FISH CREEK VOICES An Oral History of A Door County Village edited by FISH CREEK VOICES An Oral History of A Door County Village FISH CREEK VOICES An Oral History of A Door County Village edited by Wm CAXTON LTD Sister Bay, Wisconsin Published by Wm Caxton Ltd Box 709 - Smith Drive & Hwy 57 Sister Bay, WI 54234 (414) 854-2955 Copyright 1990 by Edward Schreiber. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Printed in the United States of America. 10 987654321 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fish creek voices : oral an history of a Door County village / Edward & Lois Schreiber. p. cm. ISBN 0-940473-15-1 (alk. paper) : $20.00 - ISBN 0-940473-16-X (pbk. : alk. paper) $9.95 1. Fish Creek (Wis.)-Social life and customs. 2. Fish Creek (Wis.)-Biography. 3. Oral history. I. Schreiber, Edward, 1914- . II. Schreiber, Lois, 1910-1990 F589.F616F57 1990 977.5’63—dc20 90-38035 CIP ISBN# 0-940473-15-1 (hardcover) ISBN# 0-940473-16-X (paperback) This book is set in a version of Times Roman type chosen for its readability and attractiveness; it is printed on acid-neutral paper bound in sewn signatures and is intended to provide a very long useful life. This book is dedicated to the memory of my wife Lois Schreiber, who helped in many ways to organize the information and suggest the form of the material included here. She eagerly awaited the day it would be published, and she shared every step forward with me. It is my sincere hope that her expectations will be fulfilled. Edward Schreiber Table of Contents Preface by Edward Schreiber and Lois Schreiber ix Before The First Man by Duncan Thorp 1 The Village Fish Creek Then and Now by Edward Schreiber 5 A Talk At The Women’s Club (1975) by Harry Schuyler 42 Cottage Row -Fact or Fiction? by Archibald G. Douglass, Jr. 62 First Impressions by Lois Schreiber 71 My Years With the Fish Creek Post Office by Anita Schulz Growing Up In Fish Creek Fish Creek Memories by Allen Schreiber 81 The Seasons In Fish Creek by Helen Schreiber Allen 98 The Hackley Tragedy by Richard J. Boyd and Michael J. Burda 126 Notes From A Conversation with Elsa Bartelda Carl by Erna Carl Gilliam 138 Growing Up in Fish Creek by Duncan Thorp 143 Families and Personalities The Hill Family and Steamboat Line by Harwood William Hill 153 Martin Kinsey by Ann Thorp 170 Vlll Fish Creek Voices The Ingham Kinsey Family by Roy Kinsey and Virginia Kinsey 174 The Herr Doktor by Ann Thorp 178 The Duclon Family by Vivian Duclon Shine, Grace Duclon Lefebvre, Lucille Duclon Hays, and Clyde J. Duclon 183 The Thorp Family by Duncan Thorp 189 Ferdinand Hotz by G. Leonard Apfelbach, MD 202 Sketches From Life: Fish Creek Voices by Duncan Thorp 205 Vlad W. Rousseff - Depression Artist by Duncan Thorp 230 Ella Weborg’s Travels by Duncan Thorp 232 Places and Institutions The Peninsula Players Theatre-In-A-Garden by Tom Connors 237 Chambers Island by Joel Blahnik 240 How We Were Almost Killed by An Icelandic Cod, and Other Tales of the Heritage Ensemble by Gerald Pelrine 249 The Peninsula Players by Tom Birmingham 258 Index 269 Preface The idea for Fish Creek Voices presented itself to us one day as we were discussing the fact that there really is no history of Fish Creek other than one chapter in Hjalmar Holand’s Old Peninsula Days. Our generation, which gradually is being depleted, has memories and experiences which may be of interest to future generations. We felt that what we know of Fish Creek’s past should be organized and written down, and we began to plan the project. Very early on, we solicited the opinion and aid of Duncan Thorp, a member of one of Fish Creek’s founding families, and of Harwood Hill, who knows a great deal about the history of the Hill family and about steamboats and transportation generally in the town’s early years. Both were enthusiastic. Both contributed manuscripts within a short time. Suddenly we had the beginnings of a book on Fish Creek, and we decided to seek out others to contribute chapters on different aspects of Fish Creek’s past. Everyone we spoke with was enthusiastic, and, almost before we knew it, the project had grown to the size presented in this volume. We were very fortunate to obtain the photographs and maps included here, almost all of which were supplied by Bill Guenzel, who has copied and preserved a great deal of graphic material relating to the history of Door County. Bill’s collection was dramatically expanded and improved