MEN of EARLY OCONTO COUNTY

Freeland B. Gardner, who played a major roll in the development of the village of Pensaukee, never actually lived in the community.  On the 1850 federal census and 1855 Wisconsin State census he is enumerated in Pittsfield, Brown County with his family.

With the development of the Pensaukee Mill, Mr. Gardner did have a mansion built in the community, which he used when visiting the area.  The census records clearly show that he maintained his family in the Chicago area of Illinois in the later 1850’s and after.

The 1860 U.S. census shows H. B. Gardner, age 43, lumber merchant living in Ward 5 of the city of Chicago.  He has $25,000 in real estate and $35,000 in personal property.  His household now consists of his wife Anna age 42 and son Horatio age 14 all born in New York.  He also has two daughters Hattie age 9, born WI. and Nellie age 1, born Illinois.  The household also has Andrew Snyder age 22 and Ann Hedgegan, age 17 born Vermont, servants.

Freeland B. Gardner, age 52 is living in the 10th ward of the City of Chicago on the 1870 census.  His occupation is lumber merchant with real assets of $500,000 and personal property of $180,000.  The household consists of his wife Fanny. age 51, born N.Y. and daughter Hattie L., age 19, born WI. and Nelli age 11, born Ill.  There are also 3 domestic servants, Nelson Bidell, age 30, born Canada; and Kate Meyers, age 30 and Kate Brun, age 24 both born Ireland.

Son Horatio H. Gardner, age 24, born N.Y., occupation lumber merchant, is also in the 10th ward of the City of Chicago on the 1870 census.  He is married to Mary A. who is age 22, also born in New York, with son Freeland B., 1 year old, born in Illinois.  Their assets were $5,500 real and $20,000 personal.   They also have three household servants.

The 1880 U.S. census shows H.H. Gardner as head of household in District 109 in Chicago, Cook Co. Ill.

Horatio is age 42 is married to Mary A., age 31, born Maryland, father born Spain mother N.Y.  They have son Freeland B., age 11.  His occupation is lumber merchant as is his father’s Freeland B, age 64 born New York, as were his parents.  Freeland’s wife is now enumerated as Francis, age 61, born New York as were her parents and they have daughter Nellie, age 21 born Ill.  They are all members of Horatio’s household as are 2 servants.   It would appear Hattie was already married to Joseph Stockton, but I could not locate them in the census records.

Besides the above census records and the obituary below I was unable to locate the descendents on any other census records.  There is a Freeland B. Gardner, age 61, born Illinois, single living in Santa Barbara, Calif. in 1930, but this is not sufficient to identify him as a descendent, as the parents birth places do not match up.

 Obituary of  Freeland B. Gardner

Unknown Chicago Paper. –
Supposed date of death 24 Dec. 1883

    Mr. F. B. Gardner, for many years one the most prominent lumberman of the Northwest, died suddenly at Pensaukee, Wis., Monday, December 24.  Mr. Gardner was on his way to the depot that evening accompanied by a friend.  Before reaching the depot Mr. Gardner asked his friend to run to the depot and ask the conductor to wait a moment till he came.  His request was complied with, but after waiting a few moments and Mr. Gardner, not having put in an appearance, search was made for him and he was found lying dead on the sidewalk scarcely half a block form the depot.  His death was caused by ossification of the heart.

   In the life of  Freeland B. Gardner may be found a brilliant instance of what ability backed by indomitable energy and enterprise may accomplish.  Mr. Gardner was born at  Eldridge, Onondage county, N.Y., on July 30, 1817.  His first business venture was the starting of a small general store at Kingsbury, N.Y., when a young man.  On a capital of $100 he managed to close out in a few months with nearly $1,000, with which he came west in 1839, returning to Fort Ann, N.Y., however, very shortly afterward to again engage in mercantile business.  But he sold out and came west again in 1849, opening a store at Kenosha, Wis., then called Southport.  He embarked in the lumber business in 1850, starting a saw mill at Pensaukee, Wis., the second mill on that side of the lake.  His business prospered from the start and two years later he established himself in the lumber business in Chicago.  In 1857 he built a mill at Little Sturgeon, Green Bay, but it burned shortly afterward, entailing a loss of $25,000 on Mr. Gardner, and this was almost immediately followed by the financial crash of that year, which seriously crippled him.  But he was made of the stuff that wouldn’t permit him to stay down and he recovered very shortly from the effects of his reverses.  He was a sufferer, too, in the panic of 1873 but resulted as happily for him as did the panic of 1857.  In 1867 the firm was F. B. Gardner & Co., the company being his son H. H. Gardner and John Spry, which was changed in 1872 to F. B. Gardner & Co., Mr. Spry retiring.  Several years ago he withdrew from business in Chicago and devoted all of his time to the mill at Pensaukee, residing in Chicago, however.

