Algoma, Schuenemann, Evergleam & the Christmas Tree Connections

Algoma is full of Christmas trees. Sparkling tree lights – inside and out – delight passers-by. Trees glow in places of business and at Legion Park. Children enjoy Christmas trees in their classrooms and at the public library, and churches will be aglow on Christmas Eve. A generation or two ago, there were a couple of tree lots in town for those who didn’t cut their own tree. It was a time when folks felt artificial trees were a joke.

It was the German settlers who brought the Tannenbaums to Ahnepee* and a few of those settlers made sure their fellow countrymen were able to maintain their time-honored traditions. At Statehood, northern Wisconsin was heavily timbered while what would become Door and Kewaunee Counties had more cedar than anywhere in the state. Logging and wood products provided jobs, and the jobs brought more settlers. More Germans meant a greater demand for their favorite evergreens, trees that, like God, never change.

It was also a time when roads were little more than primitive paths through the forests, a time when rivers and Lake Michigan provided the best in transportation. Ahnapee was a lake port. Goods came into town and products were shipped. Ahnapee captains traversed the lake, trying to make a living like everybody else. Shipping looked as if it was lucrative, and there was plenty of business, but shipping didn’t make the Ahnapee captains rich. After bills were paid and the family was seen to, there often wasn’t money to left for patching the sails, mending the lines and caulking the seams of the old wooden vessels.

Both Chicago and Milwaukee had huge German populations. As that population grew, folks had to go farther and farther to find a Christmas tree. There were those who cut trees in city parks. And that’s what started it. “It” was the “Christmas tree ships.”

Captains from Ahnapee and other lake towns began making a last voyage in November – the worst month on Lake Michigan. The captains and their crews made that last trip to Northern Wisconsin or to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to pick up a load of Christmas trees for places at the lower end of the lake, mostly Milwaukee and Chicago. Often, that trip made the difference that put the year in the black.

Small as it was, 40% of the tree captains and crew members came from Ahnapee. Herman Schnemann is the Ahnepee born captain who went down in the lake in November 1912 before going down in books, stories, song, musical theater and even a Weather Channel video. Herman had sailed with his older brother August, affectionately called “Christmas Tree Schuenemann.” In 1898 Herman’s wife Barbara had just given birth to twin daughters and needed Herman at home to care for his family. As it was, a lake storm took August’s life, the lives of his crew and sunk his ship as it neared Milwaukee. Herman immediately took over where August left off, saving Christmas for Chicago's German immigrants. Chicagoans awaited his yearly visit and called him Captain Santa, prompting Herman to craft his image. A look at him is to think, “his eyes how they twinkled,” "his dimples how merry,"and “the little round belly that shook when he laughed like a bowl full of jelly.” Herman didn’t have a beard, but he had a moustache and, often, “the stump of a pipe he held close in his teeth,” so perhaps “the smoke encircled his head like a wreath.” Herman liked to make people happy and one could say the Christmas trees were in Herman’s blood.

Years earlier, Herman and August purchased land in Michigan’s U.P. There they raised and cut trees, offering employment to the Native Americans in the area. Herman was in the U.P., loading in Cedar River that fateful November 1912 day when the barometer was dropping fast. The Weather Bureau wasn’t issuing warnings, however. Maybe a storm was brewing but if it was, Herman thought he could out run it. Rats were scurrying off the ship and one of the crew members, a Green Bay fellow, refused to board the boat. Those rats were an ominous sign, and Herman was cautioned not to leave port. As the weather worsened Herman still felt he could out run it. But, he didn’t.

Freezing rain, sleet and snow turned to ice, sticking to the mounds of trees stacked on the deck. The boat got heavier and heavier. By the time the boat was north of Kewaunee, the ice covered mizzen and its sails were dragging behind the boat. It had been spotted, but nobody saw a distress flag flying. A car ferry trying to make Kewaunee radioed the Life Saving Station about a boat in trouble. The storm overpowered Isaac Craite and his crew as they attempted a rescue. There was nothing they could do but turn back. Craite radioed Mr. Sogge at Two Rivers, but the boat didn’t get that far. When Capt. Santa failed to make Chicago, and there was no word, the lake communities knew Herman went down in that violent storm. As Herman did after August’s sinking, his wife Barbara and her daughters immediately took Herman’s place. Barbara was called Mother Schuenemann and dubbed “The Christmas Tree Queen” by the papers. By then railroads brought more trees than Christmas tree ships ever could, and trucking trees was in its infancy. In the year before Herman died, it was said Christmas tree ships brought 27,000 trees to Chicago, however the lake was not providing the efficient transportation it once had. Feeling there was a legacy to protect, Herman’s daughters and took over from Barbara, eventually phasing out the business in the mid-1930s. 

