Kewaunee County and Limestone

A part of Brown County's park system, Fonferek Glen is just south of the City of DePere. Hiking the park provides one with insights to Wisconsin's Niagara Escarpment, a geological wonder that is part of a nearly 1,000 mile cliff from east central Wisconsin to Niagara Falls.

Not long ago every school kid knew what chalk was, however as smart boards and electronic media replace blackboards, chalk is the stuff for writing on the sidewalk, not a blackboard, or chalkboard. Chalk is limestone. Kids in science classes learn about sedimentary rock, and geography lessons include the chalk cliffs of England and other formations world-wide, including those in the regions of the Great Lakes and, specifically, Wisconsin’s most prominent geologic feature, the Niagara Escarpment.

Early settlers who knew little, if anything, about the Escarpment, found Wisconsin’s peninsula a limestone treasure. Eventually its quarries provided employment and income for both individuals with their own kilns and larger companies. Used as mortar in stone work, brick work and in plaster, the clamor for limestone increased with the early burgeoning Wisconsin population. Lime was and still is used to neutralize acidic soils. Before 1910 the Algoma Record carried articles and advertisements touting benefits gained in applying lime to soils used for wheat. Lime was vital in controlling outhouse odors and lime was good for manure too. A little slacked lime in compost or barnyard manure guaranteed decomposition of the matter over the winter, producing a first-rate fertilizer at very little expense.

Mortar, whitewash, cement and more can be found in ancient history. Colonists brought its uses to their new homes in America  where  limestone slabs were used in building walls or shaped to be used in such things as bridge abutments. Algoma City Council minutes and those from Kewaunee County Board indicate both groups were purchasing crushed stone for streets and roads by 1900. The county also bought lime for the Poor Farm. As time marched on, uses for lime mushroomed in ways the earlier peoples would have never dreamed. Its use in plastics, in sewer treatment operations, landscaping and much, much more came later, 

Nast, postmarked 1907

Kewaunee County's early days witnessed more lime kilns than are known today, as most were individually or family operated and only for a short time. Nast Bros. quarries and kilns at Footbridge was certainly the county’s largest and most well known. Nast’s business was on the site that is now Bruemmer County Park just outside Kewaunee. Though the kilns are long gone, the zoo area has more to view than just the animals, while walking the trails offers the mind’s eye what might have been.

Nast Bros. was formed in 1872, but in Marblehead, Wisconsin, not in Kewaunee County. Western Lime and Cement was incorporated in Wisconsin in 1886. In a merger announced in January 1921, Western purchased Nast Bros. and operated in Footbridge a short time before completely closing. Nast, the company that became so large, started on a very small scale, presumably with John Colbert in 1860 or ‘61. Seth Moore followed and his business is well-documented in the county's history, as is Nast’s. Not so well known is that William Bruemmer and Fred Besserdich also operated the stone quarry and lime kilns before the Nast Bros. took over. Western Lime and Cement became Western Lime and Stone and, following several mergers, it became one of Wisconsin’s largest lime firms. Footbridge had been operated as one of the company's subsidiaries. It is the smaller one-man and family operations that have faded into history. 

Advertising in the new Ahnapee Record in 1873, Charles Strutz and Fred Dammen promised to provide the residents of Ahnapee the highest quality fresh lime. In September that year the Record reported that A. Hall & Co. burned its first kiln in the company's new lime kilns on the South Branch (of the Ahnapee) about a mile up-river from its saw and grist mill. Nearly two years later, in mid-June 1875, Henry Gericke put up a lime kiln on the lake shore near Chris Braemer’s residence, today at approximately Arlington St. and Lakeview Dr. Joe Shestock announced his lime kiln near Kodan, about 3 ½ miles north of Ahnapee in the spring of 1883. It appears that August Schuette had purchased John Wheatley’s Montpelier land and was running a lime kiln there. Schuette sold in 1910 to August Borchardt who is believed to have been operating it into the 1930s. Matt Holub, Jr. put up a lime kiln at Gregor in early spring 1901. Henry Boulanger lived near Thiry Daems in Red River. Following his marriage to Clementine Delain in October 1901, he leased a neighboring farm where he operated a commercial lime kiln. Joe Musil’s kilns at Ryan were up and running by 1909 when he was purchasing wood from P.W. Cain. Before 1922 Joseph Bairel was advertising the white pulverized lime available at his Luxemburg lime works.

