A Young Look At Old Green Bay 0964149966

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AYoung Look At Old Green Bay

A Young Looi< At Old Green Bay

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First Edition:

Published by the Green Bay Public Schools July 1977

Second Edition:

Published by the Brown County Historical Society Green Bay, Wisconsin, with permission of the Green Bay Area Public Schools October 1997

The original book was the product of a Federal summer program to foster reading and math skills. Under the guidance of Cecelia Howe, a teacher for the program, a multi-age group of students interviewed 21 elderly persons from the Green Bay area. The taped interviews were then transcribed and illustrated by the students, and published by the Green Bay Public Schools.

Copyright 1977 Green Bay Public Schools ISBN 0-9641499-6-6 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 97-075060 Printed and bound in the USA The Brown County Historical Society P.O. Box 1411 Green Bay, WI 54305 (920) 437-1840

A YOUNG LOOK AT OLD GREEN BAY by The Summer Kids of Fort Howard School Editor: Cecelia Howe Illustrator: Julie Holzer DEDICATION This second edition is dedicated to the memory of Peter M. Platten, who was born in Green Bay on August 20, 1900. Peter was a life-long resident of Green Bay and he loved all that it had to offer. His story, as told to The Summer Kids, begins on page 83. The republication of the book is presented by his wife, Helen Brown Platten and his children : Peter M. Platten Ill, Pati Platten; H. Anne Lemke; and Jane Platten Van Lanen .

The Brown County Historical Society wishes to thank the Plattens, and recognize the following for contributed services/materials: Moran's Quality Print Shop; Imperial, Inc. ; Heyrman Printing, Inc.; Steen Macek Paper Co., Inc.; and the Green Bay Area Public Schools.

It was one of our summer kids , Julie Holzer, who did all of the sketches for this oral history book, and also suggested the title : A Young Look at Old Green Bay. This project, begun in 1976, was developed around a theme of the Bicentennial. It celebrated the accomplishments and life experiences of the gentle ones who came before us , enriching all those involved. To the adults and kids who volunteered so many hours beyond the class requirements , and to the "seniors" who were at last able to have an eager and attentive audience of young ones for their stories, we rededicate this book. At this date, most of our interviewees have died, and the young people are busy creating their own life stories. But the lives and histories that we have touched upon are captured here forever. We hope you will be encouraged by our project, convincing your own young ones to "look" at their grandparents, neighbors, or friends , asking them to share the "olden" days. Tape it - then write it down. Find wonderful pictures (don't forget how special a child's art is.) And there you have it, your own oral history treasure! Cecilia Howe

A Y0 U NG

L 0 0 K AT

0 L D GR E E N BAY

By: THE SUMMER KIDS of

FORT HOWARD SCHOOL Cecelia Howe - Title I Teacher, Sunmer Program Julie Holzer - Illustrator

Developed under ESEA Title I Funding Green Bay Public Schools July 1977

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A Y0 U N G L 0 0 K

AT 0 L D G R E E N B A Y

This book is dedicated to the many parent volunteers who gave so generously of their time and talent. Without their involvement this program would not have been possible.

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A C K N 0 WL E D G E ME N T S

THE KIDS WHO MADE THIS BOOK POSSIBLE GUY DONART

CARRIE MILLHISER

JULIE HOLZER

PIXIE MILLHISER

VICKI HOLZER

JEAN MINIX

JENNY HOWE

DAN PAZDERA

ROBBIE HOWE

JOANNE PAZDERA

MARTHA MAI ER

LISA SCHULTZ

BECKY MICHALETZ

MICHELLE WAUTERS

COLLETTE MICHALETZ

WITH GRATEFUL THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING ADULTS

DEE ANN ANDREWS

ViRG INIA MIN IX

CHUCK HATFIELD

WAYNE PETERSON

MARY ANN HENKEL

DON QUIGLEY

JUDY HOLZER

BOB RASCHKA

CECELIA HOWE

CORRINE REOLAND

ALICE KUKLA

EVIE ROZEK

ANDREW LEANES

NANCY SIEWERT

MARIAN MAIER

JEAN WAGNER

DONNA MICHALETZ

JANET JERRY

.....

AND TO TWENTY-TWO BEAUTIFUL PERSONS WHO SHARED THEIR LIVES WITH US

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P R E F AC E

It began with this letter of May 9, 1975:

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Dear Parents: Fort Howard School is in the center of one of the oldest historic sites in Wisconsin, the site of the original Fort Howard.

The excitement of

the coming Bi-Centennial provides a fascinating opportunity for the people of the community to experience in meaningful, concrete ways the spirit and life of Colonial America. We have chosen for our focal point the construction of a log cabin and settler's homesite.

This project will grow from the investigations of

children and involve the labors of young people and adults alike. With the lifting and notching of logs will come the joy of seeing and feeling in this small way the life of people long before our time. Within this background, another group of children and parents will learn by first-hand experience the crafts which, although now hobbies, were very necessary parts of Early American Survival. The furniture, the quilts1 the curtains, the candles, the dishes, all these will be produced by the children.

Food of the period will also be studied and prepared, sharing

these products with the community of working people. Woven into this tapestry of experiences will be the crafts, games and food of the Native American, not as a separate study, but as an integral part of our American Heritage.

Within our community are great, untapped human

resources which we will also involve.

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These are people who have beautiful

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..... bits of history, old tales, crafts, recipes, and experiences which would be invaluable links with our past.

These are too often impersonally

trapped in history books, leaving out the spice of real, living people. Places too, will become real, through carefully planned field trips. Also included in this program is a study of man's relation with his environment, historically and currently.

Through activities such as gardening,

water quality studies, material gathering for crafts, and studying ponds, rivers and forests; the past, present and future of our environment can be

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seen in perspective . Our program will culminate with a 11 Cabin Warming Party" where crafts, foods,

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dances, games, drama, pictures, journals and music will be shared with the whole community.

We will try to recapture the community spirit of the

frontier days which is so lost in our city life of today. The project is designed to make readin', writin' and 'rithmetic a natural part of the investigation, building and sharing of children who are involved in exciting, meaningful activities.

With the involvement of a large number

of volunteer adults, we can be assured that these skills will be brought into the home through common experiences of children and parents. With all these ideas in mind, we the staff of the Fort Howard Summer Project, find it difficult to contain our excitement and eagerness to be under way, June 16!

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Sincerely,

Charles E. Hatfield Chairman

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PHOTO BY JIM MORAN

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This book, a collection of personal memories, is a product of the program's Oral History section. The interviews were planned, conducted, recorded, and transcribed by elementary students. They have been condensed, I

but every effort has been made to quote the subjects accurately, preserving the flavor and personality of each interview.

The events described are the best recollections of

people and are therefore not necessarily accurate in every historical detail. We hope these glimpses into the past will provide some fascinating insights to those who are reading it now, and to those who may read it in the future.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page AURELIA BARTH BILL SAYE

8

LEONA SAYE

15

FRED BORLEE, SR.

20

ETHEL CADY

26

CL I FF CENT EN

35

HELEN FERSLEV

46

MAX FRANC

53

EDWIN GAROT

63

DOMINIC OLEJNICZAK

69

LOUELLA OUTLAND

76

PETER PLATTEN

83

MR. AND MRS. WALTER QUIGLEY

91

MAUDE REIDENBACH

99

LOUIS ROPSON

107

JACK RUDOLPH

115

J. ANNE SCHWEGER

123

LEO SCRAY

134

JOSIE VANDERVEST

139

CARL WITTEBORG

146

DOROTHY STRAUBEL WITTIG

156

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PRESS-GAZ ETTE PHOTO

MRS. AURELIA BARTH

Visiting Mrs. Barth, the first director of Brown County's Reforestation Camp, meant another joyous trip to the country.

She is now

retired and living not too far from the camp that was in her care for many years.

We all knew the camp well, but didn't know much

about its history before this.

Afterwards we spent some happy

moments frolicing in her yard.

She even has a pond - with an

island!

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AURELIA BARTH

I was born in Stanley, Wisconsin. Sturgeon Bay.

Both of my parents were born in

Their parents were original settlers on the peninsula.

My mother and dad lived within two miles of each other through the woods.

One grandpa was from Germany and Grandma was from Ireland, and

the other two grandparents were from Germany. When I was born my mother and dad came back to Sturgeon Bay for the winter and we stayed with Grandma and Grandpa in their log cabin. had quite a fire - you know those log cabins.

and other wooden things.

We

They had wooden shingles

Grandpa was rocking in his chair, and looking

out the window, he saw a big shadow on the snow - fire.

They threw me -

nine months old and not wearing very much - into a snowbank. had to get Grandma out, who was paralyzed.

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Then they

They carried her out with

the bed.

All that was saved was the rocking chair and the feather bed

my grandma was in.

But the neighbors came and helped build a new cabin.

They started all over again.

This was at Jacksonport on the Lake, about

half way between Carlsville and Jacksonport.

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it wasn't too civilized.

We loved that place because

It had lots of trees and stone piles.

My dad was a teacher and we moved to North Dakota and I went to grade school for the first seven years in North Dakota.

I went back there a

couple of years ago and the school is still standing.

It looks exactly

like it did as I remember it, and that was over 55 years ago.

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I went to high school in Denmark.

I took my teachers training at Manitowoc.

I taught for eight years in primary school at Pine Grove and New Franken. They had a fire here at the Reforestation Camp in 1948.

It burned for two

days back in here before anybody knew about it and it burned out all the WPA work from 1935.

All that was left was a few burned out stumps.

This

was county land and they decided they'd better put someone out here to take care of it. My husband built the building and just after it was finished . we brought the men out and they stayed with us.

I cooked the meals.

We lived on one

side, and in the long part of the building where the men lived, they had a dining room, a recreation room and what we call the bunkhouse. twenty beds.

There was a bathroom on the end, and a storeroom.

were brought out by the sheriff to stay with us day and night. no locks on the windows, no locks on the doors. be out in the fresh air.

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There were The men There were

The men were so glad to

In 1951 my husband had a heart attack out in the woods.

The committees

that run the county business let me stay here on probation for six months to see if I could carry out my husband's ideas.

I stayed for 24 years so

I guess I did his job for him.

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For about three years there was no one but myself to do the work.

I would

make breakfast and I would go out in the morning with the men, get them started at their work, come back and make dinner. of 1953.

I got a cook in September

I had 22 men here and I was just about dead - that was a lot of

potatoes to peel and meat to fry and things like that.

You had to put on

big meals for them because they were working outside all day. When we moved out here the old timers had taken everything out of the soil it's all sand.

So it's really good for nothing but trees.

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They decided trees

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would be the crop.

We got out all the brush, plowed furrows and replanted.

And another way it served the public was that it took the men out of jail and gave them something to do. how the men just sit.

Of course you know what the jail is and

Alcoholics were sent out to the camp when we started

it. My mother and dad stayed with me the first six months, but then they saw that I didn't have anything to fear from the inmates.

They knew that if

anything happened to me or to my three children they would be the first ones blamed, and it would go pretty hard on them, so they were just like guards, really.

And when they were drunk they were so sick they couldn't

hold their head up.

Sometimes I would get a doctor for them, but generally

I knew what to give them, and I always had the common first aid remedies with plenty of aspirin. In 1954 we looked at some of our pine plantings which were growing to a height of six feet.

The forester had told us to plant them six feet apart

but we thought we should plant them a little closer - they may not all grow. Well, they all did grow, so we had to thin them out and we cut those for Christmas trees.

People going to Chicago and Milwaukee on big trucks would

pick them up and give us 75 cents a tree, and that money went to the county treasury. Right now they have mostly hired help.

The law has been changed in regard

to the type of person that can be sent out here.

They may phase out the

inmates entirely which to me would be a shame because for 24 years we had inmates down there and you can see that they did beautiful work.

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In 1953 I started the park.

The first thing was the deer fence.

got some baby deer and the state gave me two coyotes. raccoons and two timberwolves.

We

I had two little

That was my zoo to start with, plus the

pheasants that we used to raise for the hunters. done by the inmates and they didn't get paid.

All this work was

All they had was a

place to sleep and a place to take their shower and three good meals a day. The baby animals were kept in a place I called the little corral.

It

was a small fenced in area where boys and girls could feed them out of their hands.

These were animals the warden brought me.

once and it was beautiful.

I had a bobcat

A hunter caught him in a trap and his leg

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was hurt.

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He couldn't

get him out of the trap so he brought

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him to me.

We lured

him out with food. We had him four or

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five years.

If

there was no one to clean out his cage,

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I did it myself.

I

would talk to him in a low voice - you couldn't get too close to Torrrny he'd spit at you.

We always found inmates who liked animals and who we

believed would be good to them.

We couldn't have someone who might poke

them or turn the water on them and hurt them. When I see the school buses go by I know those kids are spending a day out in the open.

They have nice parks in town but to get out in the open, to

see the animals and have a day in the wilderness, to me, is a pretty big thing.

When I talk to them I realize a lot of children don't even know

the different animals.

They don't know what they are like, what their

habits are or what they eat.

Also, the trails and trees are all marked

and they know just what they're looking at.

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Coming here is a nature lesson.

PRE SS-G AZETTE PHOTO

MR. &MRS. BILL BAYE

Mr. and Mrs. Baye live near our school at 823 Oregon Street.

Mr.

Baye, retired recreation director at the Stat e Reformatory, grew up on Green Bay's northeast side, and Mrs. Baye on the west side, near where the two of them raised their family . pretty late before we left them.

As usual, it was

We never get tired of listening

to others tell us what it was like growing up a long time ago.

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BILL BAYE

I was born in Green Bay in 1906. in Kewaunee County.

My parents were born in Tonet, Wisconsin

My grandparents were born in Belgium.

I went to St. Peter and Paul School.

I started in the old Woelz School

where Nicolet School is now.

....

I went to high school, vocational school, and the University Extension . At that time you could get college credits from the Extension but you didn't have to attend a full day of school. university here.

The professors came to us at the reformatory, the

same as they are doing with the inmates now. out there.

That pre-dated the present

They taught the officers

We had classes every Tuesday for sixteen years; prison psy-

chology, prison management and all the psychology classes for prison systems.

Nobody had to take these courses - we took them on our own

for our own education. Being from the east side, I remember Bay Beach quite well. take the open street car that went to Bay Beach.

We used to

We had swimming, a

roller coaster, a merry-go-round, and nickel dances every night of the week except Monday.

We would pay a nickel for each dance.

buy the tickets and then ask the girls to dance. came real late!

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We would

Most of the fellows

My first paid job was weeding gardens for 35 cents a day. picked strawberries for one cent a box.

We also

Later I worked for a canning

company in the summer when I was going to school. I was always interested in sports as I was a bat boy for the old White City baseball team.

They

were from the post office

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and played in Belgian Pete's baseball park which was right across from Basten's Tavern out there on Irwin Avenue. It was known as White City Park. In the fall of the year we used to go skating in the ditches out there and skate from the Green Bay and Western tracks right out to the beach

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where we skated on the bay.

We also played basketball at the old

armory, where the East High athletic field is now, Do I remember the Tercentennial when President Roosevelt came? Yes, I remember the crowds going out to Bay Beach in the open cars. had a log building for the Tercentennial.

They

That building is still

there, and that is all that is left of the fort that was specially built for the event. After getting out of school I went to work for the Straubel Paper Machine Company for five years as a machine operator. umpire baseball at the Reformatory on Saturdays.

I used to

They talked me

into coaching in 1930, so I took a six month leave of absence from Straubels.

Then the depression set in.

After baseball season,

Mr. Ecklund, who was superintendent at the Reformatory, asked me to stay and coach basketball.

I talked it over with the Straubels

and they said it would be fine with them if I would stay out there because they could then keep on two married men.

They were cutting

down from nine to eight hours, so I stayed at the Reformatory and my six months leave of absence ran into forty-one years.

I coached base-

ball and basketball, and then took over the recreation department as director. It got to be a challenge more than just a job, trying to help these fellows.

I took more schooling because when you are dealing with

human beings you have to try to stay ahead of them, but of course, much of your knowledge comes from the experience of working with them

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more than from any theory or book .

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I didn't have just one group - I had all of the groups, and you would run into the individual who was despondent and very much dependent on dope.

He might try to sneak it or try to sniff glue.

~~e

wanted the

kids to have their training out in the open so they were free.

There

were those who wanted to sneak off in the corner. We tried to keep them out of their cells a certain number of hours a day.

We tried to keep them out at least three nights a week, and occa-

sionally you would run into the fellow who wouldn't want to get out. just wanted to sit in his cell.

He

So you know he needed help, and I would

send his name to the psychologist or chaplain and let them work with him. There have been some changes in the type of crimes.

In the earlier days

you had the car thief, and that was a serious thing - you could get five

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years for that.

1t was almost as bad as a horse thief.

During the

depression it was bank robbery and now you have the drug thing.

Many

steal in order to get drugs, and there are a lot of burglaries going on now - homes more than businesses, because so many business places have alarm systems now. In the early days they blamed a lot of their problems on alcohol 11

moonshine

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Now they are using the drug - dope alibis when they

commit a crime.

It's not the same - with alcohol you get a headache

and the next day it is gone, but the effects of dope stick with you. It is not a pleasant sight to see these addicts in cells - youngsters squirming in pain. The lack of respect for authority shows up more in the prisoners today and is quite a problem.

We had the military system of marching two

abreast to and from the shop.

Now they are free to just walk.

other way was better, and there was no talking in line.

The

To show the

difference in timing, when we used to march to the baseball field they would be up there in three minutes.

Now it takes ten minutes, which

cuts down on the time for playing. Many people think that discipline is punishment, but it isn't - it is

...

just good organization.

In sports the only way to run a good program

is with good discipline.

They have lost a lot of it out there due to

their riots .

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MRS. LEONA BAYE

Mrs. Baye told us delightful stories of fun times when she was young.

Descriptions of ice skating on the Fox River, ice boat

sailing on the Bay, boat riding on the Fox, and watching medicine shows sounded like great pastimes.

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MRS. LEONA BAYE

My grandfather was born in Belgium, that is my father's family.

