Meeme House Guests, 1852
Meeme House - July 1, 1900. Photo from MCHS Archives.
Seldom does it happen that two rather insignificant historical events come together to frame a larger story. Such is the case, however, with the building of a log cabin by Michael and Andreas Herr in the town of Meeme, and a journey south along the Green Bay Road by immigrant Karl Pflaume. Recent research has begun to uncover some of the early history of the Herr family’s Meeme House, a way station for weary travelers along the Green Bay Road.
In 1847 brothers Michael, Andreas and Peter Herr, along with their widowed father Karl, immigrated from Alzenau, Bavaria, to Wisconsin. Peter settled in Sheboygan County, while the others journeyed north into Manitowoc County. Andreas and Michael both purchased property along the Green Bay Road in the township of Meeme, approximately one mile south of the village of Spring Valley.
This was a time of immense poverty in Germany. The splitting of land parcels into ever smaller slices, poor crop years, and the sudden growth in population could no longer sustain the starving multitudes. To be allowed to emigrate, families had to sell their property and personal possessions and use those funds to finance their trip to America, hoping there would be enough money left over for the purchase of inexpensive land. In this same time period, Wisconsin is opened up for settlement and governmental lands become available at greatly reduced prices.
Another German immigrant, Karl Pflaume, emigrated from Aschersleben, Saxon-Anhalt, in 1851. His situation was a bit different. He came from a well-to-do family, had earned a degree in agriculture and set out to America to earn his fortune, as it were. Pflaume purchased land in the township of Newton, on the northeast corner of south 26th street and Silver Creek Road. He returned to Germany in 1854 to marry, came back to Manitowoc with his new bride, and became active in local politics. For a time he published his own newspaper, Der Buschbauer. Pflaume, however, was an intellectual whose joy of writing and reading often overtook his interest in farming, and he eventually returned to Germany almost penniless.
The lives of the Herr brothers and Karl Pflaume appear to intersect in a narrative written by Pflaume about a trip that he and a neighbor made in 1852 to Cedarburg to buy cattle. Pflaume writes:
We traveled a road hewn into the wilderness in an almost straight line from north to south, which was called the Green Bay Road … We followed the road south and found very few settlers along it, hiking long stretches before coming upon a house or two. We saw some log cabins which had been abandoned by their owners, and some, which were occupied by settlers from Ireland.
We reached a place where we thought we would stay overnight. There was an American living here, who owned an inn and was the postal agent. There was a sign over the door indicating lodging and postal agent … But we could not stay there, the man said, as he had no lanterns. We told him that was not a problem, to which he responded that he also did not have any tea or coffee …
So we continued on, until, as it grew dark, we reached another house which was occupied by some Germans. However, since the house was not yet complete, and the room quite small, it took some effort to convince them to let us spend the night there. This was in March and it was too cold to sleep on the ground in the forest, and too far away from the next dwelling. So we stayed there, and were quite satisfied …The man was from Bavaria. His brother, a young and hearty lad, explained that in a few weeks they would be heading to the Racine prairie to find work, just like a few others from their neighborhood. They wanted to earn some money in order to establish their own inn …The innkeeper’s wife came from the area around Koblenz… On the next day we came upon a settlement of Welch – people from Wales …
While it is impossible to know with absolute certainty that the place being described by Pflaume is the earliest beginnings of the Meeme House, the evidence strongly suggests this is indeed the case.
Pflaume has placed himself between an Irish settlement, the area around today’s Osman, and a Manitowoc County settlement of Welsh immigrants, just south of the Herr property. Even more specifically he has journeyed south from an inn owned by postmaster Henry Edson, which stood directly north of Spring Valley and was later owned by a Peter Phillips.
Pflaume infers that the brothers are of contrasting ages, which indeed they are, Michael being seven years older than his brother Andreas. They are also, of course, Bavarians. Additionally, the 1850 United States census shows the two brothers were working on the prairie lands of southeastern Wisconsin, just as they intended to do again in the summer of 1852. Lastly, Michael has recently married, and his wife is from Laubach, a community directly west of the city of Koblenz in Germany.
Doubtless, the two brothers were familiar with the early inns through their journeys along the Green Bay Road. They may have seen an opportunity to earn extra cash as they slowly began clearing the forested acreage they had purchased. And Pflaume’s unexpected stay may have provided some extra impetus to their budding idea.
The early Meeme House was likely exactly as Pflaume describes – a crude “bed and breakfast” housing the family and a guest or two. With the passing of time it expanded into the large structure it is today. How fast this happened is still being researched. What is clear, however, is that the experience Karl Pflaume and his companion had was a very pleasant one, as Pflaume writes that he and his friend stayed there again on their return to Manitowoc.
Edited and translated by Karyl Rommelfanger, 2015
About Karl Pflaume
Karl Pflaume immigrated from Aschersleben, Saxony, to Manitowoc County in 1851. Settling just south of the city of Manitowoc, on Silver Creek, Karl cleared his land, built himself a balloon frame house and out-buildings, and became involved in community life. From a well-to-do family, Pflaume had been educated in agriculture, but was also a prolific writer, newspaper editor, and ardent Republican. In addition to his careful observations of early Manitowoc life, he wrote poetry and prose for several New York magazines and was considered a writer of some note among Wisconsin Germans of the time. Returning for a short time to Saxony to marry, he came back to Manitowoc County with his new wife Amalia in 1855. Then began a difficult period in his life with the death of several children. Pflaume returned with his family to Saxony in 1863 where he died in 1879.
Edited and translated by Karyl Rommelfanger, 2015
