A Sixth-Ward Mutiny

Here’s a photo of Players Pub & Pizza taken in May, 2025. One hundred years earlier, this place epitomized the Southside's unwavering rejection of the dry law.

Prohibition began on January 17, 1920. On that day, the saloon at the northeast corner of 5th and Ohio sat empty. That’s how it was supposed to be. Prohibition wasn’t just about abolishing liquor. It was equally about exterminating saloons. But the dry victory at that corner was short-lived. The old tavern sprang back to life three weeks after Prohibition began.

Alfred Berndt had jumped into the void. He was a 27-year-old Southsider and son of a tugboat captain. Berndt had been bouncing from job to job and partying hard before he leased the vacant saloon. He remade the old place into a speakeasy with an underworld flair. It was now a jazz hall called the Wisconsin Club. Berndt burned hot and burned out. He was out of there by the end of June 1921.

The Oshkosh-based Erv Pfeiffer Jazz Orchestra played the Wisconsin Club on February 16, 1920.

Werner’s Oasis
The new guy was Southside bona fide. Adolph Werner was born in Bohemia in 1888. He was replanted at 12th and Rugby at age 10. Czech was his mother tongue. Werner grew up in a neighborhood teeming with young, untutored toughs who later became the pioneers of Southside bootlegging.

Like a lot of those boys, Adolph was finished with school by the time he was 11. He found himself cutting wood for coffins at Buckstaff. His childhood labor was probably necessitated by the Werner family’s need for money. His father, Isadore, worked at Paine Lumber for starvation wages. There were 10 mouths to feed at the Werner home. They needed every penny they could get.

The Buckstaff-Edwards mill in the 1100 block of South Main, where Adolph Werner worked as a boy.

At 18, Adolph married Katie Stini, a Sixth-Ward inhabitant of Bohemian descent. A son arrived eight months later. After that, the kids kept coming; another almost every year. Adolph’s life was unwinding like a dreary echo of Isadore’s. By 1919, Katie had given birth to eight children, and Adolph was working at Paine Lumber. Just like his father.

The home where Adolph and Katie Werner lived with their children in 1919 still stands at 7th & Idaho.

Adolph Werner wanted something more than the drab toil he seemed fated for. Drudgery may have been what led him to form the Lyric Athletic Club. Its goal was to bring together Southside working men interested in literature and athletics. An unusual undertaking for a guy from Adolph’s neighborhood. But that was just a diversion. When Prohibition began, he saw an opportunity for the unconditional escape he longed for.

Adolph Werner was 33 in the summer of 1921. Prohibition had been in place for just a year. But already it was obvious that Oshkosh would never go dry. The reformers had made a colossal blunder, and Werner’s boyhood friends were making the most of it. Among them was Frank Kinderman, whom Adolph had known since childhood. Kinderman had launched a moonshine distillery on his frog farm near 10th and Knapp. He came to symbolize the bootleggers' reckless freedom.

Frank Kinderman with his modified Ford Model T Runabout, circa 1921.

Kinderman was at the center of a Southside liquor network. Most of his cohorts were in their early 30s and embedded in the Sixth-Ward Highholder community of Bavarian/Bohemian immigrants. All of them were familiar with Adolph Werner. Some were making booze; others were selling it. Adolph joined on the retail side. On August 2, 1921, he took out a $50 soft-drink license for the speakeasy Berndt had just vacated at 5th and Ohio.

It was the start of a new life. Katie was pregnant, and Adolph was free of the lumber mills. But federal agents quickly discovered Adolph’s connection to Kinderman. On the Friday evening of January 6, 1922, the feds raided Kinderman's distillery and then went after people linked to him. Adolph was pouring moonshine when the dry squad came through his door. Five months and four days into his emancipation, Adolph Werner found himself in jail.

Saturday morning, they brought Adolph into court and made him wait. The docket was filled with Prohibition violation cases. He was still waiting to be called when Katie went into labor. Adolph eased out of the courtroom, unnoticed. Katie gave birth to a boy they named Stanley, and on Monday morning, Adolph turned himself in. Back in court, he pleaded guilty. They gave him two options: a fine or 90 days in jail. He took the fine, $250 (about $5,000 today). Adolph paid up and went home. You can bet he didn’t have that kind of money in his pocket when he worked for Paine Lumber.

The Killing Floor
There was no turning back. The Werners were living in the apartment on the north end of the building. And when the property went up for sale, they jumped at the chance to buy it. Pabst Brewing had owned the building since 1905 and leased it as a tied house before Prohibition. The dry law killed that, and now Pabst wanted out. And quickly. The brewery offered the place to Adolph at a bargain price, $3,000 (about $60,000 today). On April 7, 1922, Adolph signed a deal with Pabst to purchase the property. A week later, Oshkosh flooded.

Fifth and Ohio during the great flood of 1922. Adolph Werner’s speakeasy was in the white building. Across the street was the Sebora grocery store.

Fifth and Ohio, May 2025.

Flooding was the least of their problems. On March 7, 1923, Adolph and Katie’s 13-year-old son, Andrew, was hit by a streetcar at 9th and Idaho. The boy was killed instantly. He was the second child they had lost to a grisly death. A decade earlier, their two-year-old son, Alfred, burned to death in a fire he had started while playing at his grandmother's house.

Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, March 8, 1923.

Sympathy was hard to come by for moonshine dealers in 1923. The 1922 raids and fines did nothing to dissuade Frank Kinderman and his associates from their illegal enterprise. The feds came back, trying to take down the syndicate piece by piece. They got Adolph again on August 22, 1923. The Wednesday night raid turned up moonshine concealed in a water cooler. Adolph pleaded guilty for the second time.

Judge Arthur Goss, whose court had turned into a turnstile for Kinderman associates, showed no pity either. Adolph was slammed with a $500 fine and six months in the county jail. Goss told Adolph he’d give him another four months behind bars if he couldn’t come up with the money by the end of his sentence. Adolph came up with money. But running a speakeasy from a jail cell was a more complicated matter.

A Fishy License
Adolph was locked up, but his speakeasy was not. He transferred the license to Charles Hering, a 31-year-old Southsider connected to the Kinderman syndicate. Hering took over behind the bar, but Adolph called the shots. Anyone with a passing interest could see through the smokescreen. The shuffle certainly didn’t fool Prohibition officials.

