Agnes in Flight

Agnes was 40 when she quit the straight world and dove into the underworld. Her scandalous turn brought her to Oshkosh. The Jazz Age was underway and the old norms were breaking down. Agnes took a radical path to liberation.

"The Flapper" cover of Life Magazine, February 2, 1922.

She was born Agnes Flynn in 1879 on a farm in the Town of Chilton. Her parents were Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Famine. In America, they asserted their fertility. A new baby almost every other year. The arrival of Agnes made it an even dozen.

Agnes was two when the Flynn’s moved to Kaukauna. And there she stayed for the next 38 years. She was always a child of her time. At 13 she quit school and at 17 got married. She became Agnes DeBrue.

Joseph DeBrue was the son of Belgian immigrants and five years older than his teen-age bride. Their first baby came a year after the wedding. Agnes gave birth six times in seven years. She was on pace to outbreed her mother. As devout Roman Catholics, their birth control options amounted to abstinence, rhythm and chance. Agnes beat the odds. At 27, she had her last baby.

Summer in Kaukauna, 1905.

The DeBrues were working-class on the verge of middle-class. Joseph was a foreman at the Kaukauna Machine Works. They had a comfortable home in a pleasant town. Their future prosperity was practically assured. Agnes didn’t want it.

In 1919, she filed for divorce from her husband of 22 years. Joseph counter-sued. The judge ruled in his favor and gave Joseph custody of the kids. The youngest was a 13-year-old boy. The middle-aged mother left town.

Cut Loose
First, she went to Fond du Lac. There were friends and family there. Then she hooked up with Herman Wichman. He was 18 years younger than Agnes, about the same age as her oldest child. Herman was married and had two young kids. He worked on a farm west of Fond du Lac, near Brandon.

Herman F. Wichman.

Herman’s wife died of blood poisoning in 1922. Seven weeks later, Agnes and Herman went to Menominee, Michigan for a quickie wedding. Both fudged their age on the marriage certificate. Herman made himself two years older. Agnes shaved off four years. At 43, she was a newlywed again.

Marrying Herman was like slamming a door on her past. It was an explosively complex relationship. Herman was thickheaded, “powerfully built,” and violent. Agnes was fearless and could not seem to resist him. He frequently beat her. Yet her young husband was surely her subordinate. Agnes brought him along when she moved to Oshkosh. In the summer of 1923, she opened a speakeasy called the Pastime Inn at what is now 24 East Gruenwald Avenue.

The Jockey Club at 24 East Gruenwald Avenue, former home of the Pastime Inn.

The ex-saloon had been vacant since the start of Prohibition in 1920. The place was just north of the Oshkosh city limits, in the Town of Oshkosh. The neighborhood was called Nordheim. It had a reputation for being rough and unruly.

But Nordheim’s lawlessness did not extend to the sale of illegal liquor. The town board had been dominated by Prohibitionists for a decade. They badgered the County Sheriff into raiding the speakeasies that kept popping up near the township’s southern border. The Pastime soon had deputies at the door.

The first raid came in the fall of 1923. Agnes was ready for it. The Sheriff's office complained that during the initial visits, she was too quick for them and had "destroyed the only evidence available.” The evasion triggered a more vigorous investigation.

Winnebago County Sheriff Peter Carlson, who investigated Agnes and the Pastime Inn.

On the Saturday evening of October 27, Sheriff Carlson and his deputies were back. They didn’t bother with trying to catch her in the act. They had learned that Agnes was storing liquor in a shack behind the barroom. They found six pints of moonshine under the floorboards.

They discovered something else inside the bar. There were women hanging out at the Pastime Inn who weren’t there for the moonshine. Carlson handed Agnes a ticket for running an unlicensed dance hall. It was a tactic used against suspected brothel keepers when obvious evidence of a carnal crime was lacking. And it was the first indication that Agnes was offering something more than bootleg liquor.

Agnes was 44 and locked up for the first time. The following morning she pleaded not guilty and got a Fond du Lac friend to post an $800 bond for her release (about $15,000 in today’s money). A week later, her trial began. Everyone was there but Agnes.

Over the next month, Agnes did everything she could to avoid standing in front of a judge. She jumped bail and then claimed she didn’t know about the court date. She missed her next hearing, saying she was too sick to leave home. Her condition grew suddenly worse. By January, she was terminally ill and so close to death that the charges against her were dropped. All of this was a fabrication.

Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, December 24, 1923.

No judge would have fallen for such a transparent scheme without a doctor vouching for her imminent death. Somehow she made that happen. There were several doctors in the area helping folks skirt the dry law. Prescriptions for whiskey were commonplace. Agnes and her doctor appear to have taken it a step further.

