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.