Gunshots and Arson - Matt Johannes, Eau Claire Wisconsin Part I.

Sometimes when researching a story it strays a bit, it going off in a direction you were not expecting.  The story of Mathias Johannes, pioneer soda bottler of Eau Claire Wisconsin, galloped off in an especially peculiar fashion.  Explosions.  Arson.  And some remarkably helpful details on the bottles used in the 19th century pop business.

A while back I briefly discussed Schofield, Garon and Hebert, first soda bottlers in Chippewa Falls.  When considering whether they would have gone to the expense of embossing their name onto the bottles, the issue of whether they had local competitors was raised.  I was aware of one, albeit in the next town over.  This would be the firm of Massolt and Johannes in Eau Claire Wisconsin.

Massolt and Johannes got at least a one year head start in the local market.  The following entry from the West Eau Claire Argus of May 1867 could be interpreted as being the start of the enterprise, or simply the start of the soda pop season with warmer weather.*  

"Pop! Pop! Massolt and Johonnas (sic) have their machine in good running order for the manufacture of pop beer, or mineral water.  They have already put up about a thousand bottles, which are rceiving a very rapid sale.  This mineral water is a very pleasant summer drink, and will meet with ready sale at all the restaurants in town, and costing but a trifle when purchased by the box, private families will find it a delightful beverage to keep in the cellar.  Massolt and Johonnas are the only firm in the Chippewa Valley that manufactures this article of drink, and will undoubtedly receive extensive patronage from the neighboring towns."

Ads from this time period describe their product as "CELEBRATED MINERAL WATER or POP BEER", and mention that it was for sale at saloons, restaurants, and groceries, also that it could be purchased "wholesale at Milwaukee prices".

The Massolt and Johannes partnership was dissolved in October of 1867, Massolt moved to Minneapolis and became the premier soda bottler in that town.  Johannes carried on the venture in Eau Claire.

He also ran a saloon.  This made sense as soda pop was a somewhat seasonal business, and in any event it was another outlet for selling his product.  The exact nature of the "Johannes Saloon" can be glimpsed in old newspapers.

He had a lawyer, H.L. Stiles, leasing an office upstairs.  Perhaps that came in handy, one news item from 1869 mentions casually that a young man refused to pay for his drinks and tried to high tail it out of the bar.  Johannes pursued, firing three shots at the cheapskate!  This attracted the attention of the constable who arrested not the barkeep with the pistol but the fleeing deadbeat.  If you tried this sort of thing in modern times the outcome would be otherwise.

Johannes was successful in the soda pop business.  His 1903 obituary mournfully describes the passing of a pioneer and claims that "..for 15 years or more he made all the pop used at Eau Claire, Chippewa Falls and perhaps several other places, and made a good deal of money in the business."  This seems to be approximately correct if one discounts minor players such as his brief Chippewa Falls competitor.

But what kind of person was Mathias Johannes?  What was the soda business like in the mid to late 1800s?

I think it is fair to say that he was not a vigilant "helicopter parent".  A hair raising tale from the local paper in 1875:

"Johanne's boy came near getting drowned in the Chippewa near the bridge this morning.  He tried riding a log, which rolled over, upsetting him, and nearly reversing his position, so that only his feet were visible, sticking up on one side, while the log floated over him...."   Fortunately a bystander noticed and "...pulled him out not at all too soon for safety, as very little more would have settled his terrestrial hash".

One thinks of the soda pop business as being a simple and happy one.  Or maybe not, its not as if Coke and Pepsi get along.  But Matt Johannes had enough bad luck that some began to murmur a bit....

In March of 1885 it was noted that Johannes had taken delivery of a car load of bottles from a manufacturer in Jersey City.  Johannes had built a new bottling plant on Madison street and now purchased no fewer than 144,000 "self sealing bottles".  Quite a few of these were stored elsewhere, and in November of the same year a fire at his warehouse destroyed "his entire stock of bottles for winter use".  There were suspicions of arson as the site was "..visited by fire about a year ago under much the same circumstances.  Someone surely must have a grudge against either Johannes or Moldenhaur and Damm"  The latter were the wagon manufacturers who shared the space.

Johannes clearly went through a lot of bottles.  Not only did some fall victim to arson, it seems they occasionally just blew up.  But that is a story for next time.

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* Massolt had been in Eau Claire since 1864, and Johannes since 1860.  Their business could have been in operation for several years in the mid 1860s. 

FIRST Robotics 2018 - Report Four

The week featured more delays and distractions due to weather, finals, illness and a contingent away doing Science Olympiad.  But we kept forging ahead.