Adolph was out of jail by the spring of 1924. He took a job at Badger Lumber. Kinderman had connections there and might have gotten him in. It was back to the grind. But for now, he needed to steer clear of his bar. Another conviction could land him in jail for years, not months. So for now…

The Badger Lumber plant on Campbell Road where Adolph worked in 1924.

It was good that he stayed away. The speakeasy was again raided shortly after Adolph’s release from jail. Charles Hering was there when the agents barged in. Hering dumped the jar of moonshine he'd been holding into the barroom sink. That didn’t keep him from being arrested.

Here’s where this story takes a puzzling turn. Charles Hering’s court date was set for May 14, 1924. The state’s principal witnesses were Prohibition agents. They decided to skip the trial. The case was dismissed. The speakeasy was raided again in August of 1924. This time, Adolph was there. It was his third arrest for a dry-law violation. But his case was dismissed before the trial date was even set. No explanation was given.

This period swims with allegations of officials on the take. Had Adolph bought protection? This timeframe also coincides with Clark Perry, of Oshkosh, taking over as the state’s Prohibition Chief. The remarkably corrupt Perry was booted out of office in 1926 and sent to prison. The following year, Adolph Werner was back in the crosshairs.

Clark Perry

Charles Hering moved to Portland after his case was dropped. Adolph couldn’t get the city to renew the soft-drink license in his own name, so he transferred it to Jordan Kodanko. He worked at Paine Lumber and appears to have been associated with the speakeasy solely for the sake of the permit. Kodanko backed out after Werner’s August 1924 arrest. Next came Mathias Matsche. He’d been working at a speakeasy (now the B & E Lounge) on Oregon Street and was also involved with a Southside moonshine plant run by his brother Frank. But Matt Matsche didn’t last either.

In January 1926, Adolph Novotny signed his name to the license. Novotny was from the old neighborhood and a veteran of the Kinderman syndicate. And he had the arrest record that went with it. But Novotny was just another stopgap. Finally, in July 1926 – having gone almost two years without an arrest – Werner convinced the licensing committee that he was now worthy of a permit. Then he got busy proving them wrong.

Werner was shot down when he came up for license renewal in June 1927. Chief of Police Arthur Gabbert interceded, claiming the Werner place was as lawless as ever. The spat dragged on until Werner lost. But he did not concede. He replaced his soft drinks with ice cream and claimed he was now running an ice cream parlor. No license required. The maneuver endeared him to exactly no one involved with Prohibition enforcement.

A Bust
Frank B. Keefe was sworn in as Winnebago County District Attorney on January 3, 1927. For the six previous years, he’d been an Oshkosh defense attorney representing bigshot bootleggers and speakeasy keepers. Now he was on the other team, exploiting his inside information to make a name for himself as a dry-law crusader. Frank Kinderman was one of the first of Keefe’s former clients taken down.

Frank B. Keefe

Adolph Werner was on Keefe’s short list. In the fall of 1927, Keefe set up a sting operation aimed at the 5th and Ohio speakeasy. At the center of the entrapment was an informant Keefe hired named Henry Repp (his younger brother, Alvin, opened Repp’s Bar in 1943).

Henry Repp walked into Adolph’s speakeasy at about 5 pm on Saturday, November 5, 1927. It wasn’t his first visit. Repp had been coming in for the past few days. Adolph and Katie were in the barroom with several men behind mugs of beer. Repp put 15 cents on the bar and ordered a beer. When Adolph served him, Repp put a quarter on the bar and asked for a shot of moonshine. Adolph served him. Repp drank up.

Another man came in. A deputy sheriff in plain clothes named Edward Below. Katie sensed that something was wrong. She left the barroom and took the connecting hallway to their apartment. Moments later, the bar phone rang. At the same time, one of Adolph’s sons entered the barroom from the hallway. Deputy Below noted Adolph’s agitation upon taking the call. Adolph handed his son a jar filled with liquid. The boy raced out of the barroom and back down the hallway. Deputy Below called out. The raid was on.

The layout at 5th and Ohio. 1) The speakeasy’s main bar room. 2) The connecting hallway. 3) The Werner family apartment.

Winnebago County Sheriff Walter Plummer burst in with Undersheriff Leroy Hahn behind him. Deputy Below took off down the hallway after the kid. Plummer went directly to Adolph and showed him a search warrant. Plummer and Hahn began rooting around and quickly discovered several cases of bootleg beer.

Deputy Below returned from his chase down the hall with two quarts of moonshine. He told Plummer he’d found Katie in the apartment, about to dump the booze into the kitchen sink. Adolph didn’t realize that Henry Repp was part of the takedown. He confided in Repp, saying that he knew he was finished. He was convinced he’d get a lengthy jail term.

From the court transcripts of Adolph’s 1927 trial.

Adolph hired Richard Curtis “Romeo” Laus to represent him. He could not have chosen a better lawyer. The 31-year-old Laus was itching for this fight. A year earlier, he had lost to Keefe in the race for Winnebago County District Attorney. In court, the animosity was unmistakable, with Laus relentlessly antagonizing Keefe.

R. Curtis Laus

What Laus did to Keefe was nothing compared to his dismantling of the state's chief witnesses: Henry Repp, Deputy Edward Below, and Sheriff Walter Plummer. Repp suffered a reputational thrashing, with Laus taunting Repp about his drinking and his alleged participation in the Ku Klux Klan. Laus then went after Below and Plummer. He made them appear incompetent. The county cops had given him plenty to work with.

On the night of the raid, Plummer decided not to bother with the bootleg beer they found. He didn’t even have it tested for alcohol. Plummer figured the moonshine was all they needed. So the entire case rested on that slice of evidence… and the search warrant.

The warrant listed the speakeasy’s Fifth Avenue address. But that’s not where Deputy Below found the moonshine. The apartment, where he caught Katie with the booze, had an Ohio Street address. Laus argued that the search warrant didn’t extend to the apartment, and therefore Deputy Below’s search of it was illegal. The court agreed. The evidence was tossed out. The case against Adolph Werner fell apart.

Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, January 10, 1928.

Adolph walked free. His accusers walked into shit storms. Henry Repp, outed as a snitch, was harassed and attacked on the street. Later accusations of rape and dog killing only enhanced his toxic repute. For Plummer, it was worse.