The Blazing Stump
While faking her death, she was busy planning her next move. Nordheim had proved too risky. She moved to Appleton and searched for a new place. She found what she wanted near the east edge of Appleton on what was then a lonely road leading to Darboy.

For years, William Hopfensperger had been running a saloon and meat market on what is now County Hwy KK near North Coop Road. It took two years of Prohibition to drive him out of there. Agnes came in and opened another kind of meat market.

The Hopfensperger saloon, circa 1916, about eight years before it became the Blazing Stump.

The place was big with a barroom downstairs, a dancehall upstairs, and private rooms at the rear. A fence stood at the perimeter of the property, adding even more privacy to an already isolated setting. The only thing lacking was a splashy name. She called it the Blazing Stump.

The origin of that name remains in question. But there are a few compelling clues. A member of the Hopfensperger family said there was a natural gas reservoir on the property with a blowoff pipe that they referred to as a blazing pump. That might have been all the inspiration Agnes needed.

Blazing Stump was not original to Agnes. By the 1920s, it had already been applied to a number of bawdy, frontier saloons. The name was popularized by an often-reprinted story that appeared in an 1895 edition of the Overland Monthly magazine. The tale involved an adventurous woman who finds love in a rough, country tavern named the Blazing Stump. The woman in the story was named Agnes.

The Blazing Stump became the best-known brothel in the area. A public secret. The first, and still the best, depiction of the BS didn’t appear until 1966, with the publication of Dirty Helen, the autobiography of Helen Cromwell. Helen was a brothel keeper in Superior and Milwaukee and seemed to know everyone in the Wisconsin underworld. She and two women from her Superior stable spent a night at the Blazing Stump on an unspecified date. Here's Helen’s abridged version of that evening.

We arrived in Appleton late in the afternoon. The big convention parade was just over and the streets were swarming with people. We checked into a local hotel and I made a couple of inquiries. All inquiries pointed in the same direction: about three miles out of town to a place called "Blazing Stump." It was a converted farmhouse in the fork of the road.

We entered the farmhouse and found the place absolutely jammed with men. A pale, limpid, distracted-looking guy was standing behind a beat-up bar, dishing out the rottenest moonshine I had ever tasted. I signalled to the girls and they flew up the stairs. There was a slight squabble among the men about who was going to be first with the girls. I helped settle it, and the remainder of the fans lined up to wait their jolly turns…

As the night wore on I felt like a timekeeper at a track meet. I pretended I was a coach at a ball game, and every time there was an opening available I'd slap a new "player" on the rump and tell him to get in there and fight for the home team. At seven-thirty we pulled up stakes and went back to our hotel room. The girls had made well over five hundred dollars each.

Helen Cromwell, circa 1946.

Despite the hot and heavy traffic, Agnes had little trouble with police or Prohibition agents. Yet she had plenty of other trouble. Most of it came from her husband. Herman Wichman’s venom was made more toxic by his binge drinking. He began carrying a gun and was growing increasingly erratic. His beatings of Agnes were more frequent. In the span of eight months, Herman broke her nose twice. She finally kicked him out and filed for divorce.

Agnes liked to drink, too. In August 1924, she was arrested in Winnebago County for drunk driving. She gave the cop a fake name and a hard time. He tacked a drunk and disorderly onto her résumé. Her soon-to-be ex-husband bailed her out of jail.

Her hearing on the charges was moved to Calumet County, the same jurisdiction that oversaw the Blazing Stump. Not a good move. She told the judge, “I was sleepy and that may have affected my driving to some extent, but I certainly was not drunk.” He laughed at her and fined her $25. And then he gave her an ultimatum: get out of the county in 30 days or go to jail.

That same week, Agnes was in an Oshkosh courtroom getting her divorce from Herman Wichman. They had been married for two years and one day. The judge added a restraining order that excluded Herman from Agnes’ affairs in general and the Blazing Stump in particular. It was an unusual decree considering that the business was illegal. It didn’t matter much. At the end of September, she moved out of the Blazing Stump and Calumet County.

Burning Out
Five years had passed since Agnes had left her first husband and their children in Kaukauna. She now inhabited an alternate universe. She was locally famous. Her name, attached to one outrage or another, appeared regularly in area newspapers. When an older brother died, the obituary listed her as Agnes DeBrue. She hadn’t used that name in years. The name Agnes Wichman, a name everybody recognized, would have attracted the kind of attention her family didn’t want.

But she wasn’t turning back. Neither was Herman Wichmann. He ignored the restraining order and was twice arrested for beating Agnes after their divorce. The first attack got him a five-dollar fine (about $100 in today’s money). The second cost him nothing. The charge was dropped after Agnes went back to him.

