Algoma Children: The Depression Ends and World War ll Begins

We're different we children born between 1937 or '38 and 1942. We aren't Baby Boomers. We aren't Gen Xers. We aren't children of either the Depression or World War ll. We aren't the Tweeners, yet that word could easily apply to us. While there aren't as many of us, our lives have been shaped by the same experiences. We didn't know we were different until the current generational labeling failed to define us.

Our parents were just coming out of the Depression. Most of them grew up in want unparalleled in the U.S. today. Grandma had hobos sitting on the porch so often, though what she didn't know was that there was a nearly imperceptible mark on the corner of her house which meant the woman inside would not turn the hungry away. Grandpa owned a dairy and delivered milk to those who could never pay just as he did for their paying next door neighbors. Another grandpa took fish from his commercial catch to leave on the doorstep of those he knew were starving. In a day when 10 cents was real money, merchants "carried" folks on the books when they themselves were in danger of foreclosure.

The shortage in housing forced newlyweds such as  Lawrence and Millie to rent a bedroom in the farmhouse of people who had a spare room. When Algoma Plywood and Veneer stepped up production just before 1940, men from the Birchwood plant were transferred to Algoma. There was not adequate housing in town for the number of men who were eventually placed 3 or 4 to a room at the Kirchman Hotel. From there they went to Timble's Barbershop where they could bathe. Brick veneer walls in that old hotel, built as the Baster in 1868, did little to keep anybody warm. Open transoms above the doors enabled rooms to get some heat coming from the stove in the hall. Two hundred years ago, men traveling the post road between New York and Philadelphia would share rooms and beds with men they had never before laid eyes on although with 3 or 4 in a bed, they might have kept a little warmer.

Rationing of sugar, tires, gas, shoes and all kinds of other things produced a black market besides tearing some families apart. Who got what? The tug of war over sugar between Grandma and Gus eventually led to Grandma and Grandpa retiring and moving into town.  Grandma, brought up in her papa's hotel in Lille, France before being the owner of her own hotel, wanted to use sugar for a pie a week. Gus wanted the sugar for cake. Gus's siblings lived on neighboring farms so they were able to stop by. Gus wanted to offer a sweet. Vacations or just riding 6 miles to see Grandma and Grandpa on the farm were mostly not to be. Tires were poor and if one did have the gas to travel those 6 miles, a flat or two was always part of the trip. If one did have a few vacation days coming from Algoma Plywood and Veneer, the Plumbers or the Foundry, it would certainly be taken during haying or harvesting. There was a sense of duty. Work came first and families pulled together.

Kids who went to country schools carried in the wood for the stove and a pail of water for drinking. During the winter they set their dinner pails - no lunch buckets then - on top the school stove to thaw out and warm up. At a time when girls only wore dresses, the accommodating teachers would allow girls to wear slacks in school to keep warm. Those who were embarrassed wearing long cotton stocking held in place by garter belts didn't know they'd grow up into a world where garter belts were sex symbols that came from Victoria's Secret. Girls wore snuggies, a kind of cotton underpants with legs. They looked much like the Sphanx of today but served to keep the wearer warm instead of smooth and curvy.

City school kids were cold too. It seems like everything was cold and dark then. Even the summers until the war was over. Five and 6 year old kids knew how to weed gardens and put tin cans in the bags behind the kitchen door. Kids knew that the cotton cloth over a glass jar strained the cooking lard and grease so it could be used again. Every 4-year old finding a milkweed pod knew enough to take the silk home. It was needed for parachutes. Woman with silk stockings had something worth more than their weight in gold because Pearl Harbor meant the end of silk stockings for most. Silk was needed for the war effort. During the Depression older sisters with jobs would mail their" run-in" silk stockings home to the farm where Grandma would mend them so the younger girls had stockings to wear.

Old clothing was remade. One old picture shows a little girl in a dress made from her uncle's old shirt. The shirt was one worn only for church and "for good." Mothers made woolen snowsuits from men's old suits or coats. Kids whose mothers were not good seamstresses were lucky if they had hand-me-downs because no woman would spend 10 cents on those expensive patterns. Kids thought the woolen snowsuits smelled bad when they began drying out in the school cloak room or near the kitchen stove. Kids who could hang their snowsuits next to the stove checked to see if left over mashed potatoes were turned into patties for mashed potato sandwiches. Again! Four year old Char ate so much gravy bread that she thought the Lord's Prayer included the line, Give us today our gravy bread.

Plug-in Christmas candles on little wreaths were found in windows of some homes in 1941 and '42 but then blackouts started. Country people who never needed shades or drapes for privacy put something over the window to block any nighttime light. Nobody knew if some German plane could get through to bomb Kewaunee County. By the early 1950s we worried about the Russians as much as we did the Germans ten years earlier. Nancy was in 8th grade when she and a number of her classmates were volunteering for Civil Defense stints, watching the skies over Algoma from their perch in the cupola of the Stebbins Hotel. Practicing with the binoculars, the girls sighted on seagulls as if they were the enemy planes printed in the training manuals. Nearly 60 years later, Nancy had everyone laughing when she told the story and then made a comment about the security of the country being in the hands of 8th grade girls. What was so humorous in the retelling could not begin to describe the responsibility those girls shouldered.

Farm equipment and household appliances were hard to come by. Clarence and Myra got the last refrigerator in town and Ray and Regina only got one because he worked for a hardware dealer. Warren and Bernadine had to plug the rental refrigerator with quarters to keep it operating. Setting aside a supply of quarters was the first thing that happened on payday. Sy said whenever they heard a terribly loud racket, the neighbors knew Grandpa was out in the field with the Fordson. When the war came, King and Queen were back in business because horses don't run on gas.

