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))Join the Douglas County Historical Society as we celebrate Valentine's Day with a very special program. We are pleased to present the exhibit My Dearest Julia: Love Letters from Early Douglas County. This collection of 30 very special love letters was written by Mr. Gurdon Wattles to Miss Julia Vance during the years 1917 and 1918. Mr. Wattles was the head of the Omaha and Council Bluffs Streetcar Company, was instrumental in the organization of the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition of 1898 and was responsible for the construction of Omaha's Fontenelle Hotel. Miss Vance was the head of the Department of Home Economics at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. They met while serving together on the F.F.A. (Federal Food Administration) for “Mr. Hoover” and were married on June 26, 1918 in Estes Park, Colorado.
To open this very special exhibit we will be having Eunice Levisay present a talk on the History of Valentines. Join us on Thursday, February 5 for our exhibit opening. The talk begins at 5:30 p.m. in the Education Room of the General Crook House Museum and admission is free for members and a $5 donation is requested of non-members. Please RSVP by emailing members@douglascohistory.org or calling 402-455-9990 ext. 101. The exhibit will continue to be on display in the General Crook House Museum throughout the month of February.
))DCHS's monthly Second Sunday event will feature Sister Kathleen O'Brien of the Sisters of Mercy, one of Omaha's leading charitable institutes, which just celebrated 150 years. Sister Kathleen O'Brien is the author of an expansive history of the organization, from its humble start with seven original Sisters who arrived in Omaha in 1864 to provide for the education of young Omahans. Soon the organization grew to assisting anyone in need, including the orphaned, the homeless, the hungry, the poor, and the ill.
)))Douglas County Historical Society (DCHS) will feature author Mark Langan's book Busting Bad Guys, My True Crime Stories of Bookies, Drug Dealers and Ladies of the Night at our February 24th Page from Our Past author event taking place from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at the DCHS Library Archives Center. The program focuses on history-based authors, both of fiction and non-fiction. A Page from Our Past is a casual and intimate roundtable discussion, where the audience has the opportunity to get up close and personal with the authors. Each program concludes with a book signing and time to meet one-on-one with the featured author.
Mark Langan retired after a twenty-six-year career with the Omaha Police Department. In 1978 Mark was the youngest police officer ever hired on the Omaha Police Department at age eighteen. He worked as a uniformed officer and as a detective in the Burglary, Vice, and Narcotics Units. Mark was promoted to the rank of sergeant in 1988, working as a supervisor in the Narcotics Unit until his retirement in 2004.
In his gripping memoir, Sergeant Mark Langan relives his front-row seat working the seamier side of crime during his decorated twenty-six-year career from youngest rookie in 1978 to narcotics sergeant on the Omaha Police force. Busting Bad Guys delivers a graphic and authentic look at solid policing on the streets of America's heartland and takes readers inside the high-adrenaline, top-secret investigations to develop innovative tactics to outsmart the criminals.
This book is currently available in our bookstore located in the General Crook House Museum. Participants who have registered to take part in the program receive a 5% discount off of the retail price of the books! Get your copy today!
))DCHS's March Second Sunday Talk will feature Dennis Mihelich, retired historian and professor at Creighton University. An author of an extensive history of the University, he will be presenting a history of the Creighton family. The Creightons were among Omaha's leaders in business and philanthropy. They were involved in all manner of business from banking and the stockyards to the transcontinental telegraph. When Edward Creighton died in 1874 his fortune passed to his wife, Mary Lucretia Creighton. After her death in 1876, Mary's will provided $100,000 as a memorial to her late husband “to purchase the site for a school in the city of Omaha and erect buildings thereon for a school of the class and grade of a college.”
)Douglas County Historical Society (DCHS) will feature author Tim Dempsey's book Well I'll Be Hanged: Early Capital Punishment in Nebraska at our March 24th Page from Our Past author event taking place from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at the DCHS Library Archives Center. The program focuses on history-based authors, both of fiction and non-fiction. A Page from Our Past is a casual and intimate roundtable discussion, where the audience has the opportunity to get up close and personal with the authors. Each program concludes with a book signing and time to meet one-on-one with the featured author.
Tim Dempsey is a native of Omaha, Nebraska and retired thirty year law enforcement officer. He has a B. S. in Criminal Justice and a M. P. A. from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Tim was a part-time instructor at U. N. Omaha for over twenty-five years, and now serves as a member of the Board of Governors of Metropolitan Community College. In 2004, the Police Officers Association of Nebraska inducted Tim as a member of the Nebraska Law Enforcement Hall of Fame.
