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 The plat name was already outdated.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. I plan to have that posted here in a couple of weeks.

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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.

The First Tavern

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Knaggs Ferry Marker.

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

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

Webster Stanley

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

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

William Wallace Wright

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wright penned a series of essays about the white settlers who came to tame this place. Webster Stanley, who died in 1887, always played the lead role. And by the time of Wright’s death in 1903, at the age of 84, Webster Stanley had been enshrined as Oshkosh’s “First White Settler.”

Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, August 26, 1903.

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

I’m going to start working on that story now… HERE's the link to that post.

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