Commercial Fishing, Boiling the Nets and Grandpa in a Tree!

Huge tripods suspending large cast iron kettles over a blazing wood fire bring up images of Halloweeen and witches' brew. Halloween would come 7 months later though. Those bubbling cauldroms meant serious business and there would be time for another kind of brew after the fires were out and all was packed up.

Junior’s dad was home for the weekend. As a deckhand who eventually made captain in the U.S. Corp of Engineers, his winter work included repairing the tugs – lots of painting – or sounding the local waters, supplying information for government charts. Winter work often allowed him to be around on an early spring weekend or two, something that didn’t happen from then on until late fall. It was a time when he could help his father and brothers in the family’s commercial fishing business. The fishnets needed cleaning and there was work to do. Grandpa and the uncles, and all the commercial fishermen, used gill nets for ice fishing all winter.

Just after dawn one frosty Saturday morning, Junior and his dad packed the family Model A and headed for Little Sturgeon Bay. By the time they reached the net cleaning area, steam from the boiling kettles was already rising above the cedar trees. Everybody was hustling and bustling in an almost carnival atmosphere as the various fishermen’s families took turns throwing logs under the big black kettles mounted on tripods while the men dunked their nets in the kettles of boiling water that dotted the bay shore clearing. All the while, the strong smell tar permeated the spring air.  Whether the tar was being used for coating lines and equipment as a preventative or to generate more heat in the fires is something Junior forgot. Perhaps it was both.

Teams of horses stood by waiting to pull the wagons full of nets. Jumpier than usual, some teams shied nervously as they backed their loads near the steaming pots. It was spring and they weren’t getting needed exercise. All winter long the horses worked with the fishermen, getting nets and supplies distributed around the area bays and then hauling boxes of fish off the ice to market distribution points. Before long the same horses would be taking up their summer jobs - working on farms. Right now it was between the big work seasons. Understandably the horses were nervous. Fire, steam and all that commotion didn’t help.

After Junior’s family took their nets from the boiling pots, their winter season was over – at least after the horses and wagons hauled the nets to Sturgeon Bay for use on the Lady Marie, the family’s fishtug. But, as it turned out, there was a little more to that fishing year.

Once the net boxes were loaded on wagons and the team had to begin pulling, it became obvious that the horses were even more jumpy. As a lumber camp teamster and a graduate of a horse short course at University of Wisconsin, Grandpa was an experienced horseman. Sensing problems, Grandpa sent Junior’s dad to Sturgeon Bay for the family truck so some of the net load could be transferred to it. Getting up  the hills on the way back toward Sturgeon Bay was hard work, and Grandpa feared a runaway.

As soon as Junior’s dad was underway in the truck, Junior and his cousin were told to hop on the back of the wagon. They were instructed to jump off immediately if the wagon picked up speed. Even partially loaded, a runaway was a possibility. Riding on the wagon was fun for the boys who enjoyed themselves as they went east through the farm country toward Sturgeon Bay. Just about the time the boys were taking things for granted, Grandpa brought the wagon to a stop and told them to get off. They were at the foot of a hill just before the little country airport, and Grandpa wasn’t sure of the team on the grade. With the boys walking behind, the wagon started forward. But just then Junior’s dad came over the hill driving the red truck and scaring the team which took off running in a flash. The dreaded run-away!

The wagon was bouncing, net boxes were flying and Grandpa was standing, trying to rein in the team that was racing toward town with the boys running in hot pursuit. In what seemed like only a few seconds the wagon was an empty while Grandpa was still pulling on the reins. As son as Junior's dad was able to turn the truck around, the boys jumped in.  The truck was chasing the wagon which remained upright for over a half mile before it flipped over into the ditch, pitching Grandpa into the air. As the hitch broke free of the wagon, the wagon continued down the road when the limb of a tree drove through Grandpa’s Navy pea coat, leaving him hanging in a tree!

The horses kept going until a farmer far down the road stopped his vehicle to try to approach the team on foot. As it neared him he was able to grab one of the bridles, thus bringing the hitch to a stop. Grandpa got out of the tree uninjured. And the pea coat? It made quite a mending job for Junior’s mother a few days later. 