Two months after their divorce, and 10 days after her latest beating from him, Agnes and Herman were back in Menominee, Michigan. Another quickie wedding. Another chance to lie about their ages. After all that had transpired, it was both awful and touching that they would even bother.

The newlyweds returned to Appleton and a home just west of Richmond Street on what is now Wisconsin Avenue. They installed a barroom and got back to work. The moonshine was flowing, the ladies were laying, and the neighbors were complaining.

Around midnight on a Sunday in early December, Appleton police raided the home. Agnes, Herman, and a sex worker named Jennie Miller were arrested. A guy named George Doine was hauled in, too. He got off easy. Doine claimed innocence, saying he had noticed a chimney fire and went inside to put it out. The judge was so tickled by the lovely metaphor that he allowed Doine to go free. The punishment was saved for Agnes and Herman.

Appleton Post-Crescent, December 30, 1924.

Agnes had been ordered out of a county for the second time in four months. And four months later, Herman Wichman made matters worse. He was arrested in Waupun for getting drunk and beating up his brother. While he was being held in the Fond du Lac jail, Herman babbled about Agnes. He claimed she was working with Prohibition agents gathering evidence against bootleggers. His loose talk got picked up by a reporter. The story appeared in newspapers across central Wisconsin. He might as well have put a target on her back.

She couldn’t take it anymore. Agnes dropped Herman and dropped out of sight. She disappeared for a year.

Out of the Shadows
Agnes was calling herself Helen Leiberg when she resurfaced in the spring of 1926 in Aurora, Illinois.

McCoy’s 1926 Aurora City Directory.

She had probably known Chester Leiberg since the early 1920s. He was dividing his time then between Oshkosh, where he worked as a bricklayer, and Florence County where he did seasonal work in a lumber camp.

Agnes was living with Leiberg in Aurora by early 1926. They were married later that fall. She wrote on the marriage license that she was 42 and that her last name was Flynn. She was actually 47. Chester Leiberg was 36.

By 1929 she was calling herself Agnes again. She and Chester remained in Aurora until Prohibition ended. Her notorious past was receding. They moved back to Wisconsin.

Herman Wichman was gone by then. He ended up in Detroit and got married again. And again. And again. His life after Agnes was only slightly less repugnant. He died in Detroit in 1959.

The Blazing Stump was renamed the Clover Inn after Agnes left. The new proprietor, Louis Soffa, tried turning it into a respectable country tavern. It was a flop.

Appleton Post-Crescent, December 30, 1924.

About five years later, the Clover Inn backslid. A longtime flesh-trader named Ella Gouley relocated there after being driven out of her Menasha brothel. “Dirty” Helen Cromwell knew her as “​​Old Ma Gooley” and wrote that “She was grotesque… the ugliest apparition of a woman I had ever seen – clumps of fat all squashed together like mounds of modeling clay.”

Agnes and Chester Leiberg were living near Tipler in Florence County when the Blazing Stump turned into a hot topic again. A 1939 raid uncovered ties to the Milwaukee mafia. The story was shared by newspapers across the state. Agnes must have heard about it. Most of those stories contained a reference to the old days of the Blazing Stump.

The Clover Inn name never did catch on with folks living in the area. The Appleton Post-Crescent was still calling it the Blazing Stump when the tavern was destroyed by fire in 1945.

Clippings from August 1945, and the burning of the Blazing Stump.

Agnes had left that scene 20 years ago. She had since reconnected with her children. How much of her story did they ever know?

In 1950, Agnes and Chester celebrated Christmas and the New Year in Kaukauna with her three daughters and youngest son. Their father, Agnes’s first husband, had died in 1945. She and Chester were heading back to Tipler when their car collided with a truck carrying 12 tons of pulpwood. Chester was driving and wasn’t hurt. Agnes took the full force of the collision. They used wrecking bars to get her out of the car. She was taken to the hospital in Oconto Falls and died 15 minutes after her arrival.

The obituary of Agnes Leiberg was a study in omission. Not a whisper of her wild years. She was buried in St. Mary's Catholic Cemetery in Kaukauna. The dating on her gravestone shaved a year off her age. Agnes would have liked that.

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Oshkosh’s Oldest Taverns

Oshkosh is home to many historic taverns. There are approximately 30 active bars in this city that trace their roots back to saloons or speakeasies that were established more than a century ago. These taverns represent one of the most durable aspects of our culture.

Early 1900s inside the former Witzke’s tavern, which traced its lineage back to 1873. Witzke’s closed in 2019.

Of the existing taverns, three stand out for their longevity: Acee Deucee, Calhoun Beach Club, and Jerry’s Bar. We’ll start with CBC…

Calhoun Beach Club, 695 N. Main St.
If location is the lone criteria, then Calhoun Beach Club is the oldest tavern in Oshkosh. The first saloon at the southwest corner of Main and Irving was established in 1868. There’s been some form of tavern at this spot ever since. It began with a German immigrant named Michael Laubach.