A scandal erupted during Adolph’s trial. D.A. Frank Keefe had learned that Sheriff Walter Plummer was conspiring with bootleggers and sex workers who paid him for protection. Keefe went public with the information. An outpouring of torrid allegations ensued. The evidence against Plummer included notes from a companion’s “love diary” describing beer parties and orgies in the county jail. Walter Plummer was removed from office on March 30, 1928.

The Dark Passage
Adolph returned to the speakeasy and carried on. A period of unusual calm ensued. After five raids in five years, 5th and Ohio was never again raided. And by 1931, it was clear to anyone with any sense that Prohibition had to be repealed. The day was coming when taverns would be legal. Adolph Werner never saw that day.

On the Thursday evening of January 8, 1931, Adolph and Katie were at their apartment with a couple of friends they’d invited in for a dinner of dove stew. Ernest and Mary Kuehn were Sixth Warders. Ernest Kuehn worked in a lumber mill and supplemented his income by making moonshine. Mary was Katie’s cousin.

Adolph liked to tease Mary. He was at it that Thursday night. Mary was giving it back to him. She threw a shoe at him. She hit him with a broom. Adolph kept at her, keeping her from her stew. There was bread on the table and a butcher knife to slice it. Mary picked up the knife and waved it playfully at Adolph. He ran out of the kitchen, into the hallway, and towards the speakeasy. Mary followed him out, knife in hand. In the dark passageway, she didn’t see Adolph turn around and come back to her. The knife plunged into his belly. All the way to the handle. At least, that’s the story they told.

Adolph was bleeding out. They rushed him to Mercy Hospital. He was going into shock. A doctor stabilized him and prepped him for surgery. The police arrived, and Adolph told them it was all a mistake. That they were only "fooling around." Adolph Werner, age 42, died the following morning at 7 am. District Attorney Frank Keefe, who had prosecuted Adolph after his 1927 arrest, decided to forgo an inquest. It was all wrapped up and put away within a matter of hours.

Adolph’s widow, Katie Werner (right), with her sister Mary Meyer, circa 1934.

Katie never closed the speakeasy. Her 23-year-old son, Edward, left his job driving an ice wagon and went behind the bar. It wasn’t to his liking. He quit six months later. Katie then leased the bar to Paul Fabrycki who’d been working at a speakeasy/billiard parlor at what is now 611 Oregon. Fabrycki didn’t stay either. In 1932, Ed Hall signed on and stayed. Hall was there when Prohibition finally ended in 1933.

Wieners and Rahr’s Beer at Ed Hall’s Bar, November 11, 1933.

Katie Werner remained in the attached apartment and maintained her ownership of the tavern until 1940. In 1950, she married Ernest Kuehn, the widower of the woman who accidentally killed Adolph Werner with a butcher knife. Katie died in 1975. She was buried in the Werner family plot next to Adolph.

Riverside Cemetery

Adolph Werner's signature.

In the next and last installment of this tavern’s history, I’ll trace its evolution as it becomes the Hour Bar and finally Players Pub. I hope to have that posted here early next month.

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The Genealogy of Players

Player's Pizza & Pub caught fire on the evening of August 12, 2026. It burned into the early morning. The building at the northeast corner of 5th and Ohio was nearly destroyed.

After the fire, several news reports made token references to the significance of this place. One of them called Players a “decades-old gathering spot.” That was about as specific as it got.

​“Decades-old” is an extraordinary understatement. Players has a lineage stretching across three centuries. It began as one of the foundational saloons of the old Sixth Ward. There’s a lot of Southside culture tied up in that damaged building.

Wolter’s Bar and Grocery
It began 143 years ago with a Bohemian immigrant named August Wolter. On September 8, 1883, Wolter paid $700 (about $23,500 today) for Lots 13 and 14 in Block 95 in the Plat of the Original Third Ward. The plat name was already outdated. The Original Third Ward had encompassed almost all of the land south of the Fox River. But in 1871 the ward was divided. Everything west of Minnesota Street went into the newly minted Sixth Ward.

An 1886 map with a red highlight showing the location of the Sixth Ward land Wolter purchased in 1883. The area was sparsely developed and etched by railroad tracks. The segment of Ohio Street next to Wolter’s property was as narrow as an alleyway.

A small home was all that stood near that corner when August Wolter got there. Wolter came to America in 1872 when he was 21. He wasted no time. Before the year ended, Wolter had found a wife. A German fresh off the boat named Augusta Josephine Neubauer. They went to Weyauwega and settled on a farm that held them for almost a decade.

When the Wolters returned to Oshkosh, they had four kids and enough for a down payment on the property at 5th and Ohio. Again, the Wolters worked quickly. They built a two-story structure that hugged the corner and outfitted it with a saloon and grocery. The opening date is lost. They may have been in business before the close of 1883. But by the spring of 1884, the Wolters most definitely had their two ventures up and running. They would be at that corner for the next 20 years.

From the 1884 Oshkosh City Directory. The Wolter’s residence at 276 Fifth was the original street address for what is now a parking lot on the east side of the building.

The 1880s were ripe years for grocery/saloon hybrids. Oshkosh had more than a dozen of them, four in the Sixth Ward alone. The ward was a magnet for Bavarian and Bohemian immigrants. Wolter’s saloon became an anchorage for immigrants trying to find their place in a foreign city that was now their home.

The Sixth Ward was also on its way to earning its brawling reputation as the “Bloody Sixth Ward.” But Wolter contributed nothing to that project. August Wolter ran an orderly saloon, largely free of the mayhem that plagued so many Oshkosh bars. The agreeable atmosphere fostered Wolter’s success. The social lubricant was fresh beer from Horn & Schwalm’s Brooklyn Brewery. It was the only draft beer Wolter served.

An 1891 advertisement for Horn & Schwalm’s Brooklyn Brewery at 16th and Doty in Oshkosh.

The saloon grew so prosperous that it squeezed out the grocery. From 1899 onward, Wolter’s saloon occupied the entire ground floor of the building. The Wolters family moved into the rooms upstairs.

