Early Lumbering in Kewaunee County & Beyond

Marcel, Jr., his wife Josephine, accompanied by their younger children, came into Manitowoc County, Wisconsin in 1848, just before Statehood. The couple’s older children, including a married daughter, entered Wisconsin about the same time but weren’t traveling with their family. Within the same few years, other French Canadian families were immigrating to the Two Rivers area, many being fishing families and most related in some way.

At the time of Marcel’s immigration, Wolf River* was seeing numerous itinerant French Canadian fishermen. Though a few names were recorded, most have been lost to history. Interestingly, the LaFond family was one of the early fishing families to Two Rivers. Nearly 160 years later, commercial fisherman Andy LaFond’s departure from his moorings on the Ahnapee River in Algoma, marked the death of an entire industry in the city.

Marcel’s older children stayed in Two Rivers. The sons engaged in commercial fishing while Marcel and Mary and the younger boys, Joe and Peter, went to Mishicot. Peter was baptized as Pierre in French Canada, but as a real American then, his name was as well. A year before Marcel’s immigration, the family of Francoise and wife Mary left the regions of Quebec for Two Rivers where their last child was born in 1847.

Marcel and Francoise’s families lived near each other on the land that is now Fox Hills Resort in Mishicot, and on the same July 1858 day, Joe and Peter married Francoise’s daughters Mary and Rosalie. Nearly a year later Joe and Mary’s first child was born. Peter and Rosalie’s first followed by about 6 months. The newlywed couples lived near their parents and married siblings, all working relentlessly clearing land, trying to build farms and eke out survival. But then the unthinkable happened. It was 1860 and the election of Abraham Lincoln brought war.

Marcel had enough war to last him a lifetime. He was an 18 year old Canadian citizen when he served the British in the War of 1812. Even though he became a U.S. citizen 1852, the war was not his, and it was not his sons’ with their young wives and toddlers. Joe and Peter began dressing as women. Anyone seeing them from a distance would think the women had taken over men’s work while the men were on the killing fields, but it was not something that was peculiar just to them. When conscription gangs were known to be in the area, the men – and no doubt neighbors too – hid in the thick forests. Joe and Peter’s names do appear on the draft list in the Manitowoc paper, but they never served. Perhaps, because from all appearances the war was close to its end, there was no serious effort to find them. As it was, the children came regularly and had anybody given any thought to the babies, there might have been questions asked these staunch Catholic families.

Joe – Joseph, Sr. by then - and Mary had 13 children while living in Mishicot. In 1878 they moved to Lena where the last child was born a year later. Peter and Rose had at least 7 children, the last of whom was born in Lena in 1882. Marcel’s wife had died, and one would wonder why that family and entire branches of other French Canadian families left Manitowoc County for Oconto County. Years had been spent laboriously cutting down trees, pulling stumps out and breaking land that had never been touched by a plow. Something prompted those families to leave that which they worked so hard to have and go north. Part of the something was logging.

French-Swiss immigrant Clement Rosera (as the name eventually was spelled) is said to be the founder of today’s Lena, then Maple Valley, when he established a homestead in 1872. Sam Roy/Roi/Sam King came about the same time. A sawmill was quickly established and most of the French Canadians engaged in lumbering. Wisconsin’s logging heyday is pegged roughly between 1870 and 1920. By 1889 one-quarter of all non-farm men were employed in the state’s pineries. Oconto County, and all of northern Wisconsin, offered employment by the big lumber camps or in businesses serving the industry. Cut-over land wasn’t worth much to the logging companies which sold thousands of acres of pine stumps at very favorable prices.

Oconto Co. history says that when the railroad came in 1882, the timber around Lena was almost exhausted, however hotels, saloons and other businesses began springing up near the depot. As logging was fading in some places, the railroad meant previously inaccessible places could be logged. It also meant small towns lacking navigable waterways, such as Lena, desperately wanted the railroad to come through.

 Lena, 1910 postmark

Marcel’s son Joe and Joe’s wife Mary ran the Maple Valley Hotel. Their children worked there until they married and made new lives, however their son Denis joined them in business. Joe and Mary also employed a nephew, Ed King, to work as a stable hand. Hotels of the time had stables, as lodgings and care were as necessary for the horse as it was for its owner.

Joe and Mary’s hotel served the traveling public as well as servicing the loggers who came from the woods north of Lena on Saturday nights. There were a lot of them! Joe and Mary were among the Lena residents who kept their daughters under wraps on weekends when the shanty boys came to town to spend their pay. Many had shaves and took baths in barbershops and hotels before they began to whoop it up. Some didn’t bother with such hygiene. The more whooping it up they did, the less safe it was. Better the pretty young women were kept out of sight. It was said a Saturday night in a town serving loggers meant that the town was wide-open. Some were. More than a few Wisconsin and Upper Michigan communities had their start with the bordellos, saloons and gambling places. Payday meant loggers had money to spend on liquor, cards, and, perhaps, ladies of the evening. Local businessmen knew there was money to be made, nevertheless the smart ones exercised caution. Though facts are not clear, one of Mary’s cousins was an innocent bystander when he was killed by a logger with a gun. As in so many other situations, rumors tarnished the reputations of all loggers, most of whom were regarded with suspicion.

