The Schuenemann Family

 

The Schuenemann Family

 

 

     “The captain always had a kind word or friendly wave to spare.”

Upper Peninsula Sunday Times

Escanaba, MI

December 24, 1978

 

     “Herman Schuenemann was an experienced sailor and was respected as a veteran captain, an honest trader, and a good family man.”

A Most Superior Land, 1983

Michigan Natural Resources Magazine

 

 

          At the center of the Christmas Tree Ship legend beats the heart of Captain Herman Schuenemann, the “gallant skipper” who delivered evergreens to Chicago in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.

Born in 1865 to German immigrants, Herman lived in a little house beside the water. His eyes were blue, like the sea he loved, and they witnessed many hardships in those early years. Yet despite a childhood lived amid poverty and disease, the trials of his early life became the tool by which his adulthood would be shaped into one of compassion, generosity, and courage.

Perhaps it was destiny that Herman was born to a family surnamed “Schuenemann” – a German word meaning “wonderful man” – for more than a name, these words became Herman Schuenemann’s legacy.

Each Christmas, Captain Schuenemann sailed from Chicago to northern Michigan where he picked up a load of freshly cut evergreens. He loved Christmas, and he loved sailing his Yuletide cargo back to Chicago where the city was waiting. There he would dock his old schooner near the Clark Street Bridge and, once anchored, crowds would come aboard to find the perfect tree for Christmas. Year after year, the people of Chicago crowded in await of the captain’s arrival.

Vincent Starrett, a Chicago newspaper journalist who personally knew Captain Schuenemann in the early 1900’s, reported that “the Christmas season didn’t really arrive until the Christmas Tree Ship tied up at Clark Street.” And according to the Chicago Tribune of December 22, 1974, Captain Herman and his boat became “as much a part of Chicago’s Christmas as Santa Claus.”

Although the Schuenemann legacy rests primarily on Captain Herman and his family, the tradition actually began with two men, not one.

Captain August Schuenemann, Herman’s oldest brother, was the first Schuenemann to ship Christmas cargos, beginning in 1876. He continued the tradition until November of 1898 when his ship went down in a terrible November storm. All on board were lost. Captain August, nicknamed “Christmas Tree Schuenemann,” was bringing a load of trees to Chicago when the gale hit.

It was a heartbreaking loss for Herman who stared across the waters, waiting. But the brother he loved so much was not coming home.

As fate would have it, Herman was not on board his brother’s ship when it sunk because he was home caring for his wife and newly born twin daughters. The joyous news of birth was accompanied by the tragic news of death in 1898.

Herman now needed to make a decision whether to continue the Schuenemann tradition, or to call it quits.

Remarkably, despite his brother’s death, and despite the ever-present danger of sailing November’s storm-tossed waters, Captain Herman summoned the courage to load another cargo of evergreens that very same year and sail it to Chicago so the city would have their trees by Christmas. Although his partnership with August had been severed by the fury of Lake Michigan, the lake could not destroy the determination of this family to carry on despite its punishing blows.

In December of 1898, the year of Captain August’s tragedy, a church newsletter in Chicago announced Captain Herman’s arrival:  “We want to draw our readers’ attention to the largest and best store of Christmas trees, garlands, wreaths, and similar items that is to be found in Chicago. It is at the southwest corner of the Clark Street Bridge where Captain Herman Schuenemann has docked two big ships which together contain more than 11,000 trees. You should visit Captain Schuenemann and give him kind regards from St. Pauls…”

 

 

…Reverend Rudolph A. John, pastor of St. Pauls in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, recorded an entry in 1897 that read: “Our old sea dog, Captain Schuenemann, is back again safe and sound from his long voyage to the northern woods of Michigan. This summer he bought one of the most beautiful and best ships, a vessel he is properly very proud of. After a long trip he is back in the local harbor with a cargo load of the most beautiful Christmas trees. The Mary Collins is docked at the southwest corner of the Clark Street Bridge and is visited by thousands every day, who buy their trees and garlands from the always friendly captain. The giant Christmas tree, which shone during the bazaar in the [church] gymnasium, was brought to Chicago by Captain Schuenemann especially for the ladies, and is undoubtedly the largest and most beautiful tree which has ever been brought to Chicago for Christmas.”

The language chosen to announce Captain Herman’s arrival in 1897 was “safe and sound.” The risk the Schuenemann brothers faced was well understood. Captain August’s ship, the S. Thal, would succumb to the waves only one short year after this article was written, and then two years later, Captain Herman’s vessel, the Mary Collins, would also be lost when it crashed into a shoreline in Upper Michigan. (Since the vessel sunk in shallower waters, all on board were rescued…)

 

 

…Fourteen years after Captain August perished, the Schuenemann family faced yet another tragedy when Captain Herman’s ship, the Rouse Simmons, went down on November 23, 1912. Everyone on board drowned…

 

 

…It is here, with the loss of Captain Herman, that the story takes a curious turn. With both brothers now gone, only women remained.