Family life was interrupted as men went off to war and the remaining men worked harder than ever for the war effort. Women did their duty too.  Clarice did hers when she had 125 kindergartners in her class in the old Quonset near the Sturgeon Bay shipyards. Helen did her duty too. She gave up a job she enjoyed, one in which she could wear nice clothes and stay clean, to take a job at the Plywood doing defense work, getting dirty and getting terrible  rashes on her legs because of the resins in the glues. Most of the women had rashes prompting Dr. Hirschboeck to come up with a tincture.

There are few memories of Dad until kindergarten when he would come home for dinner - at noon in those days - and put me in his bike basket to take me downtown to kindergarten on his way back to the Plywood. I really never missed him. I probably didn't know he was supposed to live with Mom and me. He was as blind as a bat and was rejected from the military, but he was always at the Plywood. During the late 1950s he told us he was cleared by the Secret Service for defense work at the Plywood and could never tell anyone. What 15-year old would believe such a story? Even Mom didn't know it. Still, it was plausible because General Omar Bradley's grandson rented the upstairs of our home and he was at the Plywood too. The hull of the PT boat taking General MacArthur from Bataan was built at the Plywood. Besides the hulls, the Plywood built airplane wings and nose cones, so maybe that's why Bradley was there. While helping Mom do some sorting years after Dad died, we found his Secret Service clearance and other documents! While Dad was not around in the early years, he was there later. Friends Dick and Joyce never really had a dad. His tank was blown up in the Pacific theater. As a baby, Dick was held by his dad, but he and Joyce never even knew him.

Some dads came back so changed that they were unable to speak about the war for years. Hank was a POW. Elmer was with MacArthur when he went into Japan after the bomb. Richard piloted the captain upriver for drinks. As it was, the very young commercial fisherman was in the pilot house when the JG could not keep the ship on course in heavy seas. When Rich said he could do it, the captain was so frustrated that he allowed the enlisted man to take the wheel. The Lake Michigan fisherman handled the turbulent Pacific Ocean and the captain never forgot it.

June and Jean have no memory of their dad when they were little, but they didn't know until they were adults that it was because he had the dreaded TB. He was a musician who taught reed instruments and played with a number of orchestras. Everybody was told he was on the road and had neither the time nor money to get home. He wasn't home for nearly three years. Things were rough and relatives helped support them. No doubt tongues were wagging. Victims of tuberculosis went to sanatoriums in those days. There was no choice, except the one Mammy made. Mammy was the grandma, who when she learned her son had TB, hid him in her attic and tended to him for those three years with secret help from the family physician. How he lived in the attic without anyone knowing brings to mind the story of Anne Frank whose family was secreted in an Amsterdam attic at the same time.

Jeanne knew that she and her sister could never mention the war or ask questions about it. Her dad was 90 when he decided he had to talk about it so that it would never happen again. This shy retiring man now speaks to any group who wants him, commanding the attention of a general. Cal's dislike of a general - Eisenhower - became quite apparent when Ike ran for president. Young as I was, I knew something was wrong with Ike who was a national hero. Forty years later Cal would tell me about Normandy. I knew the horrendous loss of life, but I didn't know so many men were lost because they could not swim with their packs that were so terribly heavy. Cal felt military leaders know they send men to their deaths, but Ike sent them not to artillery fire but to a watery grave. Packs that became lead weights.

People were admonished that "Loose lips sink ships." Loose lips could also mean jail. Bob, and everybody else, was dead when Elaine shared a story on what should have been their 50th anniversary. She and Bob had set September 1942 as their wedding date. Bob was the single child of older parents. The family doctor sat on the draft board and knew Bob's number was coming up. He suggested to Bob that since he was getting married, if he moved the date up a few months, he might escape the draft. Bob and Elaine began quickly planning an early June wedding. In 1942 everybody was sure that this good Catholic country girl had obviously turned into a wayward big city heathen. Elaine couldn't breathe a word, but she needed help and turned to Auntie Dee, her landlady. Maybe Auntie Dee told Uncle Dunk. Who knows? He knew the score. He was in World War l and played with John Phillip Sousa. Though Elaine had a job at a large department store, money was scarce. In its bargain basement, Elaine found an affordable wedding dress - $3.00 - only because of a spot on it. On a Sunday afternoon when nobody was around, Elaine and Auntie Dee took Energine into the garage and cleaned the dress. Tongues never got the chance to wag because it was years before a baby came.

Each night at 5, Mom would put me on her lap while she listened to the news from WTMJ. War news surely affected her because nearly 20 years later, Ed Murrow began  hosting a TV program. The first time I heard that voice, I froze remembering Mom's tightening arms while remembering, "This is London." Years later an NPR program again sent shivers through me. I knew the voice of Gabriel Heater. Today I can guess what Murrow and Heater were saying in those broadcasts. Hearing those voices is feeling Mom's tightening arms around me. For a two year old child who knew nothing of war, the voices are still there to frighten me.

Those of us born in that five or six year period grew up a little faster. We knew what it was to live with less and to be sure we helped others with work and other needs. Had we been born 5 years later, we'd have been Boomers. We'd have been on the cusp of change which eventually became plenty. We had that "plenty" too but we treated it differently. We learned our lessons at an early age from parents who went from the Depression right into the World War ll years. As preschoolers we bridged the Depression and Pearl Harbor. Big impressions were made on little kids. Circumstances within that short period affected us and made us what we are. We are different and we are cautious. We have that sense of duty. We never fought in that war but we remember. We are part of the World War ll generation that is passing away all too quickly.

