Algoma's Stockyard, Packing Houses and Butcher Shops

A little over 100 years ago several railroad companies purchased land in Chicago to build a stockyard that would become the hub of the country. What became known as the Union Stockyard brought packinghouses. Then came factories that dealt with by-products. Living conditions are a separate story.

Today few would think Algoma ever had a stockyard. It did. Whether one could say Algoma had packinghouses is a matter of perspective, but there were butcher shops that were true packinghouses, and Algoma had by-products that were dealt with elsewhere. However, that’s where any similarity to Chicago ends.

In 1892 - five years before Ahnapee was renamed Algoma - the railroad came to both Algoma and Kewaunee, and, as in Chicago, it was the railroad that brought the stockyard. Algoma’s stockyard originally stood at the foot of Mill Street near the Veneer and Seating Company on the south side of the Ahnapee River. Yards were adjacent to Ahnapee and Western railroad tracks on the north side of the stock pens.  .

During June 1916, Mill Street residents living in the vicinity of the stockyard entered a grievance against the railroad, understandable because the yards were in a residential district. One can imagine the odors on a summer day and, recognizing the complaint as valid, the railroad moved the yard further west to just beyond Plumbers Woodwork. In some ways the railroad's cooperation was a surprise, but the new, more substantial yard was covered, a fact appreciated by shippers during the winter. Fifty years later, long after the stockyards were gone, older city residents referred to the area around Haney Avenue as “Pig Alley,” reflecting memories of an earlier time.

During the first 50 years of its existence, Ahnapee/Algoma had a remarkable number of butcher shops, or packinghouses, for the size of the population. Meat was shipped to city markets on railroad cars that, by then, were refrigerated. Animals were originally slaughtered in town, but as the place grew, slaughtering moved outside the city to places such as the Damas farm just north of St. Paul’s Cemetery.* William Damas was working with Frank Groessl at the time and then opened another market at what is approximately 521 4^th St. today. Sanborn fire maps indicate ice houses next to the butcher shops. In a day before refrigeration, the ice houses were a necessary step in preserving product. Algoma’s packinghouses had by-products – such as bones, hides and blood.

Bones created another income source when they were shipped to Green Bay Soap Products and other such concerns in Milwaukee for use in the manufacture of soap. There is even some humor in those bones. Peter Kashik made the Record in 1909 when he installed a grinder for use in pulverizing bones for chicken feed. "Chicken feed" also suggested the product's income level. Captain Herman Schuenemann, the Christmas tree ship captain who went down on the Rouse Simmons in November 1912, was born in Ahnapee. Ironically the Reindeer frequently made Algoma to pick up the bones to bound for Milwaukee. One wonders how many nine year old boys washed their faces because of the Reindeer, "Captain Santa" Schuenemann and thoughts of Christmas?

C.R. Bacon gave the city something to laugh about when he opened his 1883 butcher in Melchior and Reinhart’s basement. The firm was a shoe manufactory, known as Reinhart’s Shoes for the next 100 years. Bacon wasn’t the only business in that basement. He shared the quarters with a marble cutting company! Baloney Bill Krueger was another with an unusual business. After World War 1, Baloney Bill ran an ice cream parlor in connection with his Mill Street meat market.

Bacon’s wasn’t the only shop in an odd place. Frank Feuerstein’s 1859 shop was partly remodeled into the present Stebbins Hotel. When Frank Slaby remodeled the hotel to what it is today, he sold the west wing of his building, in which Feuerstein conducted his shop, to F. Schroeder who moved it to another section of the city for conversion as a dwelling. John Graf used the Fax building on the 1^st and Steele site that is now Von Stiehl’s warehouse as his packinghouse. Rudolph Pauly ensured speedy service using the delivery bike from his store on the site that is now Walters. J.J. Storzbach followed him. Ed Westfahl’s meat market was on the southeast corner of 4^th and Clark in 1900. He was succeeded by his son-in-law Joe Horak. Horak became Kewaunee County sheriff. Horak’s wife Helen was his partner in the store and followed him as sheriff.                                                                                                                                       

F.J. Jakubovsky’s meat market burned in the fire consuming the building on the southwest corner of 2^nd and Steele. There were many other butchers such as Charles Braemer, R. Haack, Wenzel Taicher, Henry and Ursala Zimmermann and Henry Baumann, but it is the Kashik family whose name is synonymous with meat markets in Algoma. The company was in business over a period of 70 years when Foxy and Kutz, the last of the Kashik line, closed the last of Algoma meat markets. With the closing went the aroma of smoked bacon and ham, wieners and all kinds of sausage, wonderful things mostly unknown to a younger generation.

Below is a section from the 1894 Sanborn Fire Map of Ahnapee, Wisconsin. It marks the Frank Groessl/Graessl meat market, which was the site of Kashik's for so many years. In looking at the map for what is approximately 218 Steele Street and the site of Harmann Studios today, Groessl's market is noted as being just west of a barbershop. Directly behind the shop is the kettle used for scalding pigs and so on. Behind the kettle is the ice house. The smoke house is in the back right corner of the property, Block 10, Lot 16, Youngs and Steele Plat of the, now, City of Algoma.

* In June 1874 John Kittinger approached the Ahnapee village board saying the dangerous, unhealthy methods of slaughtering animals at home had to be stopped, and an ordinance providing for slaughterhouses was passed.

Sources: An-An-api-sebe: Where is the River?, c. 2001; Commercial History of Algoma, Wisconsin, Vols. 1 & 2, c. 2006 & 2012, including graphics; Ahnapee Record, Algoma Record, Algoma Record Herald; blogger's postcard collection.