Calhoun Beach Club at the southwest corner of Main and Irving.

Laubach purchased the property on September 10, 1868. His saloon/grocery appears to have opened there several months before he acquired the real estate. Laubach died in 1892. But the tavern remained in operation and under family ownership until 1905, when it was sold to Clara Hilton. She was the daughter of Charles Rahr Jr. of the Rahr Brewing Company. Rahr Brewing bought the saloon in 1908.

The saloon became a speakeasy at the start of Prohibition and was the site of several raids by federal agents. The speakeasy became a legal tavern again when Prohibition ended. Here is where it gets complicated.

The above photo shows the original building where Michael Laubach ran his saloon. This picture was taken in either late 1938 or early 1939. Rahr Brewing had just been granted a permit to tear the building down and replace it. The building that Calhoun Beach Club now occupies is the building that was constructed in 1939.

July 17, 1939.

Can this qualify as Oshkosh's oldest tavern if the original building has been replaced by one built in 1939? You tell me.

Acee Deucee, 1329 Oregon St.
The situation here is more straightforward. On August 10, 1874, a German immigrant named Anton Koplitz purchased the lot at the northeast corner of 14th and Oregon. In 1876, he began building what is now the home of Acee Deucee. Construction was completed in June 1876. A date stone remains visible at the top of the structure that bears the Koplitz name and the 1876 date.

Acee Deucee at 1329 Oregon St.

Anton Koplitz lived in the Town of Black Wolf, where he tended a farm. His son Edward was a brewer at Horn & Schwalm's Brooklyn Brewery on Doty Street. Ed was said to be the largest man in Oshkosh, weighing about 400 pounds. Which made it tough to work in the cramped quarters of Horn and Schwalm’s rustic brewery.

So, in 1876, Ed Koplitz quit the brewery and applied for a saloon liquor license. He then took out an ad in the Wisconsin Telegraph, a German-language newspaper published in Oshkosh. The ad was an announcement for the grand opening of his new saloon at the corner of 14th and Oregon on July 1, 1876. That means that this bar will mark its 150th year in 2026.

Wisconsin Telegraph, June 30, 1876.

Sadly, Ed Koplitz died young. He was just 45. The saloon was taken over by his brothers Theodore and Frank. The photo below is from the early 1900s when “T & F Koplitz” were there. The Koplitz family remained involved with this bar well into the 1930s.

Jerry's Bar, 1210 Ceape Ave.
Getting to the origin date of Jerry’s Bar took some work. The details will be spelled out below, but I’ll cut to the chase for those who’d rather not suffer through the grind of all that: what is now Jerry’s Bar was launched in 1878 by two German immigrants. Their names were Wilhelm “William” Noe and Hermann “Onkle” Heinze. Onkle Heinze was the more prominent of the two in terms of running the bar.

Before I get into the research that led me to those names and that date, I want to dispel a persistent myth about the age of this bar. Here’s a quote from a book published in 2012 that cuts to the heart of it.

“The building it is estimated has been “standing” since about 1858. The building in its earliest days also housed an Oshkosh saloon.”
  – Oshkosh, Preserving the Past; Ron La Point, Dog Ear Publishing, 2012.

Over the past 50 years, the 1850s date has appeared in several stories written about Jerry's. If that date was correct, Jerry’s would easily be the oldest tavern in Oshkosh. There is, however, no evidence to support the 1850s date. There are many sources, though, that contradict it.

For example, none of the Oshkosh City Directories published before 1879 place a saloon of any kind near the east end of Ceape. In fact, the land where Jerry’s Bar stands was vacant during those early years. The drawing below is by Albert Ruger published in 1867. It presents an accurate depiction of the area at that time. The arrow points to where Jerry’s would later be built.

I’m not sure where the 1850s date came from. But I suspect it began with an offhand remark made to a Daily Northwestern reporter more than 60 years ago. Gustave “Jerry” Wesenberg was the proprietor of Jerry’s at that time. In an article published on June 29, 1963, Wesenberg is quoted saying that his bar is “all of 100 years old, it was here when I was going to school.”

Jerry Wesenberg was born on November 2, 1882. And he was absolutely correct that the bar was there when he was a kid. His 1963 quip that it was “all of 100 years old” was probably just his way of saying that the place had a lengthy history that preceded his ownership, which began in 1911.

Jerry Wesenberg in front of his bar in the early 1960s.

Here begins the grind. For the sake of clarity, I’m going to refer to this tavern simply as Jerry’s from this point forward. I’m hoping that will be less intrusive than continually repeating “the tavern that is now Jerry’s.” So I’m going to call it Jerry’s even though that name came to it years after the period we’re about to dive deep into.

