Onkle Heinze and the Lake Shore Casino Club

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

Jerry's Bar, 1210 Ceape Ave.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Joseph Stringham

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Oshkosh Police in the 1880s.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

George White Pratt

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

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

Pratt Trail in Menominee Park.

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

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

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

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

Jerry’s Bar.

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Pints of the Past

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

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

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

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

The Morgan House at 234 Church Avenue.

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

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

John R. Morgan

The Green Front Inn Speakeasy & Boxing Club

There is a building on Main Street with a stone embedded at the top that has “Joe. Laus 1894” carved into it. Joseph Laus was into candy. The “Laus Block” was home to the Laus Candy Company for 38 years.

What was once known as the Laus Block at 576 & 578 North Main Street.

But this story isn’t about candy. It’s about what happened after a part of that building was leased to a trio of scofflaws and how they used it as a clubhouse for their underworld adventures. This story begins with the death of Joe Laus.

Joesph Laus.

Laus had been making candy in Oshkosh ever since moving here from Milwaukee in 1879. He’d come to the right place. If a city is known by its appetites, then alcohol and candy would be the cravings that explain 1890s Oshkosh. With a population of 27,000, the city supported 120 saloons and 25 confectioneries. Joe Laus thrived here. Right up until he died in 1925.

His children inherited the business and the building. The candy company occupied the north half of the Laus Block, what is now 578 N. Main. The south half – 576 N. Main – was vacant. The Laus kids kept the candy shop running, but then did something Joe Laus would never have done. Two months after their father died, they leased the adjoining space to three young men who wanted to open a soft drink parlor.

Maybe the Laus kids were supremely naive. Or maybe just careless. In Oshkosh, “soft drink parlor” was synonymous with speakeasy. Having an illegal booze dive next door to the home of the Caramel Nut Sucker was no way to sell candy.

Oshkosh Daily Northwestern; June 23, 1926

The perpetrators of the speakeasy were Arvin “Dick” Schrader, Herb Koeck, and Roman Schwartz. Dick Schrader was the oldest of the bunch and, initially at least, the ringleader. He was a 26-year-old baker and World War I vet. Schrader’s wife was Herb Koeck’s sister..

Herb Koeck was a 19-year-old Southside fighter. He grew up in his father’s saloon at the corner of 6th and Knapp. He was better known as Battling Herb. Koeck quit school at 15 and began his boxing career about a year later.

Rounding out the trio was Herb Koeck’s unlikely best friend, an Eastsider named Roman Schwartz. He had been an honor student and noted athlete before he started running with Koeck. Schwartz was 17 when he quit school in 1923. That summer, Koeck and Schwartz tried walking to California. The trek gave them plenty of time to talk about what they'd do when they got back to Oshkosh.

The Green Front Inn
You had to get a $50 license to run a soft drink parlor in Oshkosh. Dick Schrader put in the application and moved into the apartment above 576 N. Main. And at the end of June 1925, the Green Front Inn was open for business.

There were approximately 90 speakeasies in Oshkosh that summer. That figure doesn’t include the countless beer flats and blind pigs hidden in private homes throughout the city. Competition among the illegal booze merchants was fierce. Koeck, Schrader, and Schwartz hit upon something novel to make their place stand out: boxing.

Battling Herb Koeck (left) and Young Shaw.

Battling Herb and Young Shaw were Oshkosh’s two most popular boxers. Battling Herb had a mauling style. His attack described as tiger-like. Young Shaw, whose real name was Bill Schraa, was a headhunter. A devastating puncher who could “deal out dreamland wallops with either paw.” On more than one occasion Shaw broke bones in his hands while hammering an opponent’s skull.

Koeck and Shaw trained in a make-shift gym squeezed in at the rear of the speakeasy. The fighters would go through their paces and then spar for a few rounds with different opponents. It became a popular attraction, and the Green Front Inn became the headquarters for Oshkosh boxing fans. On fight nights, they’d gather and get lit, then head out the back door and slide down the block to catch the latest boxing card at Armory B.

Armory B at the north east corner of Merritt and Jefferson; the home of boxing in Oshkosh in the 1920s.

The Green Front Inn was the talk of the town by the fall of 1925. It was one of the few Oshkosh speakeasies to receive press coverage for something other than being raided. Which led to it being raided.

On the Thursday evening of October 29, a squad of state Prohibition agents swept in and ordered everyone out… except for Dick Schrader. The mop squad found more than a dozen bottles of moonshine. Schrader was arrested and taken away to spend the night in jail. His first call was to attorney Richard “Romeo” Laus, son of the late Joe Laus of candy company fame. The Green Front Inn gang would keep Romeo busy for some time to come.

