New Book Pulls Fascinating Local Folks Out of the Historical Shadows
‘Hidden History of Eau Claire’ full of Chippewa Valley residents of days gone by
If you’re a connoisseur of local history, you probably think you’ve heard of all the notable folks who’ve called Eau Claire home at one time or another: Celebrities like Hank Aaron and Ann Landers. Pioneers like Daniel Shaw and Adin Randall. Contemporary natives like John Menard and Justin Vernon.
But what about Norwegian revolutionary Marcus Thrane or silent film actress Rose King? What about royal body double Eva Converse or upstanding businessman/notorious skinny dipper Darius Bresee? All these folks – and dozens of others – are pulled from the shadows of history for renewed moments in the spotlight thanks to a new book, Hidden History of Eau Claire.
The book is the result of a collaboration between history buffs and intrepid researchers Diana Peterson and Jodi Kiffmeyer. While both work at the Chippewa Valley Museum – Peterson as editor/assistant curator and Kiffmeyer as archivist – the book was an independent project published in January by The History Press. (The pair had previously collaborated on a book published by the museum, Reflections of Eau Claire: A Photo History of the City, 1870-1998.)
“Jodi and I are always finding these little fun things,” Diana said of the stories compiled in their new book. “We’ll email or say, ‘Hey, did you hear this or that?’ They are things that aren’t appropriate to our work right at the time, so we can’t follow them up. We just have these little threads we wanted to go back to, so we thought this would be a great opportunity … to write a bit of some of those stories.”
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The history that’s going on right here, our local history, is just as interesting and important as anything going on outside in the wider country or the world.
JODI KIFFMEYER
CO-AUTHOR, HIDDEN HISTORY OF EAU CLAIRE
The book gave its authors a chance to return to their lists of interesting local stories and to travel down dozens of historical rabbit holes.
“It’s an outlet for our curiosity,” said Jodi, who each day reads the newspaper from 100 years ago. Jodi’s personal motto is “No news is old news,” and she hopes the book helps people realize that much of what happened in the past is still relatable today. “The history that’s going on right here, our local history, is just as interesting and important as anything going on outside in the wider country or the world,” she said.
Of course, some of the local stories reached the wider world. For example, word of Darius Bresee’s scandalous 1896 bath in the Chippewa River was reported in newspapers coast to coast – a demonstration that news could go “viral” long before social media.
Bresee’s brush with fame falls into Jodi’s historical sweet spot, the late 19th and early 20th centuries, while many of Diana’s contributions to the book are from her era of interest, the 1930s to the 1980s. A number of Diana’s tales also have a pop-cultural element, from the budding feud between twins Eppie Lederer and Pauline Phillips (who went on the fame as advice columnists Ann Landers and Dear Abby, respectively) to the unexpected Hollywood stardom of local native John Myhers (who appeared in dozens of Hollywood films and TV series, including The Twilight Zone and Hogan’s Heroes).
“Each of this stories are threads in Eau Claire history. (They all) deserve to be collected and shared and preserved.”
DIANA PETERSON
CO-AUTHOR, HIDDEN HISTORY OF EAU CLAIRE
As a self-described history buff who’s spent a fair amount of time scrolling through newspaper archives hunting tales from the past, I can appreciate the hard work and curiosity it took to track down the stories of, for example, Ella Tousley, whose unclaimed remains caused a stir in 1903 Eau Claire, or the tragic tail of football hero “Big Saul” Brackett, whose life was cut short in a river disaster. Yet any reader can appreciate the economy and skill in which these tales are related. The book is composed of 37 short chapters, each telling a fascinating tale that inspires the reader to turn the page for the next one and then the next.
“Each of these stories are threads in Eau Claire history,” Diana said. “All the stories in Eau Claire history make this beautiful embroidery. If you think about an embroidery, you can remove a few threads and it still looks nice, but you remove too many and it totally changes.” Although readers might not know these people from the past, she added, “They all had an important contribution in Eau Claire and their stories deserve to be collected and shared and preserved.”
Hidden History of Eau Claire is available at The Local Store, the Chippewa Valley Museum, as well as online via ArcadiaPublishing.com and Amazon.com.
