Birth of the Bloody 6th Ward

Here’s a building that represents far more than its appearance suggests. It’s the forgotten cornerstone of Oshkosh’s Bloody Sixth Ward.

The northeast corner of 6th and Ohio (556 W. 6th Avenue).

The old Sixth Ward was created in 1871. It was carved out of the Third Ward, which covered most of the city south of the Fox River. That vast sweep of land was cleaved at Minnesota Street. Everything to the west went into the new Sixth Ward.

The original Sixth Ward. Bounded on the north by Rush Ave, on the south by W. 18th Avenue, on the east by Minnesota Street, and running west to the former city limit at Eagle Street (click image to enlarge).

The Sixth Ward was a hinterland of marsh and scrub in 1871. But for the next two decades it became the landing point for the second great wave of German-speaking immigrants to Oshkosh.

An 1867 drawing depicting a portion of the sparsely developed Sixth Ward prior to its establishment. The red line runs down Minnesota Street, the eastern edge of the ward.

John M. Lueck was an early settler in the new ward. Just getting there was an adventure. Lueck was born in 1813 in Prussia. He was 44 when he left his homeland. Lueck boarded a sailing ship for America with his wife and their three kids. It was a bad trip. His wife died during the voyage. The boat lacked facilities for dealing with a corpse. Mother was tossed overboard.

After the ship reached New York, Lueck left his three kids in the big city. They were 16, 13, and 10, and they were on their own. Lueck returned to Prussia to find a new wife. He searched for more than a year before finding Wilhelmina. She was 21 years younger than John Lueck. The newlyweds sailed for New York. This was a better trip. Wilhelmina was pregnant by the time they docked. After she birthed a son, the reunited clan – six in all now – headed west to Oshkosh.

The eldest son, Frederick Lueck (shown above with his wife, Mathilde), was 16 when his father left him in New York to tend to his younger siblings. He was 21 when he enlisted in the Wisconsin Infantry to fight in the Civil War. Fred was wounded minutes into his first battle and had to have his lower-right leg amputated. His cork leg saved him 40-years later when his small boat capsized on Lake Butte des Mortes. The prosthetic kept him afloat until he was spotted by a rescuer.

The Cornerstone
It took John Lueck a few years to find his way in this new place. The Luecks lived on the south side, first on South Main and then on Tenth. He worked in construction before settling into his principal vocation as a school teacher. Lueck was fluent in both German and English. A coveted skill set in a city flooded with German-speaking immigrants producing children at a prodigious clip. Lueck gave private lessons from his home and also taught at the German and English Academy on Court Street.

The former home of the German and English Academy at 316 Court Street. The school was founded in 1858 and rebuilt in 1875 after the great fire of that year.

John Lueck was moving up in the new world. In November 1874, he bought an empty lot at the northeast corner of 6th and Ohio. He began building the following spring. The main section was purpose built, with an apartment upstairs and room for a store on the ground floor. On the east side of the structure, he attached a single-story space for a saloon. There were no saloons or grocery stores in the Sixth Ward when Lueck moved there. He installed one of each. His 1875 building still stands at Sixth and Ohio.

Lueck’s saloon and grocery laid the foundation for the 6th Ward’s development. His corner was soon surrounded with homes and small businesses. Ohio Street became the Sixth Ward’s main artery.

A great wave of immigrants flowed in from villages in the highlands of Bavaria and Bohemia. In Oshkosh, they were called Highholders. Like Lueck, the Highholders had fled from kingdoms grown increasingly repressive. Unlike the Lutheran Lueck, the Highholders were Catholic. But that appears to have been a minor concern. Lueck bonded with his new neighbors. They shared much in common, including a willful sense of pride that often led to conflict.

The old Sixth Ward earned its “Bloody” byname during those early years of furious growth. It started as a slur and turned into a badge of honor. The nickname originated with New York’s Bloody Sixth Ward, home to the most notorious and violent slums in America. The first print reference to Oshkosh’s Bloody Sixth Ward appeared in 1897 in an Oshkosh Daily Northwestern blurb that referenced the fights at Sixth and Ohio. The ward’s bloody reputation was established at Lueck’s place.

Sixth and Ohio in 1885. Lueck’s grocery and saloon is at 274 Sixth, a relic of the old house-numbering system.

Bloody Sixth and Ohio
Lueck’s saloon was a hotbed of Sixth-Ward networking, politicking, and fistfighting. All of it fueled by a rushing river of alcohol. John Lueck was hip deep in the whirl. Aside from tending the bar, he was still teaching, and also serving as a Sixth-Ward election official and the Sixth-Ward School Commissioner.

