Oshkosh Beer: The First Tavern

It began with a tavern by the river. This tavern was the first step to what would become the City of Oshkosh. It was the project of a man born more than 240 years ago. His name was George Johnston.

George Johnston’s tavern as he may have envisioned it. As we’ll discover, it turned out to be a more primitive affair.

George Johnston was born in Virginia in 1784. He roamed away as a young man and wound up in Detroit. The city was rapidly developing from a fur-trading outpost into a multi-cultural boom town. Detroit was a magnet for the young and ambitious. People like George Johnston.

A bird's eye view of Detroit as it looked when George Johnston arrived there.

Johnston had been in Detroit for at least two years when the War of 1812 broke out. The conflict promised the sort of adventure he’d been seeking. Johnston joined the Michigan Militia to fight the British and their Native American allies. He survived the disastrous Brownstown Battle, where U.S. forces were routed by a small band of Shawnee warriors. But in a later clash, Johnston was captured by British soldiers. They sent him to Canada as a prisoner of war.

Fort George on the Niagara River where Johnston was held as a prisoner of war.

Johnston was released from Fort George in March of 1813 and returned to the fighting. After the war ended in 1814, he went to Fort Howard, at what is now Green Bay. Johnston made his living there selling provisions to troops stationed at the garrison.

A view from the Fox River of Fort Howard about the same time that Johnston was there.

In 1818, Brown County was created as part of the Michigan Territory. Johnston was appointed its first sheriff. He held that post until the end of 1829. And this is when he begins looking south to where the Fox River flows into Lake Winnebago.

The exact date of Johnston's arrival here is unknown. But the summer of 1830 may be the best bet. George Johnston became the first non-Native settler in what would become the City of Oshkosh. He was not entirely alone, though. There were several Indian villages nearby. But those weren’t the folks Johnston had in mind for the tavern he was building.

The Tourist's Pocket Map Of Michigan” showing travel routes and Indian villages in the vicinity of Lake Winnebago. The map was already outdated when it was published in 1835.

In the spring of 1830, Congress set aside money for the opening of a new route between Fort Howard (Green Bay) and Fort Winnebago (Portage). Passing through the current Oshkosh would have been the best way to go. Except that soldiers, mail carriers and other travelers hated the thought of swimming their horses across the Fox River.

Johnston had a solution: a ferry crossing. And a tavern to cash in on the traffic coming his way. He planted his log tavern, his log home, and his ferry launch on the northeasterly bank of the Fox River. The Johnston complex was situated in the South East Quarter of Section 10, Township 18 North, Range 16 East, 4th Principal Meridian. Or as we call it now, Riverside Cemetery.

The approximate location of Johnston’s Tavern in what is now Riverside Cemetery, and the ferry route across the Fox River.

Johnston didn’t own the land he had settled on. He was squatting on Indian territory. And he was well established by the time the Army got around to surveying the area for that new route between Fort Howard and Fort Winnebago.

A portion of the map drawn by Lt. Alexander J. Center based on the survey he made in the summer and fall of 1832. Johnston’s name is misspelled and Lake Butte des Morts is identified as Lake Wing.

Johnston’s Tavern was as rugged as the country it inhabited. There is no surviving drawing of the tavern’s exterior. But its log construction was probably similar in appearance to the home George Wright built here a few years later.

Wright’s cabin. It was located close to where Jackson and Algoma streets now meet.

The interior of Johnston’s place was just as rough. An 1831 visitor mentioned that venison and bear meat were served and that the accommodations amounted to “one room, bare and dirty” with a floor “thickly covered with mud and dirt.” You can get away with that when you run the only place in town.

Johnston wasn’t here long. In the summer of 1832, he was offered a commission to fight in the Black Hawk War and co-lead a troop of more than 300 from the Menominee Tribe. Johnston was closing in on 50 and still craving adventure. Off he went, never to return. Johnston was 67 when he died in Green Bay in 1851. Two years later, Oshkosh became a city. And by that time, Johnston was on his way to being forgotten.

