Kewaunee County & the War of 1812

On June 18, 1812 President James Madison signed a declaration of war against Britain, and for the next 2 1/2 years the U.S. was involved in what came to be called the War of 1812. At the time, present-day Wisconsin was part of the Illinois Territory. Twenty-four years after the war began the Wisconsin Territory was split off from Michigan which achieved Statehood. Twelve years later, in 1848, the State of Wisconsin was admitted to the Union. Door County was set off from Brown in 1851 and Kewaunee County was separated from Door the following year.

A generation or two ago, when the average U.S. history high school classes learned about the war, it was about the British burning the capitol, Dolley Madison rescuing the painting of George Washington and Francis Scott Key writing the lyrics to the Star Spangled Banner. The War of 1812 got so little class attention that some only passed the test because of Johnny Horton’s 1959 hit song The Battle of New Orleans and how “we ran through the brambles and we ran through the bushes”……. to chase the British through the town of New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico.

So what does Madison’s declaration of war and that which became known as the War of 1812 have to do with Kewaunee County? Nothing that invites national monuments, tourism and summer vacations, yet there is a connection.

With the exception of French explorers Jean Nicolet, Pere Marquette, Samuel de Champlain, and Robert de LaSalle among others, there isn't any history of Europeans in what is Kewaunee County until the days of the Michigan Territory.  On the frontier as they were in 1812, the two oldest settlements in what would become Wisconsin - Green Bay and Prairie du Chien which had residents of European ancestry - were important to the U.S., to the French and to the British alike. Before the war, Native Americans and the French fur traders in today’s Wisconsin had pelts to market, thus needing both the British and the Americans. Inter-marriages meant there were also social relationships.  And, while naval battles were being fought in the eastern Great Lakes, the British topsail sloop Felicity patrolled Lake Michigan, including off the coast of today’s Door and Kewaunee Counties. Although the sloop carried four swivel guns and its crew numbered only 12 men, the Felicity was a show of force. But, a show a force to whom?

The Felicity, piloted by Samuel Robertson, is believed to have been patrolling years before the war ever started. One story is that the sloop's presence was intended to prevent the Pottawatomie from joining the Americans. Another is that after the war began the patrolling ship’s captain had reason to believe the Pottawatomie near today’s Two Rivers had large stores of corn for which he hoped to trade rum and tobacco and then take the corn to the garrison at Mackinac Island. Did it happen? The Felicity was said to set sail after the Indians convinced the captain that supplies were low and they only had enough for the winter, but who really knows? Histories mention the British ships Welcome and Archangel sailing Lake Michigan serving in similar capacities. Though crews were small, the booming guns were considered more than enough strike fear among the Indians.

Mackinac Island today
digitalmi.com

Had the captain managed the trade for the corn, he would have been popular at Mackinac Island. In July, the month after Madison’s war declaration, the British captured Fort Michilmackinac on Mackinac without a fight. Though about 400 Indians from 5 or 6 tribes were there to aid the 200 British in the capture, they didn’t have anything to do. The 60 or so Americans on the island became aware of the British only after they fired a single canon shot and as the Americans were outnumbered 10 to 1, they couldn’t do much but surrender the fort. It was retaken in 1814.

Chief War Thunder is well known in Kewaunee County history. Lesser known is his brother Wampun. History tells us that the bands of Pottawatomie along the western shore of Lake Michigan were building boats and storing corn with plans to support the Americans. History also says as friends of the Americans, the brothers took their bands to Mackinac in an effort to offer help. What happened then is a another question.

With the Americans and the British at war, Indians and trappers had to choose sides and most chose the British, although some tried to remain neutral. Green Bay residents generally sided with the British as did bands of Sac, Winnebago, Menominee, Ottawa and Ojibwa. Wisconsin’s Pottawatomie supported the Americans, while flip-flopping alliances at times. The Pottawatomie, Ojibwa and Ottawa made up the Three Fires Tribes, however they saw things differently. Tribes banding together in support of the British were often at odds among themselves, but their common goal was working together to prevent American settlement, which appeared to be a far greater threat than British settlement. As the Americans pushed westward, the Indian people knew it did not bode well for them.

As it was, Indian civilization was already disrupted as the settlers kept moving. In the previous 50 years alone they had been affected by the French and Indian War, by the Revolutionary War, by loss of their lands and by disease. While the Native Americans were trying to protect their interests, John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company already was operating on Mackinac Island. Knowing about President Madison’s declaration, Astor ordered his stores to be moved south to the mainland of Michigan.

While the British ships were patrolling Lake Michigan, a future resident of Kewaunee County was serving in the war. Joseph McCormick was born in Pennsylvania in 1787. He became a river pilot, running lumber from New York to the Chesapeake Bay. He fought in the war, achieving the rank of major. When it was over he relocated to Indiana and then to Manitowoc while Wisconsin was still part of the Michigan Territory. By then the Black Hawk War was over, the Indians had ceded their land, and life for Wisconsin's Native Americans had changed forever.

