Lumber Yards and Saw Mills at
Menominee, Mich. (ca. 1910)
Dear George,
The more I dabble in
Menominee history, the more fascinating it becomes. It turns out
Menominee and Marinette were among the most important towns in the Northwest
Territory in the 1880’s and 90’s. This was the era of a major lumber boom
in the North Woods region. The
twin cities, directly across the Menominee River from one another, had a
combined population of almost 30,000 at the turn of the century, greater than
that of Green Bay, Madison, or Milwaukee, and they constituted the largest
lumber shipping port in the world. I’ve summarized some of the
information about this era by focusing on prominent lumbermen in Menominee and
Marinette who helped to build the industry. In doing so I’ve drawn
particularly from historical and biographical accounts provided by A. L. Sawyer
(1911), G. W. Hotchkiss (1908), G. N. Fuller (1926), the Western Historical
Company (1883), E. S. Ingalls (1863), and the Lewis Publishing Co. (1896) [see
references at end].
In the early 1800s fishing
and fur trading were the first forms of commerce in the Menominee River
valley. However, commercial lumbering was soon to become the area’s
dominant industry from the 1840s to about 1910. This was a period of
massive westward expansion in the U.S., and settlers needed endless supplies of
cheap lumber to build farmhouses, barns, stores, city dwellings, etc. By
1860 huge quantities of pine logs
were being floated down the Menominee River to the sawmills at Menominee
and Marinette, then shipped by schooner via Green Bay and Lake Michigan to
lumber yards at Milwaukee and Chicago.
The U.P.’s first sawmill
was built on the Menominee River in 1831 by lumber operators William Farnsworth
and Charles Brush. It was followed by several water-powered mills in the
1830’s and 1840’s, though none of these proved profitable. However, the
introduction of steam power and better machinery in the 1850’s began a new
era. In 1854 the New York Lumber Co. built the first steam mill at
Menekaunee, at that time a separate village from Marinette. Nelson Ludington,
Harrison Ludington, and Daniel Wells Jr., investors from Chicago and Milwaukee,
opened the N. Ludington Company in Marinette in 1856, and they built the area’s
second steam mill in 1857.
Kirby, Carpenter &
Company also opened a steam-powered mill in Menominee in 1857. In 1863
the Ludington, Wells, and Van Shaick Company constructed what was then known as
the world’s most modern steam operated lumber mill. The Sawyer Goodman
Company, established by Philetus Sawyer, his son Edgar, and William Goodman,
built their first mill in Menekaunee in 1880. They became the largest
lumber shipper on the river, and one of their mills operated until 1931, the
last existing sawmill on the Menominee River.
As the U.P. pine forests
began to be exhausted in the 1890’s, lumbermen and manufacturers shifted their
interests to hardwood manufacture, particularly maple flooring. The J. W.
Wells Lumber Company, established in Menominee in 1875, was a major leader in
that industry. By 1895 there were 22 lumber mills on the Menominee River,
9 on the Marinette side and 13 on the Menominee side. Twin City sawmills
manufactured 436,979,263 board feet of lumber in 1895. If laid end to end, the planks would
circle the earth three and a third times.
The last log drive on the
Menominee River was held in 1917, signaling the end of this extraordinary era.
Below are brief life histories of some of the figures who played
leading roles in Menominee and Marinette’s lumber industry from the 1830s to
1910. (1, 2, 4, 9, 13) [Note:
numbers in parentheses refer to references at
end.]
William Farnsworth. William Farnsworth was born in Vermont in 1796.
He worked briefly for the American Fur Company in Montreal, set up a trading
post and founded the city of Sheboygan in Wisconsin, and then started a new
trading post on the north side of the Menominee River in 1822. The
American Fur Company tried to destroy his business by provoking local Indians
to seize his goods. However, Farnsworth defeated the attempt when he
threatened to explode a keg of gunpowder in their presence. In 1824, with
the help of Chippewa Indians, Farnsworth forced Louis Chappee out of his
American Fur Company trading post on the Marinette side of the river.