To get to the genesis of Jerry’s you have to begin with Hermann Heinze. I wrote about his background in a post I published in October. But all we need to know for now is that Heinze had been working as saloon keeper on Main Street for about 10 years before he launched Jerry’s Bar.

The 1876 City Directory is the last that shows Heinze living and working on Main Street. The next city directory was not compiled until the spring of 1879. It was issued in July of 1879. This one shows Heinze on Ceape Avenue as the proprietor of Jerry’s Bar. That narrows the origin date of Jerry’s to a three-year time frame.

There are two main sources that make closing the gap possible. Most important are the real estate records held at the Winnebago County Register of Deeds office. Next are the historical tax and property assessment ledgers preserved by the Area Research Center at UWO’s Polk Library.

2025 City of Oshkosh Assessors Map for the lot where Jerry’s Bar resides.

Jerry’s Bar is located on a part of Lot 100 in the Replat of Block 29. That land was purchased by Ludwig “Louis” Genter in 1871. Genter was a carpenter living on Washington Avenue and owned several other empty lots near Jerry’s. He began developing those parcels in the mid-1870s.

On February 5, 1877, Genter took out a mortgage on the Jerry’s lot. He may have done this to finance construction on the property. Something was clearly in the works. On November 20, 1877, Genter signed a lease agreement with William Noe, who was working with Hermann Heinze.

All signs point to Noe and Heinze having a financial relationship, but not a typical business partnership. Newspaper stories about this saloon always identify Heinze as the sole proprietor, while Noe’s name is never mentioned. The alliance with Noe may have been necessary for Heinze due to his abysmal credit rating. Heinze was given the lowest possible credit score in an 1878 edition of the Commercial Agency Register, published by McKillop & Sprague.

In any case, the signed lease went into effect on July 1, 1878, and lasted five years. William Noe didn’t last that long. On January 12, 1880, he assigned the lease to Hermann Heinze. There is absolutely no doubt that this lease was for the Jerry’s Bar property. Both the original lease and the lease assignment reference the legal description for the property. It identifies exactly the same property where Jerry’s stands today.

The fact that the lease began nine months after it was signed suggests that the tavern had not yet been built. The 1877 assessment of the property also points to this. The assessed value of the property did not increase that year.

That changed in 1878 when the assessed value of the Jerry’s property jumped 67 percent. The increase was consistent with reassessments after new constructions on nearby lots, which ranged from 50 to 75 percent. The assessed value of the Jerry’s property rose by another 25 percent in 1879. This could have been caused by the addition of the bowling alley that was once attached to the east side of Jerry’s.

All of this indicates that Jerry’s was up and running by July 1, 1878. It may, however, have opened a little earlier. On April 25, 1878, Heinze took out a new saloon license. If he had been waiting for July 1 to open the saloon, he probably would have delayed paying for that license until he needed it.

When the new city directory was released in July of 1879, Heinze was already there on Ceape settled into his saloon, with a beer garden and bowling alley to boot.

1879 Oshkosh City Directory, page 170.

Don’t be confused by the 147 Ceape address. This belongs to the old numbering system used in Oshkosh. It was such a failure that the city council ordered the renumbering of the entire city. That project began in October 1882.

November 13, 1882; Oshkosh Daily Northwestern.

The address for Jerry’s changed from 147 to 385. The new number was in line with the other address changes in that neighborhood. There are countless examples of this, here is one: Ferdinand Bunke, whose home was across the street from Jerry’s, saw his house number change from 150 to 390.

The 1882 Wisconsin State Gazetteer and Business Directory also places Heinze at Jerry’s Bar. That directory spells out his location as being on the north side of Ceape east of Frankfort. But Heinze was gone by the time that book came out. He died on December 25, 1881.

Heinze’s lease on the bar did not contain a clause terminating the contract upon his death. His wife, Anna Marie, had to fulfill the terms of the lease until the end of June 1882. Her neighbor, a painter named Jacob Wenzel, stepped in to help. Wenzel took over the saloon in 1882 and then purchased the property from Louis Genter on December 17, 1883.

Jacob Wenzel’s Saloon and Bowling Alley.

In 1881, Heinze had organized a semi-private club that met at Jerry’s called the Lake Shore Casino Club. Wenzel and company kept the Casino Club moniker alive into the next century. The bowling team sponsored by Wenzel was still being called the Casino Club team as late as 1901.

The address for Jerry’s changed again after another city-wide renumbering in 1957. Jerry’s Bar became 1210 Ceape Avenue, just as it is today.

Jerry's Bar, 1210 Ceape Ave.

There’s so much more waiting to be told about all three of these places. Each has a history worthy of a book. This is just a start.

