History gets confusing and it happened in Kewaunee County too. The county was primarily made up of New England Yankees, Germans, Bohemians and Belgians, and in the early days it was often whose ears heard whose mouth. Until 1873, when the Ahnapee Record began publication, Kewaunee Enterprise was the county's only newspaper. News gathering was by word-of-mouth and was not always accurate.
The site description document gives the location as the SW ¼ of the SW ¼
of Section 21, Township 25N, Range 23E, on Route 13101 from Casco. Mail was
carried once per week. Lincoln, to the east, was the nearest post office, and it
was Peter Chall, the Lincon postmaster who reviewed the document. Robinson was
5 miles southwest and Dyckesville was 5 miles west. When Darbellay l
closed on January 13, 1875, it was reopened in Section 34 as Thiry Daems,
however, the portion of the site document shown above indicates the post office
name was changed to Thiry Daems as early as March 2, 1874.
Kewaunee Enterprise March 3, 1874, reports, “We
understand that Darbellay is the name of a new post office that has been
established in the town of Red River with Mr. Joe Weng (Wery) as postmaster.”
After ten months, stated on the original site document of January 13, 1875, the
name was changed to Thiry Daems. On February 2, 1875, Kewaunee Enterprise noted, “The Postmaster General has ordered a
change in the name and site of the Post Office at Darbellay, in the town of Red
River in this county, to Thiry Daems, and appointed Constant Thiry postmaster.”
Ahnapee Record on March 12, 1876, reports that, “Darbellay is the name of the new post office in Red River.
Joseph Wery is the happy father.” This article is baffling as it is too early
for Darbellay ll and Darbellay l had its beginnings in March 1874.
A
short history of the Thiry family and the naming of Thiry Daems was found in a
collection of undated papers. Author Marion Ratajczak writes, “Constant Jean
Baptiste Thiry, Sr., one of the men Thiry Daems was named for, was among the
first Belgian settlers in Red River. Thiry first came to America, and then
Wisconsin in 1856, claimed some land before returning to Belgium for his wife
and three children. Early in 1857, Thiry brought his family and built a log
house. Thiry’s property expanded to house seven children and eventually his
land became the center of the Village of Thiry Daems. In 1876 Thiry donated
five acres of the land he owned for the building of St. Odile’s Church.” Thiry’s
post office site was across from the church. It appears below as it looked in 2006,
Constant Thiry was an educated man and a civil engineer. An account found in the booklet Kewaunee County 1873, claims that Thiry never learned to speak English. Continuing, the article said that although he was a member of the county board for years and was a frequent witness in court on boundary disputes, he always spoke through an interpreter. In a 1922 article, an unnamed researcher disputed this information as in the 1880 census, Thiry stated, in his own handwriting, that he had completed the enumeration.
Father Edward Daems who befriended the first group of Belgians to arrive in Wisconsin in 1853 was instrumental in getting the group to settle in the Brown-Door-Kewaunee County area, hence the second half of the place name.
Thiry Daems is described in the Wisconsin State Gazetteer, 1901 – 1902, as
being in Kewaunee County, 21 miles northwest of Kewaunee, the judicial seat,
and 16 miles northeast of Green Bay, the nearest shipping and banking point.
Louis Boucher was the postmaster and mail arrived three times a week.
Thiry
filed a new site document on October 2, 1875 identifying the post office as in
the SW ¼ of Section 34, Township 25N, Range 23E on Route 25367. Lincoln, 5 ¼
miles to the northeast, was the nearest post office. Casco was the nearest post
office to the southeast, at 6 ¾ miles and Dyckesville, to the northwest, was
the nearest off route post office. The post office at this location was
discontinued on July 8, 1881.
Eight
years later, on October 4, 1889, Thiry Daems was reestablished on with Louis
Boucher as postmaster. Boucher submitted a new site document with a new
location in the SE ¼ of Section 27, Township 25N, Range 23E, the site across
the road from St. Odile’s Church on Route 25407 from Ahnapee to Red River.
Noting Red River on the route is puzzling since the Red River ll post office
had been discontinued on December 3, 1887. Darbellay at a distance of 2 ½ miles
was the nearest post office on the northwest side. This too is blurring because a
second post office named Darbellay was established July 7, 1887, also by Joseph
Wery, and referred to here as Darbellay. Kewaunee’s New Era, November 13, 1891, places the post office in Louis Boucher
& Sons store in what today is Thiry Daems.
Postmaster Appointments
For Darbellay l Joseph Wery March 16, 1874
For Thiry Daems Constant Thiry January 3, 1875
Louis Boucher October 4,
1889
John B. Boucher
November 3, 1903
The post office was discontinued
November 30, 1903 with mail sent to Luxemburg.
Postmaster Compensation
Darbellay 1875 Not listed
Thiry-Daems 1875 No
returns
1877 Constant Thiry $4.18
1879 Constant
Thiry $0.59
1881 No
returns
1883-1889 Not listed
1891 Louis Boucher $22.08
1893 Louis Boucher $25.51
1895 Louis Boucher $28.87
1897 Louis Boucher $26.09
1899 Louis Boucher $25.47
1901 Louis Boucher $28.50
1903 Louis Boucher $42.65
