Silver Creek: Where Did It Go?

Walking the lakeshore near the mouth of Silver Creek in Ahnapee Town's Section 7 is like walking the shore any place north Algoma. One would never guess what happened there, or that it was a hub of activity 150 years ago. Kewaunee County has many long-forgotten hamlets, but, though little remains, most at least have a 45 mph traffic sign. Silver Creek doesn't even have that.

It was in 1855 that James  Norman purchased and received a patent from the federal government for 58 ½ acres in at the mouth of Silver Creek in Section 7, Town 25N, Range 26E. One acre was set aside for a school that later 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, who also patented substantial property, built a pier out to a few hundred feet into water deep enough to allow schooners in to load wood products. Pine, hemlock, cedar and hardwood was brought to the pier by oxen or horse drawn sleds and loaded onto the boats and shipped, primarily to Chicago markets. 

Captain Zeb Shaw was Silver Creek’s third resident, but his story begins long before that.  Early in the 19th century, Moses Shaw I, a native of England, settled at Yarmouth, Nova Scotia.  His son Zebina was born on Christmas Day 1815. As other young men, he grew up seeking adventure and went to sea. The close of 1850 found him in Memphis where he soon found an Irish bride, Katherine O'Brien.  Zeb always seemed to find his way around, meeting George Fellows, Sr. in Chicago and then sailing with him. The association led Shaw to Wolf River in 1855 when the young Mrs. Shaw was landed on the beach at the foot of Tweedale's Hill - today Algoma's Lake St. hill. No doubt she remembered small boats coming out to ferry people ashore. No doubt she also remembered animals being thrown off the boats so they would swim to shore. Whatever her story, it was said she relished the retelling all of her life, something she probably did while having the pipe which she so much enjoyed.

Terrence O'Brien and his 19 year old daughter Katherine left Ireland in 1851. Considering the ocean voyage would have been undertaken no earlier than March and that the O'Brien's documented trip took 8 weeks, there was not much time for Shaw to get to Memphis, meet his wife and get married and get back to Chicago to begin sailing with Charles Fellows, Sr. later in 1851. Zeb  and Katherine apparently didn't feel the need for a long courtship.

Arriving in Wolf River, the Shaws kept house for David Youngs and operated Captain Fellows' Tremont House, today the Stebbins, before relocating to Silver Creek where there was a sawmill, store and Welles and Valentine's pier, a Chicago business at which Shaw was employed as superintendent. Captain Shaw's father came with him and it was believed the elder Mr. Shaw was the first teacher at Silver Creek School. Captain Shaw, owner of the Falcon, was not remembered as a great farmer but he was indeed an alert and cautious seaman, hauling wood products before relocating to the farm that remained in the family for over 100 years. Shaw was also one of the area captains who supplemented his income by cutting Christmas trees in Wisconsin and Upper Michigan and transporting them to Milwaukee and Chicago.

There were fishermen at Silver Creek before the War Between the States.Jackson Jordan was one of them. Jordan made his home with Captain Charles Ross and with Eli Dunham and Willet A. Wheeler, also of Silver Creek, enlisted in the war. Dunham was an Easterner who came to the area to visit his brother Spencer Dunham, an employee of Wells' sawmill. Wheeler was an employee of the same company, though his military career was brief and ended at the first battle of Shiloh when the trigger finger of his right hand was shot off.

News was made during the spring and summer of 1868 when the 180 ton schooner Bessie Boalt was built in Ahnapee for the richest man in town, C.G. Boalt. The impressive $32,000 vessel was launched directly into the lake from the beach.** Civil War hero, master designer and craftsman Major William Henry built both model and ship. When she sailed from the north pier on her 1^st voyage, she was under command of Captain John McDonald, a full crew of Ahnapee seamen and with Zebina Shaw as 1^st mate. A few years later the Bessie went down in a storm off Two Rivers while in tow of a tug which had rescued her from the treacherous sand bar off that point.


Zebina and Katherine Shaw were the parents of eleven children, three of whom survived to adulthood.  Son Moses Shaw II, born November 8, 1861, spent his life on the homestead at Silver Creek.  At fourteen he had gone as far as possible in the school and there after devoted his time to farming and serving on the school board. As Highway Commissioner from 1912 to 1923, he oversaw the building of the first macadam and the first concrete highways built in Kewaunee County. He was appointed State Highway Inspector for both Kewaunee and Calumet Countys and served as the Kewaunee County director of the N.R.A. or National Recovery Administration,during the alphabet soup days of the New Deal. 

Eventually Moses Shaw applied for a post office at Woodside and for a time Zeb carried mail between Ahnapee and Two Rivers. Shaw's site request follows this document. Shaw, his sons, 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. In the early days, the highway called County S did not exist. To avoid swampland, the road going out from Ahnapee turned east at the Shaw farm (above), at the intersection of today's Highways S and U, and followed the lake shore much of the way to Sturgeon Bay. 

Today it is difficult to believe that Mrs. Perry Austin operated a restaurant a short distance from the mouth of Silver Creek or that the area eventually 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. Today there is no sign of the pier or any of the other businesses in another of Kewaunee County’s long-forgotten early villages.

**Henry's shipyard was a small "bay" on the north side of the river, now the area between the motel and the channel.  Filled in, the same area held the coal docks. The one story section of the Shaw home above served as the Woodside post office. Pictures are in the author's collection. Mrs. Perry Austin was Charlotte Berg before her marriage.