Surprise in the stacks

During one of our late winter snowstorms, I was bored and decided to try to find some family history info by using Google. To my complete amazement, two newspaper stories popped up about my  great and great-great grandfathers. That set me sleuthing about the Pennsylvania anthracite coal mining industry where my grandfather and his father both worked when young.

As these things do, that sent me down another rabbit hole for a book housed in the legendary library in the State Historical Society Building in Madison. The book was in the lower stacks and as Mark and I were walking towards the area where it was shelved, we discovered this limestone detailing. What a surprise!

This lower library storage area appears to have been built on the other side of the original building. That limestone clearly seems to be a once-upon-a-time exterior wall. It's right where you go from one room to another and the wall is extremely thick which seems to corroborate our guess. 

It is interesting, mysterious and kind of scary to be off in the middle of nowhere surrounded by books. So I was glad I was not alone. I was checking the book out on Mark's university library card, so he was forced to come with me. He snapped this photo as I made sure I had the right book. Turns out this is where books on women, work and feminism all seemed to be stored.

I'm almost finished reading my find: "Their Fathers' Daughters: Silk Mill Workers in Northeastern Pennsylvania, 1880-1960" by Bonnie Stepenoff. Turns out that many silk mills located in this coal mining area to take advantage of the fact that children, especially girls and young women, were willing to go work in the mills to try to help out their families by bringing in more income. As with the cotton mills in Lawrence, MA, as the women began to organize for better wages, hours and working conditions the mills moved south to where there were fewer laws and people would work for less. Alas much of the book suggests how little things have changed since then — at least when it comes to a living wage.

Comments

[Michael Bridgeman]

Good find! The exterior details now on the inside of the Wisconsin Historical Society building are wonderful. The original building was U-shaped and the open space was filled in when the stacks were expanded in 1965-66.

[Linda from Each LIttle World]

Thanks for the explanation. We were definitely taken aback when we turned and saw that detail.

[Barbara H.]

I worked in a large public library and being in the depths of the book stacks is a somewhat scary and somewhat magical thing. How nice that you found information to help you in that rabbit hole of family history. My grandfather worked in a lead mine in Illinois for a short time and I wonder if that contributed to the Parkinson's that he had at the end of his life. He also worked on the Liberty ships in Portland in his later years, which might also have contributed. It IS very sad that so many things have not changed and that if wages go up, businesses simply move to the lower wage areas. But perhaps those lower wages are helpful to the folks in thos places. Kind of a Catch 22, I think.

[ceci]

Gosh look at all that room on the shelves.....this library has room for more books, how delightful.

ceci

[Kris P]

That's one interesting rabbit hole, Linda.

[Lisa at Greenbow]

I think it feels weird going down into our small town library basement by myself. I can't imagine going into a strange place like that. It is good that Mark had to go with you. Cute picture of you too.