Lime kilns were dangerous places. In May 1883 E.T. Tillapaugh, the former owner of Cedardale Nursery about a mile west of Ahnapee, was nearly suffocated by the gasses from a kiln at Rockford, Illinois where he was working. After it appeared that the fumes rendered Tillapaugh lifeless, it took several physicians hours to restore him to consciousness, however Tillapaugh had no memory of the episode and couldn’t explain what happened. There were those who felt that since Tillapaugh’s son was “subject to fits”* when he was alive, it was possible such a thing caused Tillapaugh’s terrible accident.

Tillapaugh was lucky. A few years earlier, in 1892, the papers carried horrific articles about a man cremated in J. Mabe’s Menominee Falls lime kiln. Foreman Nick Marks was attending to business when he fell into a half-empty kiln. Workmen tried to save him but he was burned to death with the lime eating his remains. Marks had a wife and small child.

Intense heat used to burn the lime stone ensured that deadly carbonic acid gas was expelled by the burning lime. It wasn’t long after 1900 when papers carried articles about the fumes emitted from the burning, cautioning readers about allowing children and animals to lie down and sleep near a kiln. In May 1915, Nast employee Richard Shinnick was driving a wagon away from the kilns when a railroad car smashed into him as it was being switched from the main tracks to the lime kiln tracks. Though Shinnick fell between the wagon wheel and the train car, he miraculously escaped with his life. While the wagon box was crushed, had Shinnick not fallen as he did, he would have been crushed as well. Shinnick was awarded compensation from the company but it was called a private matter and does not appear to be recorded. Thomas Buffy was another who nearly lost his life in late 1916. Fog was dense – perhaps Buffy was too! He was on the tracks in the advance of the train coming from Casco Junction. The foreman repeatedly warned him to get off the tracks before co-workers finally pulled him off just in time. He reported an arm injury, no doubt from being yanked off the tracks. That arm injury probably saved his life.

Horace Jahnke, a Nast day laborer, brought suit against the company. Jahnke had been loading wood from a railroad car when he fell and was severely injured. Frank Rhadio had the same thing happen to him. Rhadio also brought suit. The cases were watched with interest as they were Kewaunee County’s first to be affected by the Compensation Act enacted on September 7, 1916.

Nast Bros. hired Italian laborers, and in November 1914 there was a rather humorous mix-up with about 15 Italians who had been employed to do sewer work in Kewaunee. As the story goes, the men were on the train and knew little of Kewaunee County. Their inability to speak English made things more difficult. When the train stopped at Clyde, the Italians felt they were in Kewaunee and tried to detrain. Somehow they were made to understand they had farther to go. The next time the train stopped, it was at Nast’s and seeing the line of houses – lime workers' homes – the men knew they were in Kewaunee and got off the train. After the train pulled out without them, they realized the error and had no option but going to Kewaunee on foot, eventually straggling into Kewaunee and finding it a far larger place than Footbridge!

Herman Nast, Sr. of Marblehead announced in November 1916 that he would be closing the lime works and would not be conducting his business there for some time. Western Lime and Cement bought the company a few years later, but as the quarry was being depleted and far less productive, it was not long before it closed for good. The site, however, still has much to offer. The county zoo, picnic area and trails add to the quality of life in Kewaunee County. Older generations remember when that quality included a stone beer garden, or bier garten, and the sounds of the county’s exceptional Bohemian and German polka bands playing in the bandstand on lazy summer Sunday afternoons.

Sources: Ahnapee Record, Algoma Record, Algoma Record Herald, An-An-api-sebe: Where is the River?, https://books.google.com/books, Rocks Products, Volume 24, 1/29/1924; J. Zeilter interview; postcard and photo from the blogger's collection, and painting courtesy NLJohnson Art.