Note: Above photo is taken from Women of the Plywood: The World War ll Years, c. 1998. It is estimated that 85% of over 1,300 wartime employees at Algoma Plywood were women who worked 50 hour weeks while raising children, taking care of the home, planting huge gardens, canning,sewing and mending, making bandages and knitting and more. Others went home to do all those things in addition to milking cows, picking eggs and driving tractor. Somehow they coped and even found time for fun in a world turned upside down.

1881: A New Year's Ball at Bastar's Hall

"Be Sociable. Dance the old year out and the new year in," read Bastar's poster announcing an Ahnapee New Year's Ball. William Bastar's 1881 poster did not offer a price including dinner, all one could drink, noisemakers and hats in addition to a room for the evening as many of today's party venues do, but he did invite old settlers, young settlers and everybody else.

Bastar built his hotel on the northeast corner of 4th and Clark Streets in Ahnapee the the late 1860's when Ahnapee was almost a boom town following the Civil War. His building ran east and west. A few years later he added the north-south facing section that many Algoma oldsters best remember as Mauer's Sport Shop. The building remains as the popular Steelhead Saloon.

Bastar's poster welcomed everyone, but whether everyone felt welcome is another story. There was animosity in Ahnapee, particularly fanned by the likes of Judge Boalt who made no secret of his loathing for the lower classes. In Boalt's mind, the lower classes were the immigrants who made up most of Ahnapee, such prejudices he didn't hesitate to bring up in his public speeches. There were any number of celebrations where the Yankees had one party and the Germans and Bohemians another.

On New Year's Eve 1881, music was provided by Bastar's Brass Band, made up of Bohemian-born William and his four sons. The musically talented William Bastar - sometimes written as Barschtor - added much to the community. He and John Sonderegger formed the Ahnapee Liederkranz* in 1871. Beginning with 48 members, the group performed throughout the area. Just a year later, Bastar and Carl Noetzl organized a brass band for boys aged 10 to 16. After raising $150 in subscriptions, Bastar had a ball to raise money for instruments. Feeling a string band was a necessity for dances, Bastar looked for instruments such as violins and flutes in town and brought more instruments with him when he returned from a trip south. (Note: In those days when someone went south, it could have been as far as Kenosha.)  Ahnapee's popular Cornet Band furnished music for all three days of the 1890 county fair.

Music in all forms was popular in Ahnapee. By the 1880's, it was a rare week that passed without a dance, ball or masquerade. Some weeks saw several. One, at the Masonic Hall at the southeast corner of Clark and 3rd, prompted this comment from the Enterprise: "Those Ahnapee folks for wind and bottom can beat the world at dancing and hot weather don't (sic) discourage them a bit."

Just as traveling musical groups attracted hundreds of area folk before 1900, Algoma's summer concert series still does. As for Mr. Bastar, it is Algoma's Community Band that continues to meet his benchmark.

*A Liederkranz is a German all male singing society.

Note: Bastar's ballroom was a popular Algoma spot until sometime into or after Prohibition when it was subdivided into hotel rooms and kept that way for the next 80 or so years. When Scott and Paula Talmadge purchased what was then usually referred to as the Kirchman Hotel, they began an immense restoration. During 2003, the Talmadges invited this blogger and five others to view the renovation in a quest for history. The ballrom was one of Talmadge's "finds." A 90 year old woman whose family had owned the hotel did not remember the ballroom. It ran north and south with windows overlooking 4th Street and to the north. Its arched wooden ceiling still had the medallions from which the gas light hung. A small bandstand/balcony was at the south end of the ballroom. As narrow as it was, the knees of any man seated had to hit the balcony wall. On the back wall there were square dance calls written in pencil. On the knee wall were labels peeled from liquor bottles.

From the band's balcony, one could see something looking like peeling paint in the middle in the otherwise nearly perfect ceiling. Scott wasn't so sure he should point out that the cleverly designed "peeling paint" was actually a conduit for rubber tubing. As he was refurbishing, he climbed above the bandstand/balcony to look above the arched ceiling. Seeing wooden boxes apparently stored helter-skelter near the center of the ceiling, Scott's natural curiosity took over. What he found was a chunk of Prohibition history. The wooden boxes disguised the liquor jugs to anyone other than one brave enough to get on his stomach and inch his way across the that curved ceiling. Once there, circumventing Prohibition was apparent.

That First Christmas in Wolf River: 1851

Few people today would look forward to a salt pork pie for Christmas, but that’s how it was at that first Christmas in Wolf River. By Christmas 1851, the founding families – Hughes, Tweedale and Warner – had spent six months living along the (then) Wolf River.

John Hughes and his family lived on the north bluff above the river about where the lighthouse keeper’s house was built about 50 years later. Native Americans were located in the same area. Orrin and Jane Bennett Warner and their children lived near what was the Drive-In and is River City Motel. The Tweedales’ log cabin was on the approximate of today’s Bearcat’s Fish Shop.

Orrin and Jane Warner had the only young children in the three families. Harriet was 9, George Washington 7 and John Henry was 3. Years later Laura Ingalls Wilder would write about living along the Verdigris River and Mr. Olson making the freezing crossing after he ran into Santa Claus who was looking for the Ingalls children. The Warner children weren't so lucky. The closest white people were a few lumbermen in Kewaunee. Wolf River's founding families were the first permanent residents of the area that became Kewaunee County in the spring of 1852. At Christmas 1851, they lived in the new Door County, which had been set off from Brown that same year.