Captain August’s wife, Rose, was yet living, as was Captain Herman’s wife, Barbara. Rose Schuenemann stood steadfastly beside her sister-in-law in the dark hours of 1912 (along with another sister-in-law, Bertha), caring for in her grief, waiting with her during the painful hours when details of the tragedy drifted in slowly. If there was anyone who understood the ache in Barbara’s heart, it was Rose… 

 

 

…These were difficult days for Captain Herman’s wife, Barbara, and their three daughters, Elsie, Pearl, and Hazel, the apples of Captain Herman’s eye. Yet Barbara Schuenemann was determined to see her husband’s purpose through to the end – not only his end, but hers. Nothing would block her path from making sure everything her husband believed in would yet live – not fear, and not despair.  In her hands Captain Herman’s memory was in safe keeping.

The Chicago Daily News of November 28, 1913, interviewed Barbara Schuenemann just prior to her schooner being loaded with Christmas trees one year after her husband’s death. She had this to say: “We’ll load the trees on it and tie up at the old dock, and our customers will come to us as they have in former years. They know where to find us. The Rouse is gone, and her captain is gone, and the crew is gone – but Christmas will find the survivors still on deck, and Chicago will have her Christmas trees as long as the Schuenemanns last.”

True to her word, the captain’s bride continued in her loving task until she breathed her last. Prior to her passing, Pastor Jacob Pister wrote the following acknowledgment of Barbara Schuenemann’s very last Christmas in 1932, her final goodbye to Chicago: “She is here to help bring joy this year like never before. She dispenses Christmas trees. You all know her. It is good Mother Schuenemann, the widow of ill-fated Captain Schuenemann, the Christmas ship man, who never returned to the shores, but with his great cargo of Christmas trees went down into the deep in that terrible night of storm. And since then Mother Schunemann has felt the urge to carry on. The Chicago Tribune never fails to pay her a tribute of respect and honor...”

 

 

…Mother Schuenemann was a hearty soul who not only stayed the course in carrying on her husband’s Christmas tree business, but who stayed the course in continuing on in her husband’s commitment to the poor. Although Captain Schuenemann was a Christmas tree merchant who sold thousands of trees to Chicago families each year, he also gave generously from his heart to churches, orphanages, and poor families, as did his wife and daughters after he was gone…

 

 

...The Schuenemann family had served the citizens of Chicago well, from the least to the greatest, during approximately fifty dedicated years, and the friendships forged lasted generations. Chicago’s Mayor Harrison was a regular patron of the Schuenemanns, as were many persons of poverty, known to few.

Harry Hansen, a reporter for the Chicago Daily News in the early 1900’s, wrote that Captain Herman Schuenemann was “a jovial man, with a very ruddy complexion and laughing wrinkles around his blue eyes, and everybody liked him.”  “Everyone” included the rich, the poor, the young, the old.

From one end of Lake Michigan to the other, Captain Schuenemann was surrounded by life’s greatest asset: friends.  The Manistique Pioneer-Tribune, published in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (where Captain Schuenemann loaded his Christmas trees), reported on December 6, 1912:  “The captain had many friends here who regret the disaster that has befallen him.” If there is one word that reveals itself more than any other in the Schuenemann story, it is the word “friend.”

In 1912, the year Captain Herman’s ship went missing, the Chicago Inter Ocean newspaper interviewed the captain’s oldest daughter, Elsie, on December 11, 1912. She was on board the schooner, Oneida, where she was selling Christmas trees while news of her papa’s disappearance was still coming in. Elsie was quoted as saying, “Our friends have been very, very kind to us. It is not exaggerating to say that 500 persons have called here and at our home to offer aid…”

 

 

…The Schuenemann legacy lived on for many reasons, not the least of which is that the story exemplifies the best of humanity: faith, hope, love, devotion, courage. The Schuenemann lives were those of giving – and living – the message of “Goodwill Toward Men” - despite emotional difficulties, and despite financial.

Although the Schuenemanns experienced the financial ebbs and flows of life as all families do, they were basically people of modest means. Yet despite their comfort level - some years meager and other years more - their generosity towards those in need never wavered. They understood poverty, and they understood the pain that came with it.

In 1912, the year of Captain Herman’s demise, the Schuenemann family suffered a particularly difficult year financially. (Many lean years followed the more prosperous years the family experienced in the late 1800’s.)

Every penny the family owned in 1912 was invested in the cargo of evergreens Captain Herman had harvested that season, and, thus, every penny went to the bottom of Lake Michigan with the captain’s ship. It was an unspeakable loss.

