The 1890s: Ahnapee is Lit Up

During mid-January 1891, the City of Sturgeon Bay announced an electrical lighting contract with Ahnapee’s A. Hamacek & Co. Adolph Hamacek had built an electric light plant in his foundry and machine shop at 6^th and Fremont Streets in neighboring Ahnapee, the first city on Wisconsin’s peninsula to have electric lighting. Sturgeon Bay was not about to be left behind. A Milwaukee gentleman announced in January 1892 that he was thinking of bringing electricity to Kewaunee. The Peninsula was getting lit-up in more ways than one.

The foundry and light plant at the northeast corner of Fremont and 6th Streets was destroyed by fire in 1895.

Adolph Hamacek's role in electric lighting seems to have had its start in 1883 when Adolph Bastar was operating his blacksmith shop of the northeast corner of Fremont and 6th Streets. It was then that Bastar  formed a partnership with Adolph and Anton Hamacek for the purposes of opening a foundry and machine shop. The company was called A. Hamacek and Co.

A look at the drawing above shows the machine shop operating in the old blacksmith shop at the left, or west, side of the complex. The men purchased a house and lot east of the blacksmith shop for $500 from businessman Samuel Perry. That became Hamacek's light plant. A livery stable was east of that.

The Hamaceks dissolved their partnership in August 1891 when Adolph moved to Sturgeon Bay to tend to that business. Anton remained in Ahnapee to take care of that part of the business,.and in 1892, Anton installed a second boiler to obtain additional power. His building had electric lights and city businessmen were looking toward making use of such marvelous technology.

In 1893 Joseph Wodsedalek became the principal owner in the company owned by himself, Anton Hamacek and August Zeimer. For a time the company name reflected the three men but it was shortened to Jos. Wodsedalek and Co. Later in 1893 Hamacek was bought out by his partners. As with so many early businesses, the Fremont and 6th St. site was completely destroyed by fire in 1895. Wodsedalek rebuilt on the northeast corner of 4th and N. Water Streets and the new light plant was up and running on Halloween 1895.

The 1909 fire map locates Wodsedalek's foundry.

Wodsedalek's foundry is at the right of this Kannerwurf, Sharpe Johnson Collection postcard, postmarked 1908. The foundry itself was closer to N Water while the light plant was closer to the Ahnapee River.

It was electric lights that brought about Ahnapee’s Ordinance No. 35** in March 1890. Section 1 dealt with permission for Adolph Hamacek and his successors to erect and operate electric lights in the city. Section 1 also gave him right-aways through the streets and alleys of the city, as the city was then or would become, for laying out poles and  wires, erecting them or maintaining them, or for supplies. The unusual thing about the Ordinance was that all placing of poles and stringing of wires was to be done under supervision of the council. Did council members understand electricity? They did have one caveat. Poles were not to be put on bridges. Section 5 of the Ordinance addressed failure: if the electrical promises weren’t met within two years, Ahnapee’s contract with Hamacek would be null and void. Poles and equipment would need to be taken down.

 Section 1 dealt with permission for Adolph Hamacek and his successors to erect and operate electric lights in the city. Section 1 also gave him right-aways through the streets and alleys of the city, as the city was then or would become, for laying out poles and  wires, erecting them or maintaining them, or for supplies. The unusual thing about the Ordinance was that all placing of poles and stringing of wires was to be done under supervision of the Council. Did Council members understand electricity? They did have one caveat: poles were not to be put on bridges. Section 5 of the Ordinance addressed failure: if the electrical promises weren’t met within two years, Ahnapee’s contract with Hamacek would be rendered null and void. Poles and equipment would need to be taken down.

It didn’t take long for the city to realize the importance of electricity, but in the beginning, Adolph Hamacek was far from being in the driver’s seat.

Late in May 1890, Ahnapee Record said Hamacek manufactured a steam engine and other equipment and then attached two incandescent lamps to test the machinery. The two lamps indicated that Hamacek was correct in his thinking. It was felt the lights could have been brighter, however the event was a trial run and folks didn’t expect much. The Record said equipment would be adjusted and capacity would be increased. Hamacek’s plans included increasing machinery capacity so that in the months to come, several city buildings would have electricity as his foundry and machine shop did. Prominent businessmen were lining up to secure electricity.