If that first Wolf River Christmas included gifts, they were not recorded. Perhaps Jane Warner knit socks or mittens. Perhaps one of the men brought peppermints from Manitowoc when he walked the lake shore for supplies. Perhaps Orrin Warner carved animals or a spinning top. Hughes, Tweedale and Warner were Yankees, and if there were decorations, they would have been pine boughs. Possibly there was a Yule Log or maybe even stocking were hung in keeping with English traditions.

Whether the ice was strong enough for the Tweedales to walk across the river, or whether they had to paddle the short distance to get to Christmas dinner is anyone’s guess. Some years, present day Algoma has a lot of snow for Christmas and the river is frozen. In other years, children are excited to see a few snow flurries.

It was about 70 years later that Harriet told of that first Christmas and the salt pork pie. She went on to say that the winter of 1851-52 was difficult and supplies were running out. As soon as possible in the spring, one of the men walked the beach to Kewaunee for flour. When the Goodrich ship Cleveland made its appearance in the summer, supplies started arriving. Ships servicing the hamlet provided a somewhat of a convenience in an otherwise hard life. And if residents feasted on salt pork pies in years to come, nobody wrote about it.

Note: The picture of Indians crossing the World, now Ahnapee, River was taken from An-An-api-sebe: Where is the River? The crayon drawing appears to have been the work of former Algoma resident Frank Swaty, born there when the city was still known as Ahnapee. Swaty's canvas was completed about the time of World War l and was a part of a business decor. It is now held by a private citizen. The rack on the deer swimming across the river could indicate that Swaty produced the work in the fall.

Ahnapee, The First City on the Peninsula to Have Electric Lights

On this date in history - December 20, 1880 - electric lights lit up New York's famed Broadway between 12th and 126th Streets. The blazing lights prompted some to call the area the Great White Way, a name that remains 130 years later. New York's theater district was on the cutting edge. So was Ahnapee. But not quite then.

When Joseph Wodsedalek's electric light plant began operation in January 1892, Ahnapee had the distinction of being the first city on the Door County peninsula with electric lights. The honor was short-lived as Sturgeon Bay followed a month later. Ahnapee's first electric light plant stood at the northwest corner of 6th and Fremont Streets.

Ahnapee boasted seven street lights with 2,000 candle power each, however the electric street lights did not completely replace the oil lamps. Almost immediately it was decided to keep the lights on all night as a service to the number of visitors who were unfamiliar with the city. Wodsedalek's own machine shop was the first building to be lit with electricity. Perry Opera House was the next.

It was not long before the city experienced problems with the new lights. When lines broke in September, the Record opined such trouble could not have been "foreseen or prevented." Darkened streets, which the paper felt was a reminder of "the olden days," were again a reality, ironically, on April Fool's Day in 1897. The break came at a time when residents were beginning to think electric lights were indispensable. Believe it or not, just a year earlier  the Record requested readers to neither damage or interfere with electric lights within the city.

In 1889, just four years before Wodsedalek's light plant threw the switch, Ahnapee prided itself on 18 oil street lamps. They required a lamplighter who was paid $50 a year,but then George Bohman was hired at $2.50 a week. Bohman carried around a ladder so he could clean the chimneys, trim the wicks and fill the lamps with oil. His duties also included those of bridge tender and harbormaster. As ships neared, it was Bohman's job to find a berth. If boats travelled the river, it was his responsibility to raise and lower the bridge at 2nd Street.

No longer is there a lamplighter nor electricity provided by a private company. No longer are there only seven streetlights. Those who thought electricity was indispensable 115 years ago were proven right!

Note: Ca. 1910 is depicted on this postcard of Algoma's Steele Street. Street lights are hanging above the intersection of 2nd and Steele in the foreground and above 3rd and Steele, further down the street. Electrical power poles and telephone poles line the street.

Stebbins, Haevers and Presidential History

DeWayne Stebbins and Ferdinand Haevers were two Kewaunee County men who changed the course of American presidential history. Both served in the Civil War. Stebbins enlisted in Co. A, 21st WI, Vol. Inf. on August 13,1862 but transferred to the Navy. Haevers was in New Orleans at the outbreak of hostilities and somehow enlisted with the Confederacy.

Stebbins, from Ahnapee, saved the life of General, later President, Ulysses S. Grant. And, it was only because Red River's Ferdinand Haevers shot the horse instead of William McKinley, that McKinley gained the presidency only to be assassinated.

Born in New York in 1835, Stebbins came to Wolf River, now Algoma, with his parents in 1856. He graduated from the Naval Academy in the same class as Admiral George Dewey, known for the victory in the Battle of Manila Bay Battle during the Spanish-American War. Following his Army enlistment, Stebbins was commissioned by the Navy as a Master's Mate. He served on the S. S. Corondelet and then on the Mound City, a ship in Porter's Fleet. Stebbins was promoted to Ensign in 1864, then was promoted to Master and transferred to the Kickapoo, a double turreted monitor that was sent to Farragut's Fleet at Mobile. Stebbins was transferred again - this time to the Portsmouth -and on July 4, 1865 was transferred to the Michigan where he remained until discharged on January 6,1866.