   Mr. Gardner was a very public spirited man, and the city of Pensaukee owes nearly all of its prosperity to his open-handed liberality.  He built miles of docks, expended large amounts of money in street and other improvements, and built the Pensaukee House, one of the largest hotels north of Chicago.  Just after the great Chicago fire he built the Gardner House, now the Leland Hotel, at the corner of Michigan avenue and Jackson streets, this city, it being the first hotel opened in the burned district after the fire.

   Mr. Gardner was married to Miss Fanny Copeland in 1841.  She died in September, and the only surviving members of the family now are his son, H. H. Gardner, of the lumber firm of the Gardner & Spry Company, Chicago, and two daughters—Mrs. Joseph Stockton of Chicago, and Mrs. W. B. Alley, of Boston.

    The funeral was held from his late residence, No. 141 Pine street, Thursday afternoon, a large number of his many friends paying their last tribute of respect to his memory.

   In memory of Mr. Gardner, a meeting of the board of directors of the Chicago Lumbermen’s Exchange was held Wednesday afternoon, at which suitable resolutions were adopted.
 

The famous Gardener Hotel which was known as the  "Finest Hotel North of Milwaukee" It was destroyed by the tornado of 1877 in Pensaukee, WI.

The obituary does not mention another financial stress for Mr. Gardner, which occurred when the tornado on July 7, 1877 struck Pensaukee wiping out a lot of his interests; mills, hotel, general store, houses and etc.  The obituary refers to Mr. Gardner concentrating his business interests for several years before his death on Pensaukee, but did not indicate why.  He was a major part of the development of the village of Pensaukee, owning massive acres of land in the area, several mills, stagecoach stop, boarding houses, stores, hotels and etc. over the years.  With his personal life centered in the city of Chicago, there are no church or vital records available in the immediate area to try and fill in the blanks but lots of land records for those who choose to search them.

As with many early obituaries and written history, it seems everyone wanted to be there first, second, third or fourth.  The obit states he built the second mill on west side of the lake.  Just staying on the northeastern shore from Green Bay and north to the current state line, there were mills at Pensaukee, Marinette, Peshtigo, Oconto and Oconto Falls prior to 1850.  With his death he left a tangled web of finances and the destruction of the last of his mills on the Pensaukee River, reported in The Oconto Reporter, on August 21, 1886, outward signs of his commercial impact in the area were gone.

1850
Freeland B Gardner Pittsfield, Brown, WI abt 1820 New York
Fanny
Horacio
Lumberman who owned a boarding house with 35 other people house in it. All ship male builders and lumbermen except for one family with a wife and 4 children.