The boys were safely home before the nets and net boxes were all retrieved, but the vivid memories of that wagon on its side in the ditch with front wheels spinning and Grandpa hanging in a tree at the edge of a swamp are the images forming never-to-be-forgotten family memories.


Left: Net drying racks and net mending needles. Nets needing repair are mended as they are reeled on to the racks.

Sources: Paintings, or parts of paintings, are used with permission from the artist N. Johnson. Photos are in the family collection

Windmills - Everything Old is New Again

Standing high on the hill on Algoma's north side, St. Mary's Church is on the navigational charts of Lake Michigan. Built to guide and protect the souls of its members, the church guides mariners as well. Across the peninsula, sailors in the bay of Green Bay know they are off Dyckesville when they spot the Rosiere windmills in the distance high on the bluff on the east side of the bay, windmills guiding sailors while protecting the environment with clean energy. On a good day, it’s even possible to see the windmills far beyond the bay’s east shore, nearly to Rio Creek.

Recent years have brought talk about building windmills in Lake Michigan off Algoma. Advocates for off-shore wind turbines weren’t thinking about guiding mariners but they were thinking about the energy producing windmills, perhaps like those in the North Sea. Windmills aren’t anything new. There was a time when Kewaunee County was dotted with them. Algoma, Casco, Kewaunee and Luxemburg had more than a few. Reminiscing with the old Peter Allen song lyrics - Everything old is new again...."

Wikipedia tells us windmills were first recorded in Iran, near the Afghanistan border by the 9^th century, and perhaps even as early as the 7^th. It was the 12^th century before they were documented in Europe. As early as the American Revolution, windmills were used on Cape Cod, pumping seawater to make salt. Nearly 100 years later a Scotsman used a wind turbine to power his “holiday home.” Offering to sell his surplus to the city for streetlights, he was rejected as some felt such a thing was the devil’s work. Electricity still seems like magic.

At first windmills were used to grind grain and pump water, which is no doubt why they caught on as they did in the American Midwest. As regions of the country saw water supplies sinking, wells had to be dug deeper and deeper making it increasingly harder to pump. And, a farm's value was enhanced when labor-saving wind power was used for the previously labor intensive feed and grain cutting

Original U.S. windmills generally had four paddle-like wooden blades. Newer technology brought mills with thin wooden slats nailed to wooden rims and a “tail” that directed it into the wind, something like a weather vane, or a sailboat rudder. In the years between 1850 and 1900, over 6 million windmills were built in the U.S. alone and Kewaunee County was not left behind. As late as the 1950s and 1960s, a ride through the county's countryside brought sights of farm windmills and perhaps a small windmill or two mounted on a roof. Some type of windmill was found on most farms and, like barns and silos, the almost iconic structures are fading into history.

1883 Birdseye Map section

Ahnapee Brewery was using a windmill for grinding malt and pumping water before blacksmiths Thomas Fergus and Herman Haucke repaired it in January 1880. The arms supporting the oblique vanes - or sails that gave the mill its motion when the wind blew on them - and the gearing had been badly worn. New ones were necessary. Since this job was the first of its kind in the city, the city appears to not have had many other windmills at the time.

Frank McDonald was on the cutting edge among home owners on 1891 when he erected a windmill to provide water for his Fremont St. residential property. His home featured piping. The Ullpergers were not far behind. In an April 2005 interview with this blogger, Sy Ullsperger said the brick for his family’s 1896 home came from the brickyard and that the yard had a windmill for mixing cement. Storm’s was the yard, and photos show the brickyard having a windmill although it was possibly there when Albert Boettcher sold his business to Ferdinand Storm and Emil Witte in 1896.

 

1901 Advertising

Knospe Bros. – the farm implement company – sold Aermotors, a windmill geared for attachment to any kind of machinery. A few years prior to 1900, the paper opined that windmills were seeing such wide use that it wouldn’t be long before most farms would have one. Fred Heier/Heuer bought one of Haney’s Monitor windmills in December 1899 and expected to put it to good use on his Town of Ahnapee farm. Heuer’s windmill had a 14’ wheel that was expected to furnish enough power to drive a feed cutter, feed grinder, cream separator, wood saw and pump.

