The Wolf River Paper & Fiber Company

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A Brief History

The Wolf River Paper & Fiber Company
W7575 Poplar Road
Shawano, Wisconsin
Excerpts from The Shawano Paper Mill 1894-1994 Centennial book by George Putz

Shawano’s pulp and paper mills were enabled through the construction of the Wolf River dam.  The paper making process is natural resource intensive, requiring both water and wood.   Water is used in the paper making process to provide power for grinding wood chips made from lumber into pulp which is used as the basis for paper.  In the late 1800’s Shawano’s leaders recognized our natural resource gifts of both water and lumber were an enticement for industry to locate in Shawano.   The property of today’s Shawano Paper Mills was actually several mills over the decades and included a pulp mill, sulfite mill, and a paper mill.  All of these mills witnessed evolution over their tenure as does today’s mill.  As we read about the history of Shawano Paper Mills, its important to note, the dam and mills all got there start before the advent of the electricity or the automobile in a community that became a city less than 20 years earlier, with a population of a just a few thousand.

By 1891, winds of progress were stirring in the community of Shawano. The Madison Lumber Company, which operated a sawmill on the east bank of the Wolf River at what is now the west end of Wescott Avenue, and Charles M. Upham, a pioneer merchant of Shawano, offered to put up a combined sum of $10,000 for the construction of a dam on the Wolf River, providing other businessmen and citizens of Shawano would contribute a like amount for the project. It was hoped that construction of a dam, and the water power made available by it, would entice industry to locate at the site.

FOUNDERS

FRANK D. NABER

The story of the Naber family migration from Germany to Wisconsin, and eventually to Shawano, began to unfold in 1848. The parents of 22-year-old Herman Naber sent him to the United States to see what the prospects were for their families and for those of others to establish homes in America, especially in the new state of Wisconsin. He was under agreement to make a report of his findings by letter or in person within three years.

In 1850, he returned to the fatherland, bringing with him a favorable account of his observations. This resulted in members of the Naber family, and many other families, migrating to Wisconsin.

On June 6, 1851, while in Germany, he married Miss Margaret Schweers. Nine days later, the newlyweds, with an entourage of relatives and friends, set sail for America, determined to make new homes for themselves there. To accommodate the large group, Mr. Naber had chartered the entire second-cabin section of the ship “Stephanie.” After arriving in America, the Nabers first settled at Mayville, Wisconsin. It was at Mayville, in 1853, that Frank D. Naber was born.

In 1858, the family moved to Shawano. The last segment of the journey, up the Wolf River from Oshkosh, was made by steamboat. After moving to Shawano, Herman Naber became one of its first merchants. For several years, he and Charles Upham had the only two stores in town.

As a clerk in his father’s store, Frank D. Naber was to start his career in the business world. In 1882, leaving the clerk job, he went into business for himself, purchasing the Charles Wiley Drug Store, an enterprise which he conducted for 14 years. He was also vice president and director of the Shawano Box Company, secretary and treasurer of the which, at the time of his death, he had held for 30 years.  He was active in the growth of Shawano, planning three additions to the city. But most important to us was his role as a principal founder of the Wolf River Paper and Fiber Company.

It was Joseph Wirtz who came to Shawano from Kaukauna in 1894 with the concept of establishing a pulp mill here, and it was Kleber Phillips, another of the founding four, who induced Frank D. Naber to join the endeavor. Nevertheless, it was Frank Naber’s untiring energy, hard work, and devotion to the company that assured its growth and continued success.

In 1882, Frank Naber and Miss Mary Bucholtz of Clintonville were united in marriage in that city. After the ceremony, they came to Shawano and immediately took up residence in the fine home which Mr. Naber had built at 215 East Division Street, and which had just been completed.

The Naber home was considered one of the showplaces of Shawano, and was worthy of the title. Its exterior was adorned with turned and scrolled wood trim. It had several beautiful stained glass windows and an ornate beveled glass window which, being made of pale rose-colored glass, was a rare example of this architectural art form. The house was constructed by Henry Bauerfiend, who also executed the home’s fine interior woodwork and its mahogany staircase. Mr. Bauerfiend, besides being an undertaker, was a Shawano cabinet maker of renown.

The Nabers were the only family to ever live in the house. It was there they raised their four children-a daughter, Pauline, and three sons, Bernard, Alexander, and Charles.  Charles, after two years with the First National Bank of Shawano, would resign his position there for that of bookkeeper in the office of the Wolf River Paper and Fiber Company. He was to eventually become president of the firm.

After the death of Frank in 1925, Mrs. Naber continue to live in the home.  After she died in 1942, the home was purchased by the local American Legion for use as a clubhouse.  In the late 1950s, the Legion built a clubhouse at a different site and sold the property to the Urban Telephone Company, which proceeded to have the beautiful and historic home demolished to make way for construction of their office and exchange building.

This also brought about the demise of the exquisitely landscaped grounds, which had been created by the hand of Frank Naber, who possessed an avid interest in horticulture. The yard contained a large ginkgo tree, which he had planted, and a lilac tree which, in the early 1900s, Mr. Naber had grafted to combine a purple and a white lilac. The tree had grown to 18 inches in diameter and had attained a height of 35 feet, which is very unusual for this species. He had also grafted a tree to bear two different kinds of fruit.