Farnsworth and his Native American common law wife, Queen Marinette, operated
their trading business for several years. Faced with slim profits and the
decline of the fur trade, Farnsworth then turned to logging. In 1831 he
teamed up with Detroit-based Charles R. Brush to built the first dam and water
power sawmill on the Menominee River, the beginning of the logging industry in
the region. The initial timber cut was used to build the town’s first frame
house for Queen Marinette. Brush turned out to be a useless partner, and
the two men’s logging venture faltered. Eventually the mill was seized by
the territorial sheriff and sold at auction. Farnsworth lost his life on Lake
Michigan in a steamer accident in 1860 when the steamer Lady Elgin was rammed
by the schooner Augusta while en route between Chicago and Waukegan. (3, 4, 15,
22)
Nelson Ludington. Nelson Ludington was born in Ludingtonville, New York,
in 1818, the fourth child in a family of 16 children. When he was 21, he
and his brother Harrison moved west, relocating to Milwaukee where they began
mercantile careers with an initial cash capital of $35. Struck by the
potential of timberlands in Wisconsin and Michigan, Nelson joined with his
brother and Daniel Wells Jr. to form the firm of N. Ludington & Co.,
specializing in the manufacture of pine lumber. They built their first
mill in 1849 at Flat Rock which would later become Escanaba. Following
the company’s initial success, Isaac Stephenson of Marinette joined the firm,
and a larger mill was erected on the Menominee River at Marinette. Nelson
Ludington was the head of the company from its founding in 1849 until his death
in 1883. The firm averaged 25 million feet of lumber per year at the
Marinette mill, along with 10 million shingles. The company's main lumber
yards were at Milwaukee until Ludington transferred the firm’s headquarters to
Chicago in 1852. There it became the most successful company in Chicago's
lumber trade. (13, 24)
Isaac Stephenson. Isaac Stephenson was born in New Brunswick, Canada, in
1829. Stephenson worked as a teenager in the lumber industry in Maine, then
moved to Wisconsin in 1845 where he eventually entered the lumber business for
himself. When he was 23 the city of Chicago awarded him a contract to
supply the lumber to construct the city’s massive breakwater. Stephenson
settled permanently in Marinette in 1858. He gained the controlling
interest in the N. Ludington Co., and his lumbering operations grew
dramatically during the Civil War. Though his business suffered huge
losses from the Peshtigo Fire in 1871, Stephenson rebuilt and soon became one
of the wealthiest lumbermen in the Great Lakes region. He owned vast pine
lands in Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as real estate in Marinette, Green
Bay, Milwaukee, Chicago, and throughout the Great Lakes region. He built
the Lauerman Bros. department store, founded the Stephenson Banking Co., was
the principal owner of the Menominee River Boom Co. and the M&M Paper Co.,
owned farms and iron mines, and was a founder of Menominee’s first newspaper,
the Herald. Stephenson held several offices in Marinette County, including
town supervisor, county board chairman, and justice of the peace; was a member
of the Wisconsin State Assembly; a member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Wisconsin from 1883 to 1889; and a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin from
1907-1915. In 1901 Stephenson established the Milwaukee Free Press
as a progressive competitor to the more conservative Milwaukee Sentinel.
In 1909 he gave a gift of a prized holstein cow as a gift to President William
Howard Taft, and the cow, named Pauline Wayne, grazed on the White House
lawn. She was the last presidential cow. Stephenson returned from
Washington in 1915, retiring to his home in Marinette. He died on March
15, 1918, at the age of 88. (20, 25)
Andrew Stephenson. Andrew Stephenson, a prominent logger and one
of the major builders of the city of Menominee, was born on the St. Johns River
in New Brunswick on Apr. 10, 1843. He left school as a child to work on
the farm for his father, then returned for one winter term at age 14. In
the winters he assisted his father in logging. He wasn’t paid anything
until age 22 when his father gave him just enough money to pay his fare to
Menominee where relatives were in the logging business. Stephenson arrived at
Menominee on April 15, 1865, and obtained work driving a team of horses in a
Ludingon, Wells & Van Shaick logging camp for $40 a month. After
working in the woods for three years as a logger, Stephenson was made
superintendent of Ludington, Wells & Van Schaick's logging business, a
position he occupied for the next thirty years. Stephenson served as the
Mayor of Menominee for two terms, was a member of the board of aldermen for
several terms, was county road commissioner when the first roads were
established in Menominee county and built the first road across the county, and
was a supervisor for three years. A.L. Sawyer, wrote in a biography that
"his services have been of inestimable value to both his chosen city and
county, and in turn he has been highly honored." (17, 19)
Abner Kirby.