Good Spirits at the Museum

I’ll be talking about the history of Oshkosh’s unique drinking culture this Thursday, November 6, starting at 5:30 pm at the Oshkosh Public Museum. The talk will use the museum’s Good Spirits exhibit of drinking vessels and decanters as the starting point to explore how Oshkosh’s drinking habits have evolved over the past 175 years.

The talk is free, but the regular admission fee to the museum applies: Adults $8, Seniors (62+) $6.

There is limited space for this event, so the museum is asking that people reserve their place in advance. The free ticket can be obtained HERE.

This should be a lot of fun, hope to see you there!

For more info see the Oshkosh Public Museum’s event page.

Onkle Heinze and the Lake Shore Casino Club

Jerry’s Bar, at the east end of Ceape, wasn’t always called Jerry’s. When it opened, almost 150 years ago, it was known as Heinze’s. That name originated with the German immigrant who ran the saloon. At the same time, it sometimes went by another name: The Lake Shore Casino Club. You have to get to know Hermann Heinze to see why his saloon had two names.

Jerry's Bar, 1210 Ceape Ave.

Hermann Heinze was born in 1835 in Bitterfeld, a small town about 100 miles southwest of Berlin, Germany. He was nineteen when he boarded a steamship and left for America. Heinze landed in Baltimore and later said he came straight to Oshkosh. I’ve yet to find evidence of that. His trail through the 1850s went cold long ago.

In 1861, Heinze was definitely in St. Louis. There, he joined the Union Army. He was not yet a U.S. Citizen. That didn’t spare him from the deadly early days of the Civil War in Missouri. He fought at the Battle of Boonville and at the Battle of Wilson's Creek, where more than 1,300 of his fellow soldiers were casualties.

The first confirmed trace of Hermann Heinze in Oshkosh is from late 1867. He shows up working as a carpenter living in an apartment on Main Street. About a year later, he found his true calling. Hermann Heinze became a saloon keeper.

Over the next decade, Heinze worked his way through a series of Main Street saloons. He also met his wife. He married Anna Marie Schmarje in Oshkosh in 1871. The couple lived on Main Street in apartments above whatever saloon Hermann was tending to at the time. They didn’t find their way to the east end of Ceape until about 1877. They arrived in a neighborhood that was beginning to fill in with German immigrants like themselves.

A current view of Heinze’s neighborhood on Ceape. His home was at the corner of Frankfort and Ceape. His saloon was just across the street.

Heinze on the East End
The neighborhood at the east end of Ceape was a world apart from the polyglot of Main Street. This place was like an echo of Germany. Most of the folks were immigrants who spoke little or no English. A German grocery had recently opened at the corner of Ceape and Rosalia. A German music teacher gave lessons a couple doors away. It was a neighborhood of working-class families adjusting to a new world.

An 1878 blurb from the Oshkosh Daily Northwestern lampooning the language skills of the German speaking people living on Ceape. “Notice – Anyone troubles this Wood without Special Order from ___ Will Cause themselves trouble.”

Hermann and Anna Marie fit right in. They had no children of their own, but were soon adopted by the neighborhood kids. They were called Tante and Onkel, German for Aunt and Uncle. The pet names became so fixed that later, after the trouble started, Hermann was identified in the newspaper simply as Onkel.

His new saloon wasn’t just a drinking place. Heinze opened a summer beer garden behind the barroom that grew into a popular gathering spot for families on Sundays. There was a bowling alley on the east side of the building. Heinze's Saloon became the cornerstone for the close-knit community at the east end of Ceape.

A rare advertisement for Heinze’s saloon from early 1879. The addresses reflects the old numbering system in Oshkosh.

The trouble began in 1881 after Joseph Stringham was narrowly elected mayor. Stringham came to Oshkosh from New York in 1864 and made a fortune in Southside real estate. His wealth was not a balm for his crusty disposition. Stringham seemed incapable of taking pleasure in living. His stiff-necked conservatism was entirely at odds with the culture of pleasure brought to Oshkosh by its German-speaking residents.

 Joseph Stringham

Temperance crusaders were waiting for a guy like Stringham to come along. They had voted for him. Now they wanted theirs. At the top of their list was enforcement of Wisconsin’s “Blue Laws.” On Sundays, they wanted no bowling, no dancing, no concerts, no fishing, no sports, and especially no alcohol sales or open saloons. And they wanted their agenda imposed by the police.

Blue laws targeting saloons had been thoroughly ignored in Oshkosh for years. The disregard ended three weeks after Stringham took office. On the Saturday evening of April 23, 1881, Oshkosh police toured the city notifying every saloon keeper and liquor dealer that they'd be arrested if they opened on Sunday.