A 1903 map of the neighborhood clustered around 5th and Ohio. The street address for Wolter’s Saloon was then 280 Fifth. Before moving into the rooms above the saloon, the Wolters family had lived at 276 Fifth. Click map to enlarge.

Pabst Brewing had been watching Wolter’s saloon grow. When the Milwaukee brewery came calling, Wolter sold out. Pabst purchased the building and business on September 22, 1905. And with that, August Wolter retired. He was 54.

The New Brew at the old Wolter’s Saloon. Oshkosh Daily Northwestern August 5, 1905.

Bobbie's Inn
Otto Ziegenhagen lived next door to the saloon in the house the Wolters family had previously lived in. Otto was 36, the eldest son of German immigrants. He worked at Paine Lumber and seems to have been moonlighting at Wolter’s saloon. After Pabst bought it, Otto went behind the bar full time. He was the kind of guy Pabst liked for its tied-houses. Otto Ziegenhagen was a Republican ward heeler and known to absolutely everyone on the Southside.

Otto Ziegenhagen turned out to be part of a package deal. His younger brothers Ed and Bob, both living a couple of doors east of the saloon, began working for him. In 1909, brother Bob took over. He was 27 and destined to become a lead horse in Pabst’s Oshkosh stable. The saloon was renamed Bobbie's Inn, and it flourished.

From the 1914 Oshkosh City Directory. The street addresses had been renumbered in 1908 and would change again in 1957. The Ziegenhagen home at 830 5th is now addressed as 536 W 5th and still stands.

Pabst soon had bigger plans for Bobbie Ziegenhagen. In 1918, he was reassigned to a place a block south: The brewery's marquee saloon at the southeast corner of 6th and Ohio. It was called the Pabst Exchange, and it was the most elaborate beer hall on the Southside. That building remains at the southeast corner of 6th and Ohio.

The Pabst Exchange, circa 1900.

At 5th and Ohio, Pabst brought in a new guy named Mike King. But King’s career as a saloon keeper got aborted by an obnoxious mistake called National Prohibition. And that changed everything. The mild, old Wolter’s saloon transformed into a rowdy, lawless place. That part of this history requires a monograph all its own. You can read that HERE → Part 2.

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The Father of Oshkosh Saloons

People who knew Webster Stanley in the 1850s didn’t think of him as the “Father of Oshkosh.” In fact, they probably gave him no thought at all. Stanley was a luckless relic best known for his misfortune. He looked more like a washout than the sire of a vibrant city.

A decomposed 1850s photo of Webster Stanley over an 1853 Oshkosh plat map.

Stanley’s reputational crash was tied to the land he staked out in the summer of 1836. He had claimed 117.8 acres that would later become prime real estate. It was called Saukeer, then, and it was wilderness. Stanley established a home and then a tavern there. Oshkosh grew up around his tavern. Stanley’s claim included the east side of what is now N. Main Street, running from the river all the way north to Merritt Ave. That land should have made Stanley rich.

An 1858 map showing land (north of the river) claimed by Stanley in 1836. Main Street is at the left edge, Bowen Street is at the right edge. It had become the most densely populated ward in the city (click to enlarge).

But that land did not make Webster Stanley rich. His undoing began in April 1840, when it came time for him to make good on his claim. The federal government wanted $1.25 an acre. Stanley couldn’t come up with the money. Daniel Butler, a Green Bay land speculator, stepped in and grabbed it. Butler paid $147.28 for the land Stanley was squatting on. Stanley bought the property back seven months later, with money borrowed from a Green Bay banker. He paid Butler $400, or $3.41 an acre. The land’s value had increased 172% in seven months.

The loan came due in 1844, but Stanley lacked the cash to pay it off. He took a second loan to pay off the first. And then fell behind on that loan. Stanley grew desperate. In January 1846, he made a deal with a cunning financier from Taycheedah called Col. Henry Conklin. Stanley agreed to deed Conklin half his land if Conklin would satisfy the mortgage. Conklin paid off the note and promptly claimed the title for the entire 117 acres. And then he called the sheriff. Stanley was evicted from the property that had been his home for a decade.

Col. Henry Conklin

Stanley protested Conklin’s subterfuge. Conklin ignored him. He subdivided the land and began selling off the lots. If you live on the east side of Oshkosh, Conklin might sound familiar. It may be on your deed or tax bill. Some of the east side plats still carry the Conklin name.

An annotated, 1848 plat map for Conklin’s 2nd Addition Subdivision. Many of the lots on this map are still associated with Conklin's subdivision.

Stanley fought and failed to get his land back. The nasty episode finally sputtered to an end in 1852 when Stanley’s lawyer exhausted his last appeal at the U.S. District Court. For the rest of his life, Stanley maintained that he had been cheated. His son Henry embellished the plot with tales of conspiracy and mob violence. Webster Stanley was more philosophical. Some 40 years after the fact, he explained that in those days money was hard to get and “justice was still harder.”

Stanley and the First Saloons
Stanley’s dispossession coincided with a wave of migration. It transformed the frontier outpost into a city with a population of nearly 1,400 by 1850. Other settlers were cashing in. Among them were the Jackson and Wright families.

In 1846, William Wright and his brother-in-law Joseph Jackson subdivided land they and their family members owned on the west side of Pamachamit, an old trail choked by underbrush. Jackson and Wright wanted to make it into Oshkosh’s main thoroughfare. Today, Pamachamit is North Main Street.

William Wright (left) and Joseph Jackson.

Wright and Jackson needed Webster Stanley’s help to realize their scheme. Stanley operated the only licensed ferry in Oshkosh. The ferry was based a couple of blocks east of Pamachamit. Wright and Jackson wanted it moved to the foot of Pamachamit, thereby directing traffic to their proposed business district. And, in turn, increasing the value of their land.

They lured Stanley by offering him the proprietorship of the saloon and rooming house they would build on Pamachamit. Stanley took the bait and moved his ferry. Pamachamit became Ferry Street. And in the summer of 1846, Webster Stanley opened the first saloon in Oshkosh at what is now the southwest corner of Main and Pearl streets.

Wright and Jackson wanted Stanley for his ferry. That he knew how to run a bar was a bonus. Stanley had operated a frontier tavern on the land he had lost. It opened around 1838 and served as an all-purpose village hub. The new place wasn’t meant to be so flexible. This was a true saloon intended for drinking and social gathering. But like his earlier tavern, Stanley’s saloon anchored a burst of development.