It was when Stebbins was on the Mound City that he was credited as saving the life of General Ulysses S. Grant, although the fact has never been actually proven. As the story was told, Stebbins was serving in Porter's Fleet during the siege at Vicksburg. One dark night when he was Officer of the Deck on the Mound City, a sentry challenged men in a small skiff. Thinking the approaching men were spies, Stebbins ordered his men to fire but then suddenly delayed the command to make sure he didn't fire on his own men. Just then a voice in the darkness was heard to say, "General Grant desires to see Admiral Porter."

Ferdinand Haevers was a Belgian immigrant to Kewaunee County. Haevers, an orphan, was said to have been a stowaway on an immigrant ship that landed in New Orleans. Somehow he found his way north to Wisconsin, however went south again with an employer. Haevers was in New Orleans at the outbreak of the Civil War. Whether it was the hoopla and excitement in the city at the outbreak of hostilities, or whether he was coerced, Haevers enlisted in the Louisiana 14th in 1861. He was discharged in 1865.

Haevers was captured early in the war and put in a prison camp from which he managed to escape. Finding a Kentucky unit, he joined it. While he was out foraging, he saw a Union officer ride into a clearing. Shooting entered his thoughts before he  remembered learning that an officer without his horse was as good as dead. So, he shot the horse instead of the man. The gunshot brought soldiers to the officer's assistance. The officer was William McKinley. Haevers was captured once again and this time was sent to an Ohio prison camp.

Haevers' Confederate background did not appear to matter when he returned to Red River. He was an office holder, a large land owner and one whose leadership was admired in Red River, Kewaunee County and beyond. As for Stebbins, he was another whose leadership was admired in Kewaunee County and beyond. Big Steb, as he was called, was a long-time leader in Wisconsin's Assembly.

Kewaunee County is small, somewhat remote, and often forgotten about in Wisconsin's politics. Its citizens have played on a world stage. Sometimes that gets forgotten.
 

Chadwick & McDonald: An Ahnapee Swindle

For the transient woodsmen and sailors who made Ahnapee their winter home, drinking, card playing and horseplay were, by far, the most popular activities. Every once in awhile, somebody who did not fit the mold spent the winter.

Bill Chadwick was one of the men who showed up in the fall of 1866, but he was different. Chadwick read. He went to church and Sunday school. Since Chadwick did not drink or play cards, Ahnapee residents thought he might be a useful member of society. Chadwick became quite popular when he inadvertently let it be known he had inherited a large sum of money and was philanthropic. Townspeople were excited when Chadwick announced he desired to enter business with Captain Bill McDonald, who then owned the Ahnapee House (today the Stebbins Hotel) at which Chadwick lodged.

The partnership of Chadwick and McDonald was formed after Chadwick looked into Mr. McDonald's character. Chadwick said he planned to open a mercantile and gristmill where "oppressed farmers" could get a better deal. He also felt the Ahnapee House needed refurbishing and engaged builders.

Giving them a $10,000 draft, Chadwick had McDonald and young Tom Osborn go to Chicago where they were to meet Chadwick's father at the Sherman House. The elder Mr. Chadwick was to give the men funds with which to purchase supplies.

While they were gone, Chadwick started a free-wheeling life. He began tending bar at the Ahnapee House where woodsmen were spending their pay. Passing out McDonald's finest alcohol, he took in more money. It seemed to be a good time for all. Then he swindled Charles Boalt out of a coat, and took McDonald's pride and joy, an exceptionally fine trotter, worth about $1,000. After inviting Neil Mclean to ride to Kewaunee for more lumber, he gave Mclean the slip, pawned the horse for $100 and started south on foot.

By then Captain McDonald was on his way home, knowing he had been swindled. Chadwick didn't have friends in Chicago. Upon reaching Racine, McDonald hired a fast team to take him home to Ahnapee. On the second day of the trip, McDonald and Osborn came upon Chadwick north of Two Rivers. Thinking fast, Chadwick told McDonald his father had come north rather than staying in Chicago and was in the big white house along the road. McDonald believed him and Chadwick climbed into the buggy. When they saw a man,.Chadwick said "that's father now," and, jumping from the buggy, ran up to him. After shaking hands, he ran into the house and disappeared. All Captain Bill was heard to say was "Hell."

It was believed Chadwick left the county. Captain Bill McDonald was often overheard to say in the barroom of the Ahnapee House that he would beat the stuffing out of anybody who ever referred disrespectfully to his late partner. Captain Bill paid all of Chadwick's bills.

Note: The photograph of the  lumbering oil painting is used with the permission of the artist whose paintings chronicle the history of both Door and Kewaunee County from ships, tugs, fishing and lighthouses to skunk trapping, farming that includes manure spreading, the post office and everything in between.

 

Tisch Mills, Pilsner & President Rutherford B. Hayes

Those who think history is dull would find it hard to believe that a Kewaunee Community came close to being named for a beer. They would find it harder to believe that a U.S. president would take much interest in the naming of a community that could only count 50 or so voters. They would find it still harder to believe that the community's name would send a first lady into "hysterics." But, it all happened.

Tisch Mills' post office opened in 1884, though an attempt was made in 1877 to open an office at Tisch’s Mills. Somehow there were questions regarding the place’s name and what it was called or should be called. Kewaunee Enterprise was there to weigh in on the facts, or perhaps that which was not quite factual.

On May 26, 1877, Kewaunee Enterprise told its readers, “In the last ‘Enterprise' the name of the new Post Office at Tisch’s Mills was given as Staus. We are informed that it was an error and that the name of the office is Pilsen. Everybody living in that vicinity is greatly pleased; and we are informed that the supply of Pilsen beer at that point is only limited by the capacity of Anton Langenkamp’s brewery.”