As with anything new, there were things to work out and when the dynamo in the electrical equipment was disabled by some burning wires, it was called one of the “unavoidable occurrences” that happened to any business. The occurrence meant that the city was without electricity for nearly a week before the new dynamo was delivered.

Things changed in April 1892 when Anton Hamacek took over lighting the city, and as the successor, he abided by Ordinance 9. Hamacek furnished 3 more lights of 2000 candle power placed as Council directed within the original limits and one in the Third Ward. The cost was $300 per annum and would be paid in monthly installments. Since the Third Ward was outside the original limits, the city planned to compensate Hamacek for erecting, operating and maintaining lights there.

Late June 1893 saw Hamacek’s foundry, known as Ahnapee Foundry and Machine Shop, becoming a partnership with Joseph Wodsedalek and August Ziemer (with Anton Hamacek} and called Joseph Wodsedalek & Co. The plant was overhauled and Wodsedalek said he was ready to do any business with short notice for reasonable prices. Having experience in several businesses, the men felt the new company would meet all expectations.

Then came Ordinance No. 10, another dealing with the transmission of electricity. This time, in 1895, the ordinance granted exclusive franchise to Joseph Wodsedalek for 5 years, from November 20, 1895 – November 20, 1900. Wodsedalek’s boundaries increased, running on the north from the street or alley at the north side of the schoolhouse, Joint District No. Two, in the Third Ward, to the shore of Lake Michigan, south along the lake to the southern boundary of Boalt’s Addition to the City of Ahnapee, then west to a point where Buchanan Street intersects. The line ran through the center of Buchanan back to where it started in the Third Ward. The right of way granted to Wodsedalek and his successors permitted them to go through, under, or over the streets and alleys, however they would not be unnecessarily obstructed by poles, wires and appliances. Anything considered an obstruction was to be removed by Wodsedalek at his expense. Section 3 of the ordinance required Wodsedalek to furnish all (again) the electricity desired by the city and its residents in the bounded area. The ordinance stipulated that Wodsedalek or his successors could enter any home, at a reasonable hour, to determine service for customers who demanded it. Except for the city, customers would be billed one month in advance.

Most of the ordinance written for Wodsedalek was as it was for Hamacek before him, however the new ordinance reflected a growing city with far more expectations than the novelty 5 years earlier.

As for Adolph Hamacek who started it all, he left Algoma in 1892 to live in Sturgeon Bay. A year earlier Sturgeon Bay’s common council approved the provisions of a contract with Adolph Hamacek. Residents were told the system – 9 lights of 2,000 candle power each - would be going “full blast” within 6 months. Cost to the city was to be $1,000 annually, and the lights would be kept burning all night. The lighting plant would be located on Cedar Street. But what happened? The December 12, 1899 Algoma Record told readership that in another 5 or 6 weeks, Hamacek would have an electric light system in operation by June 1.

An August 1895 Milwaukee Journal carried an article about another of Hamacek’s inventions. The paper said he had invented and received patents on a method of propelling street cars by an underground system of electrical currents. Hamacek’s invention was tested and operating successfully, thus solving a problem that had attracted investors for years.

Adolph Hamacek had a significant impact on Kewaunee County and far beyond. What began as Hamacek's foundry was a prominent Algoma, and Kewaunee County, business and employer for just over 100 years. The Hamacek family itself had a wide influence on Kewaunee County commerce. But that's another story.

This view of the foundry appeared in Algoma Record Herald in 1962. 

There were substantial remodelings and additions.

Notes:
** Ordinance 35 would later also deal with waterworks and a city electric light plant.
Ahnapee was renamed Algoma in 1897,

Sources: Ahnapee Record/Algoma Record/Algoma Record Herald; An-An-api-sebe: Where is the River?; History of Commercial Development in Algoma, WI, Vol. 1; Sturgeon Bay Advocate.

Graphics are sourced, however that drawing's origins are unclear. It can be found in Vol. 1 of History of Commercial Development in Algoma, WI and is used with permission.

