Celebrating history across the county

Next week marks the third annual Brown County History Days — a weeklong celebration of history in Brown County, organized by the Brown County Federation of History Organizations.

“Brown County History Days is basically a week-long celebration of Brown County’s history,” said James Peth, curator at the Neville Public Museum. “It allows people to explore our history with a week of free programs. Basically, the public is invited to check out a whole bunch of exciting and diverse events presented by expert staff at our unique historical environments around Brown County.”

Brown County History Days will take place May 12-18 with programming offered at 12 participating locations, giving attendees an opportunity to explore historical organizations they may not be familiar with.

“Each of our organizations does something a little different, so there’s a variety of history-related things to go and do,” Peth said. “Maybe people don’t know about the Historic Allouez Society, but because we do this event, they have the ability to go visit the Historic Allouez Society and learn about them and maybe learn some things about that community and what they’re doing over there. [History Week] provides variety in both content and historic institutions, which we love because I don’t know if many people know about all the different organizations we have dedicated to history.”

And when it comes to Brown County, Peth said there is no shortage of rich history to explore.

“It’s important to celebrate a week of Brown County History because there’s a whole bunch of us talking about different aspects of it,” he said. “Our county was one of the first in the state, so our history goes a long way back in the history of our region. It also predates us being a state, so it’s nice to have a variety [of programming] during the week so that people can learn a whole bunch of different things about our community.”

Peth encourages those planning on attending a History Week event to check out the event details at browncountywihistory.com/historydays as some events require pre-registration.

More details and updates about Brown County History Days can be found on the Brown County Federation of History Organizations’ Facebook page.

A map and list of participating historical organizations can be found on the back page of this week’s issue of City Pages.