Host: Mike Reno
Blog post: Mike Reno

The loss of the Lady Elgin in 1860 is an event that has gotten an outsized and at times overembellished presence in Milwaukee’s collective memory. The Lady Elgin was a passenger steamship on Lake Michigan back in the run up to the Civil War. This episode presents material on the leadup to the disaster sitting it in the context of the time, where various racial, ethnic, and political issues were dividing the country in half.

There are two specific items at the Milwaukee County Historical Society that regarding shipping and the Lady Elgin that I would like to draw your attention to. First, is the Lady Elgin Collection. The collection consists of a timetable, song sheet, newspaper clippings/articles and other miscellaneous material. Especially, if the song sheet was a song that the passengers were singing in, “the party like atmosphere” that prevailed onboard the ship as it headed out into the foreboding waters.

Second, is this photo from the Historical Society’s collection of workers offloading coal from a ship. The lady Elgin dealt with many aspects of Milwaukee’s past, from social, political, to technological issues all inherent in that disaster. However, the one aspect that the Lady Elgin did not address at least directly, was economic issues. This is a photo of workers unloading coal from a ship docked at Milwaukee’s harbor.