Algoma and the Telephone Party Lines

“1 2 1 2 F 1 3, Please.” That was Aunt Friday’s phone number in the day of party lines. The “please” was a courtesy to the operator who connected the proper wires. It was a time when neighbors knew that three longs and a short belonged to the family across the field and two shorts and two longs belonged to the family across the road. Everybody with a telephone shared a line with 8 or 12 other families. Each knew all the long and short rings and everybody knew who was getting a call. There was no such thing as metadata. There were neighbors keeping track of calls. If one long and one short had an illness in the family, those who heard the ring picked up to listen so they'd know what was going on. If food or assistance with milking would help, somebody came over, but not because they were told there was a need. If there was a death, family troubles or a scandal in a family, the grapevine passed it on posthaste. Listening in was not only a way to get the news, it was also a passtime.

It was a time when city lines were shared with 4 families. To make a call, one needed to pick up the receiver and listen a bit, ensuring that ringing the operator would not interrupt the call of another. That meant accidentally - or not - being privy to conversations. It also meant that kids wished they could understand German as the adults using the phone instantly switched language. Kids all knew the good stuff was discussed in German.

Phone numbers in Algoma were much shorter than Aunt Friday’s though. Anybody wanting to call Katch’s Department Store would simply tell the operator,  ”26X, Please.” If the wires were accidentally crossed and 26R was plugged in, the caller would get Clarice and have to place the call again. 53M got Agnes and 53R got Annie. Agnes and Annie were on the same line. They often called each other, but the operator had to connect them. When it was time to ring off - because Agnes or Annie’s ringer was not on and other callers got a busy signal - the women hung up. Hanging up was replacing the ear piece receiver back on the main part of the phone so another call could be placed. If that receiver was just a tiny bit off, the phone would be off the hook and preventing calls from coming through. Nobody dreamed of voice mail and nothing short of death in the family meant calling outside of one's home area. 

All the aunts and uncles lived in rural areas and were fortunate that wires came down their roads. Uncle Charlie’s phone was the best. It was on the landing between the downstairs and upstairs. No 1^st and 2^nd floor in those days. The wide landing had a north facing window with a rocking chair, a huge Boston fern and the big wall telephone. One stood next to the phone holding the receiver while speaking clearly into the protruding mouthpiece. Anybody under  5’ tall needed a stool to reach the mouthpiece. Kids didn’t play with it, perhaps because younger children weren't tall enough even with the stool or lacked the strength to turn the crank that notified central, which was what the operator was called. That was in the 1940s, but telephones made their appearance in Ahnapee/Algoma decades earlier, before 1900, when residents wondered why most would ever need such a thing.

Communication with the outside world was definitely on the minds of Ahnapee’s early progressive citizens though. A July 1865 Enterprise reported the Atlantic cable was nearly laid. Tariffs were being estimated and stock was selling at a premium. In the early 1880s, the Record reprinted a story from the Sturgeon Bay Advocate describing the telephone lines going between Green Bay and Sturgeon Bay via Ahnapee and Casco. The community looked forward to a telephone connection with Kewaunee in late spring, but it took until May 1891 before a line to Alaska was finished. It was called "a great convenience to the public." A few years later, in October 1897, telephone company Manager G.W. Overbeck announced the addition of a small room adjoining the main telephone exchange office. It was fitted with a telephone for the use of patrons, enabling them to connect with telephone lines to the "outside world." Years later, those telephone rooms would be only large enough for one person and referred to as a phone booth, which, before the days of wireless, truly was a great convenience.

By 1903, Algoma had an impressive 64 telephones and the August 14, 1903 paper announced the first telephone books. One hundred years later, the proliferation of cell phones with instant access and storage of numbers brought the beginning of the demise of phone books.

DeWayne Stebbins was a man of stature in pre-1900 Algoma. A Civil War vet, bank cashier, postmaster, Ahnapee Record editor/publisher and finally Wisconsin Assemblyman, Stebbins' importance to the community was noted in a September 1883, news article pointing out the "telephone instrument" at the Bank of Ahnapee and that "now the Honorable D.W. Stebbins can communicate with the outside world without leaving his office."  “Big Steb” was on the cusp of change that years later brought the end of isolation to rural families such as Aunt Friday’s. That change caused a young man to quake in his boots making a call to see if a girl would go to the dance at Alaska, rather than depending on a post card. The changes enabled Agnes and Annie to phone Katch’s or the Farmers Co-op Store to send out a 100# bag of flour. The changes brought a new world to the handicapped. The changes brought the rescue squad and the fire department in an emergency. One hundred years ago parents were concerned about what young people were getting into when they wanted to use the phone. Some things never change and parents today still worry about what the young are getting into with cell phones.

When DeWayne Stebbins was making a call in 1883, he might have been overheard by someone in the immediate area, but having the only telephone in town, there was no party line and nobody to “listen in.” There was no metadata either. One hundred thirty years later, few can imagine the privacy and anonymity that Stebbins enjoyed. 

Information comes from An-An-api-sebe: Where is the River? c.2001 and Commercial History of Algoma, Wisconsin, Vol. 1, c. 2006. Photos are from the commercial history and used with permission.