There is more to the story and the Algoma connections, however. And, it isn’t in any of the videos. Those of us with long-time roots, roots in what is Algoma before the Civil War, have ancestors who went to school with the Schuenemann children before the family moved to Milwaukee, mostly due to father Frederick Schuenmann’s Civil War injuries. The tree captains always passed Ahnapee/Algoma on their trips up and down the lake shore. This blogger served on the Living Lakes board when in 2003 Algoma’s Steele Street point was renamed Christmas Tree Point in tribute to the men of Ahnapee/Algoma, those throughout Kewaunee County, and Wisconsin’s lake shore communities, who had served on the Christmas tree ships.

The ships were seen from the windows of the blogger’s grandparents’ dairy milk-bottling building. Isaac Craite, the man at the Kewaunee Life-Saving Station, was one grandpa’s first cousin. Sogge at Two Rivers had Algoma roots. Joe Dionne, another first cousin, had just been transferred from Two Rivers to Sheboygan. When Joe was interviewed by Milwaukee newspapers, he said Herman’s boat, the Rouse Simmons, sunk in the worst storm he’d ever seen in his 47 years on Lake Michigan.

Christmas Trees and Algoma ties don’t stop there.

In the late 1950s Jerry Waak of Aluminum Specialty Co. in Manitowoc wanted to manufacture artificial Christmas trees. There had been a few such trees around, but Jerry envisioned aluminum trees. After all, that was the company’s business. The trees needed trunks and that’s when Jerry went to Algoma to ask cousin Maynard Feld if his Algoma Dowell Co. could manufacture them. Yes indeed. For the ensuing years, Christmas trees once again provided employment to Algoma residents.

Those Evergleam Christmas trees have faded into history, however part of the history is once again on display at Wisconsin Historical Society Museum in Madison. In the beginning the trees were silver aluminum, but new and improved meant pink and gold. Revolving stands with colored lights, changing tree colors as they rotated, were popular. There were aluminum wreaths and wall decorations; however it wasn’t Mother Schuenemann and the girls making them.

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Herman Schuenemann’s parents, Frederick and Louisa, brought his older brother August from Manitowoc to Ahnepee late in the 1850s.  One hundred years later Jerry came from Manitowoc to Algoma for a Christmas tree planning session with Maynard.

Algoma has more of a relationship with Christmas trees than most could dream. It’s more than a TV program and a museum display. Besides, the Reindeer was making port in the intervening years, but that’s another story.

                                                                                N. Smith photo

Aluminum trees were found all over during the early 1960s and Gillett Historical Society's museum has one in their collection. The Gillett Museum is in the home belonging to former Ahnapee/Algoma resident Walter Smith who married Ruth Heald from the Foscoro area. The son of Civil War veteran John Smith became a protege of Paul Gablowsky. From his Algoma employment Smith went to Seymour to manage a woodenware company. When that burned, he bought the equipment and moved it to Gillett where he started a new company. The museum will reopen on Memorial Day weekend and is worth a trip.

*Locals spelled their community's name with one “a” and three “e”s, however the State of Wisconsin most consistently used the spelling we know today: Ahnapee. When the place received its village charter in 1973, residents changed the name from Ahnepee to Ahnapee, thus going with the flow. “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

Sources: An-an-api-sebe: Where is the River?, c. 2001; The History of Commercial Development in Youngs and Steele Plat and Other Significant Properties in Algoma, Wisconsin, Vol. 1, c. 2006, and Commercial Development in Algoma, Wisconsin, Vol.ll, c. 2012; Feld family history; Algoma Record Herald. Painting is from NLJohnsonART and is used with permission. The Gillett Museum photo is courtesy of N. Smith while other photos and the postcard of Schuenemann are the blogger's.