Little Wisconsin

Born in Martinez near Berkeley and raised in the "endless summer" of Southern California, Melinda Anne Roberts acquired her passion for photography and history during the six years she lived along the Hudson River, down the road from the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and home of author Washington Irving, in New York's Historic Hudson Valley. The day before her 55th birthday, in November 2011, just six months after arriving in Wisconsin for a new job, she was diagnosed with Stage III colon cancer and given a two-year window. When her oncologist suggested she "do something fun" since "we don't know how much time you have," she set out in June 2012 on her first journey-to visit Baraboo's ancient Man Mound. Along the way she discovered several Wisconsin Historical Society "official" markers, learned there were 532 across the state and no useable resource on how to locate them, and decided to visit and digitally record them all in the remaining 18 months of her two-year window.



Today, Melinda's award-winning WisconsinHistoricalMarkers.com website is populated with nearly 75,000 photographs of more than 6,000 Wisconsin historical markers and sites, lighthouses, Smokey the Bear signs, whimsical roadside attractions, and vintage hamburger joints. She and her project have appeared in numerous news reports, newspaper and magazine articles, and she was featured in an episode of Wisconsin Public Television's "Wisconsin Life."



Along the way she discovered her great-grandmother Annette Johnson had immigrated from Norway to a farm in Wautoma, Wisconsin, where her grandmother, Ethel Verna Peterson was born in 1895, and that her Great Uncle, Hjalmar Rued Hoeland, who immigrated as a young boy to live in Wautoma with his older sister, "Nettie," was a Wisconsin author and historian who settled in Ephraim in Door County, where he researched and wrote prolifically, established the Door County Historical Society, and became world famous for his work with the Kensington Rune Stone, which he believed proves the Norwegians were in America long before Columbus brought his three little ships through the Caribbean.



Melinda has a BA in English & Comparative Literatures and an MATESOL. She spent 20 years teaching English as a Second Language, Composition and Writing, and English Literature in adult schools and community colleges in California, New York, and Wisconsin. She has also directed award-winning ESL programs; written curriculum; been a presenter at local, state, national, and international conferences; and authored a literacy-level workbook to accompany the internationally acclaimed Side-by-Side ESL series created by Bill Bliss and Stephen Molinsky. Her most recent project was teaching ESL on a Green Bay area dairy farm.



Melinda is thrilled to have been given the opportunity to research, write, and photograph Little Wisconsin, proud to discover her Wisconsin roots, and humbled to be following in the footsteps of her Norwegian ancestors, all of whom she absolutely believes are here with her on this wonderful, wonderful journey. Melinda lives in De Pere with her tailed traveling companion Dexter Noeel and his kitty, Bailey Boo.