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My mother's mother was born in Alsace-Lorraine, which is on the border between Germany and France.

Mother's mother was born in

Frankfort, Germany. I went to grade school at Elmore School on the west side in Green Bay. At that time it was on the corner of Elmore and Vroman Streets. also went to St. Willebrord's School for a couple of years.

I

I attended

McCartney School for the 7th and 8th grades (where the Presbyterian Church is now.)

I went to West High for my high school education.

When I was a little girl I can remember the first car that came on Kellogg Street.

It belonged to the Boland family who lived across the

street from where our house was.

They were the first people to own a

car in our neighborhood, and that was quite an occasion. When we were little, they used to move houses. the house moving, using horses.

The Kennedys did all

A lot of houses were being moved

because the west side was growing.

They would come inching down Kellogg

Street, and it was so fascinating to watch that.

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We used to go skating on the Fox River - the city had an ice rink on the river . There was a couple who would come down to skate, and they

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skated so beautifully.

We would all stand around to watch the

Buershingers, Frank and his wife, Irene Platten.

They skated like

poetry in motion - it was just beautiful. We watched football practice in back of West High School .

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One of the

fellows who played with the West High team and was later a Packer, "Cowboy" Lyle Wheeler, lived near us. the street.

So of course he was the hero of

We would sit on the steps as he'd go by, and if he deigned

to notice us, that would make our day.

Another former Packer, Verne

Lewellyn, lived next door to us on Oregon Street - that was after he played with the Packers.

Hurdis Mccrary, who played in the 20's or 30's,

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lived a couple of doors away on Hubbard Street . My younger brother made an ice boat, and we used to go ice boat sailing on the Bay.

That was really fascinating.

We used to have to walk from

our house on Kellogg Street way out to the Bay, past the Northwestern Railroad yards.

Believe

me, that was quite a hike.

By the time we

got there we were half frozen, and coming

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home, of course, it was even colder because it was later in the afternoon.

We

didn't have snow suits at that time. We used to just pile on long underwear and lots of stockings, heavy boots, and caps and whatever.

We could find ways to keep warm and believe me, we did!

We loved

to go ice boating. It was dangerous too, of course . wind shifted and died down. shack where it was kept.

One time when we were out there the

We had to push the ice boat back to the

When we were almost to the shack there was a

patch of open water so we had to go around that in order to get the ice boat back into the shack. My father and his brothers had a boat. fifteen passengers.

It wa s big enough to carry about

It was just an open boat and it was run by a Straubel

- 17 -

gasoline engine.

They would take people out for rides on the Fox River.

We would go to Little Rapids - that was quite a trip - and up to Long Tail Point where the lighthouse is, and to Benderville, which is Redbanks now. At that time too , there were two excursion boats on the Fox ... the John Denessen and the Netty Denessen.

They were much bigger, of course, and

could carry a couple hundred people. There were medicine shows.

Have you ever heard of them or seen them?

Somebody would come around selling medicine that was supposed to be good

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for everything! shows. nights .

They wou l d have an old car or truck, and would put on

There would be compet i t i on , singing and dancing for a couple of Actual ly, if you bought the medicine you got your money's worth

in the entertainment rather than in the medicine.

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MR. FRED BORLEE, SR .

One hot windy day Mrs. Howe drove us to her parent's home on the ledge at Bay Settlement.

Even though it was a busy time for them -

there was to be a wedding the next day - they took the time to treat us to a cool drink and tell us some interesting things about growing up long ago in the Bay Settlement area, where many people from Belgium settled .

.. ...

- 19 -

MR. FRED BORLEE

I was born in the town of Red River in Kewaunee County.

My mother was

born in Nice, Belgium, and my father was born in Namur.

They were two

little villages twelve miles apart. I went to grade school in Dykesville, in the town of Red River. go to high school because I was the only one left on the farm. was getting old and I had to stay home and work on the farm.

I didn't My dad

Then my

teacher said, ''If you can't come to high school now, come back in the winter and I'll teach you the 9th grade." Oh, yes!

We walked!

I went pretty near all winter.

We walked two miles from home.

on rail fences when the snow was deep.

And we kids walked

We would follow a path sometimes

after a snowstorm and pick up some sticks to put along side of our path so that we could follow it to school. I'd drive the cows to the pasture just about a half mile and I had a nice dog, Sam.

I'd put the cows in the pasture and he'd watch every cow.

When

I shut the gate we would go into the woods and look at the birds and pick flowers. As soon as the frost was in the ground and there was a cover of snow on the ground, we'd cut trees for firewood.

That took a couple of weeks.

we'd haul the logs home and pile them in a great big pile. them with a sawing machine that had a gas engine.

Then

Then we'd saw

From the pile we'd skid

them and then we piled them up again to dry for the next winter. For enjoyment we had corn husking.

We'd get into gangs and husk that corn

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•

and shred it.

The boys and girls who went around together would go out

and smooch a little bit. We had a threshing machine with a steam engine, and I used to run the steam engine after I got the hang of it.

We had to split pine stumps

and make fires under the boiler to make some steam.

One guy would be on

a scaffold and would put bundles on the scaffold and then in the thresher. There was a steel cylinder with rows of teeth on it and these teeth would break the grain off the straw.

Then it would go through the threshing

machine, and towards the end was a blower with a fan that would blow the chaff away.

There was a place where the grain would come down and at the

end of it the straw would go through the blower and into a straw stack. That was a great thing. before.

Mothers would prepare for it a couple of days

They'd have a quarter of beef or a piece of beef and make some

stew meat.

The young people would really go for that.

They could eat!!

We'd go from place to place and the neighbors would help each other.

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day the thresher would be at my home and the next day at Grandma's place and the next day another place. other.

My dad would have some seeds and we planted tobacco seeds

in some real rich soil.

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Five or six neighbors would help each

My grandma had a big farm and it took more than one day to do hers.

(Growing tobacco)

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One

planted them.

When they grew to about four inches high we trans-

When it was getting mature, brown spots would appear in the

leaves and then we 1 d cut them.

We piled them in stacks and covered them

up, and it would heat and cure.

When we thought it was right we would

take all the leaves off the stalks and hang it up in the shed.

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When it was

cured enough we packed it in little bundles. leaves and put it around the bundle.

We would take one of those

When it was a damp day there was a

guy with a machine, a chopper , or a tobacco cutter they called it. chop it and roll it up and put it in a wooden barrel.

He'd

Then you'd reach

into the tobacco barrel and get a pouch full and smoke it.

When that was

gone we'd get another pouch full from the barrel. (Slaughtering a pig)

Two or three guys would throw the pig down and slit

the throat with a knife and stab it .

Then someone would pick up the

blood, cool it off and put salt in it and make blood sausage.

Then we'd

come with a rack and a wooden barrel filled with scalding water.

Two of

us would soak the pig in there and scrape all of the hair off until it was nice and clean.

Then we ' d open it up and take the insides out and throw

away whatever we couldn't use.

When it was cooled off we cut out the heart

and tongue, and we'd make hash with it, adding onions and raisins.

- 22 -

Years ago they had a shingle mill in Dykesville. and my mother met.

That's where my dad

The boiler blew up and destroyed the whole mill.

My

mother, who was just a young girl, didn't get hurt, but my father did. They didn't know where to take him, and there were no hospitals in those days.

My mother said, "Take him to my house and I ll take care of him." 1

He had to stay in bed a couple of weeks with a concussion and many cuts. She took such good care of him that he fell in love with her. Every winter we would go to my uncle's in Green Bay . Main Street, in what was called Muskrat City. have hay in the sled.

He l ived north of

If it was cold we would

My mother would heat up some bricks in the oven,

real warm, and then wrap them in burlap and put them under the hay to keep us warm.

It took a couple of hours to get to Green Bay.

a great big skating rink and we'd go and skate on the ice.

There was

I never had

skates of my own but my cousin had some. My brother and I would go up to Rosi ere and Dykes vi 11 e to dances . We would take the horse and buggy. We had a nice little red horse named Queen.

Some-

times the four of us would go in the same buggy - two couples.

In winter we had

a cutter, a little sled. Sometimes in a snowstorm we'd tip over.

That was a lot of fun .

Model T Ford.

-

- 23 -

In 1918 I got my first car, a

(Depression) worthless.

We were on the farm and we couldn't get a job. We'd get six cents for a dozen eggs.

beef for four cents a pound. of milk.

Money was

I bought a quarter of

We got sixty cents for a hundred pounds

So the little bit that we had paid the taxes.

There was nothing

left over. I couldn't go to World War I because they had to keep somebody on the farm to work and produce food. friends were there.

I wanted to go into the Army - all my

But I was stuck - I had to stay on the farm.

November 11, 1918, we were threshing across from my home.

On

Telephones

were scarce in those days, but the storekeeper had one, and the tavern, three-quarters of a

111il

e away from home.

When the ca 11 came that the

war was over, a man came running across the field and told us.

All the

men stuck their pitchforks in the mow and went down to the tavern.

One

fellow stayed on the steam engine, blowing the whistle till it was out of steam.

-

When World War II started, I wasn't on the farm any more, and my brother

PT-108-S

and I had to go and work in the shipyards.

- 24 -

I worked in the electrical

shop making electrical parts for boats.

They needed men, and you either

went in the Army or worked in the shipyards.

....

my country, so in 1942 I started in the shipyards .

... ....

I had to do something for

- 25 -

... MRS. CHARLES CADY

Mr. and Mrs. Cady treated us to punch and cookies in their home at 503 Porlier Street.

(Now how did they know that next to

interviewing, we like eating best?)

Their house had a special

bicentennial sign in front telling about its stick style architecture.

Mr. Cady, who is retired, had the house built in 1906

and has lived there ever since.

- 26 -

...

MRS. ETHEL CADY

I was born right here in Green Bay on February 23, 1892. My father was born in Morristown, New Jersey and he was brought here by his parents when he was a baby.

My mother was born in Chattanooga,

Tennessee. Were they strict? Well, I don't think so.

They were always very good

to us and we minded when we were told what to do and so on.

I don't

think it was ever unreasonable. We had a very happy home.

We always had a cat or two.

very fond of cats and she still is. father's side in Green Bay.

My sister was

We had a lot of relatives on my

My name was Smith, Ethel Smith, and at one

time I had 54 cousins that were living in and around Green Bay. after all these years I have a couple of second or third cousins.

Now Nearly

all of them died or moved away to some other place. I attended Woelz School where Nicolet School is now.

I felt very bad

that it was changed to Nicolet because they had a streak in Green Bay of naming everything after Nicolet and Marquette and Mr. Woelz was a very fine man who lived over on the north side not far from where Nicolet School is now.

The school was named after him because he was a pioneer

over on that side of the East River, what they called the north side. I think it was nice that the school was named after him, and I think it should have been left that way. I went to East High School.

At that time it was over about three blocks

- 27 -

from here on the corner of Chicago and Webster Avenue. when my father died.

My mother had died before and I came home to go

into the business and see what I could do. for Smith Brother's company.

My father managed a business

They had gardens, big market gardens.

raised all kinds of vegetables . kraut.

I left college

They

They had a factory where they made sauer-

They had a grocery store in Green Bay on the corner of Grove and

Main Streets.

It s now Lockman's Tavern . 1

But in those days it was a

general merchandise store, where they sold everything.

The farmers came

in from all around and sold their produce and we bought that and we had groceries and all kinds of merchandise to sell.

It was an old fashioned

store. I remember my first grade teacher .

Her name was Ann Zimmer and later she

was Mrs. Ann Call and I just loved her . There were so many children they had to have more than one first grade.

I was put in a different grade and

when I got there I found out Miss Zimmer wasn't going to be my teacher so

- 28 -

-

I ran home as fast as I could and told my mother.

It was about four blocks.

told her I wasn't going to go to school if Miss Zimmer wasn't going to be my teacher.

Mother looked at the clock and said, "Ethel, if you don't

hurry, you're going to be late for school," and I turned around and ran just as fast as I could.

I've thought of that so many times.

That was

way back in first grade. Most of the children didn't go to kindergarten in those days. first grades in Woelz School. after they got to school. at home.

We had three

Most of the children learned to speak English

They were Belgian and their parents spoke Belgian

They were all centered around St. Peter and Paul's Church.

In those days Green Bay was divided into sections where foreigners lived. German people all went to the Cathedral, the Dutch people went to St. Willebrord's and the Irish people went to St. Patrick's. to St. Mary of the Angels.

The Polish people went

People came in from all around the farms and

went to the church to hear their own language preached. them had schools.

A good many of

When we were at Woelz School we could hear the children

at St. Peter & Paul's School reciting.

- 29 -

One of my best girl friends when I was in first grade was the daughter My mother was quite worried about that, but Papa said,

of a saloonkeeper. 11

You don't need to worry, that's all right.

11

After school, Louisa's

mother, a great big woman, took a big loaf of bread that she had baked, and held it up by

-

her stomach as she sawed off a piece, and then she spread lard on it.

I just

loved that.

When I

came home to Mother and said,

11

Couldn t 1

we have lard on our bread?

11 ,

-

she looked

at Papa and said, 11

Wel l, I guess you

could have lard on your bread."

But it didn't taste as good as it did

when I ate it over there. My mother had been an organist at the First Presbyterian Church in Chattanooga. After she was married she gave music lessons to help out the income.

Louisa

came over to learn to play, but she didn't do very well because she didn't practice.

So my mother said to me, ''I wish that Louisa would practice more.

She isn't learning very much."

I said, "Well, you know Mama, the piano is

in the saloon and sometimes she can't get in there to practice when there's a lot of people."

Louisa was a nice girl.

didn't hurt me any.

- 30 -

She was my friend and I guess she

Well, school only went through the 7th grade and we had sort of a graduation exercise there.

Then we went to Whitney School .

Out of all those

children who graduated out of the 7th grade there were only two that went to the 8th grade, another girl and myself.

When we finished the 8th grade

at Whitney we went to East High. We used to go to Bay Beach a lot. swirrming.

We took the streetcar there to go

On hot days we certainly loved that.

I didn't go to any of

their celebrations or the Tercentennial or anything like that. Christmas was just like it is for all children ... it never came soon enough'. When you get to be 84 it's always here and just coming and just leaving. We always had a nice Christmas. We did celebrate the 4th of July.

We didn't celebrate Halloween very much. I lived on the corner of Forest and

Main Street and across the East River from us was Hagemeister Park. always had a celebration there on the 4th of July.

They

Mr. Hagemeister had a

big brewery and the Brewer's picnic was at the park.

I remember one time

my sister and I wanted to go over to the Brewer's picnic and my mother didn't think that would be a very good place to go. of our horses at the barn said he would take us over.

The man who took care I don't remember

much about it but I have a picture of my sister and me that was taken at this picnic.

When we got over there, there didn't seem to be much going

on.

- 31 -

Our store delivered groceries.

We had three or four light wagons and

each wagon had two horses hitched to it.

We got the orders for groceries

-

over the telephone and then these orders were put up and delivered all over the city.

We had a very nice grocery business.

The horse barn was just across Forest Street down by the river. was very fond of horses and she was always out there. scared to death of them.

My sister

But I used to be

I dreamed all the horses were in the barn in a

row and they d kick and bite me, and I was always afraid of them. 1

Mr. Cady had one of the first cars.

He founded the Cady Land Company.

built this house when he was 24 years old. the girl next door.

He

He was going to be married to

Between them they planned this house and he gave it

to her for a wedding present. of money way back in 1906.

He told me it cost $5,000 - that was a lot

His first wife died in 1922.

married in 1926 and now it s 1976. 1

He and I were

That s 50 years married. 1

-

-

It is a nice

house and very well built.

- 32 -

-

He got Harvey Barnard, a young man who worked in the bank, to work for him.

After that it became the Cady-Barnard Company.

and it became the Barnard Corporation . business up to Door County. have some.

Now Mr. Cady is

business for him. P.S.

Then he sold out

Mr. Cady took his real estate

We had lots of land up there, and we still 94~ .

His son and son-in-law look after his

So we're supposed to be people of leisure now.

Mrs. Cady has a specially constructed shadow-box dedicated to her

mother, Julia Crandall Smith, nee Julia Spencer Crandall , who married

Fillmore B. Smith December 13, 1887 .

The framed assemblage is a collection

- 33 -

of momentoes from her parent's wedding and includes a portion of her mother's gown and a tiny kid slipper, her father's kid gloves and white s ilk tie.

There are pictures of the bride and groom, the wedding invi-

tation, the bride's dried corsage, her handkerchief and a feathered silk ivory fan that probably belonged to Julia's mother.

Childhood keepsakes

are a baby bonnet and shoes, a book, ribbons and valentines, one of which has an original poem written to her by her father.

We saw a hair brooch,

a pen and pencil, a slate, a thimble, a menu for a dinner party, and a hair album.

It was a unique and fascinating "little museum . "

- 34 -

-

-

-

MR. CLIFF CENTEN

We interviewed Mr. Centen in his office at City Hall where he was nearing the end of a long career as city clerk of Green Bay.

Mr.

Centen, who had polio as a child, had to explain to us what polio was.

None of us children had ever heard of it.

He told us how

he developed an interest in cooking, instead of engaging in the more boisterious activities of his brothers and sisters. he's a gourmet cook.

This and his many other hobbies will keep

him busy during his retirement.

-

Now

- 35 -

MR. CLIFF CENTEN

My mother's father and mother were born in Holland and my father's mother and father in Holland.

They were friends in Holland and they

came to Wisconsin on the same boat. farm in Wrightstown.

My mother's folks settled on a

My dad's dad was a tailor and he settled in

Green Bay. I went to St. Willebrord's School, which is a block from here. originally was the Holland school.

That

When the immigrants came to settle

in Green Bay, naturally they just knew their own language. church was called St. Willebrord's Church.

The Holland

The old church was a wooden

church, and then, I believe in 1902 or something like that, they built a brick one which is standing there on the corner of Adams and Doty right now.

It was very interesting - my dad tells about it - that they built

this church over the wooden one.

So when the brick one was completed,

they tore down the old one and then put a flooring in, the altars were

- 36 -

all in.

