Gilded Age Plains City: The Great Sheedy Murder Trial and the Booster Ethos of Lincoln, Nebraska is a work of

digital history Digital history is the use of digital media to further historical analysis, presentation, and research. It is a branch of the digital humanities and an extension of quantitative history, cliometrics, and computing. Digital history is commonly dig ...

hosted by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln which uses the January 1891 murder of Lincoln,

Nebraska Nebraska () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Kansas to the south; Colorado to the southwe ...

resident John Sheedy and subsequent murder trial as a means to gain insight into

Great Plains The Great Plains (french: Grandes Plaines), sometimes simply "the Plains", is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, an ...

urban development Urban means "related to a city". In that sense, the term may refer to: * Urban area, geographical area distinct from rural areas * Urban culture, the culture of towns and cities Urban may also refer to: General * Urban (name), a list of people ...

during the

Gilded Age In United States history, the Gilded Age was an era extending roughly from 1877 to 1900, which was sandwiched between the Reconstruction era and the Progressive Era. It was a time of rapid economic growth, especially in the Northern and Weste ...

. The site is an extension of the research and

scholarship A scholarship is a form of financial aid awarded to students for further education. Generally, scholarships are awarded based on a set of criteria such as academic merit, diversity and inclusion, athletic skill, and financial need. Scholarsh ...

done by Timothy R. Mahoney, Professor of History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, in his article "The Great Sheedy Murder Case and the Booster Ethos of the Gilded Age in Lincoln, Nebraska," which was published in ''Nebraska History'' quarterly and won the 2001 James L. Sellers Memorial Award. ''Gilded Age Plains City'' explores not only

local history Local history is the study of history in a geographically local context, often concentrating on a relatively small local community. It incorporates cultural and social aspects of history. Local history is not merely national history writ small bu ...

and regional history, but also urban history,

social history Social history, often called the new social history, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in his ...

cultural history Cultural history combines the approaches of anthropology and history to examine popular cultural traditions and cultural interpretations of historical experience. It examines the records and narrative descriptions of past matter, encompassing the ...

, and issues of race and gender.

Site Organization and Content

The site has three primary sections: "Explore the City," "Spatial Narratives," and "Interpretation and Narrative." "Explore the City" contains an interactive map and an introduction to the city of Lincoln, Nebraska as it existed during the Gilded Age. "Spatial Narratives" includes a discussion of what a spatial narrative is as well as a brief overview of the spatial narratives of eight different groups of interest in Gilded Age Lincoln: lawyers, boosters (and boosterism), male

subculture A subculture is a group of people within a culture that differentiates itself from the parent culture to which it belongs, often maintaining some of its founding principles. Subcultures develop their own norms and values regarding cultural, poli ...

, African Americans, manufacturing and railroad infrastructure, women, the working class, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. "Interpretation and Narrative" contains five subsections which summarize and analyze events pertaining to the murder of John Sheedy, the murder trial, and widespread interest generated by the case. ''Gilded Age Plains City'' possesses a wide variety of

primary source In the study of history as an academic discipline, a primary source (also called an original source) is an artifact, document, diary, manuscript, autobiography, recording, or any other source of information that was created at the time under ...

material available for users to not only view, but also sort, search, and (in some cases) download. This makes the site's Document Archive quite similar to a thematic research collection, although it is perhaps more narrow in scope than most such collections. The site's Document Archive includes transcriptions and photographs/images of legal documents, letters, and newspaper articles related to the murder trial as well as photographs, postcard images, and newspaper illustrations of the city of Lincoln during the 1890s. Biographies of all of the major historical characters involved are available, and hyperlinks ensure their presence throughout nearly all areas of the site. A glossary of historical terms, phrases, and organizations is also provided. Some historians have suggested that "academic historians, like other citizens, should insist on a role in this new 'public space'" (of the World Wide Web). ''Gilded Age Plains City'' may be a step in this direction.

References

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External links

''Gilded Age Plains City'' website
Nebraska culture History of Nebraska History websites of the United States Histories of cities in Nebraska