Ferry Street colonized even more quickly than Wright and Jackson expected. Three stores, a shoe shop, a shingle factory, and about 20 homes went up on or adjacent to Ferry Street by the fall of 1846. There would have been more construction if they hadn’t run out of building materials.

An 1850s depiction of Ferry Street, looking north from the river. 

Amidst the boom, Webster Stanley was ejected again. In the spring of 1847, the saloon he inhabited was sold to Manoah Griffin, a newcomer from Maine. Griffin moved the entire structure to the east side of the street, where he had bought four lots in what is now the 100 block of N. Main. His “Oshkosh House” was up and running by the summer of 1848.

Griffin renovated Stanley’s “shanty” saloon, turning it into a three-story public house. Griffin claimed it was “one of the largest and best located mansions for public entertainment in Northern Wisconsin." He also claimed it was “the first tavern opened in the village of Oshkosh.” Only the newest of newcomers would not have recognized that as bullshit.

Oshkosh True Democrat, February 9, 1849.

Then they came for the ferry. The Fox River Bridge Company was formed in 1847 by a clutch of Ferry Street gentry. They wanted a floating bridge spanning the Fox River from the foot of Ferry Street. The bridge would render the Stanley’s Ferry obsolete. He had been stripped of everything else by this point. Stanley conceded to the inevitable before it came to pass. The bridge opened to traffic on July 3, 1849. Stanley had already abandoned the ferry and was living on the Southside by then.

Looking north over the floating bridge in the 1850s.

The Birth of Brooklyn
Stanley’s move to Saukeer in 1836 led to the creation of Oshkosh. And then he got kicked out. Stanley's move to Pamachamet in 1846 led to the creation of Main Street. He got kicked out again. He had nothing to show for all that he had enabled. He’d lost everything but his capacity for enabling.

Henry and Joseph Stringham were of a mind to exploit Stanley’s singular talent. In 1838, Henry Stringham claimed much of what now constitutes the Southside of Oshkosh. He owned everything south of the river and east of what is now Ohio Street, all the way down to what is now 17th Ave. Henry’s brother Joseph oversaw the vast property. A lone prairie of scrubland and stinking marshes.

The Stringham brothers made Stanley an offer: they would give him nearly an acre of their land if he opened a saloon and boarding house near the south shore of the river. Stanley’s new saloon was called the Brooklyn House, and it seeded the next stage of Oshkosh’s expansion. It was the first multi-story building south of the river. A collection of businesses gathered around it. For decades to come, the Southside’s old Third Ward would be known locally as Brooklyn.

A rendering of Oshkosh’s Brooklyn twenty years after Stanley arrived there.

The Brooklyn House stood at what is now South Main just south of 7th Ave. Stanley had the bar up and running before the end of 1848; well before the float bridge opened to traffic. But his tenure at the Brooklyn House was frequently disrupted. Saloon keepers cycled through almost annually. The turnover may have been due to the Stringham brothers, who retained ownership of the property. Stanley rotated in and out. When he wasn’t at the Brooklyn, he could be found on a farmstead in what is now the Town of Nekimi.

Despite the disruptions, the Stringhams eventually made good on their promise to hand Stanley a slice of their Southside real estate. It was a choice cut, spanning four lots directly east of the Brooklyn House. The Stringhams claimed the property was worth $1,000, or about $40,000 in today's money.

The red block indicates the approximate location of the Brooklyn House. The blue block represents the lots Stanley owned.

Stanley had land again, but he was still dirt poor. He lacked the resources to build anything more than a small shanty on the property. His ongoing money trouble had him back in court, where he was being sued by two of his debtors. Stanley could not have missed the irony. The town around him was booming. He had done so much to make that possible. Yet he had next to nothing to show for it.

Webster Stanley was 60 years old when he gave up on Oshkosh. In 1858, he sold the lots that were given to him by the Stringham brothers. He used the money to buy 51 acres of bayou land at the south end of Partridge Crop Lake in Waupaca County. The Wolf River snaked through it. The Wolf had become an important conduit for moving people and supplies through the area. Stanley and his son George built a saloon and hotel called Stanley’s Landing at a bend in the river. For the next decade, Stanley’s Landing was a favored port of call for Wolf River boat traffic.

The red marker is at the former site of Stanley’s Landing (click to enlarge).

The Father of Oshkosh
The Geographical and Statistical History of the County of Winnebago was published in 1856. Webster Stanley had come here twenty years earlier. The book was a first stab at curating the early history of non-native settlers to the area. Its depiction of Webster Stanley was superficial: “Stanley was a man of enterprise, was one of the founders of business in Oshkosh.”

Co-authors Martin Mitchel and Joseph H. Osborn had been living in Oshkosh for at least a decade when they wrote that. Curiously, they refer to Stanley in the past tense. Webster Stanley and his family were living at the Brooklyn House at the time.

Cover of the 1856 Geographical and Statistical History with a drawing of Webster Stanley that appeared on page 63.

The first meaningful reappraisal of Webster Stanley’s significance occurred a decade later. In 1867, the Oshkosh Daily Northwestern published the Biographical and Statistical History of the City of Oshkosh. It was written by Orange H. Harris. He had come to town a year earlier and was obsessed with the city’s history.

Orange H. Harris

Orange Harris never met Webster Stanley. He may have heard about Stanley’s troubles, but he didn’t share them. Harris focused on the early years. He leaned on a handful of aging settlers for his information. Pioneers like George Wright and Joseph Jackson. They told him of Stanley and how the city came to be. Their memories and shared documents “formed the base of what I have written,” Harris explained. He saw all of it from a fresh perspective.

Harris reshaped the narrative. He reintroduced Stanley as “the founder of Oshkosh.” The admiration was unequivocal. “Mr. Stanley was a man of energy, and doubtless entitled to all the credit he receives,” Harris wrote. Despite being very much alive, Stanley was still being consigned to the past tense.

​Others came around to Harris’ point of view. Richard Harney and William Wright were influential Oshkoshers who had known Webster Stanley for years. Both began writing about the city’s history. Stanley was placed at the center of the stories they told. By the 1880s, Webster Stanley had ascended from the founder of Oshkosh to the Father of Oshkosh.