Frank D. Naber, after a brief period of illness, passed away on July 29, 1925.

KLEBER MICHAEL PHILLIPS

Of the four founding fathers of the Wolf River Paper and Fiber Company, Kleber M. Phillips was the first, by his untimely death at the age of 48 years, to relinquish his role in the affairs of the company which he helped to organize just two years earlier. After an illness of several weeks, Mr. Phillips died on June 1, 1896.

Kleber Michael Phillips was born in Oswego County, New York, on August 11, 1847, the third child of Welcome Phillips and Louisa Angell, of that state. When Kleber was three years old, the family moved to the village of Brothertown in Calumet County, Wisconsin. In his youth and early manhood, he worked on his father’s farm, meanwhile acquiring a rudimentary education in area schools. In 1867, he began the study of law with George Baldwin, an attorney at Chilton, a com-an attorney at Chilton, a community eight miles from his home. For four years, while completing his study of law, Kleber walked the eight miles to Chilton.

In 1871, he was admitted to the bar and shortly thereafter moved to Shawano, where he soon built up a very successful law practice. He was the second lawyer to establish a practice in the city.  In 1873, Mr. Phillips was appointed District Attorney of Shawano County, a position which he held, with the exception of one term, until 1881. He was also elected District Attorney in 1892.

He served two terms as mayor of the city of Shawano, in 1879 and 1882. At that time, the term of office was one year.  Mr. Phillips was a lifelong Democrat and, for years, was the acknowledged leader of the party in Shawano County.

Mr. Phillips was the last of the family of six children. He was survived by his wife, the former Emma Andrews, and a two-year-old daughter.

Ironically, of all the achievements of Kleber M. Phillips noted in his obituary in the Shawano County Journal, no mention was made of the achievement which had the most profound and lasting impact on the Shawano area-his part in the founding of the Wolf River Paper and Fiber Company. Mr. Phillips was the company’s first president.

WILLIAM CHRISTIAN ZACHOW

William Christian Zachow was born in Greenville, Outagamie County, Wisconsin, a son of Mr. & Mrs. Jacob Zachow.

While he was still in his teens, the Zachow family moved to Seymour, Wisconsin. It was there that W. C. Zachow started his productive career in the business world by clerking in a store and working in a stave factory. Though there were no schools in the area at that time, Mr. Zachow was determined to obtain an education. He did so by making use of the time between waiting on customers of the country store to study whatever books were available to him.

At the age of 18, he came to Bonduel, Wisconsin, to work in Adolph Spengler’s General Store.

In 1883, the Milwaukee Lakeshore and Western Railroad built a line from Clintonville to Oconto, connecting two main lines of the Chicago and Northwestern. This new rail line passed through Shawano, crossing the Wolf River about a block downstream from where, nine years later, a dam would be built across the Wolf. It proceeded east from Shawano, then northeast, skirting the east end of Shawano Lake.

It was at the east end of Shawano Lake, by this rail line, that the community of Cecil began to develop. Mr. Zachow, sensing that the new community and the railroad would offer a good business opportunity, was one of the first o buy a lot in Cecil, upon which he built a store.

W. C. Zachow was apparently gifted with excellent business acumen, for it wasn’t long before he had the largest store in Cecil and had expanded his business ventures into ownership of a sawmill and a grain elevator.  He was also buying and shipping lumber and cattle. It is recorded that, on one day, he shipped 14 carloads of cattle from Cecil.  In 1905, when the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad built its line through Shawano, from Eland to Green Bay, they named a station in eastern Shawano County in honor of Mr. Zachow, the man who was the largest shipper of lumber and cattle in this territory. Today the village of Zachow is still an active little community.  It was in Cecil that W. C. Zachow met Mary Naber, who was the first schoolteacher in the first school in Cecil, and who would become his wife. They were married in 1887. Mrs. Zachow was a sister of Frank D. Naber, who was also involved in the founding of the Wolf River Paper and Fiber Company.  Shortly after 1900, Mr. Zachow was elected president of the First National Bank of Shawano. In 1903, he moved to Shawano with his wife and four daughters, making their home at the Herman Naber homestead, a large house which was situated on the northwest corner of Division and Sawyer Streets, now the site of Citizens Bank. This author remembers well the grand home as it was in the 1930s, with its spacious, tree-shaded lawn.  It was later converted for use as a rooming house and offices and was surrounded by a parking lot. It became a shabby, neglected hulk and was eventually demolished. Had this home, which had become known as the “Zachow House,” and its grounds been preserved in their original splendor, they would today be one of Shawano’s historic show-places.

Besides his involvement in the founding of the Wolf River Paper and Fiber Company, Zachow was also an original stockholder of the Wisconsin and Northern Railroad, which was dubbed “The Whiskey Northern” by local people. This railroad was organized by Shawano businessmen in 1907 and was headquartered in the depot, which still stands just south of the Green Bay Street crossing. It was later acquired by the Soo Line and, a few years ago, by the Wisconsin Central Railroad Company.