Early Lumbering in Kewaunee County & Beyond

Marcel, Jr., his wife Josephine, accompanied by their younger children, came into Manitowoc County, Wisconsin in 1848, just before Statehood. The couple’s older children, including a married daughter, entered Wisconsin about the same time but weren’t traveling with their family. Within the same few years, other French Canadian families were immigrating to the Two Rivers area, many being fishing families and most related in some way.

At the time of Marcel’s immigration, Wolf River* was seeing numerous itinerant French Canadian fishermen. Though a few names were recorded, most have been lost to history. Interestingly, the LaFond family was one of the early fishing families to Two Rivers. Nearly 160 years later, commercial fisherman Andy LaFond’s departure from his moorings on the Ahnapee River in Algoma, marked the death of an entire industry in the city.

Marcel’s older children stayed in Two Rivers. The sons engaged in commercial fishing while Marcel and Mary and the younger boys, Joe and Peter, went to Mishicot. Peter was baptized as Pierre in French Canada, but as a real American then, his name was as well. A year before Marcel’s immigration, the family of Francoise and wife Mary left the regions of Quebec for Two Rivers where their last child was born in 1847.

Marcel and Francoise’s families lived near each other on the land that is now Fox Hills Resort in Mishicot, and on the same July 1858 day, Joe and Peter married Francoise’s daughters Mary and Rosalie. Nearly a year later Joe and Mary’s first child was born. Peter and Rosalie’s first followed by about 6 months. The newlywed couples lived near their parents and married siblings, all working relentlessly clearing land, trying to build farms and eke out survival. But then the unthinkable happened. It was 1860 and the election of Abraham Lincoln brought war.

Marcel had enough war to last him a lifetime. He was an 18 year old Canadian citizen when he served the British in the War of 1812. Even though he became a U.S. citizen 1852, the war was not his, and it was not his sons’ with their young wives and toddlers. Joe and Peter began dressing as women. Anyone seeing them from a distance would think the women had taken over men’s work while the men were on the killing fields, but it was not something that was peculiar just to them. When conscription gangs were known to be in the area, the men – and no doubt neighbors too – hid in the thick forests. Joe and Peter’s names do appear on the draft list in the Manitowoc paper, but they never served. Perhaps, because from all appearances the war was close to its end, there was no serious effort to find them. As it was, the children came regularly and had anybody given any thought to the babies, there might have been questions asked these staunch Catholic families.

Joe – Joseph, Sr. by then - and Mary had 13 children while living in Mishicot. In 1878 they moved to Lena where the last child was born a year later. Peter and Rose had at least 7 children, the last of whom was born in Lena in 1882. Marcel’s wife had died, and one would wonder why that family and entire branches of other French Canadian families left Manitowoc County for Oconto County. Years had been spent laboriously cutting down trees, pulling stumps out and breaking land that had never been touched by a plow. Something prompted those families to leave that which they worked so hard to have and go north. Part of the something was logging.

French-Swiss immigrant Clement Rosera (as the name eventually was spelled) is said to be the founder of today’s Lena, then Maple Valley, when he established a homestead in 1872. Sam Roy/Roi/Sam King came about the same time. A sawmill was quickly established and most of the French Canadians engaged in lumbering. Wisconsin’s logging heyday is pegged roughly between 1870 and 1920. By 1889 one-quarter of all non-farm men were employed in the state’s pineries. Oconto County, and all of northern Wisconsin, offered employment by the big lumber camps or in businesses serving the industry. Cut-over land wasn’t worth much to the logging companies which sold thousands of acres of pine stumps at very favorable prices.

Oconto Co. history says that when the railroad came in 1882, the timber around Lena was almost exhausted, however hotels, saloons and other businesses began springing up near the depot. As logging was fading in some places, the railroad meant previously inaccessible places could be logged. It also meant small towns lacking navigable waterways, such as Lena, desperately wanted the railroad to come through.

 Lena, 1910 postmark

Marcel’s son Joe and Joe’s wife Mary ran the Maple Valley Hotel. Their children worked there until they married and made new lives, however their son Denis joined them in business. Joe and Mary also employed a nephew, Ed King, to work as a stable hand. Hotels of the time had stables, as lodgings and care were as necessary for the horse as it was for its owner.

