Author Archives: SCblogger

The Gaines Street African-American Settlement

Herington Park in Davenport is a two-acre city-owned park with an address of 935 Brown Street. The park includes the area surrounded by Brown, Gaines, W. 9th, and W. 11th Streets. Neighborhoods with historic homes and families are nearby and … Continue reading

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Hostetler Hotties

We’ve been uploading thousands of images from our Hostetler Studio glass negative collection to the Upper Mississippi Valley Digital Image Archive since 2004! Yes, thousands of images ranging from the mid-1890s through the mid-1920s. Did we mention thousands of images … Continue reading

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Caregivers of Color in Davenport

In celebration of this year’s Black History Month theme, “Black Health and Wellness,” we tell the stories of three African American healthcare providers who practiced in Davenport: General Houston, Charles William Bates, and Robert Shannon Taylor, M.D. We have elsewhere … Continue reading

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Who speaks for a Calico Ball?

What is a Calico Ball you ask? I did too when I came across this in a May 1883 local newspaper. Turns out, a Calico Ball (alternately referred to as a Calico Dance or Party) stems from an 1855 New … Continue reading

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Sibling Saturday!

As we perused our digitized images on the Upper Mississippi Valley Digital Image Archive, we wondered how many images of siblings we had in our collections. We are highlighting a sample of them below. Catherine Coan or Coon These images … Continue reading

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Recipes We Have Loved: Schauder’s Hungarian Goulash

It has been 14 years since we started writing blogs for our Special Collections Department. After all these years, it is still exciting when you come across an interesting story from our past. This week’s blog was intended to go … Continue reading

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Telling Your Family History for Future Generations with Dan Foley

At the beginning of this month, Daniel M. Foley gave an insightful presentation on how he researched and published several books on his and his wife’s family history. Daniel recently presented at the September meeting of the Scott County Iowa … Continue reading

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Upper Davenport

By now we are familiar with the fact that the 1857 Map of the City of Davenport and its Suburbs, Scott County, Iowa by James T. Hogane and Henry Lambach contains many features that were aspirational for the city’s developers. … Continue reading

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This Week We Say Goodbye to Our Director Amy Groskopf

This week we say goodbye to our director Amy Groskopf. Amy has been with the library for over 33 years and has held numerous positions in that time culminating in leading the library for the past 7 years. With a … Continue reading

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Happy 175th Birthday, Iowa!

Today, December 28, 2021, marks the 175th anniversary of Iowa’s admission into the Union as a state in 1846. During the 28th Congress in the Second Session, the elected House of Representatives passed “An Act for the admission of the … Continue reading

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