Skip to main content

Green Bay



Green Bay is located on Lake Michigan in Brown County, Wisconsin, at the mouth of the Fox River.  The Menominee, Ho-Chunk, and other native peoples inhabited the area for at least 10,000 years, drawn to the area's rich soil and abundant fish, wild rice, and waterfowl. The earliest reliably documented contact between Europeans and Indians in Wisconsin was in 1634,  when French explorer Jean Nicolet (1598-1642) met the Ho-Chunk,  followed by missionaries Claude Allouez (1622-1689) and Jacques Marquette (1637-1675). The French named the area "La Baye," and it served as the main point of entry into the continent's interior.  In 1763, the British ousted the French and took control of Green Bay until 1783, when the Americans won control in the American Revolution.
Image result for green bay fort howard history
The Americans built Fort Howard in 1816 to control the entrance into Wisconsin.  The fort had excellent transportation routes on the Fox River and Lake Michigan and the entire Great Lakes system which had access the east.  The transportation routes were further improved with the construction of what is known as the old military road beginning at Fort Howard and extending west to the frontier.  The road proved much more efficient than navigating the waterways.  The rapid expansion of the United States had pushed the frontier west of the Mississippi and Wisconsin’s old military road proved far more important to civilians than the army once that it was constructed.  The road was key to the economic and civil development of Wisconsin, nurturing the settlement of the region.  
Wisconsin was incorporated into the Union in 1848 which also marked the beginning of the mass emigration from Austria-Hungary and Central Europe to the United States. First attracted to Wisconsin were Germans, who were soon followed by Czechs and Scandinavians.  The growth of the settlement in Green Bay was influenced by the presence and operations of Fort Howard.  Officers of the fort helped keep the peace between local Native American tribes and settlers.  The fort provided medical services, education, and a lively social environment.  With the fort, the community grew rapidly. Troops were actively stationed at Fort Howard until 1852 and the fort was officially closed in 1863.  The surrounding city of Green Bay, however, continued to expand.   In the 1870s, when the growth of railroads displaced steamboats as the main form of transportation to and from Green Bay, the city became a center of iron smelting, lumber milling, and paper products. Green Bay also became home to the state's first newspaper and was the first city to receive mail.  Surrounding villages include Allouez and Suamico.
Sanborn Map of Green Bay, 1900

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Mathey Family

Standing: Emilie and Alexander Mathey, Sitting: Rosalie and Joseph Mathey Standing: Lucy, Louisa, Josephine, Joseph, Catherine, Mary Antionette. Sitting: Joseph and Marie Rosalie. The Mathey family were my Swiss ancestors who immigrated to Manitowoc, Wisconsin before the Civil War.  One of Mathey's granddaughters, Louisa Greenwood, recalled what she knew of the Mathey family history.   "Joseph Antoine Mathey was a young soldier in France who, while on duty, met and fell in love with Maria Rosalie Teraze, a Swiss girl who tended sheep on the mountainside. When his father heard about it, he told him to go to his Swiss girl and not to ever bring her near him. They married and then came over here with a bunch of Swiss friends" It's not clear if Joseph was a French soldier or a Swiss soldier, but he identified himself as Swiss in all his records in the U.S.  from the New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists, Ship Brother Jonathan, Le Havre, France  ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Martin Woodruff (1795-1899): The Elder

Who is Martin Woodruff?  Martin is my 4th great-grandfather.  The only information I have to support this are a few newspaper articles from the Appleton Post-Crescent. from the Appleton Post-Crescent, Sept. 30th, 1898. And then almost exactly a year later, his obituary appears. from the Appleton Post-Crescent , Sept. 28, 1899, Thursday. From these articles we get his approximate birth date, February 1795, in Bohemia.  His arrival in the States in 1854, residence in Milwaukee, and then death date of September 21, 1899, in Green Bay. I can't find him anywhere in the census for Milwaukee, or Green Bay.  His death doesn't appear to be noted in the Green Bay newspapers.  Why did he move to Green Bay, if his only child lived in Appleton?  Does he have other relatives?  Is Woodruff even his birth name?  If he is from Bohemia, its probably changed to sound more American.  What other name variants should I be looking for?  Wotruf?...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bohemia

      Bohemia is a region of modern day Czech Republic.  It is bordered by Bavaria to the West, Saxony to the North, Poland to the Northeast, and Austria to the South.  During the time of the Holy Roman Empire, Bohemia was it's own kingdom until 1526, when it came under Austrian rule by the Hapsburg Monarchy.  Prague was even capital of the Holy Roman Empire at one point!  Under Hapsburg rule, Bohemia became increasingly more German, with the German language being spoken predominantly.  In 1848, many Czech nationalists revolted and wanted to restore Bohemia as Czech and independent, apart from Austria.  The revolution failed and Bohemia did not become independent until after WWI, when it became know as Czechoslovakia.  Pamphlet in German extolling the climate and soil of Wisconsin                  My 4th great-grandfather Martin Woodruff came to the States in 1854, from Bohemi...
Post a Comment
Read more