At the age of 82 years, William C. Zachow died on April 29, 1939. His legacy to Shawano was a thriving paper mill he helped to found; for Shawano County, a village which bears his name. It was noted in Mr. Zachow’s obituary that, though he had widespread business interests, he always had time to be a friend of the working man.

JOSEPH J. WIRTZ

Obituaries in the newspapers of yesteryear told us much more about the deceased than they do today, especially those of our more prominent citizens. The obituaries of Messrs. Naber, Zachow, and Phillips tell us the story of their origins, and the ascent in the realm of the business world of these three founders of the Wolf River Paper and Fiber Company.

The fourth founder, Joseph J. Wirtz, moved to Shawano from Kaukauna shortly after the founding of the company in 1894. Only four years later, in 1898, he sold his interest in it to the other stockholders and moved back to Kaukauna. Consequently, very little information was found pertaining to him in Shawano’s two English-language news-papers, and the German-language paper was beyond my comprehension.

We know nothing of the early, or later, years of his life, when he was born or when he died.  We do know that, before coming to Shawano, he was affiliated with the Phillips and Reese Pulp Company of Kaukauna. His capacity with the company, or if he retained any affiliation with it after becoming involved in organizing the Wolf River Paper and Fiber that there is no known connection of Kleber Phillips of the Wolf River Paper and Fiber Company, with the Phillips and Reese Pulp Company.

The Klondike gold rush of 1897 must have begun to divert Mr. Wirtz’s interest from the pulp and paper industry of Wisconsin to the gold fields of Canada. Under the spell of gold fever, a group of men at Kaukauna formed a company known as the “Yukon Trading and Gold Mining Company.” The stated purpose of the company, capitalized at $1 million, was to have a twin-screw steamship built at Seattle, Washington. The vessel would then be dispatched to the Yukon with a party of 20 men, some who would prospect for gold while the others would carry on a general trading business. The ship, a 200-ton vessel, would then be utilized for general transportation business on the Yukon River.

Joseph Wirtz was an affiliate of this company and also an appointed agent to sell its stock. The Shawano County Journal of November 25, 1897, reported that he had sold about 10,000 shares of stock, with local buyers noted as being Shawano’s mayor, Henry McComb, August Schweers of Shawano and Herman Naber of Cecil.

The last bit of information we have of Joseph Wirtz is this item in the Shawano County Journal of March 10, 1898. “J.J. Wirtz and family, who have made Shawano their home during the past three years, leave this week to again take up their residence at Kaukauna, where they formerly resided. Mr. Wirtz has given up his contemplated trip to the Klondike and expects to engage in the furniture business.”

With this, of the four founders of the Wolf River Paper and Fiber Company, there remained only William C. Zachow and Frank D. Naber.  Only the Naber family would hold any interest in the mill up until the time it was acquired by the Little Rapids Pulp Company.

THE BEGINNING AND THE PULP MILLS

On December 10, 1891, a meeting was held at which D. Mihills of the Madison Lumber Company and Frank D. Naber, Mathias Miller, F. W. Humphrey, D. E. Wescott, and Antone Kuckuk organized the “Shawano Water Power and River Improvement Co.” with a capital stock of $30,000, consisting of 300 shares of stock at $100 a share.  By the evening of December 12, through the efforts of D. Mihills and C. C. Naber, a total of $22,700 worth of stock had been sold in 45 parcels, indicating a broad range of support for the project. Construction of a dam was assured.  The following Saturday, December 19, a meeting of stockholders was held at the Murdock House Hotel parlors. At this meeting the following officers were elected: Charles M. Upham, president; Louis Rollmann, vice president; Frank D. Naber, treasurer; D. E. Wescott, secretary; and Mathias Miller and Antone Kuckuk, directors. The directors immediately made an assessment of 20 percent of the stock subscribed, and plans were made to employ an engineer and start construction.  Construction of the dam was no small task but was completed in 1892 and spanned the Wolf River which was almost 350 feet wide and held an 11-foot head of water.

Soon after the dam was completed, a shoe factory, sawmills, and the pulp and paper industries were attracted to the Shawano based on the dam’s potential.  The Shawano County Advocate of February 8, 1894, contains an extensive article with the headline, “A Pulp Mill at Shawano.” This article probably contains a good clue as to why no more is heard of the Howard Paper Company. It gives the information that a few weeks earlier Mr. Joseph J. Wirtz of Kaukauna had made a visit to Shawano to look over the dam to see if it and the city of Shawano had any advantage to offer for the successful operation of a pulp mill and, perhaps, a paper mill. He found that not only was the dam site an opportune location, but there was also sufficient local capital available, so no outside capital would have to be enlisted to launch such a venture. A stock company was soon formed with a capital of $24,000, with Joseph J. Wirtz, William C. Zachow, Kleber M. Phillips, and Frank D. Naber as incorporators.

