Monday, October 10, 2022

Kewaunee County History: Courting, Bundling, Pabst Beer and More


 

Courting. Dating. Relationship. The words mean essentially the same thing: the time before marriage. There was a time when women were married off to enlarge a kingdom or cement foreign relations. Women were married off to enlarge a farm or married off just to get rid of her feet from under the family table. One less to feed meant more food for the others. Male children were physically, thus economically, more important. Males carried on the family name and inherited property. Females bore children, kept a household intact, and were even known to pull plows when the family didn’t own a horse or oxen.

Deaths were so frequent following the earliest settling of the East Coast that it was not unusual for an afternoon wedding to follow a morning funeral. A widow was joined in marriage with the most recent widower. A woman needed a man to provide for her, while the man needed a woman to do for him. There was no courting. There was no time to mourn. The marriage following the funeral was one of expedience.

As the American west opened, there was a shortage of women, prompting men to run newspaper ads for wives. Widows and other single eastern women in lower economic circumstances went west to find a husband. A family’s prosperity and survival often depended on the marriage, and often, there was no courtship.              

Ancestry.com describes an ad appearing in an Arkansas newspaper. As Ancestry pointed out, the husband-to-be wanted a woman who would bring practical skills to the marriage. The ad? “Any gal that got a bed, calico dress, coffee pot and skillet, knows how to cut out britches and can make a hunting shirt, knows how to take care of children can have my services until death do us part.” Ancestry did not say how many flocked to answer that ad.

Generations past, real courting included long conversations and spending time with each other. Letters include such wording as “my friend” or “your friend,” while Wikipedia tells us the courting friendship was the “idea of being intimate friends with someone before becoming an intimate lover.”

The times spent in conversations might be followed with a walk that included a chaperone. Time was spent together at social events. If things went well, the man would ask for the woman’s hand in marriage, however in the case of Henry Harkins and Lucy Eveland in Wolf River, it was an elopement a few years following the first settling of the community that would become Algoma.

The elopement was an interesting twist of events because the two families were connected years before. Henry, or Capt. Hank, Harkins was courting Abram and Almira Eveland's 15-year-old daughter, Lucy, while the Evelands were still living in Racine. Because of Lucy's tender age, Mr. and Mrs. Eveland discouraged the courtship and then forbid the marriage, but the young couple was not dissuaded. By the spring of 1855, the Evelands had relocated to Wolf River when Harkins, with David Youngs as his mate, sailed the Lucy Ann to the hamlet. Lucy boarded, and the couple, with Dave as the chaperone, sailed off to elope. Youngs built the fledgling community’s first pier and became the town’s leading factor. The thing was, Dave was the foster son of the Evelands – having been taken in at nine years old following the death of his mother - and the brother-in-law of Hank, the brother of Dave’s late wife Amanda. One would think the Evelands would have hit the ceiling when their 15-year-old daughter ran off with their own Dave abetting the marriage. Adding to the the convoluted story, Henry Harkins was Abram Eveland's employee and was captain of the vessel Mr. Eveland named in honor of his daughter, Henry's heart throb. Dave was part owner of the boat. But it all worked out. Lucy was legally married. What could her parents do? The seemed go with "If ya can't beat 'em, join 'em."

In today’s world, sleeping together and living together are common. Such bedding was common during the country’s colonial days, but not the way one would think. Most courting took place within a two-mile radius, the distance one could easily walk. The cold of winter, depths of snow, and pitch-dark nights made a difference. The man stayed the night and couples “bundled.” In that arrangement, the couple would stay fully clothed while sharing a bed, sometimes with a bundling board between them. Since homes were so cold, the bundling put the kibosh on any hanky-panky while keeping the young couple warm. Besides that, the couple was right under the noses of the girl’s parents.

