Gilded Age Plains City: The Great Sheedy Murder Trial and the Booster Ethos of Lincoln, Nebraska is a work of digital history hosted by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln which uses the January 1891 murder of Lincoln, Nebraska resident John Sheedy and subsequent murder trial as a means to gain insight into Great Plains urban development during the Gilded Age.
The site is an extension of the research and scholarship 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 [1] and won the 2001 James L. Sellers Memorial Award.
Gilded Age Plains City possesses a wide variety of primary source material available for users to not only view, but also sort, search, and (in some cases) download.
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.