Marinette County had its own “race riot,” though it was not the same kind of thing as it was 100 years later. As it was described in the paper, three Pembine woodsmen alleged that the “Pollacks” started the trouble when they objected to a Frenchman’s actions. It seems the fellow was thawing out a piece of frozen meat on a stove. That meat was thawing for the man’s dog. Objecting to the odor of the thawing meat, the Pollacks threatened to brain the Frenchman. Whether the fellow was “brained” or not, a fight broke out and was said to have been “general.” Thirty-five Pollacks walked out of camp and went to Marinette. Three woodsmen were held in jail for causing great bodily harm.

While Denis was in business with his parents, his brother Joe, Jr. and wife Mary – yes, another Joe and Mary – bought a hotel in Stanley. With a dozen kids, they had a workforce. The boys did the stable work, tended bar and helped their mother cook. The girls were chamber maids and waited on the dining room. Except when the loggers were in town! By then the railroads were operating in northern Wisconsin and transporting logs via train enabled the logging camps to operate most of the year, not just the winter.

As logging faded in Wisconsin, the hotels along the railroad lines were frequented by the drummers, the traveling salesmen who sold everything from cigarettes, to clothing, to farm implements and more. Drummers often displayed their wares in a hotel’s sample room where local businessmen would check them out. By then logging had passed its heyday, men were getting drafted for what became World War 1 and Prohibition changed hotel taprooms, although maybe not the way one would think!

With the changes in clientele, Joe and Mary breathed a sigh of relief. That didn’t last long because while the loggers really didn’t care about family’s religious faith, there was an area KKK cell which burned a cross after it was known Joe and Mary's Catholic daughter was engaged to teach in an area one-room school.

Dikeman Mill

Kewaunee County lumbering started along the Kewaunee River as early as the mid-1830s, about the same time that Wisconsin became the Territory of Wisconsin. John Volk took over operations in the early 1840s. Volk was the county's first postmaster, as he was in Oconto Falls where he was lumbering after leaving Kewaunee County in the early 1850s. The Slaussons bought the land that Volk told everybody he owned. Until the Slaussons, nobody bothered to check and Volk was essentially forced out of Kewaunee County. Abraham Hall began operations in Wolf River in 1852, Scofield started in Red River and C.B. Fay was off and running in Casco and at Casco Pier. There were many others followed, including Grimmer and Duvall Co. and Stransky in Kewaunee, Dikeman in Coryville,* Bottkol in Lincoln, Beitling at Casco Pier, then called Langworthy, Heppler in Pierce and Tisch in Carlton. Montpelier had a number of lumbering operations, most notably Christman, Baldwin, Hardtke and Brand. Ten or 12 mills including Decker's and Lamb's between Scofield's at Red River and New Franken were lost in the horrific Peshtigo fire. 

When the first settlers arrived in (then) Wolf River, the trees were so thick that the settlers feared getting lost in the woods. In 1851 the thick forests along the (then) Wolf River held the river in its bed, keeping it wide and deep. Within 20 or 25 years, the trees were cut and cords of wood were stacked along the river bank almost as far as the eye could see. Without the trees to keep the river in check, it seeped into the surrounding countryside and baked in the hot sun to be what it is today. Twenty-five years after first settlement there was little logging around Ahnapee, however men found employment opportunities in the northwoods. Little is written about the men seeking such employment before 1900 but history has recorded such familiar names as Krueger, Kumm and Sibilsky among others. The Schuenemanns had a workforce of men cutting trees in the Upper Peninsula for their Christmas tree business, something the State of Michigan was glad to have. Schuenemanns offered employment in a waning business.

Area men John Fellows, Dave Machia and Ernest Miller found work at Cedar River in the early 1900s. Frank Kwapil was operating his own camp at Hardwood, Michigan at least during 1910. In late October 1919 Kwapil took charge of the Strutz-Kwapil camp in Cavour. Given the association with Ahnapee Veneer and Seating Co., it is possible Kwapil was overseeing lumber operations for the company. Sam Newman, the man who originated Algoma Plumbers Woodwork, had a lumber camp on Washington Island. When the schooner James Hall came from Washington Island with a cargo of cabbage in 1911, Newman sent an Algoma crew back to his lumber camp. Newman's interest in racing was reflected in a horse named Pinery Boy. The Jennerjohns – John H. and John F. – who were joined by Louis Jacobs, Ed Kramer and Ted Jones, found employment near Nadeau, Michigan in 1914, but due to lack of snow, the men were forced to return home. Herman Wickman was another in Michigan that year. Though the industry had declined, Alaska’s Bernie Bycoski still found employment in the northwoods in 1926.

The cedar of Kewaunee County meant cedar shingles and posts for the growing markets in Milwaukee and Chicago. Working by firelight in the 1850s' evenings, those clearing land during daylight could make hard money. Ahnapee harbor was filled with schooners awaiting loading of hardwood logs and ties, the shingles and posts. The cities of the country were built on not only Wisconsin’s northwoods, but on the forests of Michigan and Minnesota and those of other states before and after the Wisconsin's logging heyday. 100 years following the decline of the industry, the state still deals with its environmental aftermath.

Notes. Wolf River became Ahnapee in 1859 and Algoma in 1897. Coryville was short lived and is now the Town of West Kewaunee.

Sources: An-An-api-sebe: Where is the River? c. 2001; Ahnapee Record, Algoma Record and Oconto County Lumberman newspapers; Here Comes the Mail: Post Offices of Kewaunee County, c. 2010. The Lena Enterprise, The Wisconsin Frontier, Mark Wyman, c. 1998. paintings by NLJohnson ART, used with permission; postcards in the blogger's collection.