He may not even have known that he was becoming a folk hero. He’d been away for a decade. When his wife, Sophia, died in 1869, Webster Stanley brought her body to Oshkosh for burial. But he didn't stay.

Sophia Stanley’s headstone. Ellenwood Cemetery, Oshkosh.

Stanley abandoned his Waupaca land after Sophia’s death. He moved to Appleton. He was 72 now. Stanley lived with his son George and worked as a carpenter. Meanwhile, the legend grew. Stories recalling his early days in Oshkosh appeared in every major Wisconsin newspaper. The stories spread to papers in Michigan, Indiana, and Tennessee.

By 1875, Stanley was well aware of his growing celebrity. He visited Oshkosh again in 1876. He introduced himself to the editors of the Oshkosh Times and the Oshkosh Daily Northwestern. The Times described him as one of “those rare links between the past and present. His mind is perfectly clear and he seems to be posted on all that is going on around him.”

Webster Stanley in the early 1870s.

The recognition didn’t do him a damned bit of good. “I am very poor, have never begged yet but don’t know how soon I may be compelled to,” Stanley confided to a reporter. He was asking for help. The prosperous city that called him father didn’t give it.

A year later, Stanley moved to Keshena to live on the Menominee Reservation. He’d long shared a camaraderie with the Menominee. They had treated him better than most others. His presence at Keshena raised eyebrows and became fodder for several Wisconsin newspapers. A Kenosha paper mentioned his presence on the reservation and quipped that "Stanley was originally the half-owner of all of Oshkosh, but is now munching on the crust of poverty.”

His hearing and eyesight began failing him. Stanley returned to Appleton. At 81, he still worked - as best he could - as a carpenter. He finally gave it up when he went blind. Stanley was living with his son George again. In 1885, George decided they’d move to the Dakota Territory and start anew. Webster Stanley had just turned 87.

George W. Stanley.

Before they left Wisconsin, a journalist from the Oshkosh Times went to Appleton to interview Webster Stanley. The reporter was impressed: “He retains his intellect wonderfully, speaks of bygone days clearly, and distinctly remembers names and incidents.” The article that followed was the longest and most detailed account of his story that Stanley ever took part in.

Stanley’s version differs from the idealized fable that had become, and remains, Oshkosh lore. He settled in Oshkosh, he said, because he was “charmed” by its beauty. He talked about the loss of his land and his hardships. He talked about fellowship, but not about the rugged individualism that others had projected onto him. He talked a lot about Native Americans. The Times reporter wrote that, “The Menomonees [sic] and half-breeds have always been his friends, and in speaking of them he became very much affected.”

The Stanley’s left for the Dakota Territory. They came to a dead-end town that is now Columbia, South Dakota. The end of the line. Webster Stanley died there on January 19, 1887 at the age of 88. He was buried under a makeshift wooden marker. His name was scratched into it with a nail. The Father of Oshkosh died poor and passed into rich myth.

February 2, 1887; Oshkosh Daily Northwestern.

The White Settler
On June 14, 1930, a dedication ceremony was held for a marker placed on the land where Webster Stanley settled in 1836. Among the dignitaries mouthing half-truths and banalities was the Wisconsin Governor, Walter Kohler. The Marker was just a stone’s throw east of the site where Webster Stanley was evicted from his home in 1846. There was no mention of that at the dedication.

The Webster Stanley marker at the corner of Bowen and Bay Shore.

In the days that followed, there was talk of exhuming the “practically unmarked grave” where Webster Stanley was planted. “It is proposed to bring the remains to this city at some time in the future, if the project can be financed.” The if became no. They couldn’t raise the money.

In 1953, there was a contest to name the new school that was about go up on the east side at Hazel and Melvin streets. The winner was Thomas Harenburg, a sixth grader who submitted the name Webster Stanley, Oshkosh’s “first white settler.”

Dec 15, 1953; Oshkosh Daily Northwestern.

The school named for Webster Stanley was demolished in 2023 to make way for a new school. Again, there was a contest to find a name. Webster Stanley didn’t win this time. The new school was named Menominee Elementary. Webster Stanley might have preferred it that way.

A portrait of Webster Stanley that was painted and given to Webster Stanley Junior High by Oshkosh artist Joseph Vogt in 1966. It was rediscovered in 2013 in the school’s boiler room.

Webster Stanley, the "first white settler” in Oshkosh… it was repeated so often that it became a truism even before his death. Webster Stanley knew it wasn’t so. The more relevant detail is that nobody at all seemed to care that the “Father” of Oshkosh was a lifelong tavern and saloon operator. In some towns, that sort of truth might be unacceptable. Not in Oshkosh. You can’t help but like that.

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This is the third and final post in a series about the early taverns of Oshkosh and Webster Stanley.

The First Tavern begins the series with George Johnston, a Virginia settler who arrived here years before Webster Stanley.

It was followed by Webster Stanley and his Tavern, which concerns Stanley's first decade here.

Webster Stanley and his Tavern

The “Father of Oshkosh” was a tavern keeper. Webster Stanley didn’t intend to take up that trade here. Yet his unplanned tavern proved to be foundational. It became the basis for what would be the City of Oshkosh. This is about Webster Stanley and what’s been left out of our conventional histories.

Webster Stanley

A Great Curiosity
Webster Stanley was a Connecticut Yankee, born in 1798. He settled here in the spring of 1836. He was not the first non-native settler, and this was not his first visit to the area. Stanley had been in the Fox Valley for about two years. He’d been working for the territorial government hauling supplies between Fort Howard (Green Bay) and Fort Winnebago (Portage). He’d been through here before. This time, though, he was coming to stay.

Stanley had departed from what is now Neenah. He came drifting down the shore of Lake Winnebago piloting a beat-up Durham boat overloaded with his wife, Sophia; their son, Henry; and a pile of milled lumber. They had tucked in provisions to last them a year.

An 1830s-style Durham boat.

They came to shore for a brief landing on the north bank of the Fox River where it flows into Lake Winnebago. A place called Saukeer. Stanley loved the beauty of this area. And he wanted to approach a small band of Indians passing through. They had been watching his boat skirt the shoreline. Stanley said they met him as a friend and with “great curiosity.” He cherished the memory of that greeting for the rest of his life.