Turning parts on the lathe.  This is actually a plastic called Delrin that is being made into pulleys.

Continuing our team tradition of building ludicrously over engineered components, our lifting mechanism takes shape.  Folks, that ain't no wimpy aluminum.

With a bit of lag time before other elements are ready, the build team is making parts for the competition robot frame.  Quality work, no kludge allowed.  And we label them so that they don't get used for other projectes.

Software has a practice course laid out in blue tape.  Naturally they are running into a few gremlins but better now than later.  We hope to have both the competition robot and its sparring partner running at the same time in a week or two.

Approaching the dreaded mid point of build season the team kicked into high gear.  Major mechanisms came together.  Parts arrived.  And the work force grew.  On a team with an official roster of 28 it is amazing to have 20 turn up to work...including another new recruit.  Keeping everyone busy on projects that are coordinated to all come together at the proper moment is a real challenge.  But a good problem to have.  Interestingly we are victims of our own success with regards to team growth. One of our biggest expenses is hotel and food costs at out of town tournaments.  This is a factor in deciding whether we can actually do two events - and finish the season dead broke - or scale back to one and keep some start up money for the off season/early season next year.

After a productive weekend we find our selves at a point where if necessary, three or four days of frantic, caffeine powered work would get us a kludgy but functional robot. With three weeks to go that's not a bad place to be although much work is needed to get anything really reliable.  

Here is the final version of the "Bear Claw" box handler.  When it grabs a box the box is not going anywhere until we let go of it.

Leaf Pile

Obviously a picture from last fall.  Warmer days.

And you never know when an Uncle will jump out of the leaf pile and try to scare you!

Bottling Beer in Chippewa Falls

This is a minor follow up to a recent post called "The Lost Brewery of Chippewa Falls". In it I described the struggles of an 1870's brewery that had a parade of different owners.  You'd think after that venture failed that all concerned would have had enough of the beer business.

But as it happens, no.

One of the early proprietors of the failed Union Brewery was a certain John P. Mitchell.  A brief article in the Chippewa Falls Herald of August 27, 1880 describes his career a few years later:

After describing other improvements in the area of the Star Flouring Mill it relates that:

"A short distance across from this structure is a two story building with a good stone foundation where Mr. John P. Mitchell will soon open up with a good stock of groceries.  This will be handy for the large number of people who live in that vicinity....."
"In the rear of the store, an establishment for bottling beer is being built.  This will be under the management of Mr. Mitchell, and will be of considerable benefit and convenience to the city, as heretofore all bottled beer had to be imported from Milwaukee, Lacrosse or St. Paul...."

This was adjacent to Leinenkugel and Miller's Spring Brewery, and it was their beer that Mitchell would be bottling.  

A follow up article in December of 1880 mentions that the bottling works was in "good running order" and had been filling many orders.  Beer could be ordered by the case for home delivery.  A case was either 2 dozen quarts at $2.50 or 3 dozen pints for $2.00.

This helps explain what I had considered a curious entry on the Chippewa Falls Sanborn Fire Map of 1884.

Leinenkugels was just off to the right.  The bottling works is as described in the news article.  Previously I had wondered about the "Gro." which clearly indicates the associated grocery.  Note the Ice House out back.  Presumably this was to keep kegs of beer ready for bottling at a nice cold temperature.

This photo probably shows it.  You are looking at the front of the building, which is the short end to the left.

Several additional thoughts.

Because of Federal tax laws it was not legal to bottle beer on the brewery premises.  It had to be taken across the street (or sometimes via tunnel, under the street) to a different building.  In transit the kegs were marked with tax stamps.  In the winter view above you can actually see a plank covered pathway running from the brewery to the bottling facility.  I wonder where the guy with the tax stamps stood?

19th century newspaper articles were pounded out at a brisk pace, not always checking for strict accuracy.  In fact this was almost certainly not the first beer bottled in town.  Three years earlier in June of 1877 it was noted that: "Both the breweries in this city are bottling beer for family use, which enables all to have fresh beer."

The reference to "both" of course reflected the presence of the Schmidmeyer brewery at that point in time.  From this point onward I am going to engage in a little speculation.

Bottling beer or soda was not a highly profitable venture unless you had a good system for getting your bottles back.  These were specialized containers with seals to keep in carbonation and thick walls to reduce breakage.  By 1880 these were almost all glass bottles, and the absolute absence of any embossed Leinenkugel's bottles prior to the late 1890's suggests that it was paper label only when Mitchell started bottling their beer on a large scale.  But prior to that it was a different story.