They had to stand up for a couple of weeks until the pews were

put in.

But that was very interesting because where would they attend

mass if they wanted it on that site?

It was a downtown site so I suppose

then it was quite expensive to buy a new site. The St. Francis Xavier Cathedral, on the corner of Doty and Monroe, was the German church, and the German people who settled in Green Bay went to church at the Cathedral, as we call it now. St. John's Church was a French church. Streets.

That's on South Madison and John

The same thing - the French people went to that church.

Then the St. Mary's Church was on the corner of Irwin and Cass . That was the Polish church and I remember that one better than any of them, except St. Willebrord 1 s, because I only lived two and a half blocks from there. Actually, the Polish people settled more in a settlement around the church than the other ones did. Then the Belgian people settled on the north side around the St. Peter and Paul Church.

The church was on the corner of, let's see, it's not Willow

anymore - University and Baird Street. spoke the language.

All of the priests that they had

I remember going to the Polish church and not under-

standing one thing of it, but sometimes it was handier than going down to St. Willebrord s. 1

I never knew Holland.

My folks could speak Holland, but I just knew a few

words I picked up. The Lutheran Church, which was on the corner of Madison and Stuart Streets, was a wooden church.

It's where the YWCA is now.

- 37 -

They had a school, too.

The German Lutherans always had a school.

In the settlement near the

German Lutheran Church there was the Methodist Church.

Then there's the

Presbyterian Church on Monroe and Stuart, and the Moravian Church which stands right across from Jackson Park behind Grace Lutheran Church. It seems that most of the churches were put in one area because people came from all over to a central place, almost like a shopping center. They are all around Jackson Park which was donated by John Jacob Astor for a haymarket, or a park. Oh, I didn't tell you about St. Patrick's Church, and who should settle around there? Of course, the Irish! I remember the streetcars that you don't remember. And I remember when the fire department was on Washington Street where the Bay Theatre is now. They had horses instead of engine drawn vehicles. They used to exercise the horses every day, and they were big black beautiful horses.

I went to St. Willebrord's School and

they used to come past there around recess time. to see them.

It was just a thrill

They had to be held down because they were so spirited.

I remember right behind Morley Murphy Company the boys used to go swimming skinny-dipping they called it then - and also just where Allouez starts

- 38 -

along the river.

It was called the muds.

I recall my brother telling

later that he used to go swiJTITling there and they would dare each other to swim across the river and back.

The river is pretty wide there, and

of course when you're dared, it's hard not to go. there and thought, "I can't make it."

He said he got almost

He started swallowing water and

he got that feeling like, "Oh, everything's beautiful." "I gotta do it, I gotta."

Then he realized,

He said he didn't know how he got the courage

to do it because the feeling was so beautiful.

That's the closest I ever

came to knowing what the feeling of drowning is.

(BAY BEACH) It was such a nice sandy beach. it was waist deep. real nice beach .

You could go out maybe a half block before

You never had to worry about holes, it was just a real, We used to go on a family picnic there and we'd take the

streetcar with all the big market baskets and everything.

We'd take enough

food along for a whole day; after supper we took the streetcar back home. We'd have to transfer, you know, taking the car from Bay Beach to Mason Street, then the Main - Mason streetcar, walking the final two and a half

-

- 39 -

-

blocks to our house. Streetcars were our only means of transportation, and at that time streetcars ran to De Pere.

One, the Interurban, used to go to Kaukauna.

I

remember going there on that because my mother had relatives in the Kaukauna-Wrightstown area.

We used to take the streetcar and get off right

at their house - the Van Zeeland house.

You might have seen it on Highway

41, it's a big stucco house on the hill. Bay Beach was real small, probably back around 1935, although previous to that time they had a roller coaster where the baseball field is now. it rotted and they couldn't use it anymore.

Then

That was standing there for maybe five or six years, and I used to think, "Gee, wouldn't that be great if it was working!" But those were all wooden structures, you know, and the weather does a lot to them.

We used to go fishing under the railroad bridge over the Fox River.

We'd sit

on thsse wide timbers and drop our line in there and catch perch and bullheads.

-

That was the extent of my fishing.

- 40 -

-

I remember the big snow storms, one in particular because I kind of liked it.

It started out with sleet and snow and I had to take the streetcar to

St. Willebrord 1 s School.

There was about a foot of sleet on the tracks,

which had to be chopped off with a pick axe to clear the track.

-

I couldn't go to school until they cleared the track. two blocks a day.

They only did about

They had to haul the ice away on horse driven drays. Fi-

nally when it got to Clay and Mason, I went to school. day storm kept me away from school for three days. at the museum. is.

Consequently,

The Washington Birth-

They have pictures of it

There's a picture of the drift where the old Orpheum Theater

There was a drift in the center of the street that was as high as the

marquee of the theater. A celebration for me was when the circus came to town.

thing.

In fact, the circus originally was held in Astor Park.

the commons in those days.

-

The circus was a big

It was called

It was all open field and it was property donated

by John Jacob Astor, when he plotted out Green Bay.

- 41 -

I don't know about this,

my parents tell.

They could look right through from Lawe Street, which

is only a block away, and see them putting up the tents.

The streets

weren't paved and the wagons would be right down to the hub.

My mother

-

said the elephants used to get behind and push to get them out of the rut. Then the circuses were at Joannes Park, right about where East High is. lt was the old Hagemeister Park then. Most of the time they had a parade.

Years ago, you know, they used to

follow that parade right to the circus performance.

I came from a family

of eleven, so we had to get our thrill out of the parades because we just couldn't afford to go to the circus.

-

But I had an aunt who lived in the

1200 block of East Walnut Street and we always got invited to watch the parade from her front porch.

My mother got us all dressed up Sunday -

like so that was a celebration! Another celebration was the Tercentennial when Green Bay was 300 years old.

Green Bay was founded in 1634, and this was in 1934.

The highlight

of that was sitting on a curb

-

on Main Street, watching the parade with President Roosevelt riding in a big open limousine. That was the first president I ever saw in person.

It was an

all day celebration.

They had

stands all down Main Street and a tent at Bay Beach. dedicated Nicolet Road.

Well, everybody

That was when they

celebrated~

The president gave his speech at Bay Beach right

from the car, because he had trouble walking.

- 42 -

I didn

1

t

see him give the

speech.

I was thrilled enough to see him.

I thought there would be too

many people at Bay Beach anyway. (DEPRESS ION) The paper mills ran, maybe not as productively, but they kept running. remember in 1939 three of us fellows went west.

We stopped for gas in

South Dakota and a fellow asked, when he saw our license, "Which part of Wisconsin are you from?"

We told him we were from Green Bay.

said, "the good old Fox River Valley. depression.

11

0h,

11

he

You know, I was there during the

Actually, you didn't have a depression.

It was worse out

here in 1939 than it was there in the so-called depression time. During the depression we had a mayor by the name of John Diener.

11

Butter

was an expensive commodity and so he didn't think they should give the relief recipients butter.

They substituted peanut butter, so he was

called "Peanut Butter John." I think that the sanctuary was one of the ni cest th i ngs that came out of

WPA (Works Progress Admi nistration}, because they made something really

- 43 -

I

wonderful out of nothing.

They drained the marsh.

in the ground they took out. there.

It's really wonderful.

Now look at all the ducks and geese we have It was finished around 1934 - 1935.

took a while because there was a lot of hard work. course, was to employ people.

Vegetation grew well

It

The idea then, of

That was why WPA was formed.

Then they had what they called PWA (Public Works Administration). Nicolet School was done under a project like that.

The

It was just to keep

employment again, just like they're trying to do now. I worked for ten mayors. the city.

John Diener was the mayor when I started with

I started in 1934.

former postmaster.

After that was John Farrell.

He was there for two years.

an alderman in the first ward.

He was a

Then it was Alex Biemert,

He was there, I believe, for two years.

Then Dominic Olejniczak became mayor, and he was mayor for either ten or twelve years.

He is now the head of the Packer Corporation.

lowed by Otto Rachals.

Roman P. Denissen was the next mayor.

He was folIn fact,

he stopped in to see me the other day, and we had a nice chat. there for four years - two terms.

Then Don Tilleman (the bridge is named

after him) was there for about eight years. of a heart attack.

He was

He died suddenly in New York

Harris Burgoyne took his place for the unexpired term.

Harris Burgoyne then ran for mayor but was defeated by Thomas Atkinson. Of course, Mike Monfils was successful in the next election. At that time we were badly in need of a new building . building is there was a factory building. away, but the city bought it.

Where this present

I can't recall the name right

We called it the City Hall Annex.

We thought

we were going to be settled for a while because it was a three story building

- 44 -

That's why they chose this site, right here, because they owned the property and it was big enough.

-

-

- 45 -

HELEN FERSLEV

We made another trip to Green Bay City Hall for our interview with Miss Ferslev.

She is the Director of Elementary Education for the

Green Bay school district and has written a book for school children about our area's early history.

Her description of the old Dousman

School, where Fort Howard now stands, gave us a vivid and colorful mental picture.

We liked the way she described the learning of

history by comparing it to holding hands with others.

- 46 -

MISS HELEN FERSLEV

I was born in Green Bay on Cora Street, just a short distance away from Fort Howard School. Mother was born in Green Bay and Father was born in the country of Denmark.

Now there would be four grandparents to account for.

My mother's

mother was also born in Green Bay and her father was born in England, but came to Green Bay when he was very young.

My father's parents were

born in Denmark, Europe. I went to a school that is no longer in existence.

First I went to

McCartney School, which is next to where the First Presbyterian Church is on Ashland Avenue.

Then, in fifth and sixth grade, I went to the old

Dousman School. My father went there, too, as an elementary student when he was in what we now call junior high ... so it was an old building when I was there. fact, it was torn down immediately after I left.

In

I think I probably took

the final lesson. The old Dousman School was on the same corner as Fort Howard, but didn't take up as much room, so the rest of that block was probably a larger play space at that time .

It was a two story, red brick building.

correctly, it had a tower in one corner. that the stairs curved .

If I recall

I do remember very distinctly

If you got too close to the inside of the curve,

there wasn't much stair there because each one was a wedge. structure inside was wood.

There were outside fire escapes.

- 47 -

Much of the There was

a bell--a great big bell with a rope. We used to love to have a chance to pull the rope when it was time to come in. I started as a teacher in a one room rural school.

Then I taught in Green

Bay and also another county school. I taught at the University Laboratory School in Madison.

I taught school in

England for one year and was principal of Jackson school, which grew from about 125 children to 900 while I was there. Teaching in England was one of the most exciting experiences in my life. I had heard about the exchange program and my application was accepted. I guess this is where I first gained any fame or notoriety, I don't know which.

The reason for saying this is that someone wrote a letter to the

Peoples' Forum objecting strenuously to having a teacher from England in Green Bay (as we had made a direct exchange). My school in England was about 30 minutes by train outside of London. It was small, with about 80 children ranging in age from nursery to eleven years.

There was no grading system.

neighborhood of 30 to 32 children.

I started with something in the They kept adding more to the class,

so that at the end of the year I had 41 students. You were asking about the desks.

They were long and narrow, and always

- 48 -

double.

The children had all their books in little bags.

When they had

a vacation they put everything in these bags and put them on a shelf. One of the most amazing things to me was the tremendous lack of equipment and materials.

Yet, how much they learned'.

The books were paper books--not the paperbacks we know today.

There were few hard

cover books. The room had no bulletin boards. one chalkboard on a stand.

We had

My desk was

more like a table. We were warned that the discipline was very strict by comparison, but I didn't find that true at all.

I think the

discipline was really quite relaxed. The earliest thing I remember about Green Bay is probably Bay Beach. was a beautiful place to swim with a nice sandy beach.

It

We could go out

there and spend the day, picnicking and swimming. No, we didn't skate on the Fox River. slough.

...

We skated on what was called the

Do you know where Seymour Park is?

filled in.

Well, that has all been

The slough came down across Shawano Avenue, circled around

and came out where the park is, then on down to Broadway, and drained into the Fox River.

The water froze in the winter and that's where we did

most of our skating .

I also skated at Fisk Park.

- 49 -

My father was one of those responsible for moving Tank Cottage to its present location in Tank Park.

It was down near the river surrounded by

industry, and a group of businessmen decided that this was no place for a historical building to be.

-

There is one experience I had that you will probably never have, and that was when the circus came to town. animals and bands.

They had a big circus parade with

I was able to go up and stand on the second floor of

the White Store and look out the front windows.

We used to see every

circus parade that came to town.

The Denessen Company had a number of boats that went up and down the river and into the bay on Sunday tours. boat trips.

My father and mother met on one of those

When I was a child I used to think those trips must have been

so exciting. 11

How did I become interested in the history of Green Bay? 11

I think, because

my ancestors on my mother's side had lived in the Green Bay area for so long that they remembered many things about the past.

- 50 -

Maybe I could explain it

-

this way---if you wanted to reach from here (City Hall) to Fort Howard School, you couldn't do it.

(Could you, by yourself, right now, reach

out and touch Fort Howard School?)

But, if you had enough people, you

could join hands and make a long line, and eventually someone could touch City Hall and someone could touch Fort Howard School.

Now let me

say that this is more or less the same way that history works. remember 75 years ago, or a hundred years ago or more. who could remember far enough back.

I can't

But I know people

It is just like joining hands.

My mother remembered farther back than I could---my grandmother remembered farther back than she could. even farther back.

My grandmother knew people who remembered

Each family could tell the younger ones some of the

things that had happened in the past. For example, when my grandmother was a little girl, there were no bridges in Green Bay.

They crossed the river by boat .

In the winter, when the

water froze, they could walk across the ice and she said they did this sometimes.

- 51 -

At the time my grandmother was a little girl, there was still a fort building for protection, if necessary.

They kept the fort for a number

of years.

My father remembered the big celebration when Fort Howard and Green Bay were joined, shortly after he arrived here. that very well .

My father could remember

It was in 1895, and he often mentioned it.

So this is probably why I became interested in history.

I can link back

by holding hands with someone I know, and find out about it.

- 52 -

MAX FRANC

Mr. Max Franc talked to us at White Pillars, a historical gem in the historical city of De Pere.

Mr. Franc is the curator and was a prime

mover in its becoming a museum.

The building was the first bank in

the northwest and has been in continuous use in some way since it was built in 1836.

He told us of the philosophy behind the kinds of

things that are preserved at White Pillars - things that are small and personal - the kind that will help the citizens of De Pere identify with its history.

- 53 -

MAX FRANC

The De Pere Museum welcomes everybody. De Pere.

It is the recorded history of

We don't care too much for big beds or sewing machines, but

we do ha ve a l ot of pictures, newspapers, and annuals from our schools. We are preserving the heritage of De Pere.

The Historica l Society

tells communities that they should stress their own heritage , their own history.

The history of Green Bay and De Pere goes back three

hundred years. Father Allouez established a mission in De Pere in 1669.

It wa s the

-

first permanent mission in the Northwest and was located where the presen t bridge now stands .

He was the first white man to establish

anything here . The Fox River was the only main street, the only road in the Northwest for 150 years.

Any explorer, trapper, or missionary who wanted to travel

in the Northwest had to go down the Fox River.

They could go to New

Orleans , Minneapolis , Colorado and Pittsburgh by going down this river.

- 54 -

-

There were no roads.

In the summertime they used canoes.

In the winter-

time they used sleds.

There was no other way to travel.

It wasn't until

1815 or 1820 that roads were built.

This area along the Fox River was

the most important section for 150 years. When it comes to the history of Wisconsin, the first history you have is the history of this locality. Menominee, Chippewa, Miami and Winnebago Indians came here from the East. They were chased here by the Iroquois Indians. consin, the fertile land was ideal for them. woods and land for cultivation.

When they arrived in WisIt had game, fowl, fish, the

They were woodland Indians.

Father Marquette and Joliet discovered the Mississippi River.

They came

down the Fox River in 1673 from Mackinac, Michigan and landed at the mission.

They stayed for two days.

Menard and Father Allouez.

Only two priests were here, Father

Nicolet and Joliet had never been down the

river, but they knew about it from the Indians.

They had an idea that

they would eventually reach the Mississippi River from the Wisconsin River.

They didn't know what the Mississippi was, or where it led, but

they knew it was there.

They were on a voyage of discovery.

They thought

they could reach China and Japan by going down the Mississippi River, because the early people here were called Putas, which means stinking or salty.

-

The explorers thought "Puta waters" meant the Pacific Ocean, but

it meant the Bay water, which is often "stinking."

They didn't realize

how far away they were from the Pacific. Altogether in the party there were seven voyageurs who traveled to Lake Winnebago and the Upper Fox.

They portaged to the Wisconsin River,

- 55 -

continued down to discover the Mississippi and the Arkansas Rivers.

On

the return trip they entered the Illinois River and continued to Lake Michigan and came back to the mission in De Pere. no white men.

All this time they saw

Father Marquette was ill and stayed for one year.

recuperated he went to Illinois, where he had a relapse.

After he

He tried to reach

Mackinac, but died at Ludington, Michigan. You can see how early the French came to this area. came ... Langlade, Grignon, Parlier and Lawe. fortune trading in furs with the Indians.

Later the other French

The voyageurs could make a It was usually the younger sons

who came, leaving their wives and families at home.

They could contract

with a mother squaw to marry her daughter for two years according to the custom of the Indians. as fourteen.

He would live with this young girl, often as young

She would have children.

It was considered an honor for an

Indian to have children with a white man.

She would do all the work, and at

the end of two years the contract was over.

The mother squaw would get some

blankets, beads or cooking utensils as payment. France. here.

As a result, for the first 100 years there were no white families The Lawes, Grignons, etc ., all had Indian wives, so many of their

descendants have Indian blood. them.

The trader would go back to

My wife, who was a LaFrombois, is one of

She can trace her family back to 1780.

Bay Settlement and were early traders. a LaFrombois, with his Indian wife.

The LaFrombois were out in

The first trader in Milwaukee was

My wife is probably one-sixteenth

Indian . Most French Canadians have some Indian blood. a Longteau, was from Canada.

