Alice Ginn’s doll

Peggy Derrick

Catalog Number: 1967.004.25

Copyright La Crosse County Historical Society

Alice Frazee Ginn was born in La Crosse in 1914. Her father, Oren Frazee, was the head of the biology department of La Crosse State College, now known as the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.

An only child of doting parents, Alice saved many family heirlooms, which she donated to the La Crosse County Historical Society. Her childhood dolls were part of the donation, accompanied by a handwritten list with their names and descriptions. She had baby dolls — “pretty lady” dolls — and this homemade mammy doll she called Aunt Jemima.

Aunt Jemima’s body is made of black knit wool, possibly from socks, which is stuffed and dressed in a cotton print dress, apron and head kerchief. She has gold-hoop earrings and a bead necklace. Eyes are sewn-on buttons, while nose and mouth are embroidered with red yarn. More than likely this doll was made from a purchased pattern or one printed in a women’s magazine.

Alice and her parents were white, not African American, and her mammy doll is a common and typical artifact of the Jim Crow era, roughly 1877 to 1960. That’s when Black Americans were intentionally disenfranchised by laws and customs, while at the same time culturally defined and demeaned by a series of stereotypes commonly seen in advertising, publications and entertainment.

A remarkable number of household products were sold with promotional images of black servants touting them, and a few still remain on store shelves today — Uncle Ben’s rice and Aunt Jemima pancake mix are two of the best known — and Aunt Jemima is a classic example of the mammy stereotype that was seen as the nurturing, nonthreatening and devoted family servant. The character played by Hattie McDaniel in the 1939 film “Gone with the Wind” is another example.

Figures such as Alice’s doll are recognizable as mammys by their rotund bodies, head scarves and earrings, as well as their skin color. Today items like this are prized by collectors.

Mammys were popular themes for cookie jars, broom dolls, clothespin bags and all sorts of small household items. The unavoidable association with devoted servitude was apparently reassuring to mainstream white culture.

Alice’s Aunt Jemima doll was included in her donation to the historical society in 1967. It shows some signs of wear, but its condition is remarkably good.

I have no idea how Alice, who died in 1989, felt about African Americans or the Civil Rights Movement, but it makes me sad to think how this doll was actually part of a broader cultural pattern of racism.

Evidence of attitudes toward different ethnic or cultural groups are important to preserve in an historical artifact collection so that we can examine and learn from the past and not just view it through the rosy lens of nostalgia. When the evidence is as charming as this little doll, the truth can be hard to acknowledge.

Alice’s dolls are being added to our online database and will soon be available for viewing at lchshistory.pastperfectonline.com. Aunt Jemima is already online, and you can find her here.

This article was originally published in the La Crosse Tribune on April 29, 2017.

This object can be viewed in our online collections database by clicking here.

Steamboat War Eagle baggage tag

Robert Mullen

Catalog Number: 1947.001.07

Somewhere, somebody has a claim to some very old luggage sitting at the bottom of the Black River at La Crosse. All they need to prove their ownership is to produce a baggage slip from the steamer War Eagle, dated May 14, 1870, for item No. 10.

Copyright La Crosse County Historical Society

That date was the evening that the Steamboat War Eagle burned and sank at the riverbank just north of today’s Riverside Park. Along with the boat, the fiery disaster destroyed the docks, the Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad depot, several freight warehouses and grain elevators, and a passenger train nearby. At least five people died.

In addition, most of the personal effects of the approximately 40 passengers were left behind during the frenzied escape from the burning boat. The staterooms on steamboats were small, so most belongings had been checked and stored in baggage compartments. Oscar Topliff, the vessel’s assistant baggage manager, saved some luggage under his care that night, but not that of at least one unlucky passenger.

This brass tag was strapped to that property. Stamped WAR EAGLE 10, the 1¾-inch high tag had a slot for a leather strap that Topliff had attached to the baggage, a common practice on steamboats and railroads of the day.

Sixty-one years later, in 1931, the Black River dropped to a record low stage, and many local residents were able to wade into the water and pick souvenirs from the charred remains of the War Eagle. This tag was one of them.

Who knows what treasures from 1870 it represents? Perhaps it was an immigrant trunk full of clothing, books and some precious mementos, or perhaps a craftsman’s toolbox. Or a traveling salesman’s patent medicines. Whatever it was, it’s still waiting to be picked up, in damaged condition, at the bottom of the Black River at La Crosse.

The La Crosse County Historical Society has hundreds of additional items salvaged from the War Eagle on exhibit at the Riverside Museum in Riverside Park. The museum is open from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sundays.

This article was originally published in the La Crosse Tribune on April 22, 2017.

This object can be viewed in our online collections database by clicking here.

Black River log drive

Robert Mullen

For the Black River logging industry in the 19th century, springtime was time for a drive. This drive was not a pleasant outing in the country — it was a cold, wet and dangerous movement of logs downstream from the northern reaches of the river to the sawmills in La Crosse and Onalaska.

Copyright La Crosse County Historical Society

The lumber industry was the biggest business along the Black River from 1850 to 1900. During the winter months, thousands of trees were cut down in the forests of Jackson, Clark and Taylor counties and pulled by oxen and horses to the banks of the frozen river and its tributaries. In spring, the waiting logs were rolled into the rising streams and floated to the mills downstream.

The logs floated down with the current, assisted by log drivers, men who poked and prodded the logs away from the banks and islands, or out of shallow waters. The drivers worked from shore or from small boats, and some balanced on the floating logs, trying to keep everything freely flowing.

It was risky work, and the drivers frequently took spills. Dunks were a daily occurrence, that sometimes resulted in drowning.

Each spring, tens of thousands of trees that measured many millions of board feet were floated downstream. With so many logs crowding the river, the driver’s efforts could not always prevent a logjam.

Logjams could form quickly and sometimes piled several stories high and several miles long. Slowly, log by log, the drivers loosened key logs and got everything moving again.

Each log was stamped with its owner’s mark. When the long journey ended, logs was sorted into separate holding areas for the various mills to await the saw blade or to be made into a large raft to continue farther down the Mississippi River to a more distant mill. By late spring or early summer, most of the logs had been delivered to their destinations.

The La Crosse County Historical Society owns some of the tools used on the drive. Shown here are two variations of pikes, left, wrought iron points mounted on long handles used to steer and prod the logs. On the right is a cant hook, a tool used to grasp and roll a log. The cast iron hammer head is pounded into the end of the log, impressing it with its owner’s symbol. In this case it is an “H” inside a diamond, indicating the Holway Mill in North La Crosse.

Logging artifacts like these can be seen at Riverside Museum. 

This article was originally published in the La Crosse Tribune on April 15, 2017.