Milwaukee Central Public Library Downtown, 814 West Wisconsin Avenue
- MCGS membership meetings are in person at the Central Library. The meetings will start with a short business meeting, followed by our speaker presentation about 10:15am. Look forward to seeing MCGS members and guests at the library!
“From the 'Burg to the Battlefield...and Back'”
by Reed Perkins
More than 91,000 Wisconsin men fought for the Union during the Civil War, including thousands of immigrants from Germany. Many of these men saw some of the fiercest action and harshest deprivations of the war, fighting in both the “famous" battles in the East, and also in the lesser-known but equally deadly conflict in “the West.” Join genealogist and historian Reed Perkins to discover some interesting aspects of the war as experienced by some of Wisconsin's German-American soldiers—and their Black and Native American comrades in arms — that may have gotten lost over time.
Reed Perkins has a life-long love of genealogy and history and a passion for separating fact from legend. In 2006, he began to focus his research on a some of his Wisconsin ancestors and their stories. In 2012 he began a collaboration with the newly-formed Jonathan Clark House Museum in Mequon, Wisconsin, and from 2015 to 2026 he served as the official Clark House Historian. In his research, Reed investigates and shares the family histories and activities of the Clark family, their relatives, neighbors and friends, and the day-to-day details of the world in which they lived. Since 2016, he has chronicled those stories in over 500 illustrated and annotated posts to his blog, Clark Heritage & History https. Along the way, Reed has become unexpectedly well-informed on a number of more specialized topics including the first Erie Canal, early Great Lakes steamboat travel, the settlement of Lower Canada’s Eastern Townships, the California Gold Rush, army life at Forts Howard and Winnebago, and early federal and local road construction in Wisconsin Territory.
Reed was born and raised in the Land of Lincoln, and has had the good fortune to live and work there, and in other history-rich places such as Williamsburg, Virginia, and Amherst, Massachusetts. He now lives in Kenosha, Wisconsin, with his wife, Dr. Laura Rexroth.
Join us: IN PERSON or ZOOM for meeting.
Please register for a zoom link to the meeting.