On Wednesday afternoon, February 7, 1894, the incorporators held their first meeting at which Kleber M. Phillips was elected president; William C. Zachow, vice president; Joseph J. Wirtz, secretary; and Frank D. Naber, treasurer. Joseph Wirtz was chosen manager and Frank Naber superintendent of the company. On that day the Wolf River Paper and Fiber Company, the forerunner of Shawano Paper Mills, was founded. Plans were then formulated for construction of a pulp mill at the west end of the dam.

Though the “Wolf River Paper and Fiber Company” as yet had no machinery for, or even a building to house, their projected groundwood pulp mill, they were by mid-February of 1894 purchasing and stockpiling the spruce and poplar logs which would be converted to groundwood pulp. This was a boon for farmers of the area, as this gave them a market for these otherwise worthless wood species, and they could harvest this timber in the winter months when farm work demanded less of their attention. Before the opening of this market for pulpwood, farmers clearing their land for agricultural use would pile the poplar and spruce logs in with the brush and burn them. Even huge white pine logs were sometimes disposed of in this manner; the object was to get the land cleared for farming.

On April 4, 1894, machinery for the ground-wood mill was purchased at a cost of $12,000.  This was for equipment to saw and split the logs into usable-sized pieces, a machine to remove the bark, four pulp grinders and one wet machine. It was later found necessary to purchase one more wet machine, as one machine was inadequate to process the output of the grinders. Initially this setup, with one wet machine, employed 14 men and had a daily production of about 300 bundles of pulp.

GROUNDWOOD PULP PROCESS BEGINS

The process for making groundwood pulp involved first cutting the logs into short lengths. The larger diameter pieces would go to a splitter. All the wood would then go to a machine which removed the bark, and then to the grinders. Each millstone in these grinders weighed about five tons. In the grinding process, water was kept flowing to the grind-stones. This resulted in producing a slurry of water and wood fiber, which went to a holding tank. From there, it was pumped to the wet machine. The wet machine, very similar to, but not as refined as, the wet-end segment of a paper machine, removed most, but not all, of the water. This produced a continuous sheet of damp pulp about one-sixteenth of an inch thick, which would wind onto a felt-covered drum. When there was a sufficient quantity of pulp on the drum to make a bundle, it would be peeled off, on the run, with a long pointed pole.

By the end of June 1894, the driving of the wood pilings to support that portion of the mill which would extend over the river was nearing completion and construction of the building would soon start. Work was already underway for a railroad siding to the mill.  An extensive stretch of this would be on a trestle over low land and out over the river at the south end of the mill. It was there that the pulp would be loaded into rail cars for shipment.

With completion of the wood frame building in early September, the mill machinery and the six water wheels which would drive it were being put in place. The four 60-inch and two 30-inch turbine wheels were manufactured by the Globe Iron Works. The turbines, submerged in water and powered by it, were at the lower end of vertical shafts. At the upper end of the shafts were large wood-toothed gears which drove the pulp grinders.  After production of groundwood pulp was discontinued, this system was adapted to run electric generators. This system remained in service until 1958, when the old groundwood mill building was demolished and a modern hydroelectric generating plant was constructed at the site.

The first floor of this portion of the building, the flume, was filled with water, which drove the wheels. The first floor area downstream from the flume had no floor; there was just the timber framework which was open to the water.   With the building completed and all the machinery in place, on Monday, October 22, 1894, the wheels of Shawano’s newest industry were set in motion, operating day and night.  Already talk of a paper mill was circulating in the community.

SHAWANO FIBER WARE COMPANY

January of 1897 saw the incorporation of a subsidiary to the Wolf River Paper and Fiber Company. This new venture, incorporated by Frank Naber, Joseph Wirtz, William Zachow and August Anderson, all of Shawano, would be known as the “Shawano Fiber Ware Company.” This company would utilize pulp produced by the groundwood mill to manufacture fiber ware pails. The machinery for this process would be located on the first floor level of the mill.

Mr. C. O. Whipple of Appleton, a former manufacturer of fiber ware, was the inventor of a new process which was said to reduce the drying of fiber ware from several days to just 24 hours. This process would be used by the Shawano Fiber Ware Company, which projected a production goal of 8,000 pails a dạy and the employment of some 50 or 60 men in the operation.

By late April, the machinery, built in Appleton, was being placed in position under the supervision of Mr. C. O. Whipple. An article in the April 29, 1897, issue of the Shawano County Journal stated, “It is expected that the machinery will be in running order next week.”

If this venture was a success, we will probably never know. The answer is lost in the shadows of time. After the April 29, 1897, item in the Journal, there were no further news accounts pertaining to the Shawano Fiber Ware Company and there is no longer anyone living who remembers it. If the venture was operating successfully, the advent of the paper mill in 1902 probably offered a more profitable use for the groundwood and ended the production of fiber ware pails.

SULFITE  MILL TO BE CONSTRUCTED

At a meeting of officers of the Wolf River Paper and Fiber Company held on Monday, September 23, 1895, the issue of construction of a sulfite mill was brought up and was the topic of a lengthy discussion. It was estimated that the cost for the project would be in the neighborhood of $40,000.  The meeting concluded with a decision to defer, for the present, any action on the proposal.