Joe and Mary’s hotel served the traveling public as well as servicing the loggers who came from the woods north of Lena on Saturday nights. There were a lot of them! Joe and Mary were among the Lena residents who kept their daughters under wraps on weekends when the shanty boys came to town to spend their pay. Many had shaves and took baths in barbershops and hotels before they began to whoop it up. Some didn’t bother with such hygiene. The more whooping it up they did, the less safe it was. Better the pretty young women were kept out of sight. It was said a Saturday night in a town serving loggers meant that the town was wide-open. Some were. More than a few Wisconsin and Upper Michigan communities had their start with the bordellos, saloons and gambling places. Payday meant loggers had money to spend on liquor, cards, and, perhaps, ladies of the evening. Local businessmen knew there was money to be made, nevertheless the smart ones exercised caution. Though facts are not clear, one of Mary’s cousins was an innocent bystander when he was killed by a logger with a gun. As in so many other situations, rumors tarnished the reputations of all loggers, most of whom were regarded with suspicion.

Marinette County had its own “race riot,” though it was not the same kind of thing as it was 100 years later. As it was described in the paper, three Pembine woodsmen alleged that the “Pollacks” started the trouble when they objected to a Frenchman’s actions. It seems the fellow was thawing out a piece of frozen meat on a stove. That meat was thawing for the man’s dog. Objecting to the odor of the thawing meat, the Pollacks threatened to brain the Frenchman. Whether the fellow was “brained” or not, a fight broke out and was said to have been “general.” Thirty-five Pollacks walked out of camp and went to Marinette. Three woodsmen were held in jail for causing great bodily harm.

While Denis was in business with his parents, his brother Joe, Jr. and wife Mary – yes, another Joe and Mary – bought a hotel in Stanley. With a dozen kids, they had a workforce. The boys did the stable work, tended bar and helped their mother cook. The girls were chamber maids and waited on the dining room. Except when the loggers were in town! By then the railroads were operating in northern Wisconsin and transporting logs via train enabled the logging camps to operate most of the year, not just the winter.

As logging faded in Wisconsin, the hotels along the railroad lines were frequented by the drummers, the traveling salesmen who sold everything from cigarettes, to clothing, to farm implements and more. Drummers often displayed their wares in a hotel’s sample room where local businessmen would check them out. By then logging had passed its heyday, men were getting drafted for what became World War 1 and Prohibition changed hotel taprooms, although maybe not the way one would think!

With the changes in clientele, Joe and Mary breathed a sigh of relief. That didn’t last long because while the loggers really didn’t care about family’s religious faith, there was an area KKK cell which burned a cross after it was known Joe and Mary's Catholic daughter was engaged to teach in an area one-room school.

Dikeman Mill

Kewaunee County lumbering started along the Kewaunee River as early as the mid-1830s, about the same time that Wisconsin became the Territory of Wisconsin. John Volk took over operations in the early 1840s. Volk was the county's first postmaster, as he was in Oconto Falls where he was lumbering after leaving Kewaunee County in the early 1850s. The Slaussons bought the land that Volk told everybody he owned. Until the Slaussons, nobody bothered to check and Volk was essentially forced out of Kewaunee County. Abraham Hall began operations in Wolf River in 1852, Scofield started in Red River and C.B. Fay was off and running in Casco and at Casco Pier. There were many others followed, including Grimmer and Duvall Co. and Stransky in Kewaunee, Dikeman in Coryville,* Bottkol in Lincoln, Beitling at Casco Pier, then called Langworthy, Heppler in Pierce and Tisch in Carlton. Montpelier had a number of lumbering operations, most notably Christman, Baldwin, Hardtke and Brand. Ten or 12 mills including Decker's and Lamb's between Scofield's at Red River and New Franken were lost in the horrific Peshtigo fire. 