Abner Kirby was born in Starks,
Maine, in 1818. On his own from the age of 12, he worked as a youth in
the Maine lumber camps. Too young to be a chopper, he was a camp cook,
then became a riverman. He learned the jeweler's trade in his teens in
Bangor, then worked in a jewelry store for seven years at Skowhegan,
Maine. In 1844 he moved to Milwaukee. Soon after his arrival he was
appointed U.S. Postmaster. Kirby built a brick building in Milwaukee at
which he operated his jewelry store for ten years. Then in 1857 Kirby
built a sawmill at Menominee. Samuel Stephenson bought an interest in the
mill in 1859. The Stephenson & Kirby mill was the beginning of the
vast business that come to be incorporated as the Kirby-Carpenter
Company. In 1957 Kirby also bought a half interest in the City Hotel in
Milwaukee which was renamed the Kirby House when he became the sole
owner. Kirby named one of the hotel rooms "Hell" and used it to
house clients who had drunk too much. Another room, “Heaven”, was
reserved for newlyweds. A war Democrat who supported Lincoln, Kirby was elected
mayor of Milwaukee in 1865. On his 75th birthday Kirby did a series of
handsprings down the hall of his former hotel to demonstrate his fitness.
However, he died later that year. Kirby's obituary states: "There
were few men better known throughout the country than Abner Kirby. Rough
in dress and language, his heart was soft as that of a child." (7,
21, 25)
Augustus Alvord
Carpenter. Augustus Carpenter
was born in 1825 in Chateaugay, New York. In 1852 he traveled to California
with his brother William during the gold rush, then returned to Wisconsin in
1855. With his brother, he purchased an interest in a mulay mill at
Menominee which was operated by Abner Kirby and Samuel M. Stephenson.
Augustus Carpenter served as president, and the firm was incorporated as
"The Kirby-Carpenter Company" in 1872. The original sawmill had
an annual capacity of 2,000,000 feet of lumber. By the early 1890's
the company was one of the largest lumber producers in Michigan, owned 800
million feet of standing timber, employed a thousand men, and cut 115 million
feet per year. The company owned vast lumber yards in Chicago, an
important part of that city's industries. Carpenter made Chicago his
headquarters, with his company’s manufacturing component located in
Menominee. He was president of the Lumbermen's National Bank of
Menominee, held major interests in the Electric Light Railway and Power Company
of Menominee, and headed several major firms in Chicago. (19) (12)
Samuel Merritt Stephenson. Samuel Stephenson was born
in New Brunswick in 1831. At the age of 6 he began to support himself in
the logging industry in Maine, and he was earning seven dollars a month as a
logger by age 10. He moved to Delta County in the U.P. in 1846 with
thirty cents in his pocket and came to Menominee in 1853. Stephenson
became associated with his brother Isaac and William Holmes, both major figures
in lumbering in the region. In 1858 Stephenson became partners with Abner
Kirby of Milwaukee. Stephenson acquired heavy timber holdings in the
south and west and became one of the country's lumber kings. He was the
president of the First National Bank of Menominee for many years and the
founder of the elegant Stephenson Hotel in Menominee In his later years he
created Pine Hill Stock Farm just outside of Menominee, one of the model dairy
farms in the country. His dairy produced 400 quarts of milk a day and 600
pounds of butter per week. Stephenson was Menominee's first mayor, first
township supervisor, an early member of the county board of education, a state
senator, and a four-term U.S. congressman. Stephenson passed away at his home
in Menominee on July 31, 1907. The city of Stephenson was named for
brothers Samuel, Isaac, and Robert Stephenson. (14, 19)
Andrew
C. Merryman. Andrew Merryman was born at Bowdoin, Maine, in 1831,
the second of seven children of farming parents. Andrew only went to school three winter months a year as a young boy, working the rest of the
time as a farm laborer. He
apprenticed as a ship carpenter at age 17 at Portland and became a master ship
builder, constructing his own brig, the A.C. Merryman, in 1855.