From the Shawano County Journal of June 9, 1898: “A prairie schooner passed through town yesterday, the owner being on his way to Oconto.”  After nearly three and one-half years of silence on the subject, the public was first made aware of plans for the construction of a sulfite mill by an article in the April 27, 1899, issue of the Shawano County Advocate.

This article was copied from the Kaukauna Sun and stated that a Mr. L. C. Locklin, superintendent of the Kaukauna Fibre Company, had tendered to that company his resignation, effective July 1, 1899, at which time he would assume management of the entire Wolf River Paper and Fiber Company plant, including a sulfite mill to be erected during the summer.  Two weeks later, on May 18, 1899, the Advocate printed this brief announcement, “The Wolf River Paper and Fiber Company have commenced to break ground for their new sulfite mill.”

In the making of sulfite pulp, the first stage and the last stage were identical to the groundwood process.  Between these first and last stages the wood, rather than being ground up, was converted into chips. The huge tile-lined digesters were then filled with these chips and sulfuric acid. A brass lid weighing several hundred pounds was then placed over the opening at the top of the digester and securely bolted in place. The chips were then cooked in the acid, under pressure, for about seven hours. The cooking in acid dissolved the lignin, which is the element of wood which bonds its fibers together. This left a slurry of free sulfite fibers and liquor, the liquor being a mixture of spent acid and dissolved lignin.

When the cooking process was finished, a valve at the cone-shaped bottom of the digester would be opened for the “blowdown,” in which the slurry of fiber and liquor was forced under high pressure through a large pipe to the blowpit. The fiber was contained in the pit while the liquor drained through its screened bottom and was allowed to go into the river, a practice which today is a definite “no-no.” The fumes from the blowdown were vented from the pit through a high wood chimney, from which they emanated in a billowing white cloud. The sulfurous odor of this could often be detected as much as 20 miles downwind from Shawano. The blowdown took a considerable length of time and was accompanied by an earthshaking rumble.

From the first bundle of groundwood pulp produced in 1894 to the last digester of sulfite pulp in 1945, the Wolf River Paper and Fiber Company converted countless millions of feet of logs into these two products. The predominant wood used in the sulfite mill was hemlock. The first logs were brought to the groundwood mill from local farms on horse-drawn sleighs. The last logs came to the sulfite mill on railroad flatcars.  The groundwood mill had ceased operation some years earlier without fanfare or note.

The last evidence of it still operating was an advertisement placed in the Shawano County Advocate of April 15, 1924, by the Wolf River Paper and Fiber Company. This ad was for their “machine glazed and fourdrinier wrapping paper” and their “sulfite and ground-wood pulp.” The ad stated a daily capacity of 30 tons of sulfite, 10 tons of groundwood, and 40 tons of paper.

THE PAPER MILL – FIRST AND SECOND MACHINES

With the success of their groundwood mill from the time of its inception eight years earlier, and the equally successful operation of a sulfite mill in the last three years, a decision was made at the annual stockholders’ meeting of the Wolf River Paper and Fiber Company, held February 10, 1902, for the immediate construction of a paper mill.  To facilitate this endeavor, the capital stock of the company was raised from $24,000 to $250,000.  At the time, the company was employing 95 men, with a monthly payroll of about $3,000. Addition of the paper mill was expected to employ another 65 hands and increase the payroll to around $5,000 a month.

No time was lost getting the project underway. By the first of April, excavation of a basement for the mill had already begun. By the end of May, a fieldstone foundation was completed, and the work of laying up the brick walls of the structure was progressing rapidly. The building was completed the first week of November and, with electric lighting having been installed, workmen were putting in long days assembling the paper machine.

The fourdrinier machine being installed was approximately 190 feet long. Its dryer section contained 30 dryer cylinders, each about 4 feet in diameter. It had three sets of calender stacks, with heavy solid-steel rolls stacked several high in each of the three frames. The calender stacks give paper a smooth finish just after it leaves the dryers.

The machine’s headbox was constructed of wood and was gravity flow; today it is stainless steel and pressurized. The frame of the wire section was brass box beam with a wood core.  The machine produced a web of paper 100 inches wide, in a basis weight range from about 30 to a 110 pound sheet, based on a 24 by 36-inch 480-sheet count. This was the basis for all paper produced by the mill until sometime in the 1950s, when bond and manifold grades were added to the line of papers being made.  These grades were based on a 17 by 22 – 500 count.

The first run of paper was made on Number 1 Machine December 24, 1902. There remains no record of what type of paper was made on the first run. Since that eventful Christmas Eve day, though, many grades of paper have come and gone.  By April of 1903, the mill’s production level of paper was at 30,000 pounds daily, and carload shipments of paper were being made weekly to San Francisco, Seattle, Kansas City, Atlanta, and St. Louis. It was also noted that, at the time, the groundwood and sulfite mills were consuming 45 cords of 4-foot pulpwood per day.

Just three years after construction of the paper mill, rumors that there would soon be a second paper machine were circulating in the Shawano area, but the Advocate was informed that there was no foundation to these reports. Seven more years and an event which forever changed the course of the mill would pass before the Wolf River Paper and Fiber Company would have two paper machines.