By November 1895 the windmill for the new Ahnapee and Western Railroad water tank was in place near the depot supplying locomotives. The old tank near the 4^th Street Bridge was taken down, however it is unclear if it too had a windmill. In spring 1898 the Ahnapee and Western water tank and windmill were taken to Casco where the water was far better. Algoma’s water often caused the boiler to foam thus making Casco a more convenient location. The equipment was put up at Ahnapee (the city's name then) before the railroad was extended to Sturgeon Bay.

Walter Knospe apparently felt that a man selling and installing the popular windmills should himself have one because in 1904 he added a windmill to his own building. As one of Algoma’s most successful implement dealers, he was selling Aerometer windmills as early as 1899. When Jule Defnet got a windmill for his well, it was Knospe’s popular model. Henry Jennijohn/Jennerjohn and M. Miller followed suit.

Knospe customers Peter Duerst and Andrew Laubenstein had their windmills put up in February 1903 when the paper commented on the men’s understanding of such technology. It didn’t take long for Duerst’s mind to change as the “hustling farmer” traded his two windmills to Haney-Gaspar-Ihlenfeldt in 1907 when he bought a 6 hp gasoline engine to drive his feed cutter and wood saw. Duerst bought a manure spreader at the same time but it was definitly not run by wind power. When Knospe installed windmills at Kolberg in December 1904 for William Guth, L. Boettcher and A. Ullman, each man had two working windmills on his farm. It was said each believed in using nature’s forces while saving their own for better days. Joe and Frank Wacek put a windmill on their Woodside farm in 1900 and Joe Bie felt he would have an exhaustible supply of water with his. Pierce Town’s Charlie Toppe’s windmill furnished water for man and beast as did West Kewaunee's Anton Kollross and John Kunesh. Ahnapee’s Karl Lineau and Adolph Feld depended on their windmills for the operation of their dairy-milk route businesses. Not only were farmers making use of mechanical energy, the Record noted all the wood sawing going on throughout the area, some with windmills providing power and others powered by an engine. Wind power was here to stay.

Looking around the county, other businesses were also employing wind energy. Theodore Tronson was using windmills to provide power to his sawmill business at Silver Creek. Several years later, a September 1897 Enterprise reported Kewaunee’s Hotel Erichson was putting up a windmill to pump water. An early 1900s postcard photo of Anton Grassel’s buildings at Sharp Corners - the northeast corner of today’s Highway N and Rendezvous Road at Neuren - show a windmill. The post office was in the section behind the tavern in the foreground. The sign right of the windmill says “store.”

John Teich was said to be an expert on windmills when he installed Herman Teske’s in January 1902, but there were other experts besides Teich, Knospe and Haney. Wenniger, Bohne, Loberger and Retzlaff are names that stand out in Kewaunee County’s pump business, but not all built the tall metal windmills. Caspar Loberger’s pump and windmill business was operating on Luxemburg’s Main Street in 1912, however he moved to Oconto the following year. Wenniger’s wooden – and then iron - pumps were manufactured in the building that became his saloon on the north side of Algoma’s 2^nd Street bridge. Bohne had establishments in both Algoma and Kewaunee. Retzlaff operated from Luxemburg and is a name long-recognized in well-drilling. Haney Bros. of Algoma and Kewaunee advertised. While some of the companies manufactured pumps, not all installed windmills.

Today’s windmills are far different than those popular in Kewaunee County a century or more ago. They no longer dot the county, however several county sites sport wind farms with any number of sleek three-blade windmills. Here and there, residents have their own windmill and sell their unused power to the power companies. Will windmills be built in Lake Michigan?  It’s anyone’s guess.

Sources: Ahnapee Record; Algoma Record; Commercial History of Algoma, Wisconsin, Vols. 1 & ll, c. 2006 and 2012; Interview with Sylvester Ullsperger, April 2005; Yours Truly, from Kewaunee County, c. 2013; 1912 Kewaunee County Plat Book.

Field Daisies & Christmas Trees: A Wedding & A Divorce

Traveling rural roads, this year’s eye-popping fields of wild daisies are sure to bring smiles. The glorious field daisies are earlier and far more prolific than in years. Field daisies bring to mind the stories of weddings 100 and more years ago when wildflowers graced the bouquets and decorated the tables of wedding feasts served at the bride’s home. Such was the wedding of A.J. and Mae.