A current view of the eastern most portion of what was once Saukeer.

But Saukeer wasn’t Stanley’s intended destination. He was going to see James Knaggs, about three miles upriver. Knaggs was a 52-year-old “quarter blood Menominee." He had been in the general vicinity for at least a decade and was well-known throughout the region. Knaggs kept a tavern on the northeast bank of the Fox River in what is now Riverside Cemetery.

Knaggs had also claimed a portion of land on the opposite shore (now part of Rainbow Park). He ran a ferry between the two points. The tavern and ferry had been launched about six years earlier by a Virginian named George Johnston. It was the first development by a non-native in what would become the City of Oshkosh. It’s quite likely that Stanley had ridden the ferry while working for the Government. By the spring of 1836, Stanley had probably known Knaggs for a year or more.

An 1834 map with Kanggs (Naggs) Ferry House (Tavern), landing and ferry crossing. Click image to enlarge.

The Stanleys spent their first night with Knaggs on the northeast bank of the river. The following morning, they floated over to Knaggs’ south-bank claim. Stanley shaped his stack of wood into a shanty there. The shanty would be their home for the next four months. Stanley worked as a ferryman for Knaggs that summer.

The Gallup boys arrived a couple months later. Chester Gallup was the father of Stanley’s wife. His sons, Henry and Amos, camped out at Stanley’s shanty and pitched in on the ferry. It’s at this point that the received history of Stanley slips into incoherence.

A Hot Tip and a Stolen Ferry
The standard version begins like this: Henry Gallup was manning the Ferry one day in late August or early September when Territorial Governor Henry Dodge stepped on board. Dodge was either coming from or going to the Cedars, near present-day ​​Little Chute. Sources disagree on his direction. But they all agree that at the Cedars, Dodge signed off on a treaty for the eventual transfer of about 4 million acres of Menominee land to the federal government. The ceded lands included Saukeer and the rest of what is now the City of Oshkosh north of the Fox River.

Henry Dodge, 1834.

During his ferry ride, Dodge is said to have given Henry Gallup a hot tip on the imminent land transfer. Acting on that tip, the Stanleys and Gallups scuttled downriver and claimed hundreds of acres of Saukeer as their own. Aside from Governor Dodge travelling on Knaggs’ Ferry, the hot tip story makes no sense.

First, there’s the intimation that Dodge’s hot tip on the Treaty of the Cedars was inside information. In fact, there was no inside information left to give. The essentials of the land transfer had been in circulation for a year. The Green-Bay Intelligencer newspaper had been helping to spread the word since the summer of 1835, if not earlier. The “hot tip” was news to no one.

Masthead for the June 13, 1835 edition of the Green-Bay Intelligencer. This issue contained a report on the opening of the land where Webster Stanley would eventually settle.

Second, whatever Dodge may have said to Henry Gallup changed nothing about the availability of the Saukeer land. At least not in the near term. The Treaty of the Cedars wasn’t finalized until February of 1837. That didn't matter to Stanley. He wasn’t waiting for a white man’s permission to settle at Saukeer.

Treaty of the Cedars Marker in the Village of Little Chute.

If the hot tip had been the trigger, Stanley would have quickly picked up and moved to the uninhabited Saukeer. Instead, he and the Gallup boys hung around at Knaggs’ place until an unspecified date in October. This may have been the plan all along. With fall and winter coming and ferry traffic dwindling, Knaggs would no longer need their help. Their October departure allowed Stanley and the Gallups to work through the summer for Knaggs while still leaving them time to get their new housing established at Saukeer before the snow fell.

Finally, and perhaps most important, is this: in 1885, Stanley said that he staked his claim at Suakeer on or about July 18, 1836. This was about six weeks before Dodge stepped onto the Kanggs Ferry.

Stanley said his Saukeer claim was granted by Chief Oshkosh through Oshkosh’s interpreters, William Powell and Charles Grignon. It’s known that Powell was frequently traveling through the area and in regular contact with Chief Oshkosh at this time. Powell was also a known associate of James Knaggs. Stanley was definitely in the orbit of these people.

Chief Oshkosh (left) and William Powell.

There are two voices habitually missing from most histories of these events: those of Stanley and Knaggs. Neither has been well served by their omission. Which leads to another piece of this story that needs reconsideration.

Some sources claim that Stanley bought Knaggs’ Ferry and took it with him to Saukeer when he moved there. Other sources imply that Stanley pirated the ferry and made it his own. Neither version holds water. As we’ll see, the Knaggs Ferry and Tavern were still in operation at their original location years after Stanley left there.

Stanley’s Unintended Tavern
In October 1836, Stanley took down his shanty and resettled at Saukeer. Chester Gallup and his wife, Betsey, were also on the scene now. They camped out on land that coincides with the current northeast corner of Broad and Bay Shore streets. About 200 yards east of there they cleared a plot to build upon. By early November, they had a 200-square-foot log home. The two families lived together that first winter. Seven of them, overcrowded and utterly isolated.

Betsey Gallup (left) and Sophia Stanley, who shared the 200-square-foot log home with four men and an eight-year-old boy during the winter of 1836/1837.

Winter turned to spring. They built another log home, this one for the Gallups, and began clearing land for crops; primarily wheat. Stanley and Gallup had staked out almost 300 acres. The tract was bounded by what is now North Main and Merritt streets, and Lake Winnebago and the Fox River. Stanley claimed 117 acres lying west of where Bowen Street now runs. The Gallups claimed 170 acres to the east of that line.

Other settlers began arriving following the ratification of the Treaty of the Cedars. David and Thomas Evans settled north of Merritt. George Wright and his son William claimed land west of North Main. They kept on coming. Many of them were Yankees, and all of them were after cheap land. Stanley’s residence evolved into a tavern, the place where the new arrivals gathered.

Unfortunately, the early histories of Oshkosh devote little attention to the social scene at Stanley’s Tavern. They tend to be more concerned with listing the “Oshkosh Firsts” occurring there: the first religious service, the first school classes (taught by Emeline Cook in an adjoining room), the first county board meeting, the first elections… that sort of thing.