There were two breweries in town.  (OK, three for a while).  If you used generic bottles the worst case scenario was not that your bottle did not come home to you...it was that it would be used by your rival!  So marked bottles made sense.  The only one from the area that dates from this era is actually from Eau Claire, the marvelous E.R. Hantzsch pottery beer bottle.  We've met E.R. before, he used a cave that was featured in several of my early Forgotten Brewery Cave posts.

So, given that bottling of beer by Schmidmeyer and by Leinenkugels was a very small scale, literally kitchen sink operation, is it possible that somewhere out there are similar pottery bottles with FXS or L&M debossed on them?  I'd like to think so.

FIRST Robotics 2018 - Report Three

I've been mostly working with the crew building the box intake system.  It has been frustrating at times.  We experimented with all sorts of different kinds of wheel material.  We have a graveyard of failed intake wheels.

It seems so simple.  You just get that fabric covered box lined up with the spinning wheels and pull it right in.  But the box actually has one short dimension, so some times the cross section you are trying to grab is smaller.  Also, the fabric covering gets saggy with use, so the one open side of the box is a loose tent.

These wheels looked great but were made out of material that was too squishy.  We have to be able to lift this box "in the grip" up to a target six feet in the air.

Finally we did get to where we had all the variables dialed in.  The wheels pulled the box in.  They spit it back out on cue.  You could pick the lift mechanism up, actually it is easier to pick up the whole robot, and shake it.  It held.  Great, yes?

Well it looks good.  We got it mounted on a drive frame and with a mock up of the elevator "mast" that will be in about that position.  But, in real world testing a real world problem appeared.  When you make a tight turn, or spin around...the spring tension on the intake arms is not sufficient to keep the box from flying out.  And since you cannot drive sedately in tournament play this is a serious, no, a fatal design flaw.

Oh, we tried to make it work.  Belts, pulleys, different sized wheels, different wheel material.  But the basic problem remained.....too much weight out front on flexible arms.  You could of course have a pneumatic cylinder pull the arms together once the box was in the grip.

But at that point the wheeled intake becomes rather irrelevant.....just use pneumatics to grab the box.

And so, two weeks into the six week build.....The Claw returns.

Some actual engineering going on now with things being drafted on paper and/or on computer, gear ratios for winches being calculated, metal being milled for elevator parts, software continues to program away.

Its frustrating, all the more so because we will likely lose another day to weather tomorrow.  But it moves forward.....

A Chubby Champ is Crowned

The chub fishing community has been stunned in recent days by the possible emergence of a new state record creek chub.  I am not at liberty to say exactly where it was caught, but clearly it was an accidental catch by an ice fisherman.  

At 11.8 inches and approximately 12 ounces this is a gigantic fish.  By way of comparison the prize winner at our second annual Chub Fest last summer was a puny 4.8 ounces.

I've seen a picture of the fish and the man who caught it.  He, the angler more so than the fish, appears a bit puzzled.  He may not have known what the heck he had caught.

Well even though it was not caught in the traditional Chub Fest way - fishing in culverts and drainage ditches - we do feel a certain obligation to reach out to the lucky fisherman.

We would after all like to express the official congratulations of the Northern Chub Anglers Alliance (NCAA) and invite him to be Grand Marshal of the 2018 Chub Fest.

Heh. That should make him less puzzled for sure.

Forgotten Brewery Caves - Mayville Wisconsin

Mayville is a nice little town in south east Wisconsin.  Remarkably it had at least three breweries.  On a trip there two years ago I had a chance to quickly take a look at two of them that are still standing.  Clearly more research is needed.

Here is a nice old stone brewery down by the river.  It has been converted into a garage and an apartment building.

The back side, built right into the hill.  Odds of a cave being under there are nearly 100%.  Ah, the Impossible Dream....a fabulous garage/work space with a brewery cave out the back.  

The other extant brewery building in town does not look like much.  But parts of it are quite old.  It is now a wholesale food company of some sort.  Likely the evolution was brewery-creamery-more diversified business.  Cold storage was the key link.

As is true with humans, so also with buildings.  You can try to hide your true age but for those who look closely.....

And off the back side another interesting little abutment to the hill.  Odds of a brewery cave?  Oh, count on it.

I've had these pictures sitting around for far too long hoping to get back and get some inside pix.  When that happens I'll of course update.

My preliminary look at the breweries of Mayville shows it to be a complicated story. This LINK to Oldbreweries.com lists 7 different breweries in town, although of course some may have simply been changes in ownership and variant names.

An 1885 map of Mayville indicates that the first brewery shown above was John Steger and Company.  The second was M. Ziegler, Mayville Brewery.