Continuing in the June 25, 1877 issue, the Enterprise wrote that “Mention was made a few weeks ago of the establishment of a new post office in the town of Mishicott, on the line between Kewaunee and Manitowoc counties, at Tisch’s Mills. The post office was first named Carlton Mills. Then some of the folks around there thought they would rather have it called Staus, so they wrote to the Postmaster General and he called it Staus. Then some other folks thought it would be nice to have it called Pilsner, and the Department was duly petitioned to call it Pilsner. Then Mr. Key (Postmaster General David McKendree Key) got mad and wrote back that he thought there was too much fooling going on about naming the post office from which it was not likely they would ever be able to collect an assessment for campaign purposes. Besides that, it would be more than his situation would be worth to call it Pilsner. Staus was bad enough, but Pilsner was worse. Rutherford (Key was referring to President Rutherford B. Hayes), he explained, got tight once on some Pilsner beer which he got from a Bohemian friend of his at Fremont who had obtained it from the old country, and went home, kicked over the cook stove, hugged the hired girl, and stood on his head on the front stoop. On that account Mrs. Hayes resolutely refuses to permit any other beverage than water to be used at state dinners at the White House, and the mere mention of Pilsner as the name of the new post office threw her into hysterics. A Cabinet meeting was called, and it was determined to discard both Staus and Pilsner and adopt the original name, Carlton Mills, and the President instructed the P.M. General to write that if anything more was said about it he would change the name of the Postmaster, Joseph Stangel, to John Jones, or maybe remove him and appoint somebody from Ohio, if he can find anybody down that way to whom he has not already given a government office. So it is settled that the new post office is to be henceforth known as Carlton Mills.”

A brief comment on the name change back to Tisch’s Mills appeared in the July 14, 1877 issue of the Enterprise: “When Postmaster Key said he wouldn’t change the name of that Carlton Mills-Staus-Pilsner post office again for any man alive, we thought he meant it but you can’t depend on any of these public men now-a-days. He has gone and changed it to Tisch’s Mills. It is a good name, however, and we won’t make any fuss about it, but the thing has got to stop right here.”

The thing did not stop, and in another discussion about post office names in the August 4, 1877 Enterprise, the editor reviewed the naming problems for both Norman and Tisch’s Mills. Tisch’s Mills’ report follows: “A post office was established on the south line of the county, in the midst of a people who came from the neighborhood of the city of Pilsen. They were unanimous in desiring that the post office be called Pilsen, but their wishes were ignored, and the office became known as Tisch’s Mills. The Bohemian residents of Kewaunee County are an industrious, law-abiding people, and ready at all times to uphold the institutions of their adopted country. Why should they be denied so simple a thing as the commemoration of their place of birth in the naming of a post office in their midst – a privilege which we believe has been accorded to the people of all other nationalities. By what law, or under what authority, does the Department give an objectionable name to a post office in opposition to the expressed wish of the very people for whose convenience it is.”

The Enterprise seemed to stick up for county residents while keeping its readers informed.No doubt its stance helped boost circulation too.

Information for this article comes from Here Comes the Mail: Post Offices of Kewaunee County. The 1902 postcard of Frank Stangel's store comes from the same book.

On the Road to Appomatox: The Boys of Kewaunee County

Gravelly Run, east of Petersburg, Virginia, was one of the more obscure battles of the Civil War, however the fight - also known as  Hatcher’s Run, Boydton Road and White Oak Ridge - was not. Gravelly Run, on March 31, 1865 was part of the campaign that finally ended the war with Lee's April 9th surrender at Appomattox Courthouse.

Wisconsin's 6th, 7th and 36th Infantry regiments saw action in the battle where the Union losses of 1,900 men were about 2 1/2 times greater than those of the Confederacy. Pierce Town Private Franz Geneva, 6th Wis. Co. D, was killed during the battle. Eugene Delwich of Lincoln was taken prisoner and then badly wounded. Francis Francee of Red River as also wounded. Both were Privates in Co. B, 6th Wis. and the wounds kept both absent when the company was mustered out.

There were other Kewaunee County men at Gravelly Run. Lincoln's Corporal John Andre and Private Carl Schneider of Ahnepee* of Co. B. saw action. Private Carlton Hall of Montpelier served in Co. E, and Ahnepee Privates William Fagg, August Baumann and William Barrand, Co. G, H and K, respectively, saw action. Private Julius Bernhart, Co. B, 7th Inf., and Private William Graham, Co. C, were other Ahnepee men in the battle. Private Christian Peters  from Coryville was another in Co. C. Casco Private Adolphe Gouchee and  Private James Marshaw from Carlton served in Co. I. Frank Zivney came from Pierce Town.

During the closing battles of the war, the Iron Brigade, which included the 6th and 7th Wisconsin, was under the command of General U.S. Grant. The Brigade saw some of the heaviest fighting and saw the heaviest casualties of the war. At Gravelly Run, when the men were ordered to fall back, it was the Iron Brigade which was the last to leave the field. Men of the Iron Brigade served primarily in the south and were discharged on July 18, 1865, three months after Appomattox. When they returned to Milwaukee, the men were provided a dinner on the street given by the women of the city.

Kewaunee's George Froney appears to have held General Grant and General Philip Sheridan in high esteem. He named his twins Grant and Sheridan.

Wikipedia tells us that 13.4% of the Iron Brigade's total enlistment died. Three thousand seven hundred ninety four were killed in action or mortally wounded, 8,022 died of disease and 400 died accidental deaths. In total, the Brigade lost 12,216 men.

