Harry Houdini (Erik Weisz / Ehrich Weiss)

He was not. The family crossed to America in 1878, when he was four, and his father, Rabbi Mayer Samuel Weiss, took the pulpit at Zion Reform Jewish Congregation in Appleton. Four years on the Fox River followed. In 1882 the congregation let the rabbi go, and Milwaukee received the rest of the boyhood. That Appleton stretch is the whole Wisconsin childhood claim the city can make without rewriting the birth certificate.

He later took a stage name from the French magician Robert-Houdin, added an i, and built a career getting out of handcuffs, boxes, and straitjackets other people could not. Publicity and even some legal paper listed Appleton as his birthplace. A letter to his brother still dreams of the town: hunting a camera that was not there, pausing to watch their parents drink and chat. In 1904, on his first return in twenty years, Edna Ferber, then a three-dollar-a-week Crescent reporter, cornered him on College Avenue and got the interview.

Appleton did not fully claim the brand until the 1980s, with Houdini Plaza, Houdini Elementary, birthday escapes downtown, and a research center. The History Museum at the Castle now holds his cuffs, picks, a straitjacket, and the paper trail. He died in Detroit on Halloween 1926. Write Budapest first; then let Appleton keep the childhood years and the relics. The hometown he invented is the one that still curates him.