Silver Creek: Where Did It Go?

Silver Creek was so tiny that using the word "hamlet" implies too much. Had it been settled by Germans, such words as "dorf" or "flecken" might have been an appropriate  part of its name, which now indicates an area north of Algoma, but then Wolf River.

James Norman purchased 58 ½ acres in Section 7 of the Town of Ahnapee at the mouth of Silver Creek from the federal government in 1855. One acre was set aside for the school that became known as Woodside and ½ acre for a burying ground. Captain Zeb Shaw’s grave is about all that remains visible in the old cemetery.

Early businessman Albert Wells built a pier a few hundred feet out into water deep enough to allow sail boats in to load wood products. Pine, hemlock, cedar and hardwood was brought to the pier by oxen or horse drawn sleds and loaded onto schooners to be shipped, primarily, to Chicago markets. In the early days, the highway called County S did not exist. The road going out from (then) Ahnapee turned east at the Shaw farm, now the intersection of County Highways S and U, and followed the lakeshore most of the way to Sturgeon Bay, thus avoiding swampland. 

Captain Zeb Shaw was Silver Creek’s third resident and surely the most illustrious. Born in Nova Scotia in 1815, he married in Memphis and met and sailed with George Fellows, Sr. in Chicago. Shaw arrived in Wolf River, now Algoma, in 1851 and began hauling wood products. Later he relocated to the farm that remained in the family for well over 100 years. Eventually Shaw carried mail between Ahnapee and Two Rivers. Shaw and Fellows’ son Charles had a significant historical impact on Silver Creek, the village of Foscoro, now Stony Creek, and the Town of Ahnapee in general.

Today it is difficult to believe that Mrs. Perry Austin operated a restaurant a short distance from the mouth of the river or that the area had its own post office. Theodore Tronson used windmills to provide power to his sawmill business and Charles Serrahn built a cheese factory, the area’s last place of business. There is no sign of the pier or any of the other businesses in another of Kewaunee County’s long-forgotten early villages.

When Captain Shaw's son Moses applied to the federal government for a post office, the request was honored and the office opened on March 13, 1899. It was discontinued on November 15, 1902 when its papers were sent to Algoma. Moses Shaw was its only postmaster. Following the example set by his father and grandfather, Norman Shaw retired from Algoma post office in 1958.

Note: The map is part of Moses Shaw's request for a post office. It has been taken from Here Comes the Mail, Post Offices of Kewaunee County.