The Daily Northwestern was irritated by Lueck's expanding influence in the secluded ward. The paper of record began throwing jabs at the saloon-keeping school commissioner. The insults were steeped in the nativist bias of the paper’s co-publisher, John Hicks, and his fear of an immigrant underclass exerting its power. Lueck was a symbol of that power and an easy target.

John HIcks of the Oshkosh Daily Northwestern.

Lueck’s outside interests often took him away from the saloon. In his absence, the bar was tended by Wilhelmina, who also ran the grocery store, and their two teenage sons. The boys were big on serving beer to their young friends from the neighborhood. Word got around. The Daily Northwestern snarked about the “guardian of our educational institutions” selling liquor to minors. And then there was the stabbing.

August 7, 1882; Oshkosh Daily Northwestern.

Saloons were supposed to be closed on Sundays. Another northside nicety that the Sixth Warders happily ignored. Lueck’s saloon was roaring one early Sunday evening in August of 1882. The place had been packed all day. Lueck, Wilhelmina, and their son Henry were working the bar, trying to keep pace with the guzzling crowd. About 6 p.m., the delirium peaked.

A woodworker named Charles Hayes was hustled out the door for being too drunk. Hayes objected. He ran to the back door and tried to force his way back in. Lueck met him there and drove Hayes into the yard, where they began fighting. A melee ensued with Wilhelmina, Henry, and a bartender named Ernst Ziegenhagen joining in. They grabbed clubs from the woodpile and tried beating Hayes into submission. Hayes pulled a knife to ward them off. He stabbed Wilhelmina and then jumped the fence.

Ziegenhagen chased after him. They were followed by a mob from the bar. Ziegenhagen caught up with Hayes at 5th and Minnesota and got slashed. The mob descended. Hayes was beaten unconscious.

The Reliance Flour Mill at 5th and Minnesota where Hayes was beaten by the mob.

Eventually, the cops arrived to save Hayes for what was surely an epic Monday-morning hangover. The Daily Northwestern kicked into high gear. Under the Monday headline was a breathless, paragraph-long sentence; one of the great tantrums of Oshkosh journalism.

Shortly before 6 o'clock last evening a disgraceful row and stabbing affair occurred on the premises of John Lueck, who keeps a saloon at No. 120 Sixth St., and who is also school commissioner for the Sixth ward, and who presides over the welfare of one of our public institutions of learning, and who has a vote in expending $36,000 of the city's money annually, and who has before been arrested and convicted of selling liquor to minors, pupils of the school over which he is commissioner, and whose wife was stabbed yesterday during a saloon fight occasioned by a large crowd drinking and carousing about his saloon on Sunday.

– Oshkosh Daily Northwestern; Monday, August 7, 1882. The address given here is from the numbering system used in the early 1880s.

Lueck saw it as nothing more than rough play. He said Hayes was his friend and a good customer. He said Wilhelmina and Ziegenhagen were fine. Lueck refused to lodge a complaint against Hayes, so the Chief of Police personally charged him with assault with a deadly weapon. Lueck stepped forward to represent Hayes as his attorney. “Old Man” Lueck served his client well. Hayes was let off with a fine.

The Bridge
John Lueck turned 72 in 1885. He’d been a Sixth Ward leader for a decade. The Oshkosh Daily Northwestern still couldn’t tolerate it. The paper ran pieces that mocked him for being old. After Lueck’s reelection as school commissioner, the Northwestern published a story claiming the vote was rigged. And when Lueck’s 25-year-old son, Henry, came down with the DTs, the paper bayed about his alcoholism and the imaginary snakes visiting him.

The constant harping had its effect. Lueck’s saloon license was cancelled for no specific reason in 1886. He protested and the council immediately recanted. Lueck remained an imposing figure. But the explosive growth of the Sixth Ward was bringing change.

Lueck’s saloon didn’t stand alone anymore. By the end of 1885, the Sixth Ward was home to a half dozen saloons. The most prominent was the Nigl saloon and grocery at the northwest corner of 9th and Ohio. Joseph J. Nigl was a Bavarian immigrant who moved into the Sixth Ward in 1881 with his parents and siblings. The Nigl place opened in 1885, and in 1890 Nigl was elected Supervisor of the Sixth Ward. At this same time, Lueck bowed out as school commissioner. The mantle was being passed.

Nigl’s Saloon and Grocery with members of the Sixth Ward Band. Joseph J. Nigl is the tallest of the three men standing near the center of the top of the platform with a mug of beer raised in his right hand.