My mother, who was

Longteau is French, and although we can't

trace it we think that somewhere along the line there is Indian blood. The early French and Indians got along well.

- 56 -

That is why there were no

massacres here.

The French lived like the Indians, and with them in

their bark homes.

All the settlement was along the river .

Four miles

inland you saw nothing. Furs meant a lot to the people of those days. position or · office.

There was a big demand for furs.

and buffalo were plentiful. peaceful .

erous.

The beaver, fox

The history of this area is plentiful and

It is the oldest settlement in the Northwest.

been someone here along this river. De Pere.

Furs were a symbol of one's

There has always

They came by canoe from Quebec to

The traders would never go far inland because it was too treachThey never knew how large Lake Michigan was because they hugged

the shore . They stayed along the right shore . Here at De Pere was the first rapids.

There is an eight foot drop so they

had to portage for about half a mile around the rapids. had to land at the rapids

here~

to establish his mission.

-

Because everyone

this was an ideal place for Father Allouez

As you go up the river to Lake Winnebago, the

river rises 176 feet in 36 miles . Three years ago the voyage of Marquette and Joliet was retraced as it was 300 years ago.

The voyageurs, seven of them, wore authentic costumes, had

authentic canoes and retraced the actual voyage f or seven months.

In

Prairie du Chein they picked up an Indian boy as a hostage to insure their

-

safety on their voyage.

Out of 14,000 Boy Scouts in four states, this boy

was picked for the voyage.

The voyage ended in De Pe re with a big celebra-

tion.

- 57 -

We had a Heritage Day.

The governor was here.

We had a big parade

and dedicated the museum. Later the English came. platted the town.

De Pere was founded in 1829 by Dickinson who

The De Pere Museum has the original plat and it is

the oldest plat in the midwest. kings.

He named the streets after the English

The other streets he named after the states.

That was done in

-

1836 and the museum has the map that he used. The English brought their civilization with them.

They brought their

linens, dishes, laws, schools and their families.

They built homes and

streets and this started the city that we have now.

They modeled it

-

after their homes in England and in the East. De Pere was incorporated as a village in 1857.

The De Pere Museum has

the original records of the minutes of the first meeting.

- 58 -

We also have

-

the records of the incorporation of the village of Nicolet which became West De Pere.

We have the records of the first school meeting in 1857

when they formed the school district and built the schoolhouse.

We

have the records of the Daughters of the American Revolution, of the Civil War veterans, of churches and cemeteries.

In 1861, a photographer,

Bowery, came to De Pere and took many pictures.

A collection of his

pictures is preserved here.

We have many of his original glass plates.

We have all the annuals from all the high schools in the city, as well as those from St. Norbert's College.

We have artifacts from various

churches and we also have Bibles from every church in De Pere. There are not many artifacts preserved from the days of the early French settlers, because they did not bring many things with them. brought guns and ammunition and items to trade.

They only

They made their clothes,

furniture and other necessities. One of the most famous artifacts is an ostensorium, given to Father Allouez in 1686 by Nicholas Perrot, who was the Lieutenant Governor of the Northwest Territory.

It was used

by the mission for about three years until the Indians burned the church, but someone took it and buried it - we don't know who.

It was apparently

forgotten, and in 1803 it was dug up by someone building a basement in the bridge area .

There is an inscrip-

tion , in French, on the bottom of the ostensorium stating that it was given

- 59 -

to the Mission of St. Francis Xavier in 1686 by Nicholas Perrot. is the oldest artifact in the Northwest.

There is only one older arti-

fact in the United States and that is a tombstone. the ostensorium.

It

Bishop Wycislo owns

Father Bonduel bought it in Detroit and brought it

back to Green Bay.

It has been in the Smithsonian Institute and the

-

State Historical Society, but it is now at the Neville Museum in Green Bay. My parents came to De Pere in 1879.

They started in a meat market.

My

grandfather, my father, my brother, and I were all in the same business for 90 years.

It was located on the west side and was the oldest build-

-

ing in De Pere when I retired in 1971. (How did you become interested in the history of De Pere?) My father had a collection of pictures taken by his brother in the 1890's. When he died, I inherited them. developed by Kelley Studios. for them.

There were also glass slides which I had

It took over a year to get the right paper

These slides were scenes of parades and the village.

them in a window of my shop.

I put

...

People were interested and gave me more

pictures to display. When the mall on the west side was dedicated, I was appointed Chairman. As part of the program I assembled a display of my photographs, maps and papers.

The people liked it so well that the mayor and chamber of commerce

got together and appointed thirteen people to start a historical club.

The

paper mill gave us $5,000 to start a museum and we rented a building.

Then

Fort Howard Paper Company bought this present building for us. started to donate things.

- 60 -

Then people

Presently I also work for the city in charge of welfare. noons I work here at the museum.

In the after-

I also go to schools and clubs and

give historical talks and show slides.

I also started this:

every

fourth grader is brought to the city hall and I show them the different departments. meeting.

Then we go to the council room and we role play a council

I describe wards and aldermen; we have an agenda, petitions

and public hearings.

This gives the children an idea of how city govern-

ment works. I lived in De Pere almost all my life. with my father and brother.

I've worked in the grocery store

I retired when I became 65 years old.

founded the Brown County Conservation Club. Observers Corps after World War II. for the Community Chest.

I

I was in charge of the Ground

I was in charge of De Pere Charities

I organized it so all the money was collected

and then it was allocated according to the needs of the group. I went to Marquette University. college before.

No one in my family had ever gone to

I was the oldest in my family, so I went to school.

year I'll have graduated 50 years. We have two sons and a daughter.

Next

In two years we'll be married 50 years. The oldest son is a Doctor of Political

Science and is a professor at San Francisco State University.

My daughter

has a Master's degree in psychiatric social work and is a social worker in Valley Forge.

Our other son studied for the priesthood, but now he is at

home. The museum is probably the oldest active building in the Midwest. built in 1836 and was a bank originally. for a tavern, a church,

It was

Later on the building was used

a school, an undertaking parlor, and barber shop.

- 61 -

The first newspaper was printed here, and it was also a cabinet factory. In 1873 it was moved to its present location.

into a home. basement.

In 1913 a man converted it

He added some rooms , partitioned it, built the stairs and a

The original timbers, roof and front are still here.

about 70% original.

It has always been in use.

In 1836 when this museum

was built, there wasn't a building in Chicago or Milwaukee. curator of the museum for five yea r s.

- 62 -

It is

I have been

-

EDWIN GAROT

Thanks to an equipment failure, we visited Mr. Garot twice.

The

owner of the Edwin C. Garot Plumbing and Heating Company, who lived at 1181 Reed Street, was just as interesting the second time, and didn't seem to mind that we had to ask the same things over again.

Like all those we talked to, he really made us feel

welcome.

- 63 -

ED GAROT

I'm Belgian and Irish and my mother's name was Sadie Hughes. We cleaned up our plates - my mother even fixed our plates.

You ate

what was on the plate or I want to tell you, you got a good crack and went to bed.

That was it.

And did we clean up our plates - oh

-

brother! I went to St. John's - that was the old St. John's School, before this school was ever built.

That was the old school Jimmy Crowly went to.

Do you kids a11 remember Jimmy Crowly? He was one of the great "four horsemen" of Notre Dame - a legend in football. I'll tell you what we used to do.

We used to go swimming down at the

railroad bridge, I'm very sorry to say. good kids.

Well, I guess you're all pretty

You know there were no swimming pools.

Mason Street bridge and the railroad bridge.

We swam between the

Many times (I suppose it's

all right to tell you) of course, we were all boys - we went naked and we got picked up a few times by the police. My folks had a cottage at Benderville, about 12 miles from here on the east shore. Down on South Broadway there used to be the old circus grounds. would be three or four circuses every surrmer. old railroad bridge and get in for nothing. We were only punk kids.

There

We would always cross that We'd sneak in the back way.

The big circus parade went right through town.

The tents and that stuff would go up just like that.

- 64 -

No kidding - you

-

wouldn't believe that those animals were so well trained.

They would

come in at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning and they'd have it all up by 2:00 in the afternoon for the first show, with another show at night. They came in on the railroad cars and moved out the next day. I can remember the greatest celebration that Green Bay ever had in my day that exceeds everything, including the Packers winning the championship.

It was the end of World War I, when our troops came home .

was the greatest celebration I remember as a kid . town was wild.

The

The trains came in with flags all over, and fellows on

top of the trains. that one!

It was in 1918.

That

There was never a celebration in Green Bay to equal

I saw the trains coming - I was only about seven years old.

I took a few short courses at the University of Wisconsin. after high school I went into the plumbing business. in the depression , 1929 to 1932.

But right

In fact, that was

My dad paid me $3.00 a week, but I got

- 65 -

my board and I used the car.

But I was paid $3.00 a week.

My dad had the Grace Manor at the time of the depression. lost about $40,000 on it. broke .

I think he

The bonds didn't pay off, and the guy went

It was really a mess all over the country.

Do they still call the school Woelz on North Irwin? School?

I did that job.

that was a PWA project.

Is that the Nicolet

I worked on quite a few government jobs, and It was a nice school.

Do any of you know the greatest athlete of all time?

He was an Indian -

Jim Thorpe - and he was the greatest. I'll tell you something else that I remember real well. Turner Hall on the corner of Walnut and Monroe.

I remember

When Jimmy Crowley was

one of the four horsemen of Notre Dame, he played in what I think was the first Rose Bowl game against Stanford.

Down at Turner Hall they had a

radio, which wasn't too good, and a big screen . They didn't have TV or anything like that, but there was a football field on this screen and as they picked up the game by radio, they would move the ball this way and that way.

One side would be Notre Dame and the other side would be

Stanford.

Notre Dame won, and I think that was in 1923 or 1924.

- 66 -

When I was a kid, say 16-18 years old, we used to have some pretty good semi-professional baseball teams.

Stillers was the best one.

They used

to go up to the Wisconsin State Reformatory and play on Saturday afternoon, maybe three or four times a year. along with a friend of mine.

I was quite a ballplayer.

The inmates had three or four major league

ballplayers who were in prison, and they were really good.

I always went

But

the reason I went mostly - you should have seen the meal we had afterward! They had a little pet bear as their mascot, and at one game this little bear got away from

- 67 -

the guy who was watching him. him down.

It climbed up a pole and they couldn't get

He finally came down but they had to get rid of it after that.

The Wisconsin State Reformatory had a beautiful band, and they put on three band concerts.

They would have up to 3,000 people out there, right

on the entrance on the outside.

Professor Larson from Green Bay was the

director of the band, and he was one of the greatest musicians in this country.

I would say that was between 1920 and 1930.

....

I love America. Green Bay.

I love the United States, I love Wisconsin, and I love

And I'm satisfied :

- 68 -

....

PR ESS -GAZE TTE PHO TO

DOMINIC OLEJNICZAK

Mr. Olejniczak, a fonner mayor of Green Bay and the president of the Green Bay Packer Board of Directors, had much to tell us about both the ci ty and its football team. at his real estate company office.

We interviewed him

Like all of those we spoke

to, he took time form a busy schedule to share a little bit of himself and our town.

...

- 69 -

DOMINIC OLEJNICZAK

I was born in Green Bay in 1908. I went to St . Mary's School. you do now.

My parents emigrated from Poland.

In grade school I enjoyed the things

We played together in small neighborhood groups.

supervised our games in somebody's yard or in the park. always someone to supervise.

Parents

There was

We played football with an old sock

stuffed with leaves.

Everyone called me Ole, for two reasons.

It's easier to pronounce and

having a name like Olejniczak was bad enough, but Dominic!

So I went

through life being called Ole. We had family picnics at Bay Beach where we went swimming. a treat.

The water was clean then.

It was quite

They had a nice bath house, one for

- 70 -

...

boys and one for girls. was a great thing.

I don't know why that got away from us.

It

A lot of people were guilty, took things for granted

and dirtied up the water.

Nobody would change by stopping the pollution.

It's a good thing some people took an interest and set up rules so that some day you people can have the pleasures we had. I graduated from high school when I was sixteen years old.

I wanted to

go to the University of Wisconsin but I was a little too young.

I figured

I had enough school, so I went over to my dad's real estate office which was located above Holzer's Drug Store.

He was located at the same office

for twenty-five years. When my parents were hit by the depression I went to the Federal Land Bank next door in the Sheridan Building.

The federal banks were really organized

in 1914 and were strictly banks, but when the depression started and farmers didn't make enough money selling their goods to pay their taxes and interest on mortgages, the bank stepped in making federal funds available for additional loans.

The government declared a moratorium.

No one could foreclose

on a farm without a hearing and an opportunity to refinance their loan. The Tercentennial was in 1934. help celebrate.

President Roosevelt came to Green Bay to

That was quite an event .

From my office window on Washing-

ton Street we had a birds-eye view of the crowded streets. I took an interest in politics when I was very young, not only on the local scene but the state as well.

I ran for the city council in 1936 .

I decided to become a candidate for mayor. and a lot of challenges.

In 1945

I had many experiences as mayor

There were many rewards - the projects we were

able to complete during my admin i stration.

- 71 -

I don't want to be boastful, but

the condition of our streets was bad and our recreation programs did not compare favorably with those of other cities our size, particularly in the Fox River Valley. than~any

Bay.

Within a short time they were as good as, or better

city in Wisconsin.

We brought water from Lake Michigan to Green

The wells could not continue to supply enough water for the community,

particularly industry.

Today our water supply is more than adequate.

After spending ten years as mayor, I could go on with a lot of other experiences .

-

It 1 s inter-

During my administration we had the Freedom Tra i n in Green Bay. esting to note that the Freedom Train was here again last summer .

Green Bay

received national recognition for the way in which they sponsored the train.

For

example, in front of the former city hall, we had a block long table.

A roll

....

of paper given by the paper mills was rolled out for people to sign.

It was a

pledge. We had outstanding bands and tremendous ente rtainment . Train were precious documents . them.

Inside the Freedom

People could walk th r ough the train and read

As mayor, I had the opportunity of riding the train when it left Green

Bay for Oshkosh.

Naturally I enjoyed the pleasure of riding .

told me which levers to pull.

- 72 -

The engineer

I like being with the Packers as much as I liked being mayor. "Don't take a job if you don't like it. you don't enjoy.

I tell people,

Never get involved doing anything

If you enjoy what you are doing, it's a pleasure, not work."

I was involved with the Packers when I was young, principally because I liked sports.

I lived at 1280 Crooks Street, only four blocks from Joannes Park.

At that time the Packer games were played at the east side stadium.

One of the players

lived next door to us.

In

those days a boy could get into the stadium if he carried a player's headgear. As my neighbor was a Packer player, I got into the games by carrying his headgear. I remember so many nice things about Verne Llwellyn and his wife, and how kind they were to my mother when we lived at home. and became my idol.

He was a great player

Another was Arnie Herber, who had played at West High

School. I was always interested in the Packers when I was elected mayor, even when I was on the city council in 1936.

As the stadium is owned by the city,

the city was involved in deciding how much rent the Packers would pay and what repairs would be made. When I first became president of the Packers 18 years ago there were twelve teams involved.

We would have one meeting a year that lasted three days at

the most .

- 73 -

The Packers started going on T.V. about twenty years ago. every city had its own T.V. arrangements. tising market here is low.

At that time

Being a small city the adver-

Some teams made probably thirty times as much

as Green Bay made.

Bert Bell, who was commissioner, then tried to make

each club strong.

He decided to sell television rights on a nationwide

basis so that all clubs could have an equal share. that amounts to quite a lot .

-

At the present time

In the first year I was president of the

Packers, I think we received 90 thousand dollars.

Today our share of

television money would be over 2 million dollars.

If that had not been

accomplished, Green Bay could not compete in this league with its big market cities like New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago and Cleveland. These large cities have a larger viewing audience.

- 74 -

It was a great stride

-

forward.

It makes the teams more equal.

Green Bay is able to pay the

salaries to players. The Packers have come a long way since they first started. envy of every city in the United States.

They were the only ones who

could have made it as a small team from a small city .

....

- 75 -

They are the

LOUELLA OUTLAND

Miss Outland, a former music teacher, brought some interesting old miscellany for us to look at when she came to our school for our interview.

We had a good time arranging her lovely

antiques in order to photograph them.

- 76 -

LOUELLA OUTLAND

My mother's parents came from Germany when they were youngsters. met in Green Bay afterwards.

They

My father's parents came from England. My

mother's parents came over when there was trouble in Germany.

They had

relatives who had come ahead and they wanted to have a place to bring up their children in a freer land.

It wasn't free over there at that time.

My father's people came over with Sir Walter Raleigh - that was way back in the early l600's - about 1602, so that was a long time ago.

They

settled on the east coast first and then gradually they moved west. My mother told me how things were when my grandparents came here. residential section was down by the river. those days.

The

The river was the highway in

The people came by river and lake and gradually cleared out

the land and built roads.

The railroad was built as far as Fond du Lac

and they were building it up toward Green Bay, but it wasn't this far when they came.

They came through the Erie Canal.

in the East; then by boat the rest of the way.

That had been built

They lived near the river

on Monroe Avenue, which at that time was the residential section.

It's

all business now. They were near the river so when they needed to wash, they carried big pails of water from the river.

They had a yoke that would fit across the

shoulders with ropes hanging down from it to make it easier to carry the pails.

The river was clean in those days - there was no pollution.

For drinking water they had wells in their yards, and then after a while, by the time my mother was growing up, they had the water works system, but not inside the houses.

They would have to go out to get water out of the

- 77 -

faucets outside, no matter what the weather. cold!

In winter it was pretty

There were no sewers then, so they would have to carry the wash

water outside and dump it.

After a while they began getting sinks with

drains to empty the wash water.

The water would freeze in the pipes in

the winter and they had to thaw them out.

They built little wooden houses

outside around them and put straw or something like that around the pipes to keep them from freezing, as much as they could . After a while as each house, one by one, got the water inside, it was much easier . Most people raised much of their own food.

Of course there were some

stores where they could buy staple foods, but they had their own gardens. There were still some Indian villages within the city limits even when my mother was little.