Two months later, the Green Front Inn got busted again. The dry squad returned on December 28, 1925 to find Battling Herb Koeck taking a break from his training with a bottle of moonshine. Koeck went the same route as Schrader: a night in jail as prelude to a lengthy court battle where every shred of state evidence was disputed. The flimsy denials paid off. Both cases were eventually dismissed.

The Kindermann Cabinet
The Green Front Inn had become a symbol for the freewheeling liquor trade in Oshkosh. The attention presented a significant downside. State Prohibition agents were now determined to bring the place down. Koeck, Schrader, and Schwartz had never been careful. Their only concession to the dry law was to stow their stockpile of moonshine in a coal bin just outside the back door. Inside the speakeasy, caution was thrown to the wind. Now, they had to do better than that.

The rear entrance and back yard of the former Green Front Inn. The coal bin where moonshine was hidden was just outside the lower door on the left.

What they needed was a spot inside the speakeasy where they could conceal the booze when they were pouring drinks. There was a Southside carpenter who specialized in this kind of thing. John Kindermann was known among Oshkosh bootleggers for his architectural subterfuge. His masterwork was the underground distillery in his own backyard near 7th and Sawyer. The dugout was accessed through a secret door in his basement. It was the most elaborately concealed moonshine plant in Oshkosh.

Kindermann was hired to build a hidden compartment in the Green Front Inn. He devised a plan for a tall, hidden cabinet built into a wall between the bathroom and the barroom. The cabinet would be accessible through a concealed hatch. With the hatch closed, the cabinet full of moonshine would be undetectable.

A week after Herb Koeck’s bust, Kindermann went to work building the secret chamber. He was toiling in the early morning hours, when both the candy company and speakeasy were closed. Kindermann was there when a cop walked by the Green Front Inn just after 3 a.m on the Tuesday morning of January 5, 1925.

Officer Elmer Ludwig squeezed in a motorcycle sidecar.

Elmer Ludwig was the city’s pioneering motorcycle cop. But he had to walk the beat when it was too cold for cycling. He was also one of two sharpshooters on the force. Scouting a deserted Main Street in the frozen wee hours was a step down from the sort of excitement he liked. This morning, though, was different.

Ludwig noticed a faint light coming from the back of the Green Front Inn. He saw a man moving around in the dim glow and assumed it was a burglar. Ludwig ran around the corner, down Parkway and to the back of the building. He pounded on the back door, demanding that it be opened. Through a window, he spotted Kindermann heading for the front door. Ludwig took off after him.

The cop raced around the corner and saw Kindermann running south down Main Street. Ludwig chased after him on the icy street, shouting for him to stop. Nothing doing, Kindermann kept running. Ludwig couldn’t keep up. He pulled out his pistol and fired a warning shot. Kindermann was getting away. Ludwig took aim and fired again.

The bullet went through Kindermann’s right leg, shattering his fibula. The carpenter went down hard in the parking lot of the Gibson Tire Company. Ludwig called in for help. Kindermann was scooped up and carted to the hospital. John Kindermann recovered. The Green Front Inn went on life support.

A 1926 drawing of the Gibson Tire Company at what is now 537 N. Main.

The former Gibson Tire Company, now the Gibson Social Club, and the approximate spot where Kindermann was shot.

Punching Out
The shooting and secret moonshine cabinet made for splashy news in the afternoon paper. The uproar pushed Dick Schrader over the edge. Six wild months at the Green Front Inn was all he could take. Schrader signed off and moved out.

That left Herb Koeck and Roman Schwartz. Neither had yet turned 21. That alone should have excluded them from getting the permit required to keep the place open. Except it didn’t. A few lies later, the license was transferred to 20-year-old Battling Herb Koeck. Battling Herb wasn’t quite living up to his name anymore.

A boxer training in a speakeasy may have been novel, but it wasn’t especially productive. Koeck had been struggling in the ring ever since the Green Front Inn opened. In December 1925, he was knocked out by a Milwaukee boxer named Joe Ortez. It was the last time Koeck would get a main event bout. Battling Herb Koeck was never the same.

Joe Ortez and the card for Battling Herb Koeck’s last main event, December 11, 1925.

Things were going no better at the Green Front Inn. The city council unanimously rejected Koeck’s application for license renewal in 1927. So Roman Schwartz applied for it. After some debate, the license was granted. And that didn’t sit well with state Prohibition officials.