*Ahnepee was changed to Ahnapee when the Village of Ahnapee was chartered in 1873. Proper names have been taken from records and often do not reflect the spelling of the same in 2012.



 

 

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Rankin.....Kuke's Corner or Mallie?

A forty-five mile an hour traffic sign is all that remains of most of Kewaunee County's once thriving hamlets, however drivers don't even have to slow down at Rankin, between Algoma and Casco on Highway 54.

Rankin was originally known as Kuke's Corners until, according to George Wing in the story of The Ghost of Dettman's Swamp, Congressman Joe Rankin "gave the hamlet a post office and his loyal Democrats, as they were, gave it his name."

Whether or not Wing is right, it was merchant Fred Plinke who applied to the Post Office Department for an office at a place he called Mallie. Two weeks after Plinke was appointed on May 13, 1886, The Record announced that the new office would be called Rankin in honor of the late Congressman who had been instrumental in relief efforts following the horrendous Peshtigo fire. Washington proffered no reason for rejecting Plinke's choice of Mallie for the post office expected to serve 500 residents. Rankin post office remained in service until being discontinued on November 15, 1902 when mail began coming from Algoma. In those few years, the Rankin post office operated in four separate locations.

As early as February 28, 1902, Algoma Record was lamenting the poor postal service at Rankin as it pointed out opportunities to better the service.While  Rankin was only 6 miles from Algoma, mail sent to Algoma from Rankin went to Green Bay and back to Algoma, a distance of sixty miles. That took a couple of days. The paper suggested Rankin residents vigorously protest the service. It was further suggested that since mail carried to Two Rivers went by stage, the stage could go through Rankin making Two Rivers' service a trifle longer but thereby securing daily service for Rankin. Apparently the lobbying worked.

It was in June 1904 that the newspaper again delivered postal news when it told its readership, "Postmaster Entringer has received word from the Post Office Department that the post office would be discontinued on November 15 when Rural Free Delivery will be put into service.The farmers through the district are rejoicing over the good news."

St. John's Church has been Rankin's most prominent institution for nearly 150 years. All that remains of Rankin commerce is the current S & K's at N 7551 County Highway D, once the site of a Rankin post office.

When Fred Plinke submitted his 1892 map, he included building locations. The map and the cover above come from Here Comes the Mail, Post Offices of Kewaunee County.

 

Kewaunee County...Suceeding Where George Washington Did Not

Nearly 250 years ago George Washington was a young legislator in Virginia's House of Burgesses. Pigs were fouling the water and Washington introduced legislation to keep them off the streets of Williamsburg. As inexperienced as he was, Washington's proposal was not acted upon.

About 100 years later, Ahnapee residents dealt with a similar problem.

Ahnapee's first official village meeting was held at 8 P.M. on July 12, 1873. By then the village had 100 registered voters. William N. Perry was unanimously elected president, Joseph Anderegg was elected clerk and in the first historical business conducted three days later, Michael McDonald was elected marshall. Marshall McDonald had to hit the ground running.

A month following his election, McDonald declared war on swine on the streets. Such a thing was forbidden by the newly created Ordinance 4. Cattle, however, appeared to be exempt from Ordinance 4 because just three years later, the Ahnapee Record commented on the "nerve" of the Village Board in creating an ordinance restricting cows from roaming the streets. Citizens were reminded to "keep your cows off the streets or you may find them milked instead of your coffee."

Farm animals in Kewaunee were an issue 140 years after Ahnape's residents breathed a sigh of relief having a marshall who could meet such a challenge. Kewaunee County Star News' columnist Barb Ludlow noted in the September 8, 2012 paper that Kewaunee's City Council was considering an ordinance allowing city residents to raise chickens. Ludlow wondered if chickens were allowed, would pigs, cows and other farm animals be next? In the next edition, Ludlow told her readers that the Council approved Ordinance No. 567-12. Livestock and other farm animals could be kept in agricultural zones but they were prohibited in other zones.

Ahnapee's Village Board and Kewaunee's City Council succeeded where George Washington did not. At least not the first time.

Kewaunee County and the Civil War, 7

 

Books have been written and movies have been made about wars and the men who fought them. Some deal with the horror while others present a kind of a fairy tale romantic version. The five Sullivan brothers of Waterloo, Iowa, who went down together on a ship during World War ll, were the subject of such a movie. Their parents eventually toured the country selling war bonds, asking that their sons had not died in vain. Eighty years earlier, Ahnapee's George Washington Elliot gave four of his sons to the Civil War. Two never returned. What is written about Elliot seems to indicate "tradition," however there is no Jimmy Stewart, Audie Murphy or John Wayne movie telling the Elliot story.

The first Elliot arrived in Swampscott, Massachusetts in 1628, seven years after the founding of Plymouth Rock. Elliot’s grandfathers served in the Revolutionary War. His father served in the War of 1812 and George Elliott himself was a veteran of the Mexican War. His sons followed the Elliot tradition.

Charles D. Elliot was the first Ahnapee man to enlist on June 28, 1861. He joined Captain - later General - Bragg’s Company E, 6^th Wisconsin, which became known as the Iron Brigade. He served at Bull Run and was severely wounded at Antietam though lived to tell about it. Following the war, Charles Elliot became editor of The Star, a newspaper in Reading, Pennsylvania.

Park Benjamin Elliot learned his printing skills at the Enterprize* and was called a superior talent. He was serving as a printer at the Appleton Post Crescent when he joined Company C, 10^th Wisconsin. Just a little more than a year later, at the age of 19, he was in a corn field at Chaplin Hills, Kentucky when he was shot in the head while supporting Simon’s Indiana Battery. A fellow soldier wrote that Park was ”as brave as a lion.”