He went to Wisconsin soon after and started up a sawmill at Fond du Lac
with his brother and Haynes Hunter. Selling his shipbuilding interests, Merryman invested all his
spare capital in white pine timberlands.
In 1866, partnering with I. K. and W. C. Hamilton, he helped organize
the Hamilton & Merryman Company and built saw mills at the mouth of the
Menominee River. The company
shipped 30 to 50 million feet of lumber annual to their yards at Chicago. In addition to managing the Hamilton
and Merryman mills, Merryman was treasurer of the Menominee River Boom Co., a
director of the Stephenson National Bank, owner of several water enterprises on
the river, and a stockholder in the M&M Paper Co., the Marinette Flouring
Mills, and numerous other companies.
Merryman ran for congressman and for governor of Wisconsin on the
Prohibition ticket. One of his
biographers wrote, "In his abhorrence of intemperance he is fearless and
outspoken, and unceasingly wars against the evil by raising his voice and using
his ballot." (8, 11)
Judge Eleazer S.
Ingalls. Eleazer Ingalls was
born at Nashua,New Hampshire in 1820, At age 18 he left for Chicago with
another teenager, driving over a thousand miles by ox team. Ingalls
settled at Antioch, Illinois, where his father was a farmer. Ingalls
worked at blacksmithing and studied law, eventually entering practice. In 1850
Ingalls organized a caravan and crossed the plains to the Gold Rush in
California . After two years there he returned east, planning to bring
his family back to California. However, he changed his mind, and in 1859
he settled on the shore of Green Bay a little south of the Menominee River's
mouth. He soon became a prominent member of the Menominee community,
serving for several years as a probate judge. Judge Ingalls was the first
publisher and editor of the Menominee Herald newspaper (later the Herald-Leader)
and was active in railroad construction interests. Ingalls secured a
contract from the state to build the Green Bay and Bay De Noc State road within
Menominee County. With his brother Charles, Judge Ingalls built a
sawmill in Ingallston township in 1866. They later sold the mill, and it
burned in 1874. Ingalls also played a major role in extending the
Menominee branch railroad to the Iron Range. Shipments of iron ore were
begun in 1878. Ingalls died in 1879 at the relatively young age of 59.
(14, 19)
Augustus Spies. Augustus Spies was born in Hesse, Darmstadt,
Germany in 1836. He attended school in Germany for seven years, then went
to work at age 13 on his father's farm. He came with his parents to the
U.S. in 1850. At age 22 he rented and then purchased a 160-acre
farm. At age 30 he sold his farm and moved to Menominee where he started
a meat market on the corner of Ludington Ave. and Kirby St. Spies ran the
market until 1875 while investing in real estate and timber lands. In
1880 Spies and Henry Martin constructed the Spies Lumber Mill on the Menominee
River which Spies operated for the next 14 years. He was a director of
the Stephenson Banking Co. of Marinette, an organizer and vice-president of the
First National Bank in Menominee, president of the Menominee & Marinette
Light and Traction Company, president of the Marinette & Menominee Paper
Co, and president of the August Spies Lumber Company of Menominee. Spies
built the first brick block on Main Street in Menominee, and the Spies home at
the corner of Main St. and Woodford Court was the first brick residence built
in the city. Spies' generosity to the city is best known by his gift of
the Spies Public Library site and building in 1903. Spies was elected
Mayor in 1906 and reelected in 1908. He served on city council for for
years and was a member and treasurer of the Menominee school board. He
died at home in 1915. According to his obituary in the Menominee
Herald-Leader, "no man, possibly, has been more prominently identified with
the business progress of Menominee than Augustus Spies." (13, 17,
19)
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John W. Wells. John Wells was born near Davenport, Iowa, on
Mar. 20, 1841. The Wells family originated in England, where the town of
Wells was founded by the family, and family members came to America as early as
1635. John was educated in the public schools in Iowa and then did
a course in a business college in Davenport. He moved to Menominee at age
21 and became a bookkeeper for two years. Then he became a partner in a
lumber business in Oconto. He moved his Oconto mill operation and
business to Menominee’s Green Bay shore in 1875, serving as president of the J.