State agents raided the Green Front Inn again in February 1928. They dug six pints of moonshine out of the coal bin and arrested Roman Schwartz. The agents must have been disappointed not to find Herb Koeck there. The raid, clearly some time in the making, smacked of retribution. That same evening, the same squad of agents arrested Koeck’s brother Martin at his home on Seventh Street, and Koeck’s father, Joe, at his speakeasy on Sixth & Knapp. Martin was making moonshine. Joe was serving it. They all went to jail.

Joe Koeck’s speakeasy at the north east corner of Sixth and Knapp, circa 1928. Now home to the 1890 Pub & Bistro.

Romeo Laus was back in court with another client from the Green Front Inn. But State officials weren’t going to let Roman Schwartz slip through the cracks like Schrader and Koeck had. After six hours of deliberation, the jury returned a guilty verdict. Schwartz was able to avoid jail time by paying $600 in fines (about $11,000 in today's money). It was the end for the original Green Front Inn.

Roman Schwartz moved to Fond du Lac and declared bankruptcy. He got a job as a janitor and was never arrested again. Schwartz remained in Fond du Lac until his death in 1956 at the age of 50.

Arvin “Dick” Schrader returned to the speakeasy business in 1929. After a bitter fight, the city council narrowly agreed to grant him a license for a former Main Street saloon that had been called the Phoenix House in its heyday. Schrader managed to avoid getting busted there. He remained in the tavern trade in Oshkosh for the rest of his working life. Dick Schrader died in 1982 at the age of 83.

The Phoenix House Hotel and Saloon which became Schrader’s speakeasy in 1929. The lot is now occupied by the Sideyard at Peabody’s

Battling Herb Koeck returned to his father’s speakeasy at 6th and Knapp and continued pouring moonshine. He got busted again in 1931. And, again, he managed to beat the charges. He remained in Oshkosh, usually working as a bartender, until 1945 when he moved to San Francisco. He died there in 1951. Herb Koeck was just 45 years old.

Battling Herb Koeck, circa 1950.

The Green Front Inn wasn’t quiet for long. In April 1928, a new speakeasy went in. The place was raided once more in 1931. When Prohibition ended in 1933, the former Green Front Inn became a legal bar named the Colonial Tavern. The last bar there was Snookum’s, which closed in 1980. The photo below is from the late 1960s, when it was Ted’s Place with a Chief Oshkosh Beer sign over the entrance.

The former speakeasy at 576 N. Main is now home to the 920 Tattoo Company. No boxing. No moonshine. But there’s a green front once again framing the stores of the old Laus Block. An unwitting nod to the roaring Green Front Inn.

The 920 Tattoo Company at 576 N. Main, formerly the Green Front Inn.

The roof-line mural on the south wall of the former Green Front Inn.

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Respecting the (Oshkosh) Beer

I was recently invited onto the Respecting the Beer Podcast where they let me babble away about Oshkosh beer and tavern history. We had a fun discussion, and you can hear it HERE.

Anna Wood’s Twilight Garden

Anna Wood could have been the poster child for the Jazz Age in Oshkosh. She was everything a young woman was not supposed to be: rebellious, independent, daring. She liked men. She liked liquor. She was free. 

Anna became Oshkosh famous in 1923, when she ran a downtown speakeasy, dancehall and jazz club called the Twilight Garden.

The former home of the Twilight Garden at what is now 19 & 21 Waugoo Avenue. The club occupied the second floor of the middle building among the three adjoining structures shown here.

The Twilight Garden was a couple of miles from where Anna was raised, but it was ages away from her Southside start. She was born Anna Poeschl in 1892. Her parents had come to America from Southern Bohemia a few years earlier.

Anna's father, Gottfried Poeschl.

The Poeschls were Southsiders, conservative Catholics whose social life revolved around the St. Vincent’s Parish on Oregon Street. Later, they moved over to Knapp Street and joined the Sacred Heart Parish. Anna’s old home still stands, a couple of doors up from Sacred Heart Church.

417 Knapp Street, Anna’s former home.

Marriage à Trois
Church going didn’t subdue Anna’s lust for life. At 13 she quit school. But not for lack of ability. Anna was bright and well spoken. But if school was too dull, her next tether wasn’t any better. Anna went to work at Paine Lumber. Her father also worked there. So did a man named Frank DuBois. He was a widower and 14-years older than Anna. DuBois got her pregnant in the summer of 1911. They married three months later. DuBois moved in with the Poeschls on Knapp Street.

Frank DuBois

Anna’s daughter, Jeannette DuBois, was born in early March 1912. The kid was five months old when Anna dumped the baby’s father. She divorced Frank and bounced him out of the house.