Civic affairs aside, it was by all accounts a primitive little dive. Log walls surrounded a floor made of half-sawed logs thatched with river cane. There’s no mention of an actual bar. But there are multiple references to the ubiquitous whiskey jug and avid drinking. Brandy may have been in the offing, as well. Ohio native and first Oshkosh mailman, Chester Ford, was said to have made a hard cider that was also popular among the pioneer imbibers.

Crosstown Rivals
At the end of 1838, there were still fewer than 100 people living in what would become Oshkosh. They were clustered around two points. The Knaggs Tavern on the north end and the Stanley Tavern on the east side. But the development adjacent to the Knaggs Tavern was stalled. Though his ferry remained part of the main route for people passing through the area, they weren’t coming to stay. Those who came to stay went downstream.

Two pieces from the same 1839 map. On the lefts Knaggs’ (Nagg’s) Tavern and ferry route is illustrated. On the right is Stanley’s (Stanly’s) Tavern. Below and to the right of the Stanley marker is a house symbol representing the Gallup home.

The predominance of the east side settlement was affirmed by the election of September 1838. Stanley’s Tavern was selected as the polling place for the precinct that would become Winnebago County two years later. Yet the place still lacked a proper name.

Mail sent to the area was often addressed to Stanley’s Tavern for want of a better identifier. That was a little too quaint for some. George Wright, who had been appointed Justice of the Peace for the settled area west of Lake Winnebago, called a meeting at his house to come up with something legitimate. “We have for a long time suffered great inconvenience in consequence of not having a name by which this noble town and interesting country might be known,” Wright complained.

On January 10, 1839, they came together for a whiskey-fueled vote on the matter. The folks living near the Knaggs Tavern united under the banner of Oshkosh. The folks living near Stanley’s Tavern split their votes among Athens, Osceola, Saukeer, and Galeopolis, among others. In February 1839, Wright published the results. “The name OSHKOSH received a large majority.” It would be the last political victory for the folks settled on Knaggs’ side of town.

A handdrawn map from March 1839 showing the Knaggs and Stanley locations with a road uniting the two settlement areas.

Routed
I mentioned earlier that some histories of this period imply that Stanley cheated Kanggs out of his ferry before moving to Suakeer. This is not accurate. The Knaggs Ferry was still running from its “Riverside Cemetery location” as late as February 1842, when it was mentioned in a bill under consideration by the Wisconsin Territorial Legislature.

Stanley hadn’t stolen the ferry and he hadn’t turned his back on Knaggs. In November 1839, Knaggs sued a man who had drunk brandy at his tavern, made use of his ferry, and then took off without paying. Webster Stanley testified on Knaggs’ behalf. He wasn’t the only East Sider who had remained hospitable to Knaggs. William Wright wrote that sometime around 1839, he and David Evans helped Knaggs build an addition onto his tavern. Both Wright and Evans were living near Stanley’s Tavern at the time.

In 1840, however, the connection began to fray. In August, Stanley applied to the Committee on Territorial Affairs for a license to operate a ferry on the east side of Oshkosh. That was the first step. Stanley then sought and received an appointment to a commission tasked with laying out a new territorial road through Oshkosh. The new road bypassed Knaggs’ ferry. It led, instead, to Stanley’s ferry near the current Wisconsin Street Bridge.

Detail of an 1841 map with a dotted line showing the territorial road passing through Knaggs’ Ferry near the confluence of Lake Butte des Morts and the Fox River.

The new route appears to have been completed in 1842. Soon after, Stanley moved his ferry further down river, to the approximate site of the current Canadian National Railroad Bridge.

From an 1844 map showing the Territorial Road now passing through Stanley’s Ferry.

Stanley didn’t steal Knaggs’ Ferry, but he had made it redundant. Knaggs went broke, closed his tavern, and struggled to get by as a farmer. At the end, he was down to a cow, a calf, and four pigs. James Knaggs died in 1847. By that time, his old friend Webster Stanley was getting his own taste of poverty and failure. That part of the story can be found HERE.

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Some Notes on Sources...
For the most part, I write these stories for my own pleasure. And because I find listing sources unpleasant, I usually don’t. But in this case, I want to call out several sources for anyone who would like to carry this research forward. What follows will be of little interest to most, but here we go, anyway…

At last count, I had collected and absorbed something in the neighborhood of 80 sources (I’m well past that point now) while researching this story and the related story about Johnston’s Tavern. I’m not going to list all of those, but here are a few that have helped to clear away some of the half-truths and errors that seem to have become axiomatic in the conventional histories of this city.

First, there’s the work of Dr. Charles D. Goff, late professor of history at the Wisconsin State University - Oshkosh (now UW-Oshkosh). His 1976 article in the Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters (Volume LXIV) and his Chapter in the 1976 book Prairie, Pines, and People are both essential texts on the initial settlements of non-natives here.

To the best of my knowledge, there’s information in the present piece concerning the events surrounding Webster Stanley’s settling at Saukeer that has not appeared in other histories. The bulk of this was gleaned from statements Stanley made in the last decade of his life. The most telling of these appears in an article published in the Oshkosh Morning Times on August 30, 1885. Stanley was interviewed extensively for the article. He provided details of his first years here, some of which contradict the often-told stories of that time. To my reading, Stanley’s version of these events is more tenable.

As for those “conventional histories” I’ve mentioned here, there are two primary sources that have seeded almost everything that has followed.

The Geographical and Statistical History of the County of Winnebago, published in 1856, appeared 20 years after Stanley settled at Saukeer. The mythologizing was well underway even at this early date. Stanley was still in the area at this time, but it doesn’t appear that anyone involved in the project ever bothered to get his input. This volume is also the source for the erroneous assertion that Stanley stole the Knaggs Ferry. In reference to Stanley, it mentions that “He took the ferry of Knaggs, who was a half-breed, and commenced keeping it himself.” This error was compounded by the subsequent interpretation that “took” implied theft.

The other primary text is Richard Harney’s History of Winnebago County, published in 1880. Harney has cast a long shadow over this history, and his book is invaluable, but some of it can’t be taken at face value. His Anglo chauvinism often skews his interpretation of events.

Lastly, I was able to get added insight into James Knaggs by reviewing the extant probate records of his estate. The first filings in that record were made in December 1847. It would be an especially interesting document for anyone researching Knaggs or the early settlement that existed near his tavern and ferry. I was able to access that source through Ancestry.com.