For the holidays, we wanted to let you know about a new way for you to find out about Nebraska history.  At the end of September, we started producing a podcast called Second Story Radio that features stories about historic places across the state. We’ve produced six episodes so far at secondstoryradio.tumblr.com. Catch up while while you’re wrapping presents or getting ready for your New Year’s party!

To mark the approach of Christmas in 1889 the Omaha Bee published brief recollections by some of the city’s earliest settlers about their first observances of the holiday in Omaha. The Bee’s account, published on December 22, said: “The celebrations were crude. In the absence of homes, churches and social organizations, the male population of the village celebrated the day in a method that made up in vigor what was lacking in decorum.” 

J. Sterling Morton and his newspaper staff in Nebraska City on May 29, 1899. NSHS RG1013-PH30-11 (at left).

By the early 20^th century, most Anglo-American women had a physician present at births. However,  many rural, minority, or immigrant groups such as the Volga Germans still relied on midwives. As the Volga German population grew in Lincoln, Nebraska, difficulties with organizing birth records and accusations of quackery led to several confrontations between the tradition of midwifery and the Lincoln Department of Health. In the winter 2013 issue of Nebraska History, researcher Rebecca J.

More than a month before the official Thanksgiving holiday in 1909, the Omaha Daily News on October 24 published the plea of mayor James C. Dahlman for what he called a "sane Thanksgiving." Dahlman, the colorful “perpetual mayor of Omaha,” said: "Unquestionably, men, women and children go to extremes in an observance of Thanksgiving day in some instances and it is about time their attention should be called to it.”