About a year later, Anna hooked up with another Southside woodworker. This one was named Joe Bloechl. He was closer to Anna’s age. They married in February 1914 and lived at the Knapp Street home with Anna’s parents. This marriage lasted three years. Bloechl divorced Anna, saying her treatment of him was cruel and inhuman. He would not be the last man to make that claim.

Anna was 26 when she netted her third husband, a guy named Robert Wood. He worked in his father’s flower shop next to Riverside Cemetery. Anna moved in with Wood above the flower store. But she wasn’t going to be dependent upon another man. Anna bought a new Dodge and launched a taxi business. Wood’s Taxi Line may have been the first Oshkosh business of its type owned and operated by a woman.

Careful Lady Driver. Daily Northwestern, June 16, 1919.

Anna had a provocative effect on her new husband. Robert Wood quit the flower shop and went to work for Anna. They bought a second taxi, a seven-seater, and moved into a downtown flat near the corner of Main and Waugoo. Anna hired a dispatcher and set up an office in their apartment. Anna’s daughter Jeannette migrated downtown with them. Wood had two kids of his own, but they lived with his former wife. The money he’d been sending them stopped after Anna came along.

The front page, January 16, 1919. 

Anna’s Twilight
The dry law spawned opportunities for those who could tolerate risk and buck the norms of polite society. Perfect for Anna. She terminated her taxi line and dove into the underground.

Around the corner from her apartment was a rowdy speakeasy and jazz club. The Twilight Garden opened in January 1922, above an undertaker, at what is now 19 & 20 Waugoo Avenue. It was launched by Henry Grusnick, a moonshiner. Grusnick was working up one of the largest bootlegging rings in Oshkosh.

The Twilight Garden in relation to the location of Anna’s apartment, shown from the southeast corner of N. Main & Waugoo.

The Twilight Garden wasn’t just a booze joint. It featured table seating surrounding a large dance floor where flappers hoofed to the sounds of jazz bands. Anna came into the picture early on, exactly when is unknown. But by the end of 1922 she was running the place. The club’s slogan – One Step Nearer the Moon – may have been a cunning reference to the moonshine served at the top of the stairs.

With the street numbering change of 1957, the address for the Twilight Garden property became 19 & 21 Waugoo Avenue.

Anna may also have been part of Grusnick’s larger bootlegging operation. The connection is suggested by the moonshine plant Anna established in a five bedroom flat she leased near the northwest corner of 8th and South Main.

As always, Anna pushed the limits. Inside the second-floor apartment were two whiskey stills and a makeshift packaging department. Her husband didn’t share her appetite for the wild life. Robert Wood was threatening to divorce her. Among his other complaints, Wood was inflamed by Anna’s frequent absences, insinuating that she was seeing other men. The couple reconciled. But Wood’s misgivings were soon borne out.

Oshkosh Police came to search the South Main Street apartment on the Friday afternoon of January 19, 1923. Neither Anna nor Wood was there. But Anna’s 10-year-old daughter Jeannette was. The little girl invited the cops into what was later described as “an extensive plant for the manufacture of illegal liquor."

Daily Northwestern, January 20, 1923.

The place must have reeked with the smell of whiskey making. The rooms were packed with barrels of mash, fermenting wash, distilling equipment, and bottled moonshine. The cops next searched the Twilight Garden. They came up dry. Anna and Wood were arrested later that afternoon and immediately pleaded guilty. They were each fined $250 (about $4,750 in today’s money). Anna, flush with cash, paid their fines and walked. Her husband walked in the other direction.

Robert Wood got scared straight. He wanted a divorce. His petition recounted Anna’s “cruel and inhuman” ways. Wood claimed Anna was “addicted to the use of vile and abusive language” and “beat and bruised” him unmercifully. He said she often strayed from their marriage. Wood filed for divorce and went back to the graveyard flower shop.

Two months after the first raid, the cops returned to Anna’s South Main Street apartment. It started like a replay of their January visit. Once again, young Jeannette was the only one home. But now, there was more moonshine, more equipment, and more raw materials on hand. The Daily Northwestern reported that the search “disclosed a situation which caused others conducted by the police to pale into comparative insignificance so far as quantity of contraband material is concerned. The patrol wagon was fairly filled.” Anna went to the station and turned herself in.

City of Oshkosh police outside of the police station along with the patrol wagon that hauled away Anna’s distillery and moonshine.

The cops also went back to the Twilight Garden. This time, they found the goods. They arrested John Mottl, an employee of Anna’s. Mottl divulged more to the police than he needed to. Anna had nowhere left to turn.

