Milwaukee’s Soldiers Home, published in April 2013, focuses on the first 100 years of the Northwestern Branch, National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, and its relationship to the surrounding communities. Favorite images include the toboggan slide, ski hill, and bleachers for veterans on the bluff above Milwaukee County Stadium. Photographs, including many never before seen or published, were gleaned from the archives of the Zablocki VA Medical Center as well as from local historical societies, city and county libraries, and individuals.
Also Available Expanded Edition of A Soldiers’ Home Class
Elizabeth Corbett lived with her family at the Northwestern Branch of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, Milwaukee, from 1891 to 1915—a total of twenty-five years. In an autobiographical sketch composed after she had moved to New York City to pursue her literary career, she wrote, “I suppose I’m the only author in America who was brought up in a Soldiers’ Home….As the only author who knows the ground, I shall some day have to write that book.”
Elizabeth published that book, Out at the Soldiers’ Home, in 1941. This expanded edition of her memoir includes photographs of the Milwaukee Soldiers’ Home, a foreword by historian James Marten and a selection of Miss Corbett’s correspondence and short poems.
The wider availability of this resource will be welcomed by scholars of the Civil War era. But many others will also find value in Out at the Soldiers’ Home. It is nostalgic but never cloying, breezy but not glib, a reflection of an earlier time, but with modern sensibilities. It honors “those who have borne the battle” by providing a loving but honest look at their lives long after the battle was over.
—James Marten in the Foreword