Sam Richards was more than likely Nebraska's first serial killer. Among his many victims were a mother and her three children who were savagely beaten to death. In 1879, Richards was hung for his crimes in Kearney County, Nebraska, and his skull eventually placed on display in the window of the local newspaper. George Morgan was a pedophile who raped and then choked an eleven year old to death on November 3, 1895 in Omaha. Morgan was hung in Douglas County, Nebraska in 1897. From 1867, when Nebraska became a state, until 1897, fourteen convicted killers were condemned to their fate on a gallows erected in county jail yards across the state. Thirteen of these doomed men died at the hands of a county sheriff and one was executed by a United States Marshal. This book looks at all fourteen of these cases. They represent the workings of Nebraska's criminal justice system in the late nineteenth century, and the men that made it work.
))DCHS's April Second Sunday Talk will feature a panel discussion to honor the 150th Anniversary of the end of the Civil War. We are proud to welcome Dave Wells, historian to the Civil War Veterans Museum of Nebraska City, and Dr. Mark Scherer, Associate Professor and Chair of the History Department at UNO, who will discuss Nebraska's role in the war. Featured at the discussion will be a few Civil War artifacts with direct ties to Nebraska and the Nebraskan men who served.
)Come learn about some of the notorious characters who helped shape Douglas County in the early 20th Century. Phone: 402-455-9990 for more information or to book a tour. The exhibit will run through Spring 2016.
))).))).Douglas County Historical Society recognizes the anniversary of the Standing Bear Trial by examining the forced displacement of mid-19th century American Plains tribes in our annual tribute, Banished: Nebraska Tribes and the Indian Removal Act.
Kent Blansett, PhD, Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, will be our featured guest speaker of the evening. His major areas of research and teaching include American Indian History and Western American History. Blansett is a descendant of five Tribes: Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Shawnee, and Potawatomi.
To conclude this discussion, representatives from the Ponca, Winnebago, Santee Sioux, and Omaha tribes have been invited to participate in a talk back panel.
Prior to this featured event, the public is invited to join us at the Crook House Museum at 5:30 for a Frontier meal, and entertainment provided by the Many Moccasins Dance Troupe. At 7:00 we move next door to the Swanson Conference Center for a musical performance by Michael Murphy playing the Native American flute, followed by Professor Blansett's presentation and talk back panel.
))
The Florence Days Newspaper (online version) – The Florence Days News Center Spread
)) 402-451-9610 )) 402-453-5500 )))).)).)))).The Blackstone Hotel was once Omaha's signature venue for luxurious accommodations, one of the premiere hotel along America's First Highway, the Lincoln Highway. At its peak, the Blackstone offered a fleet of Pierce-Arrow limousines for use by important guests, a ballroom, a publication called The Blackstonian, and a number of well-loved restaurants. One of those restaurants produced the Blackstone's most famous legacies, the Reuben sandwich, but the hotel was also responsible for introducing Butter Brickle ice cream to the world. DCHS researcher Max Sparber takes a look at the hotel, its legacy, and its many stories.
))).))).)).)).Presented by Dennis Mihelich
Join us as we welcome retired Creighton University professor of history Dennis Mihelich who will analyze Omaha's rich immigrant population. Learn how immigration patterns and world crises have shaped the people and culture of Omaha – from the German immigrants of the 1880s to the Sudanese influx of the 1990s. The talk is presented by the Douglas County Historical Society with funding provided by the Dr. C.C. and Mabel L. Criss Memorial Foundation.
This Second Sunday Talk will be held on July 12 at 2 pm at the Fort Omaha campus of Metro Community College in Building 10 Room 110. The event is free for members and $5 for non-members. Please call 402-455-9990 ext. 101 or email members@douglascohistory.org for reservations.
))).)).))).)).)).)).Presented by Max Sparber
Douglas County Historical Society researcher Max Sparber will discuss the signal corps, the telegraph, and the secret lives of the people who ran the singing wire.
Before there was the Internet, before there was the telephone, before even radio, there was the “singing wire” – the telegraph. There wouldn't be an Omaha without the telegraph – city founder Edward Creighton helped string the transcontinental telegraph across Nebraska, and the railroad followed that line, and Omaha was born because of the railroad.
The telegraph had its own language, Morse Code, and so was run by a series of specialty trained telegraph operators, who developed their own culture, including specialized slang.
The military quickly adopted the telegraph, as it needed an effective way to communicate orders and information along long distances. This was entrusted to the Signal Corps, a branch of the United States Army responsible for communications in the various branches of the military.
In 1905, Omaha's Fort Omaha was reactivated as a training school for the Signal Corps, teaching, as a document explained it, “electricity, telephony, telegraphy, radio-telegraphy, line-construction work, and special instruction in telegraphic accounts ...” How appropriate that the military would teach the telegraph in a city that would not exist without it?
)))).)).)).))).)).)).))).)))))).)))).)))))) )We rest and prepare for another year from January to early May, although there will be Florentine Players performances starting in January or February, and the Douglas County Historical Society may have some events near Florence that are listed as well.
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