Chief of Police Arthur Gabbert was waiting for her when Anna was brought into court. After her first arrest, little was made of her young daughter being left alone at the moonshine plant. Gabbert wasn’t letting that happen again. He testified that Jeannette had been forced into helping her mother make moonshine. Gabbert wanted the child removed from Anna’s custody. He wanted the maximum fine and jail time for her. The judge gave Gabbert everything he asked for.

Arthur Gabbert

Anna was sentenced to six months in jail and fined $500. Another four months would be added to her sentence if her fine remained unpaid when her scheduled release date arrived. John Mottl's testimony led to the closing of the Twilight Garden. The court also took away Jeannette. Anna’s daughter was placed in the custody of her godmother, Anna Penzenstadler. It was an ironic turn. Court officials didn’t realize that members of the Penzenstadler family were as deeply embedded in the underground liquor scene as Anna was.

It was arguably the harshest set of penalties yet handed down to an Oshkosh bootlegger. The most unjust piece was the stipulation of additional jail time if she didn’t come up with the $500 while locked in jail. Anna claimed she had no way of paying the fine. Her assets were still tied up in her ongoing divorce case. About a month into her jail term, she was allowed into a work-release program to raise the funds. No normal job would pay her what she needed. A good wage for an Oshkosh woman at this time was less than $60 a month.

There was no point in slaving away at low-wage work. Anna had a better idea. She still had access to the Hudson touring car that she and Robert Wood purchased after shutting down the taxi line. Anna turned the car into a rolling liquor store.

A 1922 Hudson Super Six, the model Anna drove.

Anna was regularly released from jail to go to her job. Whoever vouched for her employment was clearly in cahoots with her. Anna’s “job” amounted to parking her large car at some well-traveled byway and selling pints of moonshine from it to passersby. It was risky, but risk was something she always seemed comfortable with. Her fearlessness betrayed her time and again.

Anna was busted again on July 21, 1923. Her luck had tanked. She was parked on Jackson Street near the north end of the bridge when a Prohibition agent based out of Milwaukee drove by. The agent saw her pass a bottle to a man who had approached her car. The Prohibition cop jumped out of his vehicle and arrested Anna and her customer, a chiropractor named Elwyn Reynolds.

The north end of the Jackson to Oregon Street Bridge looking south, early 1920s.

Elwyn Reynolds got the worst of it. He had recently arrived in town after fleeing Indiana, where he left an angry wife and a pile of debt. Indiana officials heard of his Oshkosh arrest and dragged him back home. For Anna, it was the third bootlegging arrest in seven months. Her work release privilege was revoked. Her future appeared evermore grim. And then her luck turned around.

Ten days after her arrest, Anna was taken from her cell to the courtroom where prosecutors surprised everyone by dropping the charges. They declined to say why. Her luck didn’t end there. Her divorce case was settled. In his scramble to break away from her, Robert Wood left almost everything to Anna, including $600 in cash and their car. Anna paid her $500 fine and was granted an early release from jail on August 15. Free again.

Anna Goes Dark
After that, she kept to the shadows. Anna appears to have stayed in Oshkosh, at least initially. Where she lived and how she supported herself is unknown. Was she reunited with her daughter? Her post-jail life gets reduced to questions. Fourteen years without leaving a trace.

Anna reappears and marries again in 1937. Lester Harry was born in Two Rivers and was 12 years her junior. They lived in Birnamwood in Shawano County, where they ran a roadhouse tavern. Anna was with Harry until 1944. She was 52 when they split up.

Anna remained in Shawano County until she married a Green Bay railroad worker named Howard Maloney in the summer of 1952. She was 60 and starting her fifth marriage. This one lasted longer than the others, until 1963 when Maloney died.

Howard Maloney

Anna lived in Green Bay for the rest of her life. She wasn’t entirely forgotten in Oshkosh. She was invited home in 1966 to take part in a Mother’s Day ceremony at Sacred Heart Church. Anna and nine other mothers from the old neighborhood were honored.

Her last days were spent in a Green Bay nursing home. Anna could still captivate. She was adopted by a group of children who lived nearby. They called her Grandmother Maloney, and for her 100th birthday, they made her a necklace strung with 100 pasta shells.

Anna died in 1993, one month shy of her 101st birthday.

Fort Howard Memorial Park, Green Bay.

A Note on Sources
I wish this wasn’t the case, but listing the sources for these stories would take more time than I can afford. There were about 160 sources that went into writing this piece. That said, I want to touch on one aspect in particular. Early in this story I mentioned that “Anna was bright and well spoken.” This wasn’t speculation. While researching this, I was able to access court documents from the early 1920s that included several pages of testimony given by Anna. The intelligence and composure she shows there is exceedingly evident.

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