Christmastime in Chicago

    The information provided below is a partial excerpt from the book THE HISTORIC CHRISTMAS TREE SHIP: A True Story of Faith, Hope and Love by Rochelle Pennington.

     The 325-page book details the extraordinary story of the Christmas Tree Ship from every angle and includes over 60 photographs along with hundreds of newspaper citations spanning a period of 140 years.

Christmastime in Chicago

     “I guess the kids are gladdest of anybody to see us come pulling into the river every December,” said Captain Schuenemann. “There’s generally a little crowd of them on the rail of the bridge when it swings open for us, and they wave their hands and cheer, and we cheer back. Some of them think we are actually coming from the North Pole.”

                                                                                                           Chicago Inter Ocean

                                                                                                           December 7, 1909

Chicago’s first municipal Christmas tree was erected in December of 1913. The evergreen tree was gifted to the city as a memorial to commemorate two men who had been an integral part of Chicago’s Christmas celebrations for a quarter of a century prior -  Captain Herman and Captain August Schuenemann.

According to the book Chicago Christmas: One Hundred Years of Christmas Memories, written by Jim Benes: “The huge tree was a gift to the city from Milwaukee Avenue tree dealer F. J. Jordan. He was a former partner of Captain Herman Schuenemann, who, with his brother August, began making yearly voyages from Manistique, Michigan, bringing a shipload of Christmas trees to Chicago. When their ship arrived, Chicagoans knew that the Christmas season had really begun. It became a tradition for countless families to purchase their trees from the Schuenemanns, taking the evergreen right off the ship docked near a bridge at Clark Street. August Schuenemann and his ship, the S. Thal, were lost in a Lake Michigan storm while bringing trees to town in 1898. Brother Herman met a similar fate with his schooner, the Rouse Simmons, in 1912, one year before Jordan decided to commemorate the brothers with his gift…”

          …The towering evergreen at the center of the festivities on Christmas Eve afternoon 1913, was a fitting memorial to the Schuenemann brothers who had supplied many families in the city, gathered in the crowd that day, with Christmas trees year after year, and decade after decade. Even Mayor Harrison had been a regular patron of the Schuenemanns who had come to recognize the familiar faces of two, and even three, generations of the same family….

…Chicago saw many changes during the nearly fifty years the Schuenemanns supplied Christmas trees to the city. The Christmas tree business also evolved through the years. During Captain Herman’s lifetime, the trees were sold directly from a schooner, but the family’s evergreen trade ended with the Schuenemann daughters selling trees in the 1930’s from a little store on LaSalle Street after their mother’s death. (The name of their store was “Captain and Mrs. H. Schuenemann’s Daughters” - a curious name which showed that the Schuenemann family continued to be held dear by the city of Chicago…

 …Captain and Mrs. Barbara Schuenemann’s only grandson, Dr. William Ehling, is still alive today, and he remembers the Christmas tree lot located at 1641 N. LaSalle Street where his mother (Captain Schuenemann’s daughter, Pearl) sold trees from in the 1930’s with her sisters, Elsie and Hazel.

          Dr. Ehling shared many memories with me when we gathered at his eldest daughter’s home south of Chicago where I was invited as their guest for a wonderful meal – served on “Aunt Hazel’s antique dishes” - and an overnight stay.

          Dr. Ehling told me stories of playing hide-and-seek among the Christmas trees when he was a small boy in the early 1930’s…

…I interviewed several persons in Upper Michigan whose families personally knew the Schuenemanns, and who gave residence to Captain and Barbara Schuenemann in their homes during the Schuenemann’s extended stays in Thompson and Manistique where trees were harvested.

The Upper Peninsula of Michigan – where winters are long and Mother Nature’s temper is short - was directly connected to Chicago’s Christmases. Evergreens supplied to the city came from the great wooded north near these port communities…

…Thompson was a place of sleigh rides and lap blankets; a place where you could see your breath hanging in the frosty air by the end of September. Winters arrived early here, and summers arrived late – and they still do…

          …Another child who remembered receiving Christmas trees from Barbara Schuenemann - as well as from Captain Herman Schuenemann - was Jimmy O’Malley.  Born in 1894 to Irish immigrants, Jimmy was the oldest of their nine children.