When the first settlers arrived in (then) Wolf River, the trees were so thick that the settlers feared getting lost in the woods. In 1851 the thick forests along the (then) Wolf River held the river in its bed, keeping it wide and deep. Within 20 or 25 years, the trees were cut and cords of wood were stacked along the river bank almost as far as the eye could see. Without the trees to keep the river in check, it seeped into the surrounding countryside and baked in the hot sun to be what it is today. Twenty-five years after first settlement there was little logging around Ahnapee, however men found employment opportunities in the northwoods. Little is written about the men seeking such employment before 1900 but history has recorded such familiar names as Krueger, Kumm and Sibilsky among others. The Schuenemanns had a workforce of men cutting trees in the Upper Peninsula for their Christmas tree business, something the State of Michigan was glad to have. Schuenemanns offered employment in a waning business.

Area men John Fellows, Dave Machia and Ernest Miller found work at Cedar River in the early 1900s. Frank Kwapil was operating his own camp at Hardwood, Michigan at least during 1910. In late October 1919 Kwapil took charge of the Strutz-Kwapil camp in Cavour. Given the association with Ahnapee Veneer and Seating Co., it is possible Kwapil was overseeing lumber operations for the company. Sam Newman, the man who originated Algoma Plumbers Woodwork, had a lumber camp on Washington Island. When the schooner James Hall came from Washington Island with a cargo of cabbage in 1911, Newman sent an Algoma crew back to his lumber camp. Newman's interest in racing was reflected in a horse named Pinery Boy. The Jennerjohns – John H. and John F. – who were joined by Louis Jacobs, Ed Kramer and Ted Jones, found employment near Nadeau, Michigan in 1914, but due to lack of snow, the men were forced to return home. Herman Wickman was another in Michigan that year. Though the industry had declined, Alaska’s Bernie Bycoski still found employment in the northwoods in 1926.

The cedar of Kewaunee County meant cedar shingles and posts for the growing markets in Milwaukee and Chicago. Working by firelight in the 1850s' evenings, those clearing land during daylight could make hard money. Ahnapee harbor was filled with schooners awaiting loading of hardwood logs and ties, the shingles and posts. The cities of the country were built on not only Wisconsin’s northwoods, but on the forests of Michigan and Minnesota and those of other states before and after the Wisconsin's logging heyday. 100 years following the decline of the industry, the state still deals with its environmental aftermath.

Notes. Wolf River became Ahnapee in 1859 and Algoma in 1897. Coryville was short lived and is now the Town of West Kewaunee.

Sources: An-An-api-sebe: Where is the River? c. 2001; Ahnapee Record, Algoma Record and Oconto County Lumberman newspapers; Here Comes the Mail: Post Offices of Kewaunee County, c. 2010. The Lena Enterprise, The Wisconsin Frontier, Mark Wyman, c. 1998. paintings by NLJohnson ART, used with permission; postcards in the blogger's collection.

Mother's Day Comes to Algoma

Record Herald ad

Mother's Day in Wisconsin was proclaimed by Governor Francis E. McGovern on May 14, 1911. In his remarks on the day's observance, he said it was a recognition of “the noble purposes of celebrating the modest virtues that make true homes.” Continuing, he brought to mind the patriotism fostered by Washington and Lincoln saying, “that none the less will the celebration of Mother’s Day develop domestic virtues which are the foundations of good citizenship.”

Just over 100 years later, the day is special to some families and a poignant memory to others. While Mother’s Day had no effect on the bottom line commercially in the first few years, patriotism is not a part of it today. Though most churches recognize mothers, and fathers on Father’s Day in June, entire services are rarely planned with them in mind.

Mother’s Day was established in Philadelphia on May 10, 1910 by Anna Jarvis. Jarvis was commemorating the death of her own mother when she conceived the idea of setting aside a day each year in tribute of mothers. Not to be outdone, the first known Father’s Day observance was held in Spokane a few weeks later on June 19^th when Civil War veteran William Smart’s daughter so honored him.

It appears that early Mother's Day celebrations were part of worship in Methodist Church services, though by 1913 other religious organizations were also observing the 2^nd Sunday in May. Newspapers jumped on the bandwagon with poems in tribute and articles about a mother’s work and duties. Symbolizing the purity of a mother’s love, men, women and children were encouraged to wear white carnations. It took a few years before ads, such as Fluck's above, were suggesting gifts for mothers.No doubt the women delighted in the chocolates or a bouquet of flowers. The corset suggested in an Engelbert ad surely devastated the woman who received it and left the household in shambles for sometime.

