to geography, discovery and exploration, the Indians, and the French period. It is impracticable to classify the remaining forty-one chapters further than to note that they cover, along with many other subjects, sketches of the several towns of the county, and of the more important types of social and industrial activity of its people. Thus there are chapters on schools, banking, political organizations, churches, highways, newspapers, and industries. More unusual than these are those on lighthouses, Peninsula State Park, Rock, Chambers, and Washington islands, and the Sturgeon Bay Canal. Interspersed are several chapters (such as “A Man of Iron: a Tale of Death’s Door,” “David Kennison,” “The Sage of Shivering Sands”) which seem either to have no logical place in the book or to be given a prominence disproportionate to their importance. There is little perceptible logic about the order of arrangement of these many chapters, and one does not gain, from a reading of the book, any clear impression of the progressive unfolding of the county’s history and development.
The author possesses an unusual command of the English language, notwithstanding his birth on foreign soil, and the volume is entertainingly written. Both the history itself, and the style of the narrative would have been improved, however, if greater restraint had been imposed by the author. Journalistic throughout, at its best the style of the narrative is fascinating; at the opposite extreme