          He remembered “carrying a dime” - clutched in his little hand – down to the ship where he and his family climbed aboard.

The arrival of Captain Schuenemann’s schooner “generated so much excitement that nothing else in the world mattered when the Christmas Ship was coming in.” Captain Schuenemann’s schooner was greeted with such exuberance “you could hear shouts in the street” as the vessel approached.  Boys and girls, waiting on tiptoe, shouted, “The Christmas Ship is here! The Christmas Ship!” Smiling, pudgy faces waved to the captain, and the captain waved back.

          Although Mr. O’Malley passed away in the 1970’s, his memories live on in his granddaughter, Mrs. Jean Kopecky, who heard her grandpa talk about how important the Christmas Tree Ship was to him when she was a little girl. Nearly fifty years have now passed since she listened to her grandpa “reliving his memories and going back to find the warmth,” but she remembers well the “twinkle in his eye” as he recalled the kindness Captain Schuenemann bestowed upon the O’Malley family.

“I am the carrier of my grandfather’s history,” Mrs. Kopecky told me, as she shared memories of her grandpa’s Christmases long past, but not forgotten. “I don’t remember my grandfather speaking of any other Christmas memory, or special holiday moment from his childhood, other than the Christmas Ship.”

“To my grandfather, the Christmas Ship represented hope,” said Mrs. Kopecky, “because his family was so extremely, extremely poor – dirt poor. They had nothing. And yet they received a Christmas tree, gifted to them from the Schuenemanns, during several years when the family fell on particularly hard times.” 

“If my grandfather’s family had not received a free tree,” said Mrs. Kopecky, “they would not have had any. Every penny was precious to the family. There was hardly enough money for food; and certainly no money for a tree.”

She told me how her grandfather looked to the arrival of the Christmas Ship as the most “highly anticipated” moment of his holiday.

“Wearing shoes that buttoned up to his ankles – even with holes in – and faded, hand-me-down clothes, my grandfather headed to the docks with his brothers and sisters to see the captain,” said Mrs. Kopecky. “Regardless of how cold it was, or if someone only had one mitten, nothing else in the world mattered when the Christmas Ship sailed in. My grandfather wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”

The O’Malley family was able to purchase a tree some years, but there were other years when they were gifted a tree. Despite this charitable exchange, Captain Schuenemann always made sure the kids maintained a feeling of dignity and pride when they were empty-handed.

“Captain Schuenemann allowed the kids to sweep on the ship for a while so they would have a sense of having earned their tree,” she told me.  (Captain Schuenemann lived through an impoverished childhood and had a soft spot for the poor. As an adult, he also experienced financial struggles – especially in the final years of his life. When his wallet washed ashore twelve years after the Rouse Simmons sunk, there was not even a single dollar inside.)

The O’Malley kids’ heights “went down like steps, one right after the other,” said Mrs. Kopecky, “and when the kids carried their Christmas tree home on their shoulders, it looked like a giant bug, with nine sets of legs beneath it, walking along the street.”

“My grandfather was the oldest,” said Mrs. Kopecky, “so he held the heaviest end of the tree where the branches were fullest, while his youngest sibling, on the opposite end of the tree, reached up high and held the tip.”

A century of Christmases have gone by since the “evergreen bug” walked down Chicago’s cobblestone streets and past gaslight lanterns decorated with Schuenemann wreaths. Yet the smiles born from Captain Schuenemann’s kindnesses are still lighting up the faces of grandchildren and great-grandchildren who have become the living repositories of their ancestor’s oral history.

“Always, I remember my grandpa being anxious for Christmas,” said Mrs. Kopecky. “But not for the Christmases of the present. He was anxious to remember the Christmases of the past – long past.”