By 1907, the mill was employing 151 people and, as noted by the following item from the May 30, 1907, issue of the Shawano County Journal, had two football teams. “There was a football game at North Beach Saturday, paper mill vs. sulfite and groundwood mill employees; score 27 to 0 in favor of the paper mill.”

The year 1907 also saw activity of paper mill architects from out of town taking measurements and surveys and making plans for doubling the capacity of both the sulfite and paper mill.  By April of 1908, it was assured that the company would soon be installing a second paper machine, similar to the one already in place and which would produce the same types of Manila wrapping paper.

It was just 43 days after an announcement in the Shawano County Journal of plans for expansion that a disaster occurred in the paper mill that for a time left the future of the company in grave doubt and eventually changed its course. In retrospect, the change in direction which evolved from the disaster was providential; it gave the mill an asset of diversity it would not have had, had it followed its original plan to install another fourdrinier machine rather than a Yankee.

The south half of the machine room in 1908 had a wood floor and was the area where the roll wrapping and the sheeting operations were conducted.  The sheeting facility consisted of a 102-inch sheeter, a ream cutter, which was believed to be a 50-inch machine, and a table on which to tie the sheet bundles. There would also have been one or more tables on which to wrap the 9-inch-diameter rolls. A part of the area was also used for storage of wrapped rolls and bundles of sheets awaiting shipment to the customer and for the 100-inch-wide deckle edge reels of paper to be converted into sheets.

FIRE

On Saturday morning, May 30, 1908, the incoming day shift changed into their work clothes. Those who would be working on the paper machine hung their good clothes, and some their pocket watches, in wooden lockers behind the dryers. They and the roll wrappers, bundle tiers, sheeter girls and Earl Bartlein, the sheeter operator, had all taken up their specific duties on what was expected to be just another routine day of work. They had no premonition of the holocaust which would soon envelop their place of work.

At about 10 o’clock that fateful morning, a small fire was discovered in one of the dryer hood vent stacks. With the dryer hood, the vent stacks and the mill roof all being constructed of wood, the spread of flames was rapid, probably aided by still-operating vent fans.  Employees attempted with whatever means available to subdue the fire, but it was a mere matter of minutes before they began to realize that if they were to survive, they would have to leave the confines of the mill. Abandoning their good clothes and watches to the inferno, they fled the premises. Earl Bartlein used to tell of how he managed to get back into the mill long enough to grab and save an armful of coats belonging to the sheeter girls.

After the flames were extinguished and the smoke had cleared, the remnants of the mill presented a sorry sight. The south wall of the building had collapsed. The paper machine stood amid ashes, denuded of its dryer hood and anything else on it that was combustible.  Steel roof trusses were draped over it in grotesquely twisted form. The wood floor in the south half of the machine room burned out, dropping the sheeter and everything else on it into a cauldron of fire in the basement. After the fire, a news item in the Shawano County Journal stated that the company had carried insurance in the amount of $108,000. This very probably covered the sulfite and ground-wood mills, as well as the paper mill. The fire loss had been placed at $75,000, but the insurance company allowed a final settlement of only $43,000, placing a residual value of $20,000 on the wrecked paper machine.

For a time there was much concern in the Shawano area over the future of the Wolf River Paper and Fiber Company. For several weeks after the fire, the company was expressing doubts about rebuilding. Loss of the area’s largest employer would have been a severe setback for the city of Shawano. By late August, however, the situation was beginning to look brighter. Leander Choate of Oshkosh, who held considerable stock in the company, had expressed a hope to rebuild bigger than before the fire.

On September 22, 1908, the directors of the Wolf River Paper and Fiber Company held a meeting from which came important decisions and at which acquisition of all of the stock of the Shawano Water Power and River Improvement Company was executed. This gave the Wolf River Paper and Fiber Company full ownership and control of the dam.

The directors then proceeded with decisions to rebuild the mill, install a second paper, and add a finishing room at the west end of the mill.   At another meeting of directors held the following week on September 29, a contract for the rebuilding and addition was awarded to Ule and DeGuere of Grand Rapids, Wisconsin. The buildings were expected to be completed in six weeks.  To finance these projects, and in anticipation of acquiring a second paper machine, the company procured a loan of $300,000, securing a mortgage bond issue from the Wisconsin Trust Company of Milwaukee.

Ironically, as reconstruction of the mill was underway, it was once again threatened by fire-this time by a blaze in a nearby forest, accompanied with a high wind on October 15.  This necessitated an all-night vigil by a crew of men with water hoses to keep the buildings wetted down.

Work of rebuilding the machine room and construction of the new finishing room addition progressed rapidly, with both units having their roofs on by the tenth of Novem-ber. A crew was already at work, putting in long days reconditioning the paper machine.  The sheeter, which had been retrieved from the rubble in the basement and had somehow survived the fire in a salvable condition, was also reconditioned and would remain in constant use for another 62 years.

On the evening of December 4, 1908, the new finishing room received a resplendent initiation when it was the scene of a grand ball. The event was conducted by employees of the mill to raise funds for its baseball club. Music for dancing was furnished by Cone’s Orchestra of Wausau. The new hard maple floor should have given wings to the dancers’ feet. Attendance was estimated at 500 people. About $65 was cleared for the ball club.