One of them was on South Washington Street.

There was

a slough there, a branch of the river.

There was a bridge over

it on Washington Street about a block or a block and a half south of Walnut.

Just south

of that was an Indian village. My mother said many times, on days when the people were going to be baking, the Indians would walk right in and sit down in the kitchen and wait for a sample when the baking was finished, and then leave.

Most people had

certain days when they would bake, and the Indians knew this.

- 78 -

For winter sports we had sleds and skates. Beach a lot, but not in the Fox River . was clean then.

In summer we swam at Bay

We did go fishing and the river

We also went fishing in the Bay.

so clean we could see the bottom twenty feet below.

The water there was

In one place where

we stayed on an island for the summer, we would throw the water pail in and bring it up and that was good drinking water - perfectly clean.

We

could see the fish swimming so we knew if they were going to bite or not. We caught perch and trout, and we would clean them and make little stone stoves right there on the beach and cook our fish right there. Green Bay, of course, is the oldest city in the Northwest, not only Wisconsin, but this whole area.

Jean Nicolet arrived here in 1634, so in

1934 Green Bay had a big celebration for the tercentennial - 300 years. Some man made a model of the old Fort Howard, with all the buildings and a high fence, and all the buildings in it made to scale.

-

They had that

there - you had to pay to go in to see it because it cost him a lot of money to make it, as well as his time, but it was worth it.

- 79 -

They had a

pageant and many of our townspeople were in that. of Nicolet.

It depicted the landing

He landed, of course, at Red Banks, but they showed him com-

ing in off the Bay and landing at Bay Beach instead.

They had the Indians

and the white people and they showed different scenes from our history up to that time.

The president was invited to come to Green Bay, and he came.

Because his secret service men were so careful of him, they thought one road to Bay Beach was not enough.

There was a straight road down Irwin

Avenue and then a sharp corner and turn.

They said that wasn t good enough 1

and it would be necessary to make a slanting road cutting off that corner they would have to have two roads - otherwise he wouldn't come. the road that goes past the wildlife sanctuary now. Franklin D. Roosevelt road.

That is

So I call that the

He gave a talk at Bay Beach and also paraded

through the town. During the wars we had many parades with beautiful floats.

The parades

were helping to get the people enthusiastic about helping for the war effort.

-

And of course many of the soldiers would be marching, both before

they went away and again when they came back - those that came back - there were some of course who didn 1 t get back. Fort Howard was built down by the river where it was very swampy and full of mosquitoes.

It was located north of Main Street from the bridge back

to where the grain elevators are, and about as far west as the old Northwestern Depot.

It was the center of social life.

One day a few of the

soldiers had gone up the river for something and got up to that nice hill and thought "wouldn't this be a lot nicer than the Fort?" up there and started Camp Smith.

So they moved

They were there for two years when the

government in Washington found out, and they ordered them back to Fort

- 80 -

-

Howard.

They hadn't authorized that, and of course a village started

building up around Camp Smith.

The real name of it was Menomineeville,

but they called it Shantytown because they just built little crude houses, or shanties.

It is part of Allouez now, just north of the reformatory,

from where the Cotton House is at the top of the hill way down to the river. That was where the first courthouse in the Northwest was built, down near the river.

There is a marker there conmemorating it.

It was probably

just a shack too, but it was in that courthouse that Chief Oshkosh was tried.

He was the chief of the Menominee Indians and because some Indian

had killed another one, Chief Oshkosh killed the murderer.

- 81 -

He was being tried and finally the judge decided, according to Indian law, he had done the right thing.

white man's law didn ' t.

Indian law required that, even though

So he let the Chief go because the Chief was

doing what he had to do according to his law.

- 82 -

.....

PETER PLATTEN

Mr. Platten, chairman of the board of the West Bank and Trust, invited us into the bank's board room for our interview.

He

knew a lot about the west side when our school was called the Dousman Street School. history for a long time.

Mr. Platten has been interested in He found the Indian skeleton that

we've seen at the Neville Public Museum .

..

,

- 83 -

MR. PETER PLATTEN

My mother was born in Ireland. by herself at the age of 16.

She came here as an immigrant girl all My grandparents on my father's side were

born in Germany . I went to grade school about a block away from your school, St. Patrick's. I went to high school at Green Bay West and college at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. I will start by describing something you know very well, the location of your own school.

When I was a kid, the old Dousman School was there.

believe at one time it was originally a high school.

building. door.

I

It was a red brick

You had to climb up about twenty-five steps to get to the

The basement was almost on the ground floor.

of any kind.

It had no facilities

The east half of the school parking lot was a baseball

- 84 -

diamond and a recreation field.

In the back, on the corner of Chestnut

Street was a voting booth where everyone on the near west side would vote. My family was in the grocery business. the area.

We had a bunch of farms around

I worked on a farm most of my time.

When I was about high

school age we started to get little Ford delivery trucks, the first ones in Green Bay.

So I peddled meat after that.

after I graduated.

At that time things were expensive.

raised our own beef and crops.

I worked on a farm As I said, we

We had a silo which was torn down in

about 1970, the biggest one you have ever seen.

Right now a street goes

through there.

We had a big farm in Suamico, one at Mills Center and

two in Oneida.

Western Lanes is part of one.

The highway was where I

used to ride my tractor and that was pasture lands.

Part of that was

cultivated land where we grew feed for the animals.

The biggest area

was where the Platten Orchards were. The area my son and I are now developing used to be an Indian trail. Some of the area was pasture land.

There would be hundreds of cattle there.

My dad and uncle were partners - my dad did the inside work and my uncle was the buyer and farm manager.

He would go to Seymour and Pulaski fairs

and buy sheep, cattle and pigs.

The railroad had an animal pen.

were there at that time. house was.

Cars

We would drive to the main farm where the slaughter

They had to preserve the meat with ice because there wasn't any

refrigeration at that time.

- 85 -

My family would cut their own ice from the Fox River and Green Bay. had big sleds that they used to haul the ice to the ice house.

spread layers of sawdust in between the blocks of ice.

They

They would

Then in July or

some other time the ice would be fresh and unmelted, On the corner of Chestnut and Dousman was a watering trough.

It was six

feet long so a whole team of horses could drink at once. All our delivering was done by horses. We bought our first car in 1909.

There were only

~bout

three cars on the

west side then.

There

weren't many places a car could go because many roads weren't paved.

- 86 -

I think ours was a big five-

passenger car, the kind that had a top that could be put down. was made of wood by a real craftsman. named the "Cartercar." gears;

going the other way - very complicated. wasn't any electricity.

once doing it. board.

It did not have

One rotated around the other one

It had lights on it, but there

The car didn't have batteries, because

weren't even invented then. crank the car by hand.

It was made in Chicago and it was

It has long since disappeared.

instead, it had friction disks .

The body

The car started with a magn eto.

ba~teries

You had to

I will never forget that, because I broke my arm

There was a little generator on the side of the running

You would put carbide and water in it to form an animating gas.

Little rubber tubes came out from the gas tank to the lights.

You just

turned a switch on the generator and lit the headlight with a match. At one time there were streetcars in Green Bay.

-

The streetcar came across

the river at Main Street, up Dousman to Oakland and turned off Oakland to the corner of Walnut Street, which was the end of the line.

- 87 -

West High was almost new when I went there.

They had an agriculture

class which I knew about from my farm, so I took it.

The main part of

-

the course was in back of the school, where they had a barn and a silo.

The barn had

a cow, too.

The pre-

sent football field was a cornfield. Pamperin Park was called Sullivan's Flats. made the rapids.

It was full of rocks that

I used to go there to look for Indian arrowheads.

I

found where the Sullivan home was, and all kinds of i nteresting things, many from the Civil War days. burned down from a forest fire .

The house had no foundation so it probably There was only plaster, broken glass and

clay pipes, and some things I didn't know - one was flintlock muskets.

-

If you ever happen to go to the Green Bay museum sometime you will see a skeleton . The museum director and I found an Indian buried at a place called Sand Bay near Sturgeon Bay.

The skeleton we found is in the museum.

It is kind of funny how we put it together.

We didn't know anything about

physiology so we got a book from t he l i brary and sta r ted to put it back together. We us ed to go swimming at the foot of Hubbard Street . there from a company that made bridges .

- 88 -

There was a slip

I found out later that sewers

...

emptied there!

We also swam at the Main Street bridge.

At that time peas

from the Larsen Company were floating down the river all the time. peas didn't go through any sewage pipes, just through the river. at Bay Beach, too. but not as much.

The We swam

It was subject to the same pollution as the Fox River The town had only 20,000 to 25,000 people at that time.

When I was about college age they built the second rollercoaster at Bay Beach - a small wooden structure that could hardly stand up. where the sanctuary is now, right about where the pond is. swamp then.

That was It was a

In 1923 it fell down and another one was built, which was

a pretty good-sized one. Of course I remember the Tercentennial in 1934.

It is pertinent now

because they're talking about the 200th anniversary of our country.

At

that time, in 1934, we were celebrating the 300th birthday of Green Bay and Fort Howard, so we had a head start in the country. thing and it started at Bay Beach Park.

A replica of a little Indian

village was built, with teepees and a fence around it. governor's day re-enacting the landing of Jean Nicolet. showing that period of time was enacted. week in summer.

That was a big

They had a A brief history

The performance ran once a

There was a great big cast with an orchestra or band.

I met my wife there.

She was secretary for Harold Shannon who was a

very well known historian from the State Historical Society.

She had

a part in the play and also did sound effects for the public address staff. In 1914 we built the old West Bank and Trust in the little area that is now occupied by the Schultz Drug store.

- 89 -

We started out with three

employees and now we have about 1 ,500. of the bank.

He died very young.

My uncle was the first president

My dad was the next president.

He

__~~r-1--;;c::===:=~=±~--= L~_ . / _______,, died in 1940 and then I became president . They built the present building about ten years ago.

- 90 -

MR. &MRS. WALTER QUIGLEY

Mr. Quigley, 1122 Dousman Street, a retired insurance man, plays Santa Claus at a local store every year at Christmas time.

After

spending a morning with him and Mrs. Quigley, we know why he's a good one.

His quips to Mrs. Quigley during our interviews made it

fun for all of us, and we recalled his jokes long afterwards.

- 91 -

MR. &MRS . WALTER J . QUIGLEY

MRS. QUIGLEY I was born on my grandmother's farm near Denmark in a little tiny old log house on a real, real hot day in August. arrived. hor~2s.

My grandma he lped.

I was born before the doctor

The doctor had to come from Denmark with

My daddy took his horse and buggy to Denmark to get in touch

with the doctor and then the doctor came with his horse, but by the t i me they got back I had already been born. (She was born in the middle of preparations for threshing day, and we asked her to tell us more about threshing.) A large steam engine with big smoke stacks pulled the threshing machine proper.

They had to put the threshing machine on the barn floor because

the grain was all in the barn,and the steam engine was put on the outside as if a spa rk would fall into the dry hay it could set the barn on fire. A great lo ng belt connected the two machines; and the men would go into the haymow and throw the bundles of grain into the mach i ne. was threshed and came out in a spout into bags.

The grain

These we r e carried into

the granary, where it was stored through t he winter.

There was the

regular threshing machine crew, and fa rme r s helped each other out, so there would be several of the farmers there too - usually about twenty men in all.

That meant gi ving them breakfast at something like five o'clock

in the morning ... they would be served eggs , fried potatoes, sometimes hash, to say nothing of oatmeal and rolls - th i s was at five o'clock in the morning'.

The men stayed until they finished the job - sometimes they stayed

overn i ght, sleeping in the haymow - but not always.

- 92 -

If it was a smaller

·-

job they often finished in one day.

Then they went on to the next farmer

and the whole process started all over again.

Each farmer, of course, had

to furnish the food and the ladies who belonged to the farmhouse had to take care of that.

They served a lunch at about nine o'clock and that would

usually be bread and butter and coffee cake and cookies; fried eggs and

bologna sausage

(in the country at that time it wasn't always possible

to get fresh meat.)

The noon meal was the big meal.

They would try to

get fresh meat for that, but if they couldn't, they would have roast chicken, or kiJl their own beef or pork.

There would be potatoes and

vegetables and everything else that goes with it ... about five kinds of pies and cakes - well, it meant baking for two full days before the threshing machine came!

At three o'clock they would have lunch again,

and if they were still there at five or six o'clock , they would have anofher meal, just like dinner - five full meals.

You were lucky to

get the dishes finished in between to reset the table. My maternal grandmother came from Germany .

- 93 -

She could understand English,

every word of it, but she wouldn't speak it. to read it, and to write it. gotten most of it.

I learned to speak German,

-

I was confirmed in German, but I've for-

My grandfather (my father's father) was Danish and

he only spoke a little English, and my mother's mother spoke only German, but they could converse together - they could understand each other!

One

would speak Danish and one would speak German, but still there were enough words that were common to both languages that they could understand each

-

other . I remember my dad shoveling out the lane, because the milk truck had to come to pick up the milk.

The lane was maybe three quarters of a block

long from the barn out to the main road. was often four feet deep!

The snow - I'm not exaggerating -

He would have to shovel all that out with a

regular hand shovel. My first job was in Crystal Falls, Michigan. time away from home.

I was 17 and it was my first

We lived two miles from the depot at Bellevue.

A

friend of mine took my trunk to the station the night before and the next morning I had to walk the two miles to catch the train that took me there.

-

If you know Crystal Falls at all, it was a little mining town at the foot of a great hill, near Iron Mountain. there.

I didn't know a single solitary soul

I didn't have any idea what I was going to be doing or anything

else, and I was scared stiff!

- 94 -

-

MR. QUIGLEY (Did you go fishing?) Often, we went down with Dad and we ate all the fish we had caught in the Fox River.

-

We didn't have the contamination we have today, so the

fish were in good shape.

Sometimes we would sit on some tar on the dock

and Dad would have to cut our trousers off of the tar to get us home. We used to make scooters out of one skate - the front part of the skate and then the back part.

You'd take a 2x4 and nail the skates on the

bottom and you put another piece up right on the s ide so you cou l d go 1i ke the devi 1 ! My grandfather had a drayline years ago .

Occasi onally he would be asked

to furnish rides with his wagon and mule for the different organizations that would have their meetings here. My grandma used to make mo l asses cake and she cu t pieces about like this -

6x6 - big and square - and we had to eat every bite .

- 95 -

But it was thick and

wonderful cake. (What is an Edison?) I used to wind the Edison up tight - the Edison was a talking machine, kids, a victrola .

I 1 d wind it up tight because a drummer was judged

by the tempo he kept with his right foot on the bass drum. orchestras were running fast at that time. waltz and end up with a one-step.

All the

You d start out with a 1

So, knowing that the tempo of the

record would be good, I would wind the thing tight so there wouldn t 1

be any variation .

Then I'd sit in front of the record player and drum

along wi th that music.

I never took a lesson, - that 1 s right, I never

took a lesson , and I can't read a note of music.

But I was a darned

good drummer. (Did I have any pets?)

Oh, I don't know.

Did I have any pets? Are you

my pet, Mrs. Quigley? (Were your parents strict?) betcha!

Well, with seven boys and two girls, you

My mother and dad were wonderful people.

how to do it and when we were supposed to .

We knew what to do,

Mother would sit with her

knitting or sewing and she d say, "Walter, you get supper tonight". "Bob, 1

you set the table; Norb and Bob, you do the dishes".

That was it.

We

knew enough about it to do the cooking - to stick a straw in the cake and see if it stuck to the straw.

If it did, it wasn't done, and if it

came out without any cake on, it was done. MRS. QUIGLEY We had some hard times .

We were married in 1929 at the beginning of the

- 96 -

-

depression.

I was working at that time and I tried to save everythin g

I earned, but the McCartney National Bank folded and everything that we had was in there.

It was on the day we moved to this house .

were moving with absolutely no money!

So here we

We regained about three quarters -

better than that - about 90%, but it came in dibs and dabs.

It didn't

all come back at one time. We moved here in 1934 .

-

At that time there were no houses on this side of

s'f •

the street until way up at the foot of the hil l whe r e ther e were a few

- 97 -

farm houses that still had barns and chickens.

But there was nothing

on this side of Dousman except vacant lots - nothing at all.

We were

positively the last house for nearly a quarter of a mile.

-

-

- 98 -

-

-

MISS MAUDE REIDENBACH

Miss Reidenbach, a former kindergarten teacher at Whitney Schoo! lives at 811 Dousman Street, just a few blocks from our school. She has lived there nearly all her life and her home is filled with lovely old things.

She didn't mind a bit as we carefully

handled some of her treasured keepsakes.

-·

- 99 -

MAUDE REIDENBACH

I was born February 16, 1894.

My parents were born in Pennsylvania.

My relatives lived nearby but we moved to Illinois when I was six years old. I went to grade school in Olney, Illinois for one year.

Then we moved

to this house in Green Bay and I've lived here the rest of my life. There used to be an old Elmore School, which isn't there any longer. From there I transferred to Dousman School which is now Fort Howard. Then I went to West High School and graduated from there. Dousman School was a very nice school. principal.

Miss Hogan was a third grade teacher and Miss Louiswanger

was a first grade teacher. metic.

Mary Kay Platten was the

It was mostly reading, writing, and arith-

We did have music, and Camille Mayer was the music teacher.

came once a week and taught music; that is, singing. much.

Her whole personality just beamed.

She

We loved her very

She is in her 90's.

She is

in good health and keeps house by herself. We didn't have playground equipment. ball.

We played tag, jump rope, and

Recess lasted 15 minutes.

We didn't do anything special to celebrate holidays at school.

We had

parties at home. We went to Bay Beach for the tercentennial. house.

At that time they had a bath

Our bathing suits had skirts and we had to wear long black stockings.

- 100 -

Each person that went swimming was given a little private room for changing clothes.

They would give

you a key that you'd wear around your neck.

We

weren't allowed to go swinuning without stockings on.

When you swam

with the skirt on the bathing suit, it would fly up and you had to tug at the stockings to keep them up. After I graduated from high school I stayed home. office inspector.

