Wisconsin - 1855 State Census

History

US History in 1855

March 3, 1855 - The United States Camel Corps was created with a $30,000 appropriation in Congress.
March 24, 1855 - American businessman, banker and philanthropist, Andrew Mellon, was born.
April 21, 1855 - The first railroad train crossed the Mississippi River on the first bridge constructed from Rock Island, Illinois, to Davenport, Iowa.
October 9, 1855 - The Shuttle Sewing Machine and its machine motor were patented by Isaac M. Singer, improving the development of the sewing machine.
The Civil Rights Act, giving equal rights to blacks in jury duty and accommodation, was passed by the United States Congress. It would be overturned in 1883 by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Wisconsin History around 1855

People in Wisconsin were virtually all white (less than one-tenth of one percent was African-American) and men outnumbered women by a slight margin, 52 percent to 48 percent.
The population in Wisconsin was about a quarter Catholic, about a quarter Methodist, and the rest belonged to smaller Protestant sects.
Languages spoken in Wisconsin homes included Ho-Chunk, French, German, Menominee, Dutch, Norwegian, Oneida, Swedish, Danish, Polish, and Potawatomie, and all varieties of English accents were heard on the street, from Irish brogue to Southern drawl.
Farming, mining and lumbering were the major industries of the period.
In 1847 the Legislature authorized a railroad line from Milwaukee to Waukesha, and the first train ran on February 25, 1851. By 1857 rail lines linked Lake Michigan and the Mississippi.

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