Despite this, Barbara Schuenemann, faced with certain financial ruin, made a point to deliver a Christmas tree to St. Pauls in 1912 during the peak of her grief.  Recorded in the church records is written: “We must not send out this review of our great Sunday School work without adding a word about our Christmas celebrations. They were occasions so successful and so rich in blessings that we shall long remember them with a glow of satisfaction and gratitude. The big tree for the church was kindly donated by Mrs. Herman Schuenemann, who in the kindness of her heart positively refused pay for it.”

Captain Schuenemann, every Christmas, gifted evergreens to churches, including St. Pauls. In 1906, six short years before the captain’s death, St. Pauls recorded the following entry: “Captain Schuenemann, the old mariner, who gets within an ace of being shipwrecked every year when he sails away to Santa Claus’ Land to get a big ship full of Christmas trees, what did he do? Well, he sent a wagon load of trees, and wreaths, and festoons to the church, the parsonage, and the Orphan Asylum. And when a meek little man went down and asked for the bill, Captain Schuenemann roared down Clark Street like a foghorn: ‘Blow the bill!’ So that’s what became of that bill. It’s blowed!”

If the captain had been alive in 1912 he would have made sure a tree stood tall and proud in the cathedral of St. Pauls, and his wife knew this. So she did as he would have. The captain may have gone down with his ship, but everything he believed in was yet alive on the shores. Other hands became his hands, and they carried his memory forward…

 

 …Christmas came again to Chicago in 1913 and the city found the Schuenemanns as they had in Christmases past - on the docks - greeting their customers, selling their trees, weaving their wreaths, united in purpose, working shoulder-to-shoulder, together. Barbara had chopped trees alongside her husband, and now she would chop trees alongside her daughters.

          The Schuenemann legacy is one of courage coupled with faith, a story of commitment to those we love, as well as to others.  The very idea of the Christmas message and the Christmas tree being at its center – the symbol of everlasting life and everlasting hope – encompasses who the Schuenemanns were, and what they believed. This is their legacy, and it has lived on from one generation to the next, kept alive by poets and painters, by songwriters and by storytellers. They are the guardians who continue to breathe life into these lives long gone… 

 

…Miss Elsie Schuenemann continued to support her mother in the family business until the mid-1930’s. She became the backbone of the operation and would, too, acquire a nickname Chicago would come to know her by.  (Mrs. Barbara Schuenemann had been lovingly referred to as “Mother Schuenemann” and her husband as “Captain Santa” because of his generosity in giving free Christmas trees away to any family who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford one.) Miss Elsie was known as “The Queen of Christmas Trees” according the following article acknowledging her 1917 wedding: “This is not the end of the ‘Tale of Christmas Trees’ – no. There’s another chapter and it has to do with The Queen of Christmas Trees herself, the daughter of the doughty captain who went down in the awful storm with the ship, laden to the guards with trees for Chicago’s children. Yes – you’ve guessed it – I knew you would, because you’ve read in the papers of the girl who brings a ship down from the wilds of Northern Michigan laden to the last inch of space with trees for the children’s Christmas. And, you will agree, that when Captain Elsie Schuenemann was married, it could only be near a big Christmas tree. Well, so it was. She came to church in the early dusk of the evening to the giant tree which she had brought out of the northern woods. You saw it, did you? Top reached away up to the organ loft. It was not quite dark in the great, still church, but we turned the lights on so that the tree would shine and glitter and glow in all its beauty for the girl who had brought it. The man who came with her was Arthur E. Roberts… There came a few others with them – the nearest and dearest on earth to them – and there in the glory of the Christmas tree they were married. And their new ship sailed out upon the wide sea, laden as heavily with hopes and plans and prayers as the other one was with trees.”

The Schuenemanns. Their’s was a story of tragedy and triumph, of helplessness and of hope. 

In Two Rivers, Wisconsin, at the Rogers Street Fishing Village Museum, a display sign commemorating the Schuenemann brothers reads: “Born in Ahnapee, Wisconsin (present day Algoma), to parents who immigrated from Mecklenburg, Germany, August and his younger brother Herman grew up along the shores of Lake Michigan. It was on the lake that the brothers were to make their living, and it was on the lake where each would meet their death as a master of a Christmas tree ship.”

The Schuenemann boys were born into this world beside the waters, and they left it within. Each had perished, it is true. Yet it is life, not death, that has the final word on this family. Every time their memory is recalled, the captains live on in the breaths that speak their name.  Their ships may lie at the bottom of the lake, but the essence of who they were is alive, alive, alive yet on shore.   

 

     “It is indeed a hard and heartbreaking task to write of Captain Schuenemann, our good faithful brother, who for so many years has been with us in our work and faith. For almost thirty years this good man, sturdy, honest, faithful, has sailed the waters of the Great Lakes, in summertime in the lumber trade, and in November, braving many an angry storm and rough sea to bring great cargoes of trees and branches and red berries to make the children’s holidays brighter and happier. And this time he has not returned.”

Reverend Rudolph A. John

(Captain Schuenemann’s Pastor)

December 1912