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History

University of Nebraska - Lincoln

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Department of History: Faculty Publications

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Articles 1 - 4 of 4

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A “Hired Girl” Testifies Against The “Son Of A Prominent Family”: Bastardy And Rape On The Nineteenth-Century Nebraska Plains, Donna Rae Devlin Apr 2022

A “Hired Girl” Testifies Against The “Son Of A Prominent Family”: Bastardy And Rape On The Nineteenth-Century Nebraska Plains, Donna Rae Devlin

Department of History: Faculty Publications

In Red Cloud, Nebraska, in 1887, Anna “Annie” Sadilek (later Pavelka) pressed bastardy charges against the “son of a prominent family,” even though she could have, according to her pretrial testimony, pressed charges for rape. To the literary world, Sadilek is better known as Ántonia Shimerda, the powerful protagonist in Willa Cather’s 1918 novel, My Ántonia. However, it is Sadilek’s real-life experience that allows us to better understand life on the Nebraska Plains, specifically through an examination of the state’s rape laws and the ways these laws were subsequently interpreted by the courts. The Nebraska Supreme Court, between 1877 …


A Tale Of Two Sisters: Family Histories From The Strait Salish Borderlands, Katrina Jagodinsky Jul 2016

A Tale Of Two Sisters: Family Histories From The Strait Salish Borderlands, Katrina Jagodinsky

Department of History: Faculty Publications

Based on legal and genealogical records, this microhistory chronicles the difficult choices between whiteness and Indianness made by two Salish sisters and their biracial children in order to maintain their kinship networks throughout the Salish Sea borderlands between 1865 and 1919. While some of these choices obscured individual family members from historical records, reading their lives in tandem with other family members’ histories reveals remarkable persistence in the midst of dramatic racial and political transformation. Focused primarily on San Juan Island residents, this article suggests that indigenous and interracial family histories of the Pacific Northwest and other borderland regions in …


Black And On The Border, Edward Ayers, William G. Thomas Iii, Anne Sarah Rubin Jan 2007

Black And On The Border, Edward Ayers, William G. Thomas Iii, Anne Sarah Rubin

Department of History: Faculty Publications

The civil war is often understood in terms of stark oppo¬sites. It seems only natural to think of North and South, of Union and Confederacy, of freedom and slavery. But the habit of thinking in opposites often extends to other parts of the war where it serves us less well: battlefield and homefront, soldier and civilian, male and female, and black and white, as if these places, people, and ex¬periences were not swept up in the same all-consuming war.


Introduction To Ethnic Voters And The Election Of Lincoln, Frederick C. Luebke Jan 1971

Introduction To Ethnic Voters And The Election Of Lincoln, Frederick C. Luebke

Department of History: Faculty Publications

A twofold purpose informs this anthology of essays on ethnic voters in the presidential election of 1860. First, it gathers together a great quantity of factual information about immigrants and politics on the eve of the Civil War. Naturally, the Germans receive the greatest amount of attention. Not only did they rival the Irish in numbers in 1860. but they were also the most diverse ethnic group in America. The essays of this volume also offer much data about politicians and their perceptions of the democratic process, about political parties and the social bases of their support, and about political …