** Ordinance No. 35 would later also deal with waterworks and a city electric light plant.

Ahnapee/Algoma & the MacArthur Family

Douglas MacArthur
from Wikipedia

Those of a certain age need not be historians to recognize the name Douglas MacArthur. They remember the general’s World War ll fame and again in Korea when, then, President Harry Truman fired him in 1951. MacArthur came back to life in an episode in the TV show M.A.S.H. when it was reported he’d be inspecting the unit. As it was, it was Radar who posed as the general riding through the village during one of the Colonel Blake’s practice runs. The general never did appear at the 177^th..

So, what does MacArthur have to do with a blog that focuses on Kewaunee County and specifically on Algoma? Actually, quite a bit.

MacArthurs were a Wisconsin family. General Douglas MacArthur’s father, Arthur MacArthur, distinguished himself in the Civil War, along side some of the boys from Ahnepee*. Arthur was 17 years old when he went off to war in 1862 with others of the 24^th Wisconsin Voluntary Infantry. MacArthur's regiment lost 40% of its men at Stone's River in the battle from December 31, 1862 to January 2, 1863.

Battle of Missionary Ridge
from  https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/beyond-battle-arthur-macarthur-jr

Young MacArthur missed part of the battle at Chattanooga (November 1863) because of illness, but he was at Missionary Ridge a few days later when the mission of the 24^th was to clear the Confederate rifle pits at the foot of the mountain.

When the General later told his father’s story, he said that  although orders were unclear, the flag of the 24^th went forward. As the color bearer went down, a corporal was bayoneted just as he grabbed the flag. A shell killed the next man and then MacArthur, the adjutant who got the flag, yelled “On Wisconsin”, and kept going through a sea of gray, followed by a division of blue coats. When the Union army took the hill, it was again, “On Wisconsin,” and Wisconsin’s flag was waving. General Phil Sheridan said young MacArthur was due for a Medal of Honor. He was a hero of Missionary Ridge and, at 19, was made colonel. Douglas MacArthur would later write that his father was congratulated by General Sheridan on a job well done and that Sheridan said that they had not lost a foot of ground.

Over 150 years following the end of the Civil War, the flags have a place in Wisconsin history. Battle flags of the 9^th, 14^th, 21^st and 24^th Wisconsin regiments were there when veterans of those units and the 27^th held a reunion in Milwaukee during September 1885. For the impressive event, the Agricultural Society furnished tents, admittance and foods that included hard tack, pork and beans and coffee. Goodrich steamers carried veterans from the Peninsula and Manitowoc for half price.

“On Wisconsin” became the rallying cry for the University of Wisconsin sports’ teams and, in essence, a state song. As a university fight song, it came into being in 1909. Although the song has since been modified from the original, just as the Civil War flag bearers pepped up their companies and regiments, the spirited song has the line, “forward in battle we will win the stand.”

Arthur McArthur was one of 11 Union colonels who took the Union army up Kennesaw Mountain in 1864. At Franklin, Tennessee, it was the 24^th Wisconsin that saved the day. After the war, the 24^th – which lost 2/3 of its men and officers - marched through Milwaukee, welcomed by cheering crowds. Ahnepee tinsmith Leopold Meyer served as a corporal in Co. H, 24^th Wisconsin Infantry. He returned to the village and died in 1894. When Algoma resident Charles Bisch died in February 1918, the Record felt older residents would remember him even though Bisch had lived in Port Washington for years. Bisch enlisted in the 24^th as soon as the war broke out. Bisch was wounded at the Battle of Stone’s River and taken prisoner. He was sent to Libbey prison in Richmond and suffered privations beyond our imagination.

Most Kewaunee County men served in the 14^th, 21^st and 27^th Wisconsin, and many were in the same battles as MacArthur. One was Peter Simon who was with the 21^st. He was captured several times and was a Confederate prisoner. Peter apparently had a cat’s nine lives because he escaped almost that many times.

John McDonald and Charley Ross were two Ahnepee men who joined the Chicago Board of Trade Regiment which also saw action in the same battles as MacArthur. McDonald, a hero at Missionary Ridge, lost his right arm there. He went on to say years later, that he lost his “good” right arm there. Charley Ross lost his left arm at Stone’s River.