In 1835, Increase Claflin estab-lished a trading post at what laterbecame Little Sturgeon, and Claflinbecame the Door Peninsula’s firstwhite settler. Although he only stayeda short time, others followed his leadand set up homesteads on the protect-ed bay. Over the next several decades,modest pursuits in fur trading, fishingand farming characterized the village’seconomy. However, the arrival ofFreeland Gardner in 1854 transformedthe sleepy village into a prosperouscommercial center. Claflin may havefounded the settlement of LittleSturgeon, but Gardner built it into athriving commercial center.Born in Elbridge, New York in1817, Gardner moved from New Yorkto Kenosha, Wisconsin at age 27,where he operated a dry goods busi-ness. He later relocated to Chicago torun a lumber handling facility. Around1850, Gardner established a lumbermill in Pensaukee, Wisconsin. Sevenyears later, the enterprise included asteam and water mill, a large board-inghouse, and a dock for small steam-ers. Moving to Little Sturgeon in 1854,Gardner purchased Increase Claflin’sold homestead. By the fall of 1856,Gardner constructed a large lumbermill in Little Sturgeon capable of cut-ting long timbers for bridges and ves-sels. The following year, Gardnerimproved the mill by installing a largerengine, which enabled the facility toproduce 4 million board feet of lumber.Later he added a lath mill, shingle milland a circular saw. It did not take long for Gardner toexpand his operations in LittleSturgeon. Soon a gristmill, boarding-houses, a general store, and rail exten-sion from the mill to the bay’s docksall operated in the village. Thesedevelopments marked the beginning ofa period in Door County’s historydubbed "The Golden Age of LittleSturgeon."Logs into ShipsOn July 3, 1866, as part of theIndependence Day celebration, therebuilt vessel F.B Gardner slid into thewaters of Little Sturgeon Bay. Over theprevious winter and spring, crewslengthened the vessel 60 feet and con-verted it from a brig to a barque. Thiswas the first vessel launched in LittleSturgeon. Gardner had obtained theservices of Thomas Spear to managethe shipbuilding operations. Spear’ssons, an expert caulker and a carpenterhelped run the yard. Later in 1866,Spear rebuilt the steamer Union andbuilt the 92-foot John Spry. Suppliedwith timber felled from Gardner’s lum-ber camps and towed to his lumbermill, the shipyard built or rebuilt a totalof ten vessels, plus an unknown num-ber of scows and barges, over its nine-year tenure. All but two of the tenserved in his fleet. Employing up to 60workers, the yard remained the largestshipbuilding facility to operate in DoorCounty before the twentieth century.In 1868, Gardner sold his LittleSturgeon holdings to Erastus Baily andTristam Vincent, for an estimated$100,000. Despite reports of favorablebusiness and relations, Baily andVincent ended their operation in LittleSturgeon in the fall of 1869, selling thefacilities back to Gardner, who ablytook over and shipped out in excess of5 million board feet, 8 million cut shin-gles and 150 cords of wood that year.In 1857, a fire swept throughGardner’s mill devouring 250,000board feet of lumber, and causing$65,000 worth of damage. Gardnerhad no insurance, but managed torebuild the following year cutting 1million board feet with 50 men. Thesetypes of disasters were not uncommonin the world built of wood.On October 8, 1871, after a winterwith little snow and a long dry sum-mer, devastating fires swept across thewest shore of Green Bay and thesouthern half of Door County. Knownas the Peshtigo Fire, it was the dead-liest in American history. With morethan one million acres and 1,200 peo-ple devoured by the flames, the infer-no wreaked more damage than theGreat Chicago Fire that occurred thesame night. Just south of LittleSturgeon sat Williamsonville, a smalllumbering village of 76 people. Theblaze completely destroyed the settle-ment, claiming every building and 59residents. The fire advanced to LittleSturgeon, where Gardner’s laborersmet it head on and battled the blazewith the bay’s water. "The fire hadcontinued on page 6
come within a stone throw of the ham-let," wrote the State Gazette, "andwhen the scattering little populationhad made ready to plunge into theprotecting shallows of the Bay, theflames were whirled off to the north-ward, and the town was saved."Little Sturgeon thrived in the wakeof the disasters. After the fire, theGreen Bay Advocate wrote that LittleSturgeon had "the finest dock andsawmill left standing on the peninsula.It … has expended $100,000 on piers,mills, shops, shipyards, store rooms,and tenement houses." Business at themill continued to boom, and in 1872 itproduced 7 million board feet of lum-ber, and over 7 million shingles.Feeding off the huge demand creat-ed by the Chicago, Peshtigo andMichigan fires of 1871, lumber con-cerns enjoyed a major market boom.However, a market collapse followed,compounded by the Panic of 1873,causing many companies to fail.Gardner, also facing personal financialtroubles, sold his entire Little Sturgeonholding to Spear for $26,000 inNovember 1875. Cutting pine alongthe Peshtigo River and rafting it acrossGreen Bay to Little Sturgeon, Spear’smill prospered. In 1876 the DoorCounty Advocate reported:Boards drop from the saw logs likeshingles from a machine, and the menwhose duty it is to "clear the saw"don’t loaf worth a cent. The amount oflumber turned out will average 65,000feet a day in addition to the cants pre-pared for shingle bolts. The shinglemachine … is managed by one of thebest shingle sawyers in the West. Theaverage drop is about 100,000 shinglea day. …Spear had the operation runningmore efficiently than ever, and cutover 13 million board feet of lumber in1876, with over 1 million board feetshipped directly to Europe. Aside fromdistant markets, the forests suppliedLittle Sturgeon’s other industries.Spear used lumber for his ship yard.The town’s lime kiln burned acres ofcord wood, and mountains of saw dustprovided crucial insulation for ice har-vested by the A.S. Piper Co.After escaping the flames of thePeshtigo Fire and the depression of1873, the sawmill ran out of luck onFebruary 22, 1877. Just north of themill, smoke billowed from the black-smith shop, and flames quicklyengulfed the building. A strong windpushed the blaze across the village.The mill and its contents were com-pletely destroyed. This $30,000 loss,with only a third insured, proved morethan Spear could endure and he soldhis holdings, ending Little Sturgeon’slumbering era. William Anger, who ranthe lime kilns, purchased Spear’s inter-ests, and soon sold the land to theA.S. Piper & Co. for their ice business.Reference:Gray, J.J

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