Kewaunee County Post Office History: Darbellay 1 is Renamed Thiry Daems

   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 post office known as Darbellay l began service on March 16, 1874, with Joseph Wery as postmaster. It turns out that Wery was the only postmaster. A few years later, there was another post office called Darbellay, thus two post offices named for Kewaunee's Joe Darbellay who did much to assist the people of the Town of Red Riveri. That is confusing in itself. However, confusion got kicked up a notch when Darbellay was named Thiry Daems.

    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,

                                                    Dr. C.R. Kannerwurf photo

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

 

Thiry Daems

A rarity of 9 is assigned to the post office at Darbellay 1. It is possible that an example of mail from this post office does not exist, however it is more likely that Thiry-Daems mail does exist, though has not come to  attention.

The 1899 topographer's map for Thiry Daems, below, is circular. The dot in the center represents the proposed post office. Instructions were that post offices were represented by dots within the circles indicating miles and directions. Such post offices were named.

Thiry Daems was in the center as it was replacing Darbellay l  which was to the northwest. Tonet is the nearest post office about two miles southeast.

 Source: Here Comes the Mail: Post Offices of Kewaunee County, Kannerwurf, Sharpe, Johnson, Copyright  2010; available at Kewaunee, Door and Brown County Library, WHS through Area Research Centers and Yardstick Book Store in Algoma, WI.