W. Wells Lumber Co. Wells also was vice-president and general manager of
the Girard Lumber Company, one of the owners of the Bird-Wells Lumber Company
of Wausaukee, and president of the Northern Hardware and Supply Co., the White
Pine Lumber Co., the Menominee Iron Works, and the Wisconsin and Northern
Railway. Wells was a member of Menominee's city council for two terms and was
mayor of Menominee for three terms, beginning in 1893. According to A. L.
Sawyer (1911), "His administration is on record as one of the best ever
given to the municipal government of Menominee." (13, 18, 19)
There are a lot of parallel
in these stories. Most of these
men grew up in large, poor farm families in the northeastern U.S. They typically left school by their
early teens to work on the family farm or in logging, then headed to the
wilderness of the Northwest territory by their late teens or early twenties,
drawn by the promise of a potential lumber boom. Often starting as manual laborers in the logging camps,
these individuals came to start up their own businesses and ultimately became
owners and managers of huge, prosperous firms. All in all, these are classic rags to riches tales.
Having grown up on the
Menominee River, we kids always had an awareness and vague sense of connection
to the Menominee logging era. When
my grandfather, V.A. Sr., emigrated from Sweden to Marinette in 1893 as a
teenager, he initially worked in a U.P. lumber camp. My dad was born in Marinette during the
logging era and was in the fourth grade when the last log drive occurred. When we moved to our family river
property in the 1940’s, there were still leftover structures from the logging
companies near our house, and the channel behind Pig Island was filled with
sawed-off stumps from decades earlier.
Steve and I used to tow dead logs home behind our rowboat and try to
balance on them, pretending that we were boom-men. We never mastered the art, but we knew we were growing up in
an area with an amazing history.
Love,
Dave
SOURCES: (1) Anderson, Ken, “Menominee County,” www.kenanderson.net; (2) Anon., “Beginning
of Marinette County Industry,” www.rootsweb.ancestry.com; (3)
Anon., “A Brief History of Marinette,” www.marinette.wi.us;
(4) Anon., “Heritage of the Route,” (www.cuppad.org);
(5) Anon., “Jesse Spalding,” www.rootsweb.ancestry.com;
(6) Anon., "Menominee County History," www.menominee.genwebsite.net;
(7) Anon., "We Should All Awake, for Abner Kirby is Dead." The
Jeweler's Circular and Horological Review, Vol. 27, Oct. 4, 1893, p. 8, www.books.google.com; (8) J. H. Beers & Co. (1896),
“Commemorative Biographical Record of the West Shore of Green Bay, Wisconsin,” www.books.google.com; (9) Fuller, G. N. (1926), “A History of
the Upper Peninsula of Michigan,” www.quod.lib.umich.edu;
(10) Google Images (for photos); (11)
Hall, H. (Ed.) (1896)
"America's Successful Men of Affairs," www.books.google.com; (12) Hotchkiss, G.