Oshkosh saloons went dark. The liquor stores on Main Street were closed. There were three breweries within a few blocks of Heinze’s saloon. Each of them hung black crêpe on their door as a symbol of mourning. The city went dry for the first time that Sunday.

Blue Sundays
The sense of betrayal was too great for people like Herman Heinze to tolerate. He’d staked his life on a country that promised freedom. He’d fought in their war. He'd renounced his allegiance to his homeland and became a U.S. citizen. And now he was being tyrannized by a clamoring minority of bigots and zealots.

For the German-speaking people of Heinze’s neighborhood, it wasn’t just Sunday beer that was being denied. What was banned was at the heart of their culture. Sunday was their one day free from work. The one day when they could join together and relax with friends and neighbors at Heinze's tavern in a spirit of gemütlichkeit.

The resentment wasn’t confined to the corner of Ceape and Rosalia. It harboured wherever the working classes resided. The following Sunday, Heinze opened his saloon. So did Frank Kuebler on Merritt. And Mike Laubach at Main and Irving. All three were German immigrants. And all three were arrested.

The former site of Mike Laubach’s saloon at 695 N. Main; now Calhoun Beach Club.

It was happening on the Southside, too. But it was easier to make an example of the Eastsiders. They were closest to the police station. Proximity mattered in a city with just a few cops on duty Sunday to suppress 70 saloons. It was an impossible mission. Chief of Police Alsworth "Alley" Ford admitted as much a day after the first arrests were made. Ford said he would either enforce the law or demonstrate that it could not be enforced at all. He probably already knew how this would turn out.

The Oshkosh Police in the 1880s.

Heinze and the others paid $10 fines, but the fight wasn’t over. They didn’t know it, then, but they were setting an example for the Oshkoshers who would reject National Prohibition some 40 years later. Like those who came after, Heinze and his cohorts never stopped kicking back against the prejudicial law.

At the Rahr Brewery, Charlie Rahr claimed immunity from the Sunday Law due to his place not being a licensed saloon. He began serving beer on Sundays in an ice barn behind his brewery. Alley Ford was not amused. He had Charlie Rahr arrested and fined him for selling beer on Sunday.

Another mutiny took place on an eighty-foot steamer named the O.B. Reed. The ship would load up with beer on Saturday and then set out for Tustin on Sunday morning with the beer flowing as steady as the river. The Daily Northwestern, which advocated for the crackdown, groused about the “crowd of excursionists on board who spend Sunday indulging in their lager (beer) without the interference of the Sunday enforcement.”

A fully loaded excursion steamer similar to the O.B. Reed preparing to leave the Oshkosh dock at what is now Riverside Park near the Main Street Bridge.

Onkle Heinze took another route. He hit the city where it hurt: in the kitty. He and a Main Street saloon keeper named Charley Bly threatened to incite a saloon keeper's revolt. The annual $75 liquor license fee was coming due in May. If the saloon keepers refused to pay their licensing fees, the city would lose an essential source of revenue.

Heinze and Bly were exploiting a glitch in the law, which read “every person licensed shall keep his saloon closed on the Sabbath day.” No license, no need to close. Of course, they could all be arrested and fined for selling liquor without a license. But the endless prosecution of cases would have overwhelmed the police and courts. And that fine was no greater than the fine for selling beer on a Sunday.

Mayor Stringham was furious. He called an emergency meeting of the City Council to deal with the “rebellion among the saloon keepers.” But more than half the council opposed the Sunday Law and refused to appear. Stringham directed the chief of police to bring them in. Chaos ensued. While the turmoil swirled at city hall, Heinze hatched another plan.

The Lake Shore Casino Club
The Lake Shore Casino Club was born in May 1881, just a couple of weeks after Heinze’s arrest. It was chartered as a private club. In reality, it was open to just about everyone. Meetings took place on Sunday at Heinze’s “closed” saloon. The Daily Northwestern mocked the idea, calling Lake Shore Casino nothing more than a “Beer Club.” It was definitely that.

Heinze didn’t mind the mockery. In fact, it seemed to inspire him. The club not only subverted the restriction of the Sunday Law, it became Heinze’s platform for satirizing the sanctimonious gaggle who had started all the trouble in the first place.

In early June 1881, Heinze hired a lawyer to draw up articles of incorporation for The Lake Shore Casino. The document dripped with high-toned sarcasm. Among the exceptionally relaxed by-laws was a proclamation that the club would be composed of “Citizens of blameless character, for the promotion of social progress and sociable intercourse” and “the improvement, perfection and the embellishment of life.”

Henzie recorded the articles with the Secretary of State. And that brought it to the attention of several Wisconsin newspapers. They weren't in on the joke. Madison’s Wisconsin State Journal described it as an “extraordinary as well as mysterious document.” Back in Oshkosh, Heinze wasn’t at all shy in admitting that “there was no secret about it, that the association was formed to evade the enforcement of the Sunday law.”

