Waukesha County Historical Society & Museum

10/21/2026

🏺ARTIFACT SPOTLIGHT🏺

PHOTO: Waukesha County Historical Society Museum

PICTURES OF WAUKESHA COUNTY GARAGES

This past summer, the museum was offered Mr. Offerman’s day diary for his job at the motor Acceptance Co. While Offerman lived in Waukesha, the company he worked for was in Milwaukee and therefore outside the scope of WCHSM. But then the donor added that it contained photos of Waukesha garages that made up his territory. That caught our interest. The museum’s collection contains some photos of garages from that period, but mostly as part of street scenes. This is much more complete. His diary is from 1941.

As you can tell from the sample page above, these businesses ranged widely in size. It should also be noted that in this context, the term garage means a business that sells new or used cars. Some were large dealerships and others much smaller operations.

The Motor Acceptance Company must have been a finance company there were notes in the album about contests that were run for their representatives. It seems that Mr. Offerman led that year in repossessions.

If the name Speed Offerman seems familiar, but not in this context, he went on to own a well-known store in downtown Waukesha, Speed’s Appliance.

10/17/2026

🎃TICKETS—> https://events.humanitix.com/grave-tales-9ylw83dz

10/16/2026

Waukesha County was well-represented at the 20th annual Local History and Historic Preservation Conference!

Our staff, board members, and volunteers learned some great skills we can bring back to better serve our communities!

10/15/2026

10/14/2026

🏺ARTIFACT SPOTLIGHT🏺

PHOTO: Waukesha County Historical Society & Museum

DOWNTOWN WAUKESHA 1931

Having gone thru multiple ‘modernizing’ updates to the downtown, I still prefer the looks of old Waukesha. The building facades were more complex and interesting, at least to me.

Above is the north side of Broadway between Freidman alley and what is now the State Bank. Many of the store fronts have since been combined into larger spaces as several of the buildings in the photo are no more than one car-length wide. (We have photos of some interiors that just have one counter running the length of the store and barely room for a customer to stand before it.

According to the City directory for 1931 there were 8 businesses in this area: United Restaurant and Coffee Shop, Rambo Barber, Polo Café, Badger Paint, Huettner’s Café, Thomas Press, and Compton Billiards. There is still even one single family residence on the far end. It seemed strange to me that there were 3 eating places in this one block, but then it was still the norm for single people, especially men, to live in rooming houses and eat their meals out.

In case you were wondering, Thomas Parkingson won re-election by 1285 votes, 3711 to 4996.

10/07/2026

🏺ARTIFACT SPOTLIGHT🏺

PHOTO: Waukesha County Historic Society Museum

CORNHUSKER

The term cornhusker goes back to a more agriculture-based time when corn was still husked – removed from the cob - in the field. However, husking by hand is extremely hard on the hand, so cornhuskers were used. I found 2 of them in the museum’s collection.

The first of them has two adjustable leather bands that strap around the fingers so that you can drag the ‘blade’ down the length of the cob, removing the kernels of dried corn. The second one has bands of unequal size so that one goes around the four fingers of the hand and the thumb through the smaller one. The blades on both of them are about the same and are not sharp as the term blade implies. They are thick and rounded on the sides.

Husking corn was a long and tedious process practiced by Native Americans long before Europeans arrived. They rewarded the completion of husking with feasting, games and dancing. Settlers in America often had cornhusking parties that pitted teams of huskers against each other to see who could husk the largest pile of corn in the shortest time. Finding a red ear of corn at these events was considered good luck.

In the 1930s mechanical devices were introduced that picked and shucked the corn in the fields. Today one is more likely to associate the tern cornhusker with Nebraska sports.

Update: I just saw a hand-cranked corn sheller in a Farm & Fleet ad. It sits up high enough so that the shucked corn falls into a bucket.