McCormick was living in Manitowoc in 1834 when he learned from the Pottawatomie about the lands to the north. Their stories piqued McCormick’s curiosity, prompting him, and others, to want to see such a place for themselves. Sailing north, they came to the present Ahnapee River. Somehow they negotiated the sand bar at the mouth of the river and sailed up-river for a distance of 9 miles, an impossibility today. Near what is now Forestville, the men came across a small island which they named McCormick in honor of their leader. After doing some exploring, the party returned to Manitowoc with glowing reports about the heavily timbered land, the game and the overwhelming numbers of fish. While northern Kewaunee County sounded like nirvana, there were no takers until the spring of 1851 when John Hughes and Orrin Warner decided to check out the area themselves. A few months later, the Hughes and Warners were two of the first three founding families of the city now called Algoma. Hughes built his log cabin on the bluff on the north side of the river, near the site that would become the lighthouse keeper’s home 50 years later. Hughes’ neighbors were Pottawatomie, the best neighbors the early settlers could have had.

As for McCormick – history says he was impressed by the beauty of the north side of the river and felt it was the place to start a town. Things didn’t turn out as he envisioned and when he returned 20 years later in 1854 he went to the area that is now Forestville, making his home along the Ahnapee River, near the county line, before eventually relocating to Ahnapee. The war changed the old veteran’s life also, but not nearly in the way it changed his Pottawatomie neighbors.

In 1870 at age 84, McCormick was the oldest person ever elected (at that time) to the Wisconsin Assembly. The year also marked a visit from McCormick’s 80 year old brother Col. Henry McCormick of New York. It had been 42 years since the Major saw his younger brother the Colonel who had also served in the War of 1812.  Whoever said, “You can’t keep a good man down,” surely had a man like McCormick in mind because within a year the elderly man was so ill there were fears for his life. He bounced back. Appropriately, on July 4, 1873, Ahnapee celebrated the 87-year-old Major McCormick's contributions to the area with a picnic at Rosia Park. It was said forty men paraded with an open carriage to call for McCormick at his residence. Though he was suffering physical problems resulting from a carriage accident sometime earlier, McCormick's mental acumen was not affected. Before a thunderstorm came up curtailing activities, speakers recognizing McCormick were calling the well-respected man the "Father of Ahnapee." A month later McCormick's visit to Kewaunee prompted the Enterprise to presume he hadn't aged, saying that at 87 he was "just as fresh and vigorous on public matters as he was 50 years ago." McCormick died in 1875 and is buried in Algoma’s Evergreen Cemetery.

When McCormick died, there were few Pottawatomie left in Kewaunee County. They had been driven out for non-payment of property taxes, losing their lands in the westward push just as so many tribes feared. Though the Pottawatomie left the area, they left their history in arrow heads and tools, and in the land deed rock on display at Kewaunee County Historical Museum. Letters exist. Exactly 100 years after Madison’s declaration, Jacob Jakubovsky was planting potatoes on the north slope of the south bluff of today's Algoma when he found a peace pipe. Carved from pipestone, the pipe was said to have a reddish tint. If that pipe was smoked with a British captain seeking to trade, nobody ever knew about it.

After the war, soldiers who served were awarded land, and there was plenty of it in Wisconsin. Samuel G. Goodrich was a Private in Captain Johnson's Co., Connecticut Militia, during the War of 1812. On February 9, 1860 President James Buchanan's signature was affixed, via his secretary, to Warrant #65034 whereby Goodrich assigned his 120 bounty land acreage to John Crawford. Goodrich's land comprised 120 acres in the SE 1/4 of the NE 1/4 of Section 20 and the W 1/2 of the NW 1/4 of Section 26 of Township 22, Range 23 in the District of Lands subject to sale at Menasha. The Warrant became (land) Patent #65934, United States to John Crawford.

T. Duescher photo, c. 2009

The marker originally put on McCormick’s grave deteriorated and disappeared. His grave site appeared to be forgotten until in recent years his great-grandchildren marked the spot with a new monument which seems to be Kewaunee County’s only remaining tie to the War of 1812. February 2015 marked the 200th anniversary of the end of the war.


Note: About 80 years later Simon Pokagon addressed the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. A recognized author, Pokagon was referred to as the last hereditary chief of the Pokagon Band of Pottawatomie Indians. Pokagon called the advance of the Americans, "The cyclone of civilization rolled westward." More about him, his writings and speeches can be found by Googling his name.

Sources: Algoma’s newspaper archives; An-An-api-sebe: Where is the River?, c. 2001; Mackinac Island history; Wikipedia; Map of Mackinac Island was taken from digitalmi.com; McCormick's stone is courtesy of T. Duescher and the Warrant was originally in the blogger's files.