Despite its progress, the Sixth Ward was the most isolated ward in the city. Nigl and his Sixth Ward cohorts lobbied for a bridge over the Fox River to connect Ohio and Wisconsin streets. They got their bridge in 1892.

The original bridge linking Ohio Street and the Sixth Ward to Wisconsin Street and the north side of Oshkosh. The view from the south side of the river looking north.

The increased traffic created a boom-town atmosphere, especially along the Ohio Street corridor. Within three years, twelve more saloons opened in the ward. Lueck’s place was no longer among them.

Lueck retired from his saloon and grocery in 1892. He was 79 and still in good health, but his disengagement from public life was total. His vital role in the birth of the Bloody Sixth Ward was quickly forgotten. His passing attracted little notice.

He was playing cards with friends on a Friday night when he suffered a massive stroke. Lueck was unconscious for eight days. John M. Lueck died on December 28, 1895. He was buried in Riverside Cemetery.

John M. Lueck, Born Jan 1, 1813, Died Dec 28, 1895.

Over the coming weeks I plan to post two additional stories that will cover the full history of the saloons, speakeasies, and taverns that were in the building at the northeast corner of 6th and Ohio.

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Looking towards the northeast corner of Sixth and Ohio in the 1940s.

Fritz, Hanna and the Last Case of Oshkosh Bock

Feb 1970: Fritz Smick was a couple of weeks past his 85th birthday when he brought home his last case of Oshkosh Bock. This was one of his old rituals. Bock beer was a stronger beer released once a year. It was always this time of year. When winter was crawling towards spring.

When Fritz was a kid, his father ran a saloon on 6th Street. When bock-beer season arrived, the saloons would hang a special sign in their windows. The sign was illustrated with a mischievous-looking goat. That too was part of the tradition. A come-and-get-it to the aficionados that this year’s bock beer was now on tap. At 85, Fritz remained an aficionado. There weren’t many like him left. 

Fritz didn’t drink that 1970 case of Oshkosh Bock by himself. His wife, Hanna, liked beer too. Fritz and Hanna drank from that case until there were just two bottles left. The last two bottles were put away for a later date.

Fritz and Hanna Smick, late 1950s.

Fritz and Hanna were two of a kind. Both were of immigrant families uprooted from Germany and transplanted to Wisconsin. Hanna’s birth name was Johanna Templin. She was born in Germany in 1888. She was three when her family migrated to Wisconsin. Fritz was christened Frederick Martin Smick and born into a German-speaking family in Marshfield in 1885. The Smicks came to Oshkosh when Fritz was six.

There were thousands of people in Oshkosh like Hanna and Fritz. They were ethnic Germans caught between the old world of Europe and the jarring culture of modern America. They came of age when cars and telephones and radio and movies were introduced. They were native to nowhere. They were not like their parents. And their children would not be like them.

A class photo taken at the German-English Academy on Court Street. The curriculum included English language lessons for German-speaking children.

The two bottles of bock beer that Hanna and Fritz set aside were being saved for their anniversary. In the summer of 1908, Fritz and Hanna went to Menominee, Michigan for a quickie wedding. Menominee was where you went when the cost of a formal wedding was more than you could afford. Fritz and Hanna were young and poor then. By 1970, they were neither young nor quite so poor.

Their life together began full of promise. They started out in an old farmhouse on the west side and filled it with kids. Fritz drove a truck for a living. He raced motorcycles for fun. They were far from rich, but they were getting by well enough.

Fritz became well known on the local motorcycle racing circuit riding a 1911 Excelsior like the one seen here.

In 1919, their seven-year-old daughter, Ethelyn, died of spinal meningitis. Fritz and Hanna buried her and moved the family to North Dakota. Their fresh start didn’t pan out. A year later, they were back in Wisconsin. They settled in Fond du Lac. That didn’t work out, either. By the end of 1925, they were back in Oshkosh and flat broke. It got worse.

The crash of 1929 brought on the Great Depression. Oshkosh was devastated. Local relief efforts were no remedy for the mass layoffs. Fritz and Hanna were dirt poor. They grew vegetables in a vacant lot to help feed the kids. Fritz hauled garbage and tried farming to bring in money. He leased three acres of land from his father, and when Fritz fell behind on the payments, his parents sued him. There was nowhere to turn.

 Lining up for “rough fish” at the Municipal Warehouse on Otter Street. In the early 1930s, the city gave away suckers, sheephead, and carp that were netted in nearby waters to help feed people in need of food.