With the new finishing room ready for roll wrapping and sheeting operations and the paper machine restored to working condition, on New Year’s Eve, December 31, 1908, the mill turned over its first reel of paper since the fire. Hard work and perseverance had wrought the transformation from rubble and twisted steel to that first reel of paper after the fire in just seven months. Along with its announcement that the mill had resumed operation, the Shawano County Journal stated that, “a second paper machine will be installed next summer.”  This statement was just a few years premature even though, during reconstruction of the machine room, a foundation had been built in the south half for placement of a fourdrinier paper machine. It would be four years before any machine would be installed in the area, and by then a decision had been made in favor of a Yankee-type machine, rather than another fourdrinier. No record exists today of the reason for the change of plan, but the advantage of a diverse product capability for the mill was probably influential in making the change.

The foundation for a fourdrinier dryer section remained visible in the machine room floor until about 1980, when a paper testing lab was built over the area. It had been delineated by two parallel rows of hash marks scored in the concrete and punctuated with bolts which were to have anchored sole plates for the dryer section. The bolts had been bent over and pounded down, and thus they remained for more than 70 years. There is no count of how many times toes were stubbed on them. The hash marks were to bond to the floor the grout which would have been placed under the sole plates.

ELECTRICITY 

From 1900 to 1907 the city of Shawano’s steam-powered generating plant had been giving its citizens the benefit of electricity only evenings from dusk to midnight, mornings from 5 a.m. to daylight, and from November 1 through March 1. In 1907, it was announced in the Shawano County Journal that, “Beginning October 10, 1907, Shawano will have all-night electricity.”

It was September of 1911 that a new era of progress opened for the city when electricity was made available 24 hours daily. The Wolf River Paper and Fiber Company had been generating all of its own electricity, and many years would pass before they would start to purchase some of their power needs from the city utility. Today there is very little information extant regarding the use of electricity in the mill during its early years of operation.  It is very probable that its first use was primarily for lighting.

There is no record of electric motors being used in the mill until 1912, when they were installed with the new Number 2 Paper Machine. Number 1 Machine was operated from a line shaft with direct drive from a steam engine, and it would continue to operate this way for some years. The speed of the machine was controlled by adjusting the speed of the engine. There were step pulleys on the line shaft to compensate for the times when the desired machine speed was beyond the maximum and minimum speed range of the steam engine.

By December of 1911, a 300-horsepower boiler had been added to the two already in the paper mill boiler house, and in June of 1912, work was progressing with installation of two additional 300-horsepower boilers in the sulfite mill boiler house. All three boilers were made by the Lyon Boiler Works of De Pere, Wisconsin. Work was also underway with the addition of an Allis-Chalmers engine to the sulfite mill engine room. This engine was directly connected with a 450-kW generator.  In addition, five Westinghouse A.C. motors, ranging in horsepower from 20 to 150, were placed in the sulfite mill operation.

 THE SECOND PAPER MACHINE – THE FLYING DUTCHMAN

On December 19, 1911, the Wolf River Paper and Fiber Company made an announcement in the Shawano County Advocate that they had made a contract with the Beloit Machine Company for a new paper machine for the mill. The machine is known as a combination machine and in the paper business is called a “Flying Dutchman.”  Origin of the name “Flying Dutchman” is unknown.  In March of 1912, machinery for the Dutchman’s two beaters was seen sitting on a rail car by the depot downtown.  By late summer, the installation of the Dutchman was completed, and it was on August 27, 1912, that the big electric motors set the new machine in motion. The first paper it produced was a 27-pound sheet, and it was only 25 minutes later that merchantable paper from the “Flying Dutchman” was being loaded into a rail car, a record-setting startup.

GROWTH, OWNERSHIP CHANGES

Before electricity, the mills were powered by steam which was produced by a boiler driving a steam engine.  After two catostrophic fly-wheel failures in 1948 and 1949, the operations of the mill started the transition to electricity.  Although the mill generated its own electricity via a generation at the dam, it was mostly used for lighting and lacked the capacity to power the mill.

At a Shawano City Council meeting held on the evening of September 2, 1947, a contract was entered with the Wolf River Paper Company wherein the paper mill would purchase a portion of its electrical power from the city.  Thus, for the first time since its founding, the company would not be producing all of its own electricity. It is also very probable that, at this time, the two steam engines and generator in the old sulfite mill power plant were retired.  They stood idle for some years before they were broken up for scrap.

This left only the two largest of the three engines in the paper mill in constant use. One of these did not power a generator, but a line shaft, with direct power to Number 1 Paper Machine. The third engine was used only on a standby basis, to operate a generator. It was the smallest of the company’s five engines. In less than two years after enactment of the contract with the city for power, all three of the paper mill engines would meet with a sudden and unplanned demise.

This second flywheel incident in 1949 marked the end of the steam engine age for the Wolf River Paper Company, and within two decades there would be none of these fascinating mechanical monsters remaining anywhere in the Shawano area. Through the years there had been 14 of them.