Brother Irving W. Elliot enlisted on August 16, 1862. Though he made corporal a few weeks later, he entered service as a drummer boy and was the youngest man in Company l, 32^nd Infantry. Irving Elliot was with Sherman on the march through Georgia and was in Washington D.C. in time to wave at President Lincoln who was on his way to Ford’s Theatre.

David Elliot enlisted on August 31, 1862, just two weeks after Irving. In a letter to his father, David reported that of the 950 men who left Fond du Lac with him, only about 340 were fit for duty and that men were dying at a rate of two per day. David died at Nashville, one of many who died of typhoid.

Irving Elliot, who had worked for the Enterprize between 1859 and 1861, wrote his father saying that he would be proud to know he (Irving) had never been in the guard house or under arrest, had never been absent from roll call and had never served extra duty for misconduct. Irving went on to say that few in the regiment could say the same. He continued saying that he “had the satisfaction of knowing that I was not home sucking my paw when the black hearted of the South were trying to tear down the old Starry Banner that we have lived under so many years. I am fighting the devil as long as there are any of them left.”

Irving Elliot was 95 years old when he died in Wauwatosa in December 1941. He had been living with his son Frank for the previous four years. Irving was both Kewaunee and Milwaukee County’s last surviving Civil War Veteran. He was also Wisconsin’s oldest Mason.

The Elliot brothers and the other men of Kewaunee County served in the Civil War with distinction and gave their lives for a cause they believed in. So did the Sullivan brothers and hundreds of thousands other young men, and more recently women, who served in the wars and conflicts in which the U.S. has engaged since the first Elliot arrived in Massachusetts.

*The paper was the Enterprize until 1865 when it was renamed Enterprise.

 

Surveying Wolf River......

City of Algoma, About 1960

Wolf River's most eligible bachelor had to be civil engineer and surveyor George Washington Elliott. The intelligent, politically connected widower arrived in the fledgling hamlet in 1857. After a few weeks he moved his family* north from the Chilton area and stayed. Kewaunee County had been in existence for 5 years. An influx of settlers meant there was land to be surveyed and money to be made. Elliot was the man to do it, though  making Wolf River his home had not been his original intent.

Elliot's experience included bigger things. In 1836 he assisted in surveying the land on which Wisconsin's state capitol stands. Later James Duane Doty appointed Elliot to look after his Kewaunee holdings, land Doty bought in the big Kewaunee gold rush two years earlier. Elliot's association with Doty included farming and dairying at Tay-che-dah before entering the mill business in Calumet County.

Elliot became a justice of the peace and presided over weddings and litigations while continuing to survey, draw maps and dig up government corner posts. The Plat of Ahnepee** and the first map of Kewaunee County, with the streams outlined, were drawn by Mr. Elliot, or Squire as he was called.

Looking at Algoma's main intersections today, one wonders why there are slight jogs in Steele, Navarino and State at their 4th Street crossings when other streets have no problems. Though jogs are minimal today, just before 1900 a few buildings actually protruded into the right-of-ways. Portions of buildings found on the wrong lots prompted lawsuits and eventually parts of Algoma were resurveyed. Block 5 most recently. The issues date to Elliott's original1850's surveys.

It was Squire Elliot who surveyed the original plat of the present city of Algoma, the SW 1/4 of Section 26, Town 25 North, Range 25 East. A portion of the city, known as Youngs and Steele Plat, was full 40' x 70' lots. Streets were 66' wide and 16' north-south alleys ran through the blocks. David Youngs, George Steele, Solomon M. Kicham and William Clark were sealed as the original owners in the documents signed by Elliot on August 1, 1858, attesting to true and correct accounts, "to true variations of the needle."

The adjacent Eveland Plat was laid out somewhat differently than Youngs and Steele's. Streets were 66' wide running north and south at right angles except those on the "East, North and West which are 30' on half street. Blocks East and West 264' with alleys of 16' running North and South through the centers, leaving lots 124' x 40' except one tier of lots fronting on Navarino Street and lying North and South. Those numbered 1 and 2 and 13 and 14 being 40' x 120'. Those numbered 3 and 12 being 120'; one tier of lots on the south side of the said 40 acres numbered 6 and 7 being 124', and the point from which to make future surveys incompliance with the Statutes in such cases provided being a lime stone 6 inches by 18 inches and 21 inches long marked 1/4 section and planted at the North East corner of said Plat." County supervisor J.A. Defaut and Justice of the Peace Orin Warner signed the survey.

Elliot was an experienced surveyor. How did he survey adjacent plats so that three streets meet in irregular intersections? How did it happen that only property owners within a small area were affected? Why did he change the size of several lots? The two plats meet at 4th Street. Youngs and Steele Plat has the Ahnapee River as its north boundary. Tiny Fiebrantz Plat, only a couple hundred feet, comes between Eveland's Navarino Street boundary and the Ahnapee River.

More than 150 years later, there are still a few inquiring minds that want to know how it happened.
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*A widower, Elliot was joined by his sons David and Irving, daughters Frances, who married DeWayne Stebbins, and Ella, his son-in-law Rufus Wing and brother Thomas. Two other sons, Charles and Park, lived in Wolf River for a short time. Both died in the Civil War.

**Ahnepee was the original spelling. It was an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" thing when the Village of Ahnapee was chartered in 1873. Ahnepee was consistently misspelled, even by the state.