Daisies abounded at the July 1913 wedding, a wedding that almost didn’t come off. The bride was sick, but the daisies had been picked. The cow was butchered and though some of it needed cooking, much of the food was ready. Sick or not, the wedding couldn’t be postponed. How would guests be contacted? What would happen to all that food? Flowers could always be picked again, but probably not the daisies.

The wedding went forward, but had there been colored pictures in those days, the bride surely would have looked green. As it was, she didn’t look over-joyed.

A.J. wanted to marry Mae and farm, however he had little money and Mae was in mourning for her father. His brother lived near Rio Creek where A.J. got a job in early July 1910, working with a crew of carpenters and builders. March 1911 found him in Milwaukee seeking employment, gradually finding a job. His rooming house at 7^th and Clybourn is now under the freeway interchange. Milwaukee was far away in those days and much of the courtship was via the mail.

Born in Sheboygan, A.J.was a child when his parents moved  to a farm near Carnot. As his siblings, A.J. had a remarkable musical talent, being accomplished on the violin and on a number of brass instruments. He and his brother Gus played with others in several brass bands, although A.J. played singly or with another as a two-man band. One cold Tuesday night in February 1912, A.J. and Charles Hoffman played for a surprise party in honor of Mae's’ family friends Mr. and Mrs. Ed Raether. Though it was a Tuesday, they played until midnight when the guests had a sumptuous lunch before going home. No doubt all in attendance were in the barn or in their usual place of work at the regular time the next morning! Morning came well before 7 AM!

Two days before the Raether gathering there was a leap year party at the home of Charlie and Edith Toppe who lived fairly close to the Raethers. It was another surprise party, but this time in honor of Charlie and A.J.. Why? Neither had a birthday. In an evening spent playing cards and dancing, A.J. furnished the music at his own surprise party. Throughout the year he worked a job by day and played many evenings until 5 days before Christmas when he left for Long Lake 5 days to spend the winter in a lumber camp in the north woods. There was money to be made. Often Mae's’ guests included A.J.’s siblings in addition to her friends and cousins, though he was seldom there. A.J. furnished the music for so many parties and dances that one wonders how much Mae enjoyed the social events. It was just prior to their wedding when they began spending more time together.

The paper mentioned the high esteem in which Mae was held. It said nothing about A.J. Though he was a hard-working farmer, it almost seemed as if it was felt she was marrying beneath her station. When Mae got so sick a few days before her wedding, perhaps it was nerves and wondering if she should go forward. But, the daisies were picked and the cow was butchered. It was 1913 and to call off the wedding would have caused talk.

But, talk there was, though not with A.J. and Mae. There were no daisies, but the Christmas tree was up and the trees that brought the smiles also brought memories of another event that happened years earlier.

Just after Christmas the wife of a prominent businessman disappeared. In a day before telephones, it was not easy to find out who might have seen her. Her husband said she’d been complaining about pains in the head and her friends said she was acting strangely for some time. Some wondered if it was insanity and whether suicide was a possibility. Where was she? When there was no sign of her, a group of men formed a search party, combing groves of trees, along the river and the lake shore. But nothing. Then it was learned that her clothing and other items were gone from her home. Folks realized she was not dead but had left her husband, perhaps going to live with relatives in another area of the state or maybe even Michigan.

Why would she have left?  Everybody knew her husband was a good provider. They lived in comfortable circumstances in a well furnished home. She had a good name and lived in high society. What could have happened?

About two months later everybody knew. Boys playing in a school’s belfry found a bolt of sheeting and some other things. Somehow the boys knew the woman had sometime before burned such items and brought the articles to her husband’s attention. It was known that about $20 worth of goods taken from the house was found secreted in that belfry. By whom and why? As it turned out, the woman had a close association with one of the school teachers. Searching the teacher’s trunk, Officer P.M. Simon found silverware and other things including items of the woman’s clothing, some of which were expensive. It didn’t take long before everybody knew just how close the association was!

Not long after the paper contained a legal Notice of Attachment demanding payment for the found goods or the teacher’s property would be sold. What happened after that? Anybody knowing with certainty kept it to themselves. It was rumored the couple was together for awhile in Chicago but he eventually went west and she remained alone.

Field daisies, Christmas trees…..