An 1834 section map showing the Ferry House (tavern), in the southeast quarter of Section 10, and the ferry crossing to the border of Sections 10 and 15. Click image to enlarge.

The tavern and ferry survived Johnston’s leaving. He sold the business to Robert Grignon, a nephew of Augustin Grignon. Augustin had established the first permanent trading post in Winnebago County in the summer of 1818 at Butte des Morts. Robert Grignon had worked at that trading post before buying Johnston’s tavern and ferry. But Robert Grignon didn’t stay long, either.

Grignon sold out to James Knaggs in 1835. Knaggs had been working for Robert Grignon before buying him out. In fact, there’s evidence that points to Knaggs working at the tavern when Johnston owned it. Unlike the previous owners, Knaggs has been memorialized here. In Rainbow Park, there’s a marker for Knaggs’ Ferry. It’s better than nothing, but the marker has almost nothing to say about Knaggs. It’s mostly about the man who gets too much credit for being Oshkosh’s first settler.

The Knaggs Ferry Marker.

Webster Stanley didn’t get here until the spring of 1836, about six years after George Johnston got the ball rolling. Stanley was born in Connecticut, and lived in Ohio, Green Bay and Neenah before reaching what is now Oshkosh. Upon his arrival, Stanley built a shanty near the ferry landing and went to work for Knaggs as a ferryman.

Some accounts say Stanley bought out Knaggs. Others say Stanley swindled him. Both versions of the story are suspect (more on that in a coming post). In any case, Stanley remained at the Knaggs Ferry landing for just a few months before leaving in the fall of 1836.

Webster Stanley

Stanley headed down river. He built a home, a tavern, and new ferry crossing nearer to the lake. Later, he came to be mythologized as the first white settler to reach Oshkosh. George Johnston, Robert Grignon, and James Knaggs – all of whom arrived here before Stanley – were overlooked. Why?

William Wallace Wright may be the key to unlocking that riddle.

William Wallace Wright

William Wright came here with his parents in 1837. He was 17 years old. The young man was impressed by Webster Stanley's ambition. Wright was on hand as Stanley became a leader of the settlement. His admiration for Stanley never waned.

Some 50 years later, Wright began documenting his eyewitness accounts of Oshkosh’s early history. He wasn’t the first to paint George Johnston out of the picture, just the most persistent. Local historians Richard Harney, Henry Gallup, and others had already published pieces that omitted Johnston. Like William Wright, Harney and Gallup came here after Johnston left. And each of them knew Webster Stanley personally.

They also knew Robert Grignon and James Knaggs. But those guys had traces of Indian blood. A disqualifying feature for founder status in the eyes of Yankee settlers. The 19th century had its own version of cancel culture.

There were other historians who also looked past Grignon and Knaggs, but were unwilling to ignore Johnston. The Illustrated Historical Atlas of Wisconsin, published in 1878, and the History of Northern Wisconsin, published in 1881, both placed Johnston here before Stanley. The ultimate forgetting required the repetitive re-telling of the Webster Stanley legend. And that brings us back to William Wright.

W.W. Wright… “Who Knows More About Early History of Oshkosh Than Any Other Person.” Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, July 7, 1899.

By the late 1880s, William Wright was one of the few from the early days not yet residing in a coffin. His senior status and narrative skills made him the go-to source for all things related to the early history of Oshkosh.

Wright penned a series of essays about the white settlers who came to tame this place. Webster Stanley, who died in 1878, always played the lead role. And by the time of Wright’s death in 1903, at the age of 84, Webster Stanley had been enshrined as Oshkosh’s “First White Settler.”

Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, August 26, 1903.

This isn’t to say that Webster Stanley didn’t play a vital role in the making of Oshkosh. He certainly did. And as far as I’m concerned, his role was far more interesting than that of “first white settler.”

I’m going to start working on that story now…

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