by work he did under a grant from Madeline Tourtelot through the Artists-In-Residence Program at the Peninsula School of Art in 1975. A great many people have allowed him to make photographic copies of old photographs and maps, and his collection is of great historical value. Bill is always interested in additional material, and anyone who has old photographs or maps that might be copied and added to the collection is urged to contact him. When we spoke to him about our project, he generously made his collection available to us. X Fish Creek Voices The following people contributed photos or maps that were included or offered for use in this volume: Alice Hotz Apfelbach, Josh Bell, James Brown, Elsa Carl, Martha Hochmeister Cherry, Eunice Clark, Archibald Douglass, Jr., Skip Fairchild, Mrs. Alfred Franke, Wilmer Gartman, Alice Paepcke Guenzel, Betsy and Paul Guenzel, Ferdinand L. Hotz, Dr. Gertrude Howe, Mrs. Caa McGee, Foster Olson, Rose Pelke, Vivian Duclon Shine, Harold Thorp, Merle Thorp, Ralph Von Briessen, Hudson Van Vorous, and Alma Lundberg Waldo. We thank them all for their generosity. We are also indebted to Linda Silvasi Kelly for line drawings which appear in several places in the book. It has been our intention in this book to record in a more or less informal way the beginnings of the village of Fish Creek, its people, and its development from a small Wisconsin fishing and lumbering village to a popular resort area. We have been as precise as memories will allow, and we beg our readers’ indulgence for any inaccuracies or discrepancies. We feel that we have presented a well- rounded picture of Fish Creek as it existed during the early part of the century, and we hope that you enjoy reading it as much as we have enjoyed bringing it to you. The royalties from the sale of this book will benefit the Gibraltar Historical Association. Edward Schreiber Lois Schreiber Fish Creek, January 1990 Before the First Man by Duncan Thorp In the beginning was the greatest wall of ice the Earth had ever seen. It devastated two-thirds of Europe and the top half of North America, where it was called the Wisconsin or Algonquin Glacier. It reached south beyond Chicago, and it melted into mighty rivers. It was a blue-steel plow that rent the land at random, or bent it into vast valleys with its enormous weight. Where the basins of Lakes Michigan and Huron join near the Straits of Mackinac, a plow of ice split off from the great Lake Michigan lobe and plowed a deep trench with sub-mountains on one side and limestone cliffs on the other. This became an arm of the lake that was named Baiee Vert (Green Bay) by early French explorers. The riven splinter of land is the hundred-mile-long finger of cliff and forest, sequined with water and a jeweled archipelago of islands, now known as the Door County Peninsula, though it was named Cape Townsend for a few years. The bluffs of Door County are part of the Niagara Escarpment, extending east to Niagara Falls. The peninsula was one of those wondrous nooks that explorers were always discovering as they prowled across the new settler, lands. It was an Eden of waters, fish, nests and game for the with acres of soil for husbandmen with plow and seed, and trees for lumbermen with saw and axe. Before European settlers found it, red men prized the Cape and fought bloody wars here. On one occasion, so they told the first Europeans they met, the last of the original Cape Indians were driven to the tip of the Cape, and most of their fighting men established themselves on the islands just north of Land’s End. Determined to recover their homeland in one last great battle, the Indians on the islands sent ashore two spies to seek out the enemy camp, with instructions to build a small signal fire on the beach where it was 2 Fish Creek Voices possible to land a raiding party at night. The two spies were captured and "persuaded" to reveal their mission. On a stormy night the enemies built the signal fire when the waves smashed against the crags, and the entire flotilla of canoes set forth and were wrecked in the night and the storm. A handful managed to climb the low cliff and were promptly tomahawked for their pains. Never again was the Cape the exclusive grounds of the Potowatami, and the strait at the tip of the Cape became known in French histories as Port des Mortes - Door of the Dead. The strait eventually was called "The Door" and the peninsula, Door County.