Kewaunee County's English Settlement: One Settlement Within Another

By the mid-1850s, a section of present-day Algoma was called “the English settlement.”  That settlement within a settlement would have a significant impact on the city and Kewaunee County.

Those of German ancestry make up much of the area around today’s Algoma, although it was Yankees who were the first residents of the place once called Wolf River or, sometimes, Wolf River Trading Post. It didn’t take long after first  settling by those of European extraction for newcomers to arrive. The English began coming within three years of the 1851 Yankees. On their heels were Germans, followed by Bohemians and Belgians. However, the largest groups of Bohemians settled in southern Kewaunee and northern Manitowoc Counties, while the larger Belgian settlements were to the west of Wolf River and into southern Door County.

French, Irish and Norwegians joined the others in the county that had been set off from Door in 1852, but it was the English who had their own distinctive settlement, just west of Wolf River, or Ahnepee as it became in 1859. Much  of the English Settlement is within the confines of Algoma today.

English arrivals sported names such as Richmond, Hilton, Loval, Barrand, Bacon, Goodwin, Fowles and Tweedale, and when George Barrand died in June 1915, it was said he was the last of the old English settlers. Not all  the so-called English came from the British Isles though. The Fowles, for instance, were New York-born Yankees. The area’s local designation held on for well over 50 years and as late as the winter of 1916, “The 500 Club of the English Settlement” was still meeting. One with German ancestry, A.J. Bruemmer, closed the school term in the English Settlement in April 1917. The settlement had a school by 1875, and certainly before that. Historian George Wing wrote about the settlement’s school burning to the ground during the drought of 1864. Fanny Gregor, the 1875 teacher, quit to take employment in Kewaunee. School was then conducted by Fanny’s brother, George. Losing Fanny was a blow to the community. When she was hired, her education at Oshkosh State Normal School and qualifications for the responsibilities at hand were touted.

Chapek's Creek about 1960

Where was the English Settlement? Before 1860, it could be described as the area west of Price’s Creek, a creek connecting to the South Branch of the Ahnapee River. But where was Price’s Creek? Today it is called Chapek’s Creek, although few Algoma residents could find it now even though they regularly see it. Chapek’s Creek is a conservancy at approximately Fremont and Buchanan Streets. Chapek’s store – the old cream-colored brick building two doors east of the creek – was built in 1866 by Alois T. Chapek as his store and residence. It was the small town’s second brick structure. The settlement spread, extending almost to Bruemmerville and then to the south along today’s Highway 54 where another Englishman, J.A. Defaut, built the first brick home in the community. That was just north of today’s Evergreen Cemetery, approximately the site of today’s Jehovah Witness center.

Price’s Creek was named for Englishman David Price who came to work at Hall’s Wolf River mill in the mid-1850s. Price was elected as Justice of the Peace in the first regular election in the Town of Wolf* on April 1, 1856. Price served with other Ahnepee men in Company E, 14^th Wisconsin in the Union Army during the Civil War. His home was built on the crest of the hill, which would eventually become Chapek’s. Today that hill is nothing more than a rise prompting little notice to those traveling west on Fremont Street. Following the Civil War, David Price and his family seemed to vanish.  They apparently moved on.

Seafarers James Defaut and Asa Fowles brought their families to Wolf River in 1854. Coming from New York with Asa were his father and brothers. When Asa bought lumber to build a home, George Wing said the old sailor also needed pitch and calcium to caulk the seams of his house, thus making it tight and seaworthy. Asa Fowles was held in high esteem, described as a quiet, industrious man whose actions with his neighbors were always just.

Mexican War veteran James Defaut was related to the Fowles, having married Susannah Fowles, the sister of Asa, Benjamin and George. Additionally, Asa’s wife Mary was a Defaut. George Wing would later remember the high qualities of James Defaut, saying he was a great man with an impressive character, a man of quiet demeanor and good judgement. Defaut took an active role in the formation of Kewaunee County and the community, serving in several elected offices, including Chairman of the Board of Supervisors and  first chairman of the Town of Wolf in 1857.

James Defaut built a store on Second Street in 1866 but soon returned to his farm. Wing remarked on the amount of sarsaparilla sold in Defaut’s store saying almost every bi-weekly account carried the “astonishing charge” of $1.00.  At the time, newspaper ads were touting Ayres Sarsaparilla as a blood purifier, an idea which seemed to have caught on in Ahnepee. There were those who felt the product kept them in good humor. That could have been due to the small amounts of alcohol used to preserve plant material in the product!

 Defaut and his family lived in approximately the area of today’s Highway 54 and Evergreen Road and it was a death in Defaut’s family that prompted what is now the Evergreen Cemetery. When James’ father Mitchell died in 1862, he was buried on the Defaut farm. As other community deaths occurred, Defaut allowed the burials on his farm, thus giving rise to Defaut Cemetery, now the northeast corner of the Evergreens. Earlier community burials took place in the Eveland Lot, approximately on the west side of what would become 4^th and State Streets. As Ahnepee was growing rapidly, the bodies were removed in 1874 to what was still called Defaut Cemetery. During 1873, the German M.E. Church society bought 2 acres from Defaut for use as their cemetery. Eventually that section became known as The Methodist Section.

