Island Village
A Community By Itself
Bill Hooker - Glimpses of an Earlier Milwaukee
Bill Hooker - Glimpses of an Earlier Milwaukee
Jones Island was to me the most picturesque spot in the city. It included docks and warehouses, where trout and whitefish were dressed and shipped, but the settlement was the real attraction. There was nothing else like it.
Fishermen from the Baltic regions of Poland and Germany had squatted there, and the streets and narrow lanes and bypaths ran in every direction, most of them in curves, and some actually in circles. A hundred comfortable little homes had been built there, many of them of driftwood or wreckage, and overgrown with Virginia creepers and morning glories. It was a community by itself, and had several small saloons where good beer and free lunches were served, and everyone seemed to be happy and peaceful. Old-timers will remember that for years no policeman visited Jones Island, for the fishermen were an orderly lot. By common consent they had a “governor,” whose word was almost law, and any dereliction on the part of an islander was sure to receive attention from him. If the offense was too serious for mere reproof, the governor would take the offender across to the mainland in a yawl, and land him at the police station at Florida and Clinton streets. But this was a rare thing, though once in a while some skylarking individual from the mainland would go to the settlement, try to start a row, and find himself in the hands of a half dozen burly fishermen, who would row him across the Kinnickinnic, and advise him to stay there. Jones Islanders believed they had obtained squatter sovereignty, and the little community was undisturbed for perhaps 30 years. Then came railway tracks, car ferries, a garbage incinerator, and other necessary things. The fishing dwindled, and finally little was left of the quaint settlement. |
An Island No More
Milwaukee Sentinel - January 10, 1886
Milwaukee Sentinel - January 10, 1886
Jones Island, at the mouth of the harbor, has ceased to be an island, and is now a peninsula. The wash of the beach has filled up the old mouth of the Milwaukee River, so the island is now connected with the mainland to the south.
The majority of the islanders are Poles, with some German and Norwegians, but not many. The population is not less than 800 souls, living in 130 old cottages and houses, which were moved over on scows. The island has been platted, and streets laid out, but no attention has been paid to them by residents, who allow chance to rule in the making of lanes and footpaths. The inhabitants are thrifty and have large families. The men work as fishermen, or in the coal and lumber yards along the harbor. There is no policeman on the island, yet not a single disturbance has been reported there for some time. They have a grocery and saloon on the island, but no butcher shop. The women buy meat in bulk at the slaughter-houses, making a butcher shop quite unnecessary. For every-day communication, each family has a rowboat. |
A Day in the Life
Ruth Kriehn - Fisherfolk of Jones Island
Ruth Kriehn - Fisherfolk of Jones Island
A typical day on a Jones Island fishing tug in the 1930s was long and hard. On mornings when the Tessler went out, Charles and Albert Tessler, captain and engineer, awoke at four-thirty. Albert spent about three-quarters of an hour firing up the boiler in their eighty-foot tug, to get a head of steam. Charles, his son Richard, and two hands, Joe Miller and Stanley Budzisz, joined him a bit later.
At six-o'clock the captain signaled, and the boat pulled away from the dock to take on coal at the United Coal and Dock Company. Coal bunkers were filled, and the boat headed for open water. In nautical terms, the captain headed “two hours and ten minutes northeast by east half east.” In the vast expanse of Lake Michigan he had to find two little flags bobbing about on a slender six-foot pole twenty-one miles away. Consulting his compass, gauging his time, Captain Tessler was right on the mark. Speed was halted. The buoy was hooked and dragged aboard. As the net reached the boat, its meter cord was pulled over a roller and around the steam-powered winch – a “lifter.” The fish caught in the mesh of the net slid along a pan onto a table in the forward hold – the “doghouse.” There the fish were picked out, thrown into a container, and the nets were again packed in boxes. For three hours, with monotonous regularity, the nets were wound up. The captain and engineer yelled to each other to regulate the speed of the lifter and the speed of the boat, to keep the nets from jamming. Then came the setting of the nets. The boat might simply turn around, or the captain might decide to set the nets in another location. The one-flag buoy and anchor were dropped into the water, and one after another the boxes of dry nets were let out. It was a tricky procedure. Two men on either side of a box of nets in the stern worked in absolute unison. One grabbed the lead sinkers, the other the floats, and with a slight throwing motion let the net flutter into the water as the boat steadily moved forward. They had to make sure they were in perfect rhythm with the speed of the tug. There could be no hesitation, no stopping. The boat traveled at fifteen to twenty miles an hour; five miles of nets were set in twenty minutes. A third crew member quickly fastened the end of one net to the beginning of another, never breaking the flow of movement. He had to have the empty boxes out of the way and the filled ones ready to take their place. Any fouling of a net would result in costly tears. When the last box had been let out, the second buoy with two flags was dropped, and the trip home began. While Captain Tessler piloted the tug, the boxes of slimy nets were lined up on the deck. One of the crew flushed them down with a stream of steamy water. The others stood at a long table and cleaned fish, slicing their bellies open, throwing the guts in one container, the fish in another. Flocks of squawking gulls followed the boat. As if by magic they appeared from nowhere, impatient for their treat. At the dock the regular fish dealers and customers were waiting. Fish were weighed and sold. The Milwaukee market usually absorbed the catch, but in the spawning season the surplus catch was iced and packed in boxes. Attached to each box was a little red or blue printed bill of sale. The express company was phoned, and the fish were soon on their way to the Lakeside Fish Company of Chicago. Only after the tug had been carefully inspected, only after fourteen boxes of dry nets had been carried aboard, and only after the shore crew and three of the boat crew had stretched and rolled five miles of nets, did the day end. |