It worked. The Lake Shore Casino Club enjoyed its Sunday beer without interference from the police. Others followed Heinze’s lead by forming clubs of their own. As Police Chief Ford had suspected, the Sunday Law was turning out to be practically unenforceable in Oshkosh.

Looking east on Merritt. The former saloon known as Kitz Hall is shown on the left. It was among those saloons that created beer clubs in response to the Sunday Law.

Schadenfreude
There’s a German word, Schadenfreude, that translates to "damage-joy." It refers to taking pleasure in someone else's misfortune. In the Spring of 1882, there was plenty of Schadenfreude to be had in Heinze’s neighborhood. Mayor Joseph Stringham did not win his party’s nomination to run again for mayor. It was evident he stood no chance of winning the coming election. Chief of Police Alley Ford also got the boot.

In April 1882, Oshkosh voters elected George Pratt to be their new mayor. He ran on a platform that promised an end to the enforcement of the Sunday Law. He won with 53% of the vote. In Herman Heinze’s ward, Pratt took 63% of the vote. The Daily Northwestern, unhappy with the result, blamed the saloon keepers for Pratt’s victory.

George White Pratt

Pratt’s name endures in Oshkosh. In 1960, the City Planning Commission named a road in his honor. Pratt Trail winds through Menominee Park along Lake Winnebago. It’s the most scenic roadway in the city. But at the dedication, they somehow forgot to mention why Pratt got elected in the first place.

Joseph Stringham’s name also lingers here, but in a less pleasing way. The city named a sewer after him. The Stringham storm sewer system cuts through the Southside and South Park. It has never lived up to its promise and floods that area on a semi-regular basis.

Pratt Trail in Menominee Park.

Hermann “Onkle” Heinze didn’t get his full share of the Schadenfreude. Heinze contracted typhus in December of 1881 and died on Christmas Day. A Sunday, no less. He was just 46 years old. His large funeral was followed by a lengthy tribute in the Wisconsin Telegraph, a German-language newspaper published in Oshkosh.

But since then, the good Onkle has been almost entirely forgotten. There has been plenty written about Jerry’s Bar over the years. But Heinze, the man who opened that bar, is never mentioned. His marker in Riverside Cemetery has become a symbol of the forgetting. It’s so weather-worn that the inscription is barely legible. The base is sunken and tilting, and the concrete urn that capped his headstone has fallen off.

Hermann Heinze, January 7, 1835 – December 25, 1881.

This piece is being published on a Sunday morning. Jerry’s will open in just a few hours. If you happen to stop there today, have a beer for Onkle Heinze. That might be the tribute he would have appreciated the most.

Jerry’s Bar.

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Pints of the Past

The Winnebago County Historical Society and the Society of Oshkosh Brewers are getting together for an evening of beer-based time travel. Pints of the Past will happen on Saturday, October 25 from 6-9 pm, at the historic Morgan House in Oshkosh.

Pints of the Past is an evening of beer tasting commingled with Oshkosh history. The tasting will feature 13 beers brewed by members of the Society of Oshkosh Brewers. Each beer has been made from a recipe used in Oshkosh by a brewery that operated here at some point over the past 176 years. The oldest recipe used in this pack of brews dates back to 1849.

The 13 beers will cover the entire breadth of Oshkosh’s history as a center for brewing. Included in the line-up are famous lagers of the past such as Rahr’s Elk’s Head, Peoples Holiday & Bock beers, and Chief Oshkosh Bock. Among the more recent re-creations are Chief Oshkosh Red Lager and Fox River’s Caber Tossing Scottish Ale.

The tasting path will wind through the historic Morgan House, built in 1884. Guides will be available to discuss the histories of both the beers and the home, creating a uniquely immersive experience.

The Morgan House at 234 Church Avenue.

Tickets for this event are limited and must be purchased in advance. More info and tickets are available HERE. And here's the Pints of the Past Facebook event page.

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A Pint for John R. Morgan.
There’s a tasty bit of irony to all of this. The Morgan House was built for John R. Morgan (1833-1906) and his wife, Eleanor (Hughes) Morgan. John Morgan wasn’t especially loud about his views on alcohol. But every indication of his opinion on the matter suggests he was a Prohibitionist. Morgan was associated with temperance groups, like the American Bible Society and the First Congregational Society. He was also a supporter of Rev. Edward Henry Smith, a leading light in Oshkosh’s sputtering temperance movement of the late 1800s. So if you make it to the Morgan House for Pints of the Past, maybe take a moment to raise a glass to John R. Morgan. He could have probably used a beer or two. Hope to see you there, Prost!

John R. Morgan