Lieut. General Arthur MacArthur – his rank in 1911 – planned to become a private citizen after mustering out with the rest of the 24^th on June 10, 1865. Forty-five years later, in June 1910, West Kewaunee’s (Commander) T.G. Chapman went to the GAR Encampment at Fond du Lac expecting to meet, Arthur MacArthur, his old colonel. Thomas Chapman was 82 when he died in 1923. Chapman settled in Montpelier where he was a longtime resident before moving to West Kewaunee. He also lived in Kewaunee for about a dozen years. Politically prominent for 45 years, Chapman, at the time of his death, was the county’s oldest Free Mason. He enlisted in Co. K, 24^th Wisconsin and was at Perryville, Stone’s River, Lookout Mountain, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, Kennesaw Mountain and Franklin, Tennessee, where he was involved in hand-to-hand combat.

Camp MacArthur - photo from wacohistory.org

World War l Camp MacArthur at Waco, Texas was named for General Arthur MacArthur, Jr. Algoma men were among the 1,200 from Wisconsin who trained there, but little did they know that they would have a connection to the name in years that followed. Carl (Josh) Lidral wrote home about the 16 weeks of training the men would have at Camp MacArthur before going off to lick the Kaiser. Ernest Haucke, the first Algoma man killed in action on August 20, 1918 trained at the camp. So did Ralph Perry who later died of wounds suffered in the Argonne Forest. Algoma’s  VFW Post was named for Haucke, and Perry’s family memorialized Ralph in the presentation of Perry Field to the city. John Culligan, Jerry Jerabek and Augie Wasserbach also were at the camp. The men were well-respected leaders just as the MacArthurs were, however the MacArthurs were on a world stage.The MacArthur connection with Kewaunee County continued.

Arthur MacArthur’s son Douglas was first in his class at West Point, won silver stars in World War l and the Medal of Honor in World War ll. MacArthur’s first connection with Algoma came over 40 years earlier when he was a young lieutenant just out of West Point. At the time, it was customary for the graduates to have practical experience and MacArthur was a military assistant, working out of the U.S. engineering office in Milwaukee. He came to town in 1908 to direct the caisson sinking for the rebuilding of the north pier. Caissons sunk in MacArthur’s time were built in Kewaunee, floated to Algoma, sunk in position and filled in. The land connection to the breakwater was rebuilt in 1932, and, in 1935, the breakwater section running north and south was recapped. If anyone with MacArthur’s prominence was associated with it, it has been forgotten.

It doesn’t stop there, however.

Stapling plys to boat hulls in the Boat Works in 1943

During the World War ll, Algoma Plywood and Veneer Co. (U.S. Plywood) was manufacturing plywood and building plywood hulls, airplane wings and noses that went elsewhere for finishing.  Some of that plywood is associated with General Douglas MacArthur’s 1942 escape from Bataan.

It was Algoma plywood that was used in the PT motor torpedo boat that rescued MacArthur, his wife, their son Arthur and his Chinese nurse, and other military personnel, taking them to Mindanao. From there they went to Australia. Ironically, MacArthur’s father, General Arthur MacArthur, Jr., was also on Luzon, but that was in August 1899, more than 40 years before when President McKinley sent him there as field commander.

Men from Algoma, and across Kewaunee County, serving in the Pacific during World War ll, and then again in Korea in the 1950s, served under Douglas MacArthur.

Whether or not any Algoma connection can be made with Douglas MacArthur’s son Arthur, it is up for grabs. To escape the limelight, it is said he changed his name.

History gets lost as the days turn into years and years turn into decades.

^Ahnepee was the spelling until the place achieved village status in 1873. It was then that the spelling was changed to "Ahnapee."

Sources: An-An-api-sebe: Where is the River?, c. 2001 Johnson; The Commercial History of Development in Youngs and Steele Plat and Other Selected Properties, c. 2006 Johnson, Nell, Wolske; They Were Expendable, c. 1942 White; Women of the Plywood: The War Years, c. 1998 Johnson. The Plywood photo is from the blogger's collection and the others were found online and sourced..