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.