THE EGAN ERA

Shortly after the 1949 flywheel incident, the name was changed to Shawano Paper Mills. This probably occurred in late November of 1949, as the payroll checks of December 11 of that year were the first to bear the title “Shawano Paper Mills.” Operation of the mill by Naber and Company ended in February of 1950, almost the same day the mill was founded 56 years earlier, on February 7, 1894.

The Egan era begins when Charles Egan, a native of Boston, came to Wisconsin in 1947 and purchased a small groundwood mill located on the Fox River at Little Rapids, about ten miles south of Green Bay. Egan was an engineering graduate of Yale University who had begun his business career with Mead Corporation at ita de Wer Chillicothe, Ohio. In 1940, as war clouds were gathering, he persuaded a Minnesota investor to back him in starting up a small, one-machine mill in Little Falls, Minnesota, known as the Hennepin Paper Mill.

One of the by-products of the second World War was a significant increase in the demand for paper, and the little mill prospered. At the conclusion of the war, the investors sold the mill to Time, Inc. Charles Egan had been able to accumulate some capital as the result of the success of the Hennepin operation, and purchased the Little Rapids Pulp Mill in 1947.  Two years later, in 1949, he moved his family to De Pere.

In February of 1950, Egan leased Shawano Paper Mills from Charles Naber, with an option to purchase. The mill would be operated as a division of the Little Rapids Pulp Company of De Pere. Charles N. Egan, president of Little Rapids, would become president and general manager of Shawano Paper Mills. This would be only the third time in the mill’s 56-year history that it would not be controlled by members of its founding families, with descendants of Frank Naber the last to be associated with its operation.

On March 6, 1950, less than one month after the announcement was made that the Shawano mill had been leased, Charles N. Egan, president of Shawano Paper Mills, named Jesse L. Trask as its new resident manager.

Over Charles Egan’s and his son, Richard Egan’s tenure, the paper mill evolved, always improving.

1958 – Steam power plant was  built.

1958 – Hydroelectric plant built.

1976 and 1979 – Wrapping and shipping facilities were expanded to keep up with increasing paper machine output.

1981 – A third paper machine was installed and operational with speeds of 4,500 feet per minute.

1983 – Pulp warehouse built.

Machine speeds increased from a few hundred feet per minute to two thousand.

Paper grade structures and finishing evolved, allowing different specialty papers to be manufactured.

1992 – State-of-the-art water treatment plant was built.

SHAWANO PAPER MILL IN THE COMMUNITY

From the time of its founding to the present, the paper mill, Shawano’s oldest industry, has provided steady employment for the area and has also contributed much to our cultural environment. Preceding chapters of this book have contained a summary of contributions from the original Wolf River Paper and Fiber Company. One of these contributions, their generous gift of waterfront land, site of Huckleberry Harbor, will benefit generations to come.

The tradition of benevolence has been carried on by the present owners of the mill, the Little Rapids Corporation. In 1968, they contributed $1,000 to the Shawano Community Hospital to assist it in the purchase of a heart monitoring unit. They have also contributed, through the Egan Foundation in 1989, $25,000 to the Shawano City-County Library for remodeling of its facility.

In 1992, $12,000 was donated to the Shawano Community Hospital for cardiac monitoring equipment. Also in 1992, the paper mill started a Dollars for Scholars chapter in Shawano by contributing $1,000 in seed money and $4,000 in matching grants. The following year, $10,000 was contributed to the Kids in the Kountry Child Care Center of Shawano.

A Charles N. Egan Scholarship for children of Little Rapids Corporation employees was founded in 1990.  Through 1993, 16 college scholarships have been awarded.

To promote a greater awareness of safety throughout the mill, an award program was established in 1971 whereby each employee of any department completing one year without a lost-time accident would receive an award.  Some of the past awards have been smoke alarms, electric drills, and fire extinguishers.  To commemorate the event, coffee, doughnuts and sweet rolls were served mill-wide. At the time I retired from the mill in 1984, the Finishing-Shipping Department had achieved a record 13 years without a lost-time accident.

CONCLUSION

This brings to a close the narrative of the 100-year history of the pulp and paper idustry in Shawano and of two years of events leading to its inception. This story was constructed from bits and pieces of information gleaned from microfilms of newspapers from yesteryear and from the memories of those still with us who lived a part of the story.

“The people, the places, the events of history are lost in the shadows of time, until brought to light by the expressed memories of the living.”  George Putz, Jr.

As the mill enters its second century, it continues its history of growth and change.  Through capital investment and improvement in the skills of its employees, Shawano has continued to improve its productivity every year. In 1993, Dick Egan articulated a new strategy for Little Rapids which included the development of products which are of a more technical nature. The company’s strategy calls for development of new value-added products. This includes the introduction of new materials designed to take the mill beyond its historic cellulose-based product mix.  In addition, other value-adding technologies such as saturation, lamination and coating are in the developmental stage. The objective of the Egan family, owners of Little Rapids Corporation, is to continue to develop the Shawano Mill and other operations into highly-profitable specialty manufacturers of increasingly-sophisticated materials.