Life got better in the 1940s. Fritz had regular work again, first at Buckstaff and then at Deltox Rug. Hanna worked at Deltox, too. They were finally getting ahead after almost 20 years of living hand to mouth.

In 1948, they moved to Division Street. This was not a fancy neighborhood. The trains that ran down Division Street crossed over the driveways of the homes in the 500 block, where they lived. The engines roared past their front door.

Fritz and Hanna flourished there. Their children were off having children of their own. Fritz retired in 1955. He got into fishing and gardening. Their little yard was filled with roses and morning glories and vegetables. Fritz was one of the neighborhood characters. He was called the Mayor of Division Street.

Looking south down the 500 block of Division Street. Hanna and Fritz lived in a home a few doors south of where the locomotive appears.

Fritz and Hanna were still living on Division Street on August 25, 1970, the day they finally opened those last two bottles of bock beer. It was their 62nd wedding anniversary. They ate breakfast and then brought out the beer. They drank a toast to one another. This was their celebration. They had no other plans.

A reporter from the Oshkosh Northwestern came by later that morning and took a picture of them on their porch. The photo shows Hanna seated and smiling. She’s looking off into the distance. Fritz stands behind her in his low-bib overalls. He looks stern, serious. He holds his last bottle of Oshkosh Bock in his left hand, a hand made thick from years of manual labor.

Hanna and Fritz, August 25, 1970.

The photo appeared in the afternoon paper. It was accompanied by a few remarks about the old couple who saved two bottles of Chief Oshkosh Bock for their anniversary. The remarks were trivial. But the photo was arresting. It captures a moment when a singular generation and their way of life were fading away.

Fritz was 86. Hanna was 82. They were part of a transitional, and dwindling, group of ethnic Germans in Oshkosh. The bock beer they celebrated with was a cultural tradition. And that was ending too. 1970 was the last year the Oshkosh Brewing Company released a bock beer. It was gone with those last two bottles.

The last label for Chief Oshkosh Bock, 1970.

Hanna Smick passed away at Mercy Medical Center on a cold night in September 1975. She was 87. Fritz died the following summer. He was 91. Their home on Division Street was torn down in 1994 to make room for a parking lot.

Division Street today. The red “X” indicates the former location of the home where Hanna and Fritz lived.

Lake View Memorial Park, Oshkosh.

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The two photos of Fritz and Hanna used in this post are from monochrome prints that were colorized.

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A 1950s Tour of the Oshkosh Brewing Company

Over the years I’ve collected dozens of photos and a fair amount of video taken at the Oshkosh Brewing Company in the mid-1950s. I've assembled that into a video tour of the brewery that follows the making of Chief Oshkosh beer.

The video is now available on YouTube, you can see it here.

Beering Up at Dichmann's Grocery

Bottled beer was rare in Oshkosh in 1878. John Glatz & Christian Elser were going to change that.

John Glatz (on the left) with Christian Elser. Their ad for bottled beer was published on March 21, 1878.

Glatz and Elser ran the Union Brewery down at the end of Doty Street. Glatz Park is there now.

The Union Brewery.

But you didn’t have to go to the brewery to get their bottled beer. Their 1878 advertising directs you to Dichmann’s Grocery Store, the largest grocery store in the city.

Two views of Dichmann’s. The store was on the east side of N. Main Street, two doors south of Washington. The photo on the right shows the storefront sandwiched between red lines.

Glatz & Elser were using Dichmann’s to get women to buy their beer. Most of the beer sold in Oshkosh in 1878 flowed through saloons. But few women were in the habit of inhabiting those places. It never helped that the City of Oshkosh periodically banned women from even entering saloons. There were bluenoses at city hall who thought it would discourage vice. The tactic always ended in failure.

Oshkosh Daily Northwestern February 27, 1901.

The Glatz and Elser workaround was simple. You placed your order at Dichmann’s and then the brewery would deliver the beer to your door. Thereby evading the nattering prudes who would keep a woman from her beer.

Bottled-beer picnic somewhere near the north side of Oshkosh.

In 1881, the Union Brewery stopped taking orders at Dichmann’s and installed a phone at the brewery. Now you could ring them up and send your order straight to the bottle house. It was the first phone line that ran all the way to the southern city limits. The brewery’s phone number was 12.

Bottled beer soon became commonplace in Oshkosh. And the brewers here continued to use it as a means of getting their liquid into the hands of women. In 1894, the Union Brewery merged with two other local breweries to form the Oshkosh Brewing Company. Glatz and Elser’s innovation was exploited by OBC for years to come.

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