Frequently, the groom was establishing himself and by the time he married, he was 10 years or more older than the bride. Harriet Warner was a child of 9 when her parents arrived in Wolf River on July 4, 1851. The Warners were one of the three founding families. Onetime Lake Michigan mariner Abraham Hall opened a store in 1852 and followed with a sawmill and then a gristmill. It was a year following the opening of the grist mill that Hall married Harriet who was nearly 25 years his junior. The ceremony took place at Harriet's grandmother’s home in Waukegan, Illinois, although the couple always lived in what became Algoma.

Marriage between close cousins is generally not permitted, however in the mid-1800s first cousins married. Surprisingly, Charles Darwin married his first cousin Emma Wedgewood. Jesse James didn’t rush into anything when he married his first cousin Zerelda Mimms after a 9-year courtship. Such relationships mattered to French Canadians well over 100 years before Darwin when this Blogger found "fourth degree bloodlines" (written in French) on ancestors' matrimonial contract.

The Depression made a difference in marriage and brought long-term courtships. 1930 saw the lowest marriage rates in the U.S. while couples were sometimes engaged for years as they worked to be self-supporting. The beginning of World War ll saw marriages on-the-spur-of-the-moment. Women were widows before they had a chance to be wives, and often the hasty marriages resulted in divorces at the end of the war.

Courting ended in marriage, and marriages were social events. Tiny Wolf River’s first notable social event was the marriage of Mary Yates to Captain Charles Fellows in 1856. Mary's father, “the courtly” Squire John L.V. Yates, performed the wedding ceremony. Other Record Herald history says the wedding of Amine Parker and George Fowles was the first in Wolf River during the winter of 1857 or 1858. They were occasions Harriet Warner Hall remembered being celebrated with homemade beer and a fiddler.

It was courting that brought good ferry service to Wolf River in the 1850s when Goodrich's three-masted barkentine Cleveland served Green Bay, Kewaunee, and Wolf River. It’s a story that wraps up with the Pabst beer dynasty. But how did that happen?

https://journalofantiques.com/
wp-content/uploads/2019/07/1863-
Philip-Best
Captain Frederick Pabst, master of the Cleveland, was courting brewer Jacob Best’s daughter. It was said that was why Capt. Pabst always made good time to Milwaukee. Pabst went from the Cleveland to the Comet in 1861 and was said to be "every inch a sailor," known to be a fearless man who would always pick a German crew if he could. The Enterprise reported the Comet was "one of the best boats on the lake" and it was "officered by true gentlemen," great favorites of the traveling public. Wedding his girl, Maria Best, on March 25, 1862, Johann Gottlieb Frederich (Frederick) Pabst entered business with his father-in-law and later began the company bearing the Pabst name. Generations after Capt. Pabst left sailing, his name remained well-known in Ahnapee/Algoma!

When the Honorable D.A. Reed, Sturgeon Bay District Attorney, was in Ahnapee courting, the paper informed readership. On wonders why the Record felt compelled to point out that there was “nothing improper” in the June 1874 visit. In March 1875, the Record called attention to Rufus Wing, S.H. Sedgwick and George Wing of Kewaunee who paid a visit to Ahnapee. The senior Wing and Sedgwick said they were in town on legal business while the paper called the visit “paradoxical” because it was known both were married men who were in town “a’ courting.” Since they were lawyers, the paper was having some fun. It wasn't women they were "courting." In October 1881, the Record announced the names of Ahnapee men courting in Kewaunee. It was no secret then because some of the men were widowers playing the field. Men of the era certainly needed to find a woman to “do” for them. Local women no doubt knew too much about them.

The Record reported in September 1880 that through the power of Father Cipin, the long-expected marriage of Mary Meunier and Carsten Smith was “consummated at the Catholic Church.” (Language was used differently in those days.) According to the paper, townsfolk noticed that each possessed “an affection for the other that can only be terminated with a union of the hearts.” Perhaps the popular Smith was a bit shy and needed prodding to get on with courting and the wedding.