My father was a post

While I was in high school I took a business course

and he wanted me to stay home and do his writing.

I had a typewriter

and when he'd come home on the weekends he would give me his reports and I would write them up .

I wasn't too satisfied with that kind of

work, and I wanted to go to college. wants to go to college. 11

He said, "What does she want to do?"

said, "Be a kindergarten teacher. teacher at Dousman School.

My mother said to my father, "Maude

11

and she

Miss Lorraine Wise was kindergarten

At that time they had paid assistants.

applied and was hired as an assistant for one year.

I

I was so fond of

Miss Wise and everything she did and she influenced me to go to the college that she had attended.

I went to National Ki ndergarten College

which was located on Michigan Boulevard in Chicago. there in 1917.

-

-

I graduated from

Those were my happiest years - college.

dormitory then and a south and north house.

- l 01 -

They had a

I lived in the main house

and had one of the loveliest rooms with a private bath.

I had two

roommates, and one of them has kept in touch with me until the last two years.

I don't know what happened to her.

The Alumni Association

sends out bulletins on the people who keep in touch. ten who is listed.

I am one of about

The college is now located in Evanston.

I taught in a little place called Marion, Wisconsin. dren very much but I didn't like Marion. two years and then I came to Green Bay.

I liked the chil-

Then I taught in Kaukauna for I taught 42 years in all - I

taught kindergarten at Whitney School for 39 years. I had 60 children in kindergarten - 30 in the morning and 30 in the afternoon.

I had wonderful assistants.

before she was married.

I had Mrs. Marks, who was Leola Lyons

Then Marie Burgoyne and Dorothy Brenner, and the

last one I had was Katherine Heintz, who is now Mrs. John Byrnes·. helped me all day.

They

The pay wasn't much for teachers - I started teaching

for $55.00 per month, and I was among the highest paid. I loved teaching and the children. demonstration schools.

At National College they didn't have

We were sent out to the different types of schools

and after the first six months we went out on our own.

I taught in a

public school in Chicago, in a private school, and a nursery school.

I

was sent to a public school where there was a lovely teacher but who was very strict.

Everyone thought if you were sent to Miss Barber's kinder-

garten you'd have to work very hard .

I went there feeling very nervous.

I learned more from her than I did in college'. There is more freedom in kindergarten now. sort of dictated.

- 102 -

When I started everything was

We built a real store out of blocks. and the children made all the materials which we sold - the parents bought things. We organized a lovely band with r.1any instruments.

It

was so successful

-

we played for many functions.

We even played at a hotel .

We used bird

whistles, and I covered blocks of wood with sandpaper which they would clap together.

We had tambourines and triangles and drums.

leader of the band.

The PTA made uniforms for us.

lady had a party and we were invited to play . children loved music.

-

I retired in 1958.

We had a

Here on Dousman a

I think our kindergarten

I played the piano and sang.

I taught a Sunday School class before I went to

college in 1913 and I kept it up until I retired.

This was at St. Paul's

United Methodist Church and they were in an old buildinq on Chestnut Street. I belonged to the Bathing Club and every two weeks we went in two Denessen

- l 03 -

boats out in the bay to go swimming.

The older women would prepare the

meal - we'd call it pot luck now. the boats.

It was fun:

When we came home we sang songs in

We went to the dock at 4:00 and got home at

9:00. My father was a mail carrie r and took an examination to become a post office inspector. lived for one year .

He was then transferred to Olney, Illinois, where we He was then transferred to Green Bay.

He took the

train or hi r ed a rig to go to these different places to inspect the offices .

He often too k the family with hi m.

of Wisconsin.

He covered the whole state

He later became the lease man for the postal department.

When the government wan t ed to build a post office he would travel to find a suitable site t o bu i ld the office . postal inspecto r.

He was the oldest and longest living

-

He l ived to be 102 .

Our family ' s f i rst car was a Studebaker , an open car.

When it rained,

you had to put up the side curtains.

- l 04 -

-

Before I had a car while teaching at Whitney, I took the streetcar. Later, when father got a car, I drove to school. The Studebaker people sent a young man out to teach me to drive. I didn't know anything about driving, and he gave me one lesson. The third time he came, he sat in the back seat. He had a lot of nerve to ride back there as we drove down Washington Street and on to DePere. I always enjoyed driving.

The roads weren't paved and it was so rocky. I went west to California.

had two cars, my mother and father took many trips. vania, New York, and into Canada. as motels.

Later on when we We went to Pennsyl-

At that time there was no such thing

We stayed at tourist homes.

remember was a lovely home in Canada.

One place in particular I The hostess was charming.

We had

breakfast there, and her china was beautiful. I did quite a bit of entertaining because our home was large. tained church groups and teachers.

I enter-

I gave a lot of Christmas parties.

When I was a child we had no television.

There were no radios either.

We had lamps for light, and the job we didn't like was filling the lamps

- 105 -

and cleaning the chimney.

Later on they put in gas light.

electricity came into use. The streets here were all made of round blocks.

All

of Dousman Street was wooden blocks.

You could hear

people going down the streets in their buggies and cars. The sidewalks were boardwalks instead of cement as we have today.

- 106 -

Afterward,

LOUIS ROPSON

Mr. Ropson lives on a farm near Dyckesville and was waiting for us when we drove up.

Inside were his hand-made cellos,

violins and grandfather clocks on display just for us.

Carey

and Collette, who have had violin lessons, were invited to play, and when our interview ended, Mr. Rapson played the organ for us.

...

.,

Before leaving, we visited his workshop, and

he gave us newspapers from Belgium printed in the Walloon language.

- 107 -

LOUIS ROPSON

I was born in Dyckesville, June 8, 1903. mile southwest of here.

My dad was born about one

My mother was born a quarter of a mile from

here right across the road.

My grandparents were born in Belgium.

I remember my grandparents saying that when they came to Benderville, they waded in two feet of water to get to shore.

They bought a cooking

stove in Green Bay.

They hooked it on the boat and held on to it.

My

great uncles Alec and John each took the stove and carried it three miles to their land.

They used it outdoors on the ground until they were able

to build a cabin. They came across the ocean on a sailboat. Collins and Ropsons were on the same boat. Ropson and Mary Collins.)

It took them six weeks.

The

(My parent's names were Joe

Grandpa Ropson helped the sailors so he wouldn't

- 108 -

get lonesome.

Sometimes he would stand and watch the big fi sh swim

around the boat. My parents met when she was taking her First Communion at St. Louis church.

He gave her a

glass of water at the well.

St. Louis is the

church where I played the organ for 52 or 53 years. I started when I was 11 or 12 years old. I got most of my training on the organ from Father VandenElzen and some from Father Dobblesteen. spondence course .

I also took a University of Wisconsin corre-

I finished the correspondence course in two years.

My brothers and sisters didn't play the organ. in the family.

There was a little music

I had a great, great, great uncle, John Rapson, who made

organs in Belgium.

That's way back.

His son was a musician who played

for dances. I went to grade school at Bay View School. but I didn't finish.

I went up to eighth grade

My brother Norman married and went away so someone

had to run the farm. The grade school that I went to had one room. ing, geography, language and writing. teachers were pretty strict.

We had arithmetic, spell-

Arithmetic was my favorite.

The

For punishment we had t o stay in at recess.

- 109 -

Some of the kids chopped wood for the fire.

To make a few dollars

they would cut a cord of wood and bring it to the school.

Sometimes

it was pretty cold in the back of the room. (Asked about Belgians and their language) There are two kinds of Belgians - Walloons and the Flemish. get along together.

They don't

They are still over there fighting like always.

am a Walloon, a French Belgian.

I

The Flemish are more German or Dutch.

The written language of the Walloon is French.

The Walloon language is

-

better preserved in this country than in Belgium because in Belgium it has too much French mixed in it. (How did you start making violins?) I was always i nterested in woodwork and music. to learn to play but they were too expensive. I made one .

I wanted to buy a viola I couldn't afford it so

I started there and I kept on making them.

(How did you learn how to make them?) Like everything else, you start with one step at a time - as you go on, you progress. hard maple.

The back should always be some kind of soft maple, not The softer the maple, the sweeter the tone will be.

If you

-

take the real hard wood, the tone is always harsh. I have a piece of land with some timber and there were a few maples in there .

I picked them out and aged the wood maybe ten or fifteen years.

The wood has to be aged in a dry place. it will age - I don't know why.

The dustier it gets, the sooner

It ages better when covered with dust.

- 110 -

-

The main thing is that they age a long time.

With aging, the wood is

more flexible for vibrating and that 1 s what counts. We can find good spruce here in Wisconsin for the top of them. pine, but pine doesn't work as good as spruce.

Some use

The spruce I use comes

from Newal, Wisconsin. You cut slabs less than 1/16 inch thick, dip each slab into water and put it on a form made mostly of gum wood.

Then you roll it on a hot stove.

When it is rolled enough and hot enough, she 1 ll stay put. together.

Glue holds it

Some of them boil theirs but that's not good - it wrinkles up.

The first instrument I made was a viola.

I referred to books but wasn't

exactly copying as I wanted to make my own model.

Mine is 1/8

inch longer than most. It gives more vibration to the strings.

I sent

one to a company in Chicago to appraise it. When they sent it back they said it was a good model and I should stick to it.

It 1 s a little bit

Guarnerius and a little bit Stradivarius. I had a chance to have a 11 Strad 1' in my hand once, but I didn't like to

- 111 -

hold it too long.

I didn't want the responsibility as it must have been

worth $35,000.00.

The Strad has the advantage because it's 300 years

old already.

One guy on the Lawrence Welk show has two Strads.

They

sound better than the ones I make, but give these 200 years and there will be quite a change.

Age, that's what counts.

Age affects the wood.

It gets softer, more spongy. I make violas, cellos and violins .

The thin pieces of wood I cut in my

own shop and do the finishing myself.

I use oil varnish - Elsie

(Mrs. Ropson) was the one who finished them and I haven't finished any since she died . There are fourteen to eighteen coats of varnish on each instrument . I've made over one hundred violins. interesting than making clocks.

I think making the violin is more

With clocks, you sometimes run into a

lot of trouble setting the movements. Do I make bows?

No, I don't.

You can buy expensive bows and cheap bows.

For a student I'd say a medium priced one runs from $15.00 to $18.00. But you can't get them anymore at that price. all.

It was pretty hard to sell a bow.

I made two bows - that's

Some people are pretty fussy.

It's hard to please everybody . There are one piece backs and two piece backs in violins and violas. two piece instrument has a seam in the center. like a pie from a round log.

The

We take wood and cut it

The one piece back takes a much bigger log.

I don't find any difference in the tone.

The difference in tone is the

one piece back made from imported wood which is drier and seasoned, so you are bound to get better results.

It costs more too.

- 112 -

I made a violin out of cherry wood once. in half so I didn't try any more. I made a form for the cello. up the blocks for me. and cutting. saw.

It fell on the floor and split

Birch is rougher than cherry.

I had the Kewaunee Furniture Company glue

I took the blocks home to figure out the carving

Then I took it back so that they could cut it on the band-

They could cut the block into sticks and I couldn't. I made my

clamps and glued it together. Yes, I had a couple of people who came to me as apprentices, but after one or two sessions they know more than you do.

So I've stayed away

from it. The grandfather clocks' wood isn't aged.

The wood is kiln dried so that

it won't warp, and that's all that is necessary. clocks I've made.

I have patterns for the

I think I have made about sixty clocks.

page for the illustration).

- 113 -

(See the next

-

- 114 -

-

JACK RUDOLPH

Mr. Rudolph was the subject of our very first interview.

He is a

former army officer and newspaperman, and since talking to us at his home in De Pere, he has published Birthplace of a Commonwealth - A Short History of Brown County, Wiscon sin .

....

whom we talked, he is concerned about preserving the heritage of the Green Bay area, and had a great store of knowledge to share with us .

...,

•

Like several others with

- 115 -

MR. JACK RUDOLPH

I'll tell you what got me into press writing.

When I was about your

age--about 11, I guess--one night I was at a boy scout meeting. wanted to get a notice in the Press Gazette office. in a newspaper office before.

We

I had never been

This was the old Press Gazette, not the

present one--this was a long time ago.

We went up the stairs into this

place and it was a rather narrow stairway going up and it was a little dark.

Going up the stairs, I never knew it, but a little gremlin jumped

out from the side and he had a great big syringe full of printer's ink.

/ He jammed that thing in my arm and let me have one and I was hooked right there. (Were all the stories true?)

Oh yes, there wasn't any point in telling

any stories that weren't true, there were too many good true stories to bother with them.

- 116 -

(Why did you always write about things in the past?) I was interested in it and I liked history.

There hadn't been much of

it done around here and a lot of other people liked to read about it, too.

So everything worked fine.

Of course every day I was writing

about things that were happening today, I wasn't just writing about the past.

As a newspaper reporter, I was writing about things that

were happening right now. (How did you get your infonnation?)

Well, the books - -there aren't many.

Right here on the desk are just about all the books that you can find that have much detail about Brown County in them . are a couple of others, but not much.

In Green Bay there

There ' s nothing interesting about

Green Bay as history in almost 60 years, except for a few little pamphlets that were written, and unfortunately nothing has ever been written for young people.

All these books are all fo r older people and not the sort

of thing you'd want to wade through because they're pretty hard reading for younger people. So there are some books.

The basic source is old newspapers.

The library

and the Press Gazette itself have microfilm of all the papers of Green Bay practically from the beginning .

They started with the Green Bay Intelli-

gence in 1833; the Green Bay Advocate, 1846- 1906; the Green Bay Gazette, 1866-1915; the Green Bay Free Press, 1914 and 1915; and a little paper called the Green Bay Globe, published in the l870 ' s and 1880's; and then the Press Gazette , 1915 to the present time .

This is all on microfilm.

That is your basic sou r ce of what went on in this town, principally from 1846 to the present time .

Ther e are all sorts of things in there, but of

course you have to start looking for detai l s in other places.

- 117 -

The older people I interviewed, their principal value was in telling about a person, like their father.

They can tell what sort of a person

their father, or some friend was, because they knew him personally and could give an idea what the character of this fellow was.

But outside

of that, you had to check it against newspaper accounts of one thing or another, or they get them mixed up with other things--details get fuzzy. I got my ideas from lots of places. files.

-

One place is those old newspaper

I don't know whether you've ever seen it or not, but in the

Press Gazette for years and years they've been running a thing called 11

20 Years Ago Today", ''40 Years Ago Today", and then on Sunday they ran

"Over the Century in Green Bay".

They go back 25, 50, 75, and l 00 years.

Well, I started that column "Over the Century in Green Bay" and for many years I did the "20 and "40" . 11

You go through the papers in those years

and they give you ideas of things that happened.

They make a good story

so you dig out all the details and go from there.

Sometimes you have to

do a bit of digging other than the newspapers because they didn't have all the facts.

One of the things about the newspaper is that whatever

appeared in the paper, you can generally rely on its being true because Green Bay was a small town and the paper carried it and everybody in town already knew what had happened.

So they had to be true because everyone

was sitting there holding the book on it.

It had to be right.

The principal change in local color is the shift in industries Green Bay has had.

It's a strange thing but in order for a town to progress and

grow you have to have something for the people to do.

Which means some-

thing they can make a living at, in other words, business.

- 118 -

Green Bay had

-

to have business, too.

And it's a strange thing, but over the years

until recently, Green Bay has had three basic industries--four really. The first was the fur trade.

The second was lumber and third is paper.

As each one died, the other came up . the forest.

All three are based on products of

The other one, of course, is transportation.

located in a place where everything comes together. people in the first place.

Green Bay is

This is what attracted

You can go from the lake to the bay, down the

Fox, and into the Mississippi.

Today Green Bay is a center--you've got an

airport, there's air transportation; three railroads come in here. I remember one time I was running across somethi ng about 1858.

Every

spring there used to be great, huge flocks of passenger pi geons - a type of pigeon that is now extinct--they don't have them anymore. all killed off .

....

These passenger pigeons were good eating .

- 119 -

They were That's why

they died off.

People killed them.

They used to come over in tremendous

flocks--just blacken the sky when they flew over - and they'd land around here. For about a week these flocks were going through.

They'd land on

the trees and at night people would go out with a stick and knock them off.

You could

have all the pigeons you wanted.

I remember the news-

paper was commenting about the passenger pigeons. People could eat pigeons and they could eat them cheaply--didn't cost anything.

"And good enough

for these profit sharing, price gouging butchers who are charging 15¢ a

-

pound for beef. " During the depression I was in the military academy.

I was going to

school and I was lucky my family didn't have to pay my bills. when you go to West Point, you're really in the Army.

Because

You get paid,

you go to school, and you get a salary just like a soldier.

You are

a soldier; you have a rank of cadet, wh ich is a special rank that's only for the students of the military academy.

- 120 -

You're just as much a

-

part of the United States Army as a general or a private. Green Bay has always been a fairly cautious town, it doesn't get out on a limb like a lot of places do. it won't move very fast.

It's frequently been criticized because

So when the depression came along there weren't

a lot of people who got hurt, as they did elsewhere . the depression got worse it got tighter here, too. pay bills.

People just couldn't

Stores were hurting and there wasn't a lot going on.

were just dead. the country.

But of course as

Things weren't happening.

Things

This was going on all over

You've probably read about and seen pictures of what they

called bread lines, where people lined up to get a bowl of soup. wasn't any of that in Green Bay.

- 121 -

There

-

0 000000 ooo o 0000 0 0 0 0 ()00

ocoooooo :

- 122 -

I

-

MISS J. ANNE SCHWEGER

Miss Schweger, a retired teacher who later worked in the family drug store, had moved into her apartment at 1507 Capitol Drive just two weeks before we visited her.

Some of her antiques were still packed,

but her word pictures were just as good.

We especially liked her

stories about the old-fashioned country schools.

Not only has she

taught in a country school, but she attended one as a little girl .

....

- 123 -

J. ANNE SCHWEGER

I was born in Seymour, Wisconsin.

My father was born in Germany and

my mother was born in Menominee, Michigan.

Both grandparents from my

mother and father's side were born in Germany. in Baden-Baden, a health resort in Germany. family.