W. (1894), “Industrial Chicago: The Lumber Interests, Vol. 6,” www.books.google.com; (13) Hotchkiss,
G. W. (1908), “History of the Lumber and Forest Industry of the Northwest,” www.books.google.com; (14) Ingalls, E. S. (1863), “Centennial
History of Menominee County,”www.books.google.com;
(15) Karamanski, T. J. (1989), “Deep Woods Frontier”, www.books.google.com; (16) Lewis
Publishing Co. (1895), “Memorial Record of the Northern Peninsula of Michigan,”
www.quod.lib.umich.edu;
(17) McCracken, S. B. “Men of Progress: Embracing Biographical Sketches
of Representative Michigan Men (1900),” www.books.google.com;
(18) Murphy, Robert G., “End of an Era: Wells Lumber Co. ‘For Sale’,” www.menomineewellses.com; (19)
Sawyer, A. L. (1911), “A History of the Northern Peninsula of Michigan and Its
People,” www.quod.lib.umich.edu; (20)
Stephenson, I. (1915), “Recollections of a Long Life: 1829-1915,” www.electricscotland.com;
(21) Stover, Frances. Milwaukee Journal, Aug. 11, 1955.
"Milwaukee's Forgotten Mayor," www.news.google.com; (22) Team Van Rens (undated;
accessed May 2014), “William Farnsworth – married Queen Marinette,” www.teamvanrens.com; (23) Western
Historical Company (1883), “History of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan,” www.files.usgwarchives.net;
(24) Western Publishing and Engraving Co. (1900). “Cyclopedia of
Michigan: Historical and Biographical,” www.books.google.com;
(25) Wikipedia. "Abner Kirby,", “Harrison Ludington,” “Isaac
Stephenson,” www.wikipedia.org
APPENDIX: Twin City
Lumber Mills in 1895 (with their cut that year) (13)
MENOMINEE:
-Girard Lumber Co.,
26,371,143 feet of lumber;
-Menominee River Shingle
Co., 21,063,000 shingles;
-Kirby, Carpenter Co.,
103,568,961 feet of lumber; 28,380,750 shingles;
-Ludington, Wells & Van
Schaick Co., 35,000,000 feet of lumber, 8,500,000 shingles;
-Menominee Bay Shore Lumber
Co., 18,000,000 feet of lumber;
-Donovan & O'Connor,
15,000,000 feet of lumber 10,000,000 shingles;
-Ramsey & Jones,
12,574,311 feet of lumber;
-August Spies, 5,000,000
feet of lumber;
-Menominee Saw Mill Co.,
7,000,000 feet of lumber, 1,500,000 shingles;
-Blodgett & Davis Lumber
Co., 20,000,000 feet of lumber.
-Total for Menominee:
216,143,272 feet of lumber; 69,443,750 shingles.
MARINETTE:
-Hamilton & Merryman
Co., 22,927,713 feet of lumber, 5,046,500 shingles;
-Scofield & Arnold
Lumber Co., 18,010,000 feet of lumber;
-R. W. Merryman & Co.,
23,376,500 feet of lumber, 381,500 shingles;
-Lieber & Noll
Manufacturing Co., 12,000,000 shingles;
-N. Ludington Co.,
23,300,000 feet of lumber, 4,700,000 shingles;
-Stephenson Manufacturing
Co., 12,766,114 feet of lumber, 1,259,500 shingles;
-H. Witbeck Co, 43,084,526
feet of lumber, 10,624,000 shingles;
-Total for Marinette:
143,464,853 feet of lumber, 31,011,500 shingles.
MENEKAUNEE (today part of
Marinette):
-Menominee River Lumber Co.,
25,000,000 feet of lumber;
-Sawyer, Goodman Co.,
26,000,000 feet of lumber, 6,000,000 shingles;
Total for Menekaunee: 51,000,000
feet of lumber, 109,155,250 shingles.
Grand Total for the Twin
Cities: 436,979,263 feet of lumber, 109,155,250 shingles.
G-mail Comments
-Phyllis S-S
(6-14): Dear Dave,
Fascinating. When are we
going to the Dayton show?….Going to see Carmen? I do not have high hopes
for it after talking with LC.
phyllis
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