Dave Lull

Duluth Stories: People and Events from the Zenith City’s Past was published by the author with the help of X-Presso Books in January.

Did you know that German prisoners of war worked in local lumber camps during World War Two? That the Zenith City produced four opera divas and eight classical-music composers? That no fewer than six Duluthians worked on the Manhattan Project, developing the world’s first atomic bombs? Inside these pages, retired Duluth Public Library reference librarian David Ouse tells the tales of not only accomplished Duluthians — including local women who broke down barriers by becoming the first female practitioners of traditionally male professions — but also of visits from the famous, the exploits of a couple of “human flies,” two early (and lost) motion pictures set in the Zenith City, and much more. …

Rena Vivian Smith as Madam Butterfly, Cosmopolitan Magazine, February 1907

The latest “Forgotten Duluthian” posting by David Ouse at the Duluth Public Library’s Vintage Duluth blog is about Duluth’s Madame Butterfly, Rena Vivian Smith.

The latest posting at the Duluth Public Library’s blog Vintage Duluth is “Duluth’s Only Female Military Casualty of World War I” by David Ouse:

Over 115,000 Americans died in World War I. Slightly more than half of those were deaths from disease. Hundreds of Duluth men were casualties of the war, but only one Duluth military woman gave her life — U.S. Army nurse Lydia Whiteside.

A 1926 Description of a Ride on Duluth’s Seventh Avenue West Incline Railway” has just been posted at the Duluth Public Library’s Vintage Duluth blog.

In Volume I of his two-volume 1926 novel The Duke of Duluth, author Thomas Shastid, a Duluth physician, depicts a scene in which the main character, John Gridley Smith, who is visiting Duluth, is walking on West Superior Street and comes upon the entrance to the Incline Railway on Seventh Avenue West. On pages 74 to 80, Shastid describes the Incline and John’s ride up to the top …

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