One of them was born

She came from a very poor

She was a tailoress - not a seamstress but a tailoress - she

made men's clothing.

She practically supported the family.

Her husband,

who was my grandfather, couldn t marry her because in that district they 1

had dowries . The woman had to have so many things - sheets, pillowcases, blankets and things like that - before she dare marry.

Well, she didn't

have those things because she was supporting the family, so they eloped. When my mother used to tell us that story we were thrilled to death to think he and she would elope. directly to America.

When they got to the boat, they came

They were married on the boat by the ship captain.

When they arrived in New York City they were married in a church ceremony. That was the most romantic story our mother used to tell us when we were little. This grandmother and grandfather came to Peshtigo. and father came to Neenah-Menasha. to what they call the Turnverein. won many different honors. the giant swing.

My father's mother

My father was an athlete and belonged That is a German organization.

He

He won a silver goblet for his skill in doing

This was done on a rod between two uprights, and he

stiffened his body and swung way around. that day who could do that.

There were very few people in

Athletics have advanced so much since then

that I imagine it is quite ordinary today. unusual.

- 124 -

But in

his day that was quite

Then he went into working in the sawmills in Neenah and Menasha. the valley was full of sawmills.

All

The mill that he worked for moved to

Seymour.

Mother and Father were married before that and they moved to

Seymour.

By that time there were quite a few children in the family

so he couldn't move with the sawmill.

He had had some experience in

running meat markets so he bought a meat market. children in our family.

There were fourteen

We all had to work pretty hard growing up.

I

think that's why we were all able to hold our own because we had such early training in taking care of ourselves. My father died very young for one who was athletic. tuberculosis of the throat. four younger than I.

He died at 56 of

I was only 12 when he died and there were

We had two older brothers, Bob and Ed.

druggist, but he wasn't a druggist when my father died. school, working in a drug store after school.

Ed was the

He was in high

After he graduated from

high school he went to school to take drug training and became a druggist. He and brother Bob took care of the family financially.

I had other

brothers but they were married and not in a position to help.

And after

we got through high school it was up to us to make our own way. My mother went through the Peshtigo fire. riences they had.

She used to tell us the expe-

It was black with smoke all the time, she said.

This

one morning in church the wind was starting to rise and the pastor said it looked very dangerous.

If it looked as though things were really going

to come to a head that day, the church bells would ring.

The church bells

rang about 6:00, and grandfather had the light wagon all packed with blankets and things that they would need.

There were three in the family,

and they all got into the wagon and he took them to the river.

~

125 -

Peshtigo

is divided in the center by a river, like Green Bay.

The river was full

of logs, so they all sat

-

on logs and he took the blankets and dipped them in the water and put them around them to keep them from burning.

The flames

were going right across

-

the water to the other side, it was so bad. They were there all night. After it was over in the morning it had gone on past where they were. .....,,,.~

~

She said when they got out of the river it was just dreadful to see the number of people that were dead.

It used to be

a horror to her and she would wake up with nightmares for a long time afterwards.

They had a sawmill there, and there was a company store or

meeting place that the sawmill company had .

They thought if they got a

lot of people in there the men could protect them. all smothered and died .

Instead, they were

It was a dreadful experience - she was just a

young girl then. In my day you could teach country school or rural school, as they called it, by passing a county examinatiu11.

I did that and got what they called

a first grade certificate, which means I could teach the first eight grades.

- 126 -

-

So I went into rural teaching.

The first year I taught I was 17 years

old and had a room of 52 students, and all grades from first through eighth.

I had 14 beginners and 8 graduates.

You had to have those

graduates ready to take a county examination. In high school I took a course called The Theory and Art of Teaching, and I had a very good teacher. a good disciplinarian. discipline.

He was the principal of the school and

I remember he always stressed the importance of

He knew that we were all going into rural work and would be

having students as old as we were and bigger. ever let them think you're afraid of them. them think you are."

He used to say, "Now, don't

You might be, but don't let

I'll always remember that, because it stood us in

hand to know, because those boys thought they'd have a great time putting it over on us.

I never was very tall and they thought they could handle

me, but they didn't.

There were some boys my age in my class.

They were

farm boys who had quit school for the harvesting and then would come back to finish 8th grade. The kids were great at throwing stuff at the school. out into the yard and order them to stop.

They weren't going to in the

beginning until they found out I meant business. school board. me, too.

I would have to get

I had the support of my

They backed me in all that I did, and the parents supported

There were only a few parents who resented my strict discipline.

But most of them were really happy.

The board was happy because they had

had teachers who let them do anything and they were tearing the place apart. I started teaching in a one room school in 1909.

It was 6 miles south of

Seymour, and was called the South Osborn School.

The building was one

room and it had regular school desks.

- 127 -

There were seven rows and went back

about ten rows.

In those days you did your own janitor work .

We had a

wood stove with a cast iron apron on it to keep sparks from causing a fire. built.

In the morning I used to have to get there early and get that fire

...

Then before I went home I had to sweep the floor and get it all

cleaned up.

There was a coat closet in front, the same width as the

-

building and there were hooks and each one had their own hook assigned. The older boys had to pile the wood that their parents would bring.

They

worked hard to pile that wood, and keep the wood box indoors filled, but that is all the work that the boys did. thing else.

They resented having to do any-

Those boys worked hard on the farm and they weren't coming

to school to work.

The girls would clean the blackboards for me.

had blackboards all around, side and front.

We

But I did all the sweeping

of the floor and taking care of the stove , taking out the ashes and that sort of thing.

Every country school teacher did that.

The lady that I lived with always packed my lunch. good one, too .

She always packed a

She had my dinner ready for me when I got home .

- 128 -

-

I used to go to school at 8:00 and the crowd that went with me if I went on a stone boat would have to suffer with me in the cold until I got the fire built.

The students came at 9:00 because by that time the

room was heated and they didn't have to come when it was so cold. always wore our coats because the room was so cold. to wear slacks.

We

We weren't allowed

Long dresses were worn as women didn't wear men's

clothes or they would be in disgrace.

The children went home at 4:00.

They had two recess periods of fifteen minutes each, and an hour at noon. We had Christmas programs. the program.

I had 52 students and they all had to be in

You had to be ingenious in order to include all of them.

We had songs and dialogues and little plays and a chorus.

All the parents

came and every one of them was thrilled to death because their children were in it.

In the rural area they didn't have the contacts that we have

now outside the school . In severe weather on the count ry roads they had a vehicle called a stone

boat.

It was used on the farm to haul stones in clearing the land . It

was like a raft but it could be harnessed to a team of horses .

- .129 -

My land-

lord would take us in the morning when the weather was bad.

In those

days you never stayed out of school because of the weather.

They would

load us up on the stone boat and we would have to hang on.

I would have

my arms around the driver and the children had their arms around me and each other.

He'd take us to school but by the time school was out we were

able to walk home.

In the morning you'd have to break the roads and the

stone boat was the best way to do it. They used to scoff at the rural school set-up but that was one of the greatest assets in the world.

They learned from each other.

were all being taught in the one room.

Those classes

They were observant and getting so

much more than what they really had to get, just from observation and listening.

I often think when open classrooms were started; it amuses me

how they come back to things.

It not only helps them in getting their

lessons but it's a good lesson in human relations. I taught primary grades for ten years including the rural.

But the most

interesting and challenging work that I ever did was the junior high school work.

The students give you a challenge every minute of the day.

became a challenge, but a most interesting challenge. with youngsters that age.

I liked to work

When I could convince them that this was the

thing to do, not what they were doing. them.

It

They were fair after you convinced

I get a glorious feeling today when I meet some of those youngsters

I had. I started the junior high school work in McCartney School. called junior high--just 7th and 8th.

It wasn't

It was the beginning of junior high.

Another satisfaction you get is meeting some of the students who have had a hard time in school and they've been successful.

- 130 -

That is why junior

-

high people give me such a charge.

I worked with them from the standpoint

of their future much more than the primary children. Along with being vice-principal I had guidance counseling. them balanced very well.

The two of

I had to be more of a disciplinarian than a

counselor had to be, yet I'd been there long enough that they accepted me.

The combination and the fact that I'd been there so long, they knew

what to expect, I was able to accomplish both. Franklin.

I was vice-principal at

That was when they went from McCartney up to West.

We were

there 25 years . The only time I took off from teaching for my education was one year.

All

the rest I did in correspondence and summer schools, plus extension work. It was a hard way to do it.

I started out at the University of Chicago,

and then along with that, I kept taking extension work from Wisconsin. Then I took one year off and went to Berkeley . disliked Berkeley. say sometimes,

11

I disliked the west and I

Berkeley was so highly recommended to us.

I used to

Come back to Madison and I'll show you a real school.

11

I

worked for my degree all the time I was teaching except for the one year off at Berkeley . McCartney was the former West High School.

The first six grades were on

the first floor and the seventh and eighth were on the upper floor . school was condemned even when we were there.

The

They had to go single file

on the stairs to the upstairs rooms, it was in such poor condition.

We

had physical education in the main room and the physical education director for the grade school had to stop having classes in the main room because

-

the timbers that held the floor on to the walls were swinging. we had 200 in that room at one time.

Many times

They tore the building down in 1928

- 131 -

because they couldn't use if for anything. W~st

The first

High used to be at Fort Howard School.

Th~n

it came over

to McCartney. When it became a grade and junior high it w. 1s called McCartney.

Before Dousman High it was known as Fort Howard High.

McCartney was a prominent family in Fort Howard on the west side.

He

was a banker· and did a great deal of social work in the town. I taught local Green Bay history in 8th grade at McCartnef.

We visited

the Tank Co':tage and the Fort Howard Hospital.

It broke 111y heart when

they moved these buildings from the west side.

To me, they were Fort

Howard.

It was one of the things that made us unique.

It was a thril 1

to take the children to see the display on Dr. Beaumont in the hospital. After I ret :red from teaching, I worked in the Schweger Drug Store. worked 21 yc ·ars there and 42 years teaching. store two years.

I've been cut of the drug

I miss all of my daily contacts with people now .

make myself do something every ac1y w keep active.

- 132 -

I

I

... ... ...

... - 133 -

•

LEO SCRAY

Befo re we interviewed Mr. Scray, we piled into his car and toured the whole quarry area on Scray s Hill. 1

We saw a lot of heavy

equipment at work while he told us how long ago much of the work was done by hand.

Later, while we talked in the Scray s cozy 1

stone house, trucks rumbled by, carrying off the hill itself.

We

came away with a butter churn for our celebration, and an invitation to return for a night time view from the hill.

- 134 -

-

LEO SCRAY

I was born in 1910 on May 30th, Decoration Day. in Bellevue.

My parents were born

My grandmother was born in Holland.

She came to America

when she was eight years old . My family came here (Scray's Hill) because they were looking for a place to live.

Three of the kids we re born i n Milwaukee or Pine Grove.

dad had a farm there, sold it, and bought this one. as this was all woods.

My

It was hard to settle,

There weren't any roads until about 1920.

The

first thing my father had to do when he came here was clear the land. This was all wilderness.

When he came here he had to cut down trees.

moved them with horses and cables anchored to stumps.

They

They pulled their

way stump to stump until it was clear. Eight of us were born in the house he buil t . called Kiley School.

I went to a little school

It was an old one - room school with eight grades.

We had to walk two miles to school.

We ne ver had a ride.

- 135 -

We would make

a path across the snow.

Sometimes in spring there would still be snow

where we were walking all winter. I was a stonecutter, mason and a farmer. like any average fann.

We raised mostly oats and corn

The land on top of the quarry was fertile.

There

was only one year that it was a total failure, and that was in 1932. body had anything then, everything burned up. things out here .

The government shipped

It was kind of like a chaff, and it kept the cows alive

until the next year. ure.

No-

But that was the only year that it was a total fail-

All the farmers around here had the same thing.

marsh grass back there, brush and weeds.

They cut all the

It all was cut up.

Well, it was

rough, I'll tell you. I worked digging ditches and sewers for 17¢ an hour. depression.

That was during the

One thing about living on a farm is you always had enough to

eat . The farmer could survive on what he had. When I was a kid I could only see three lights in the valley.

Now you can

see lights all the way from Kaukauna to Bay Settlement. We used to dig mostly by hand.

We used wedges, drive wedges, and they had

dynamite too, but you would have to drill by hand . by hand they were all different sizes. all the same size.

When stones were cut

Now when a machine does it they are

Not many people are hand cutting today - there are very

few . In 1928 is when stone started to move - right before the depression. in 1939 it really started to move. stones to the YMCA .

Then

The winter of 1923-24 we hauled all the

We brought it over mainly by the East River to the East

- 136 -

High School, and went down Walnut Street - we made one trip a day. if we got back in time we would load up for the next day.

Then

We would leave

about 4:00 in the morning. In 1924 we got our first truck, a Model T.

I had to pay $450.00 for it.

I drove it from 1924 to 1932. There was this "Magic Hill" that was written up in Ripley's "Believe It or Not" in the early 1930's , about ca rs coasting up Scray's Hill. would go down one hill and be able to go up the next.

it look like there's a little hill down below.

You

The big hill makes

Oh, it fooled so many people!

Cars came from all over America - as a matter of fact, you couldn't get through because there were so many cars day and night. MRS. SCRAY (When asked about the Tercentennial Celebration) I was in the Ind ian pageant at Bay Beach. It was i nte resting . costumes and I dressed up like a squaw.

-. 137 -

We made

It was just like a regular set,

by the shore, and was like a play.

getting people ready .

It took a lot of time planning and

They asked for volunteers .

I knew Florence

Schilling well and she was the one that got me the part. old then - I think it was in August .

I was 23 years

It was supposed to represent the

landing of Jean Nicolet.

- 138 -

-

MRS. JOSIE VANDERVEST

Time has not erased Mrs. Vandervest's vivid recollections of her past.

It was with pride that she told (and with pride that we

listened) of her Baptism, First Communion, Confirmation and marriage all taking place in the same church where she attends Mass today.

- 139 -

JOSIE VANDERVEST

I was born in the town of Red River in Dyckesville in 1887. were born in Namur, in Belgium.

My parents

I had nine brothers and four sisters.

I went to Bay View Grade School in the town of Red River.

I didn't go

to high school - we didn't used to go to high school at that time in the early 1900's. I always lived with my parents until I was twenty years old. married when I was twenty.

I got

My brothers worked as masons with my dad.

They would lay bricks to make buildings. When I was a young girl, there was only one teacher for fifty children. We had a stove in the winter to burn wood.

The big boys would bring in

the wood and make the fire in school during the day. one room. side.

There was only

The girls would sit on one side and the boys on the other

We had to walk five miles to school.

9:00 and ended at 4:00.

The school day started at

Sometimes we walked home in the dark in the

winter when the days were short. We had slates to write on.

We also had tablets and a pencil, which we

used more than anything because the slates made too much noise. children came to school with wooden shoes.

Some

They took their shoes off

and when they wanted to go outside they had a mix-up with their wooden shoes.

Sometimes they even had a fight to find their own shoes.

When I went to Green Bay for the first time, I went with my dad in a big wagon with two horses. it was over twenty miles.

That was my ride.

It took a couple of hours -

The roads were pretty good.

- 140 -

We went to Green

Bay with some wheat to have it ground into flour .

Then we went home

with the bags of flour, and we had enough flour to bake all winter. When I was a girl on the farm, we had to help with the milking. to milk the cows by hand.

We had to give them hay and feed.

We had

When they

were done eating, and we were done milking, we had to untie them - they were tied in the barn, in stanchions.

We had to take them out to pasture

until it was time to milk them in the afternoon . school we had to do the milking before school.

When we were going to Everyone had the same kind

of chores, except my two brothers who worked wi t h my dad as masons.

Those

that stayed at home had to feed their horses and hitch them up and work either plow or cultivate and seed. (Could you tell us how you made a corn husk mattress?) When the corn was ripe in the fall and the leaves around were dry, we pulled the leaves off and stacked them in a room to dry.

When they were dry enough,

we would put them in the ticking and sew it up . (What kind of a wedding di d you have?) We had a plain wedding at our church and then we went home for dinner. had the wedding celebration at home.

It was just a small wedding for

We the

close relation. I have ten children and over one hundred grandchildren and great-grandchildren. That's a bunch! The biggest change in Green Bay was because of the automobile. have electricity . the lamps.

Before we had kerosene lamps.

And now we

We burned kerosene in

There was a wick going down into the kerosene and we had to

- l 41 -

light the wick with a match. (Celebrations) We had the kermi s in the fall of the year.

dance hall to danc e. celebration .

We celebrated Sunday and Monday - it was a two day

We baked pies and made dinner at home, and we invited our

friends for the day. second day

All the people would go to the

W3 S

Then at night we would all go to the dance.

the same as Sunday.

(What does kermis mean?)

time to thank God for the harvest on the farm.

The

It was a

Kermis is a Belgian word

and only the people from Belgium celebrated in this way. Besides pie s, other special foods were beef and Belgian Tripp, which is made with por k.

Aft er t he tripps were made, my mother would boil them

and put them to cool , so when we wanted some, we fried them.

- 142 -

It didn't

take so long to get them ready to eat. (Could you describe the kind of pies you had?) We could have any kind we wanted - we had the raisin and the prune with whipped cream on top, and cottage cheese.

My mother would make the dough -

she would put eggs, butter, milk, and yeast in the flour. She let it raise in a big pan and when it was even on top, she would punch it down and let it raise again.

Then we

spread the dough in the pie tin.

After a while when

they started to raise, we would put the custard or prunes in, or whatever we had.

My mother used to

bake them in the Dutch oven.

When we had twenty-five or thi r ty pies, and the oven was warm enough -

well, we all carried the pies to put in the Dutch oven. The people made their own beer, and it was good ! They would get a little dizzy.

We put the barley to soak, and the juice that came was pu t i n big

barrels, and then they added yeast - when i t st art ed to bu bble, i t was raising - but we had to wait till it stopped bubbl i ng t o close the barrel . When it stopped bubbling, in a few days , we coul d sta r t drinking it . was good for drinking.