Ted Richmond was another Englishman. Ted served as constable in late 1870s and in the days before railroad service to Ahnapee, it was Ted who made sure the mail went through. He carried the mail between Ahnapee and Casco for years before making his last trip in June 1892  A few weeks earlier the Ahnapee Record recognized Richmond’s efforts in bringing the mail from Casco while riding his white mule. The opening of the railroad in 1892 meant that mail came into Ahnapee via train. During construction, mail went by railroad as far as Clyde and carried to Casco where Ted picked it up. The paper noted his regular and rapid time, saying the community “will be under lasting obligations to him.” During the pioneer days, mail to Wolf River/Ahnapee came aboard schooners and steamers, and was also carried by another Englishman, L.M. Churchill, who was said to make the 40-mile trip on foot from Two Rivers in one day.

Thomas Richmond and his wife came from England in the 1850s, making their three-week trip aboard a sailing vessel. Their son James, born in Ahnapee, died of typhoid fever in 1923 at 58 years old. He was married to another with English ancestry, Anna Barrand.

Of the English settling in what became Algoma, it was the Barrands who claimed a connection to royalty. The Barrand brothers' sister Maria remained in England and married  architect Mr. Eldred on the St. Paul’s Londonbury estate where Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon was born. Maria;s stepdaughter married William Eldred, the tutor of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, who became the wife of George Vl. They were the parents of Queen Elizabeth ll, present Queen of England. A descendant of the Eldred’s was still bookkeeper on the estate in 1939.

John Goodwin was born to English parents in the early days of the English Settlement.** His sister, Mrs. Joseph Bacon, was still there 50 years later when he came to visit her and his old friends. Goodwin had relocated to Chicago where he worked at plumbing and steam fitting while raising a family of five children. Daniel W. Goodwin was running a stagecoach line in the early 1890s when he decided to turn to meat cutting. For a time, he was the city’s street commissioner and it was Commissioner Goodwin who was credited with building the new Fremont Street bridge, near Chapek’s, in 1897.

Although it surprised some, the English enjoyed 4^th of July festivities. Irving McDonald remembered the time George Grimshaw, the old English bugler, came out of the woods in his vegetable cart one 4^th of July, intending to play his bugle in the streets. Some felt the day would also offer Englishmen Billy Barrand and Henry Hallam presenting some kind of English sparring. After all, the American Revolution was long past.

Rev. Hela Carpenter, an itinerant Methodist minister, was another of the settlement’s residents. It was said Rev. Carpenter preached hellfire and damnation to the extent that believers could feel themselves sizzling in hell. It was also said that the early community’s piety and goodness had roots in Carpenter’s sermons. Nearly 140 years later, Carpenter’s North Carolina descendants would learn his 18^th Wisconsin company bivouacked just beyond their back yard.

The paper carried articles about the English Settlement as if it was a village of a few miles distant. Baseball was the rage in the 1880s, The English Settlement had its own “nine” and Fowles farm was the scene of games between the Settlement and its immediate neighbor. A Sunday game in late May 1886 left viewers agog. Ahnapee beat the Settlement by a whopping 35-11. One can only guess what the game might have been like.

School districts were separate and in July 1892  taxpayers of the English Settlement District turned out to consider school matters. The District voted for a 10-month school term to be taught by a female teacher. There was no reason to raise additional taxes for school purposes: the district had money on hand and with the funds received from the state, money was sufficient.

When George Wing reminisced years later about English Settlement people, he said, “Each of them played a successful part in the early development of the neighborhood. Their strong hands and arms cleared the forests, made comfortable homes and brought up families to useful and good citizenship.” Their descendants continue to make-up the area.

*Ahnepee and Ahnapee have been used in this article. Ahnepee followed Wolf River, in 1859, as the small community’s designation. When the community was chartered as a village in 1873, its designation was changed to Ahnapee. The State had regularly misspelled the place’s name. Post office cancels changed from Ahnepee to Ahnapee.

**During May 1932, a Mr. Eggert presented his memories of the old Goodwin homestead along what is now Highway 54, west of Algoma. Otto Krueger had purchased the property and was having an office put on Goodwin's orginal home foundation. Krueger was also opening a gravel pit. Eggert remembered the old Goodwin barn built on what became the highway.

**  Sarsaparilla had its beginnings as a cherry cough medicine made by James Cook Ayer in 1843.

Sarsaparilla put Apothecary Ayer on the map and other medicines and cures followed. There was little Sarsaparilla didn’t cure while producing a huge fortune for the inventor.

Sources: Ahnapee Record/Algoma Record Herald; An-An-api-sebe: Where is the River? c. 2001;  Cox-Nell Algoma House Histories found at Algoma Public Library; George Wing histories; Wikipedia.