Congress got into the act in 1913 recommending the special day on the 2^nd Sunday of May, but it was only a recommendation .After Smart’s daughter left Spokane, Father's Day fizzled. Woodrow Wilson spoke in honor of the Father’s Day celebration in Spokane and wanted to make the day official, but Congress balked with the collective thinking that such a celebration would be too commercial. In the mid-1920s President Calvin Coolidge thought a day for fathers should be observed though he never offered a proclamation. By the late 1930s, William Smart’s daughter had garnered the help of organizations that would benefit in a Father’s Day, mostly commercial groups which would profit financially. Congress was right that time! It was finally in 1966 that President Lyndon Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation designating the 3^rd Sunday in June as Father’s Day though it was Richard Nixon who signed it into law in 1972. 

Mother's Day was official long before Father's Day. As early as 1915 there was an international effort to promote and encourage the recognition of mothers. Honorary U.S. officers were former Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft and then President Woodrow Wilson who was in office at the time. Kewaunee’s Congregational Church also highlighted the day in 1915 when Pastor James Dean welcomed women. Pastor Dean said mothers were their children’s best friends, teaching them about God and that through Him, they would see each other again.

Old newspapers indicate Algoma’s Methodist Church was the leader in local recognitions of Mother’s Day. The church captured headlines in 1916 when Rev. Edward Brittain’s Mother’s Day sermon was reprinted for all to read. 

Western Union celebrated Mother's Day 1916 with a special telegram - delivered day or night - decorated with carnations. The Mother's Day Association named the white carnation the emblem of the day, hoping it would be worn by all as a tribute to one's own mother and as a tribute "to the gentle and noble motherhood of the land."

A year later, the congregation invited everyone to a Mother’s Day service. In addition to the sermon “The Motherhood of God,” a women’s trio sang “Memories of Mother” while “My Mother’s Song” was preformed as a woman’s solo. Thomas Edison’s feelings for his mother were part of the 1920 program. Edison credited his mother influence throughout his life and said without her encouragement, he’d have never become an inventor. Algoma Methodist’s 1923 program was the same as a broadcast on a New Jersey radio station that afternoon. 

National groups called for fitting sermons, and appropriate music. Schools were encouraged to have programs on the Friday of Mother’s Day weekend. Plain View School in Maplewood did just that in 1922 when all mothers of the district were invited to a program at 2:30, as regular school work would halt at that time. If it was convenient for fathers, they were invited too. Plain View continued the programs for some years.

Mother’s Day 1918 was celebrated in churches as a time when those who had sons, fathers and brothers serving in war would offer their prayers for them. A women’s prayer battalion was formed following a visit from the English founder. Thousands of women signed a pledge for daily prayer, ensuring the pastors a number of contacts outside of their normal church community.

Algoma’s local branch of War Mothers led observances in 1919 in the assembly room of the Training School, the earlier name for Door-Kewaunee County Normal School and later County College. Irene, Catherine and Ursula Jirtle offered a piano trio, followed by the War Mothers singing “Battle Hymn of Republic” and “America.” Walter Marquardt offered the recitation “Sailor’s Talk” while Mrs. Zander gave a tribute to Frank Lidral.  Rev. A.E. Schaub gave a talk on mothers. The War Mothers were honored to know their boys – Co. F, 128^th Infantry – were recognized by General Mangin, the Marshall of France. The tribute to Frank Lidral came after his family was notified that he was missing in action in France. Lidral was said to be one of the first “lads” to join Company F and one of the youngest as he had just turned 18 when he enlisted.

Mothers this year will surely be thinking of sons, husbands and brothers - but now also daughters, mothers and sisters - in the military just as the War Mothers did in nearly 100 years ago. Mothers young and old will be thinking of their children. Pastors will recognize mothers with special blessings and many will find day-appropriate sermons in the 4^th Commandment. More than likely many pastors will capitalize on the courageous Baltimore mom whose convictions and expectations swept the nation after being caught on network news. She exemplifies motherhood. A few more like her and the world would be a far better place!

Sources: Algoma Record Herald, Wikipedia.