-

-. 143 -

It

(Was there one sickness that was really bad in the old days?) Yes - the diphtheria - people would die.

They had sore throats and if

the doctor wasn't called on time, they choked. was twelve years old. couldn't move.

I had a very bad fever, and I laid in bed and

We called the doctor and the doctor gave us medicine to

clear our throat. inside .

I had diphtheria when I

It was like your throat was filling up.

It was white

Lots of people died from it - two or three in the same house

sometimes.

Our next door neighbor had three girls that died in the same

week. (Can you tell us how you washed your clothes?) Oh yes - we made a good warm suds with soap.

First we put all the white

clothes in to soak, and we had a board, and a cake of soap.

-

We rubbed the

soap on the clothes, and we started to wash like this

-

-rubbing the clothes on the board, and that 1 s how we washed and they were washed good'.

We rinsed them in another tub with clear water.

- 144 -

(You did all

-

that by hand for ten kids?)

Yes - well, I didn't have ten children all

at once. I'm going to talk about my religion. the same church that I go to today.

I'm a Catholic.

I was baptized in

I was baptized - I made my First

Communion - I was confirmed - I was married - all in the same church where I go to Mass today.

(That's wonderful)

.

,

••

....

- 145 -

Yes, I think so too .

CARL WITTEBORG

We visited Mr. Witteborg at the Beaumont Motel.

His father was

the owner of the original Beaumont where he lived and later served as manager.

Growing up in a hotel, as Mr. Witteborg recalled it

for us, was an interesting and unique experience.

He witnessed a

lot of the excitement of downtown Green Bay, including some of its more spectacular fires.

- 146 -

MR. CARL WITTEBORG

We had a nice apartment and we ate all our meals in the public dining room and I'd always have meals with my mother and father.

Of course my

father being manager at that time sometimes was on call--at anytime of the day and so we'd sometimes not see him all the way through a meal. I'd come home from school for lunch. or anything like that.

We didn't have any lunch programs

Some kids who lived in Allouez would bring their

lunch, but the rest of us all walked home. streetcar.

On bad days, I'd take the

We didn't own an automobile at that time, so we weren't carted

back and forth--we'd walk and in winter time when it got down to sub zero, why we'd put on our long handles, long underwear, you know, and bundle up, or take the streetcar. I can remember as a little boy, the waitresses before we'd open up for a meal.

They were all dressed in black un i forms with starched white aprons.

Just before opening up the doors at noon or at night, why they'd stand around in circles and they'd tie the bow of each one's apron--it always reminded me of elephants in the circus. grab each other ' s tails.

You know, when in the parade they'd

Well, that's the way these waitresses would do.

There would be about ten of them standing around in a circle, and each one would be tying the apron of the waitress in front of her. I went to Howe School; used to walk down there and in fact, we had a man who lived in the hotel who owned the Continental Clothing Store across the street, and he kept a horse--a riding horse--over at Miller Sales Stable over on Adams Street .

In winter somet imes he wou l d give me a ride on his

horse.

- 147 -

(What about streetcars?) There was a conductor and a motorman, and one of them would stand at the rear end and one at the front end.

The one at the front end would

take the fares and more or less be in charge. they called one man cars.

They later changed to what

It was a smaller car and the conductor and

motorman were one and the same, and they'd get going at a good clip and they'd sort of pop along and rock almost like a rabbit. One of the favorite stunts on Ha11uween of course, was when a car came to a slowdown up in the residential areas, grab the trolley cable and pull it off the trolley--that's a pretty bad thing to do. Prior to 1921, 1922, there were still a lot of horses, wagons, and buggies. The Hurlbut Company which had a coal yard over here had one of the biggest stables of draft horses you have ever seen--they had about fifty horses at

- 148 -

one time, I think.

Big heavy Percherons, Belgians, horses that would

team up to pull coal wagons all over town. they had to have wagon repair shops.

But to keep wagons going,

There used to be one right on the

corner of Adams Street and Cedar Street--a stone's throw from here. Green Bay, as you know, was always a good port.

We never had deep

water ships like we have now, but we had a lot more lake shipping than we have, and there used to be passenger ships that came in here.

Here's

a pix of the Charles McVey which used to ply between here and Chicago, and there were a lot of passenger ships--the Goodrich Line for instance used to come up from Chicago; it would make Milwaukee, Sheboygan, Manitowoc, and Algoma.

Then it would come around and stop at Fish Creek and Oconto, Green

Bay, and Marinette .

-

It carried passengers and also some cargo.

The river in those days was clean.

Gordon Bent Company had a sporting goods

shop on this end of the Main Street bridge.

A man by the name of Parmentier

ran a sporting goods store on the opposite side of the bridge and kids used

-

- 149 -

.

-

to dive off the roofs of those buildings into the river. and the river was clean!

Right over here between--well. between the Holiday Inn and

us. only on the river bank, was a grain elevator and there as a little boy and fish.

used to go over

The perch were good and clean and I 1 d

bring them back and clean them and we'd have them for lunch. In the spring of the year when the log drives were over, I can remember seeing l oggers and lumbermen--woodsmen come down.

They would probably

come down on the train to spend some of the ir winter earn i ngs and buy a suit of clothes or something.

Very seldom would they have any luggage,

\ I/ ..... /

~)--

-

\

s (

but they'd have a gunny sack slung over thei r shoulde r and they would have a pair of heavy boots on , t he ir wi nte r l oggi ng pan ts , an d they would come down to Green Bay and put up i n some of th e lower pr i ced hotels which

- 150 -

-

existed on Main Street.

There used to be a number of hotels - the

Green Bay House, the Nier House, the Tremont and a bunch of others that were, oh--maybe two stories high. a night including breakfast.

A man could get a room for maybe 50¢

They would frequent those places.

All

those hotels also had a stable where a farmer coming in could park his team for the day or two days, if he was staying in town for any length of time. One thing in the spring of the year; I remember the men coming down from the northwoods always came in with arbutus for sale--trailing arbutus is now a protected wildflower, but I can always remember that one of the first signs of spring was

-

when along about late April or about mid-May they'd come down with these little packets of trailing arbutus and they'd sell them for 25¢ a bunch, and it's the most fragrant flower you'd ever smell.

It was one of the first signs of spring in the

northwoods. In those days we had what we called Green Bay flies.

I don't know if

you've ever heard of them or not , but they'd get a heavy batch of these big flies and it was a fly that had a -- le t me show you it on here.

The

Green Bay fly had a wing--wings about like this--and it had a long body fiddled off to a l ittle tail that had some feelers here and these wings

- 151 -

were very, very--they would sometimes get almost to that size, and they would come into the city where the lights were at night.

They

would be in such swarms that if you drove on, say from Dyckesville along about dusk, there'd be a cloud right above the road sometimes. they'd flock into the lights and they'd die by the millions, of course, and sometimes the streets would be slippery, there'd be so many dead

...

t

I ...

•

.I

Green Bay flies on them, so the next morning, why the street department had to come out with a hose.

First of all they'd go underneath the

lampposts with shovels and they'd shovel them up into a wagon or into buckets, and then they'd hose down the streets because they smelled awfully fishy, but they made good bait for fishing, too.

They would

die by the millions at night and you;d come downtown where all the lights are and that's where you were most aware of them because like a moth they'd go for the lights, and then they'd fall down in the gutters and die. This was the first Beaumont House and across the street here was the

- 152 -

-

Continental Clothing Store which I remember well as a boy.

It burned

down during the winter and everybody came dovmtown to watch the fire, and of course, there was ice from ,the fire streams--there was ice all over the streets for weeks after that, before they got rid of it all. They didn't use salt then to nelt the snow and the ice like we do now. There was the Cargill grain elevator and that burned down about 1915. Now, if you're familiar with grain fires they usually develop from a

-collection of dust--when it

~eaches

a certain concentration, maybe a

spark or static electric charge can ignite it and that's always one of the dangers of mills and granaries.

They had this explosion over there.

It was a hot summer night and I remember being awakened.

We lived on

the third floor of the Beaumont at that time and you could feel the heat - the whole thing went up in flames .

- 153 -

Big pieces of wood and sheet

metal would drift off in successive explosions, and it was one of the most colorful fires that they'd ever had in Green Bay. ments in those days were horse drawn .

The fire depart-

They would have steam pumping

units that would be fired with coal and they drew up all the pumpers along side the river, and of course they had no problem getting water. They'd just put the intake hose down into the river and they'd pump water up.

They nursed that fire for several days before it was all

burned out .

The river was full of grain for two years after that.

The carp really got fat! We used to skate along the river a lot in those days.

There used to be

ice rinks - oh, maybr a dozen of them between the mouth of the river and the south city limits. (We interviewed Mr. Witteborg at the Beaumont Ramada Inn.) This is on the oldest hotel site in the state of Wisconsin.

There was

a hotel here one time called the Washington House and it stood on this corner.

It was just a log cabin , and that burned down in about 1850

and there was nothing built on it for a long time until about 1862 or 1863 .

A man by the name of Israel Beaumont - he was the son of Dr.

Beaumont who was the contract surgeon who was attached to Fort Howard bought a strip of land in he re and bui l t the first Beaumont House which was completed in about 1864 .

Dr. Beaumont, Israel Beaumont's father,

sta r ted out as a contract su r geon wit h the Army , and the Army would follow the fur route to protect the interest as they went farther inland . Dr. Beaumont wa s ori ginally , I think , from New Hampshire, and he didn't carry any rank because he wasn' t an Army officer.

He would just contract

t o work for the Army, and he sta rted out fi r st at Fort Mackinac up on

- 154 -

Mackinac Isla nd, which was one of t he fi rst outposts of the furr i ers, and then they moved down to Green Bay, wh i ch was the second.

Finally

he moved down to Fort Crawford which is where Prairie du Chien is, at the confluence of the Wisconsin and Mississippi Rivers. is where he was stationed the longest.

Fort Crawford

But they have a museum up on

Mackinac Island with a lot of Dr. Beaumont's memorabilia in it.

There

are a bunch of letters there, and I remember reading one in which he advised his son, Israel, to invest his money either in Green Bay or Fort Howard.

He thought those were solid areas in which to make invest-

ments, so he and his cousin invested on the Green Bay side and built the first Beaumont House here .

... - 155 -

MRS. DOROTHY STRAUBEL WITTIG

Although Mrs. Wittig was not fully recovered from recent surgery, she consented to spend a morning telling us about the beginnings of Heritage Hill State Park. park as a visual aid.

She used a much traveled model of the

She and Mrs. Amanda Cobb are co-chairmen of

the historical park committee of the Brown County Historical Society, and it was their perseverance and prodding that gave us Heritage Hill State Park.

She told us so much about the history of our county that

we couldn't begin to include it all in our book.

- 156 -

MRS. DOROTHY STRAUBEL WITTIG

I was born right here in this house - a long time ago.

My parents

were Frederick Straubel and Amanda Wiese, and both of their parents were very early pioneers.

The Wiese family came to Green Bay from

Germany in 1846 and the Straubel family followed, coming in 1848, so they've been here a long, long time - so have I. Most of the furniture in here \·Jas my Grandfather Wiese's, which my mother inherited and which I have inherited and just love. I went to school on Madison Street at Howe School.

I went to East

High when it was on Webster Avenue, and to Milwaukee Downer, where I majored in Home Economics. I worked for a while for my dad.

Dad had a factory.

He was quite

an inventor of office equipment.

The factory started on Pearl Street.

When they built another he said he needed help and I went over there

-

and just loved doing odd jobs . (Tercentennial) It was very exciting.

It was held out at Bay Beach of course, with

President Roosevelt here - everybody was tremendously excited.

It was

at that time that the semi-circular monument on the lower road marking the site of the first court house in Wisconsin was dedicated.

The

stone was quarried and cut by the boys from the State Reformatory.

We

expected the president to be there, but you know presidents are always in a hurry and he was on his way shortly thereafter . had a big dedication program at that time.

- 157 -

They

Have you ever noticed

the monument on the lower road?

You must look for it the next time

you go by. (How did you become interested in Heritage Hill?) Well, it's strange you know.

My grandfather Straubel lived with us

for a great many years, and he came over from Germany when he was a boy of six.

-

He used to love to talk about that trip and as a child

I was a little bored, to tell the truth. attack and he had to be very quiet.

Then my father had a heart

He was in the hospital for a

while and he had five brothers who used to come in and visit with him. I noticed as they sat there together; they began to talk about their boyhood days.

I t !·ou ght this was so interesting, and Dad was so

interested in it, it would keep his mind off his condition.

So I be-

gan to jot down on a pad things that the brothers talked about, and also I gave them a lot of ques t ions.

I had two uncles, particularly,

with marvelous memories, and it gave me a start on genealogy. Then of course I have been a long time member of the Brown County Historical Society.

For some reason I decided it would be a good

idea to compile scrapbooks of new items.

History gets twisted around.

The news media doesn't want to repeat what has been mentioned before so they add a little bit, and they're not always quite sure what they're adding.

I must have at least thirty looseleaf notebooks in

which I paste items that I have cut out of the papers. a marvelous reference.

It has become

I'm not a historian, and I wasn't even inter-

ested in it in school, but I am now, because I feel that our area has a heritage that is incomparable in the state, and I continue to cut

- 158 -

-

up papers. Since 1966 I have been chairman of the historical park committee of the historical society.

We knew we wanted that property (Heritage

Hill) because of its historical significance, but the reformatory owned it and used it for truck gardening.

When plans for the Allouez-

Ashwaubenon bridge surfaced, we leaped right in and said, "With all of the access roads you certainly can't transport your men to this little farm", and Mr. Wilbur Schmidt of the Department of Health and Social Services agreed.

We went to Madison, had a meeting with him and the

members of the State Historical Society, and asked that this property be turned over to us. About that time we realized that this park had such great potential that we would never be able to swing it financially, and we contacted the State Historical Society about contacting the Department of Natural Resources.

They thought it was a fine idea, and gave us the name of the

man who was the head of the Bureau of Parks and Recreation. him and he came down.

I recall that evening so well.

We wrote to

We stood just

about in front of the monument and looked up the hill toward the Cotton House and he just sort of caught his breath and said, "It's a natural. Of course we want to get in on this." into a state park.

So from then on it has turned

But for about four years before that we were alone.

We talked about there being Fort Howard, and Navarino, and the town of Astor, the town of Allouez and DePere.

Before there really was a Green

Bay and even before there was an Astor or Navarino, settlements began on this spot.

You know three flags have flown over this territory and after

the War of 1812 which the Americans won, it became American territory .

- 159 -

It remained quite French for a long time because the French people

A me r \co."'--

had settled here down on the river.

You see, the Fox River was the

only means of transportation.

They all built their homes and their

farms right along the river.

They somehow found this high spot and

Camp Smith had been established up there.

Lieutenant Smith of

Fort Howard maintained that the low, swampy land on which Fort Howard had been built contributed to the spread of malaria.

He

thought that this high land would be much better , and it afforded a good view up and down the Fox River.

So he started what he called

after himself, of course, Camp Smith.

He had plans to make great

fortifications.

Temporarily he moved into a small log cabin that

was standing up there.

Later when one of the American generals came

back to Fort Howard he said they must be at the mouth of the river to protect the entrance , but in the meantime all these settlers came from the east and chose to settle up here during the period that Camp Smith

- 160 -

had been established.

They liked the protection and they enjoyed the

social contact because most of these officers came from the east, and brought their wives and families and were educated persons, and they enjoyed the natives also. There is a map on file in the Brown County courthouse listing the owners of the private claims which were given by the federal government. can be found in various books.

They

It is fascinating to read about those

people because most of them came from the east and many had lovely homes and then they came to this wilderness, and it really was a wilderness. No one had ventured any farther south.

Getting away from the river was

dangerous. Robert Irwin, Jr., came here in 1817 from the east and his father, Robert, Sr., and brother Alexander came in 1822 and 1823.

They all built

log homes and became very prominent in affairs of the community.

Governor

Cass appointed Robert Irwin, Jr., clerk of the newly formed Brown County, and he was also the county's first postmaster, using part of his house as the post office.

We are going to build a replica of what we think that

building looked like. They called this Shantytown for a great many years.

Judge Doty wanted it

called Menomineeville as he thought that was more aristocratic, but Shantytown really held on. A little log court house was built down below .

We had an archeological

dig a couple of years ago by the State Historical Society, and we unearthed the old stone foundation of this court house. dimensions from that .

We can get the

We had some old weathered logs that we purchased

- 161 -

up in Do0r County.

We are goinq to rebuild that court house and that

is where the famous trial of Chief Oshkosh took place. of Chief Oshkosh?

Have you heard

He was the Indian chief who shot another Indian be-

cause it was the law of his tribe, not the white man's law, and he was freed.

It was a very famous trial and you will find a mural portraying

that trial in the Supreme Court chambers in Madison showing its importance as one step introducing law and order in this part of the country. We are going to reconstruct a portion of a plank road because the original plank road between Green Bay and DePere went right

stra~ght

There is a beautiful ravine where we 're going to have a rustic bridge with a pathway going up to a fur trader's cabin, because that of course was the main enterprise of this community . The making of maple syrup and maple sugar was taught to the white man by the Indians .

They had discovered the use of the sap of the maples to

boil down to sugar which have a sugar camp.

t~ey

carried with them.

So we are going to

Right now we have several memorial trees established

which will en circle the sugar camp .

We hope eventually to have this .

You see, you get so excited about the potential and the things you want

- 162 -

-

to do, and some day we will do them if we last long enough, but if we don't it's up to you young people to carry on. We are going to have a school in the Fort Howard complex, an army post school.

We have a detailed description of it.

into taking over the school.

Colonel Ellis was talked

Here were all these little children of the

officers of the fort and really no place to educate them, so they opened a school.

They were very, very strict.

appeared every day to hear lessons.

In fact, the officer of the day

Believe me, you had to know your

assignment for that day. The garden clubs of Wisconsin are very anxious to do some landscaping. They have done a great deal of study on native plants and all of these places will be landscaped beautifully, but only with native things. will really be an arboretum.

- 163 -

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.. 164 -

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