Newspapers got into the courting patterns and October 1880 was no exception when papers brought scandal and sensationalism to the courting and elopement news. There were stories in the Record, Enterprise, Chicago Times, DePere News, and who knows where else. The papers said Kewaunee County priest Fr. Phillip Crud and Miss Zoe Allard were the “principal characters.” Tongues wagged when Miss Allard broke off her engagement at the time Crud was leaving the area. In the end, Crud was in Cincinnati and Miss Allard was in DePere with her father.

A few years later, the paper said there were hundreds of women who can “thrum” a piano to one who could make a loaf of good bread. The paper said men enjoy a good dinner more than music. When a man is courting, he lives at home, and if he needs to travel, he can find good meals at a hotel or “eating-house.” In a word to the wise, the paper felt even a lion could be tamed with good food.

In March 1886, the Record called attention to the empty-headed boys who felt they were beyond boyhood and were dudes old enough for courting. The  “dudes” called on a neighbor girl who welcomed them. It was a pleasant evening until her father thought it was time for bed, but the boys failed to take the hint and over stayed. Just after midnight, the boys were startled by an apparition in white, shaped like the ”old man” carrying a club. Bidding a hasty retreat with the ghost in hot pursuit, the boys got to the door, but it was locked. Seeing an open window, they went through it. The last boy crawling through the window said the ghost’s club was “awfully heavy and red hot besides.” More than a few fair maidens had an “old man” who knew how to get rid of bothersome courters.

Three years later, an article concerned a young courting man who gave his young lady a lozenge to help relieve her cough. It didn’t work. The next day he received a note with a coat button in it. The note said he must have given her the wrong kind of lozenge, one which he might need. Obviously, the woman in the article wasn’t going to sew on his button. The same paper noted the men marrying widows because they were too lazy to court.  At New Year’s Eve, 1899, posters were advertising a dance just before Valentine’s Day. Algoma’s Dan Tweedale planned to raffle a horse, cutter, and robes. As the Record said, the raffle presented a good chance to win a courting outfit.

Church should be a good place to meet a mate, but not all were of that opinion. A July 1904 Enterprise told readership that English Church officials had different views on courting and courting in churches was getting controversial. Some felt since marriages were made in heaven, courting should be allowed in church? Courting is the gate to marriage as marriage is the gate to heaven.

There were churches that felt to put “Christianity into the congregation” meant courting would follow the right lines. In churches where men sat on one side and women on the other, the segregation stopped courting, prompting the Free and Open Church Association to advocate for greater freedom of sitting in church. When the Record pointed out in 1900 that a huge source a matrimonial difficulty came from a lack of housekeeping knowledge by the wives, the paper didn’t suggest such training as a pre-requisite to courting.

Just as today, young people had things down to a science. Electric lights were coming into being around the turn of 1900, and Algoma was the first Peninsula community to have electric streetlights. A 1903 Record brought up the problems with such lights that young people felt were no good for courting purposes. One young man liked the kerosene lamps his girl took care of. Her family’s piano light had a red shade that softened the light, which was a plus. The girl was thinking ahead when she filled the lamp with just enough fuel to burn to the time her folks went to bed. When the flame dimmed, it was 9:30. The young man was heard to say, “That lamp, controlled by so charming a girl as mine, is a bonanza.”

Kewaunee Farmers and Merchants State Bank used courting in their 1921 ads, saying a fellow’s grandfather went courting on horseback although the fellow’s dad thought a buggy was the height of style in his courting days. The bank went on to say that in 1921, a young man enjoyed taking his sweetheart out in a six-cylinder car while their children – if they married – would likely court behind a cloud bank in “a modern monoplane.” Banking progressed just as courting and in 2022, both are electronic, but forget the monoplane. The bank went on to ask if young men were handling their finances through a modern bank, or the antiquated ways of a grandfather. That question remains 100 years later.

 

Sources: An-An-api sebe: Where is the River?; Ahnapee Record, Algoma Record Herald, Kewaunee Enterprise, Ancestry, Journal of Antiques online, Wikipedia. Postcard is from the Blogger's collection.


No comments:

Post a Comment