John Manke is an active former Bay View resident who is involved in numerous neighborhood organizations, including the Bay View Historical Society, the Humboldt Park Fourth of July Association and the Shore Shore Farmers Market.
He believes Bay View has a fine tradition in its past that we do not want to lose in the future.
Kashube Park is located in the northern portion of Jones Island on S. Carferry Dr. near the old carferry
building close to the sewage treatment plant. It consists of one tree, one picnic table and one wastebasket.
It is the size of your average front room.
Jones Island once held the natural harbor entrance to Milwaukee. Horace Chase and Mr. Clyborn had a
receiving warehouse at the harbor entrance for any ships that came to Milwaukee. Mr. Wilcox was the one
who supplied most of the incoming ships with lumber to burn as fuel on the ships. When the new harbor
entrance was created where it is now, Chase's entrance became clogged with sand as a result. Thus ended
the great natural harbor system in Bay View. Captain Jones built a shipyard on Jones Island but gave up
after frequent storms wiped out his business.
In what is now Poland, on the peninsula of Hel, near Danzig ( now Gedansk), a large community of Kashubes had their homes. They were neither German nor Polish, but spoke in a dialect that was close to
Polish. On one part of the peninsula of Hel were Lutherans and the other side had mostly Catholic people.
One day the German government decided to draft some of the Kashubes into the German army. These people were fiercely independent and did not acknowledge any goverment. They just wanted to live their lives in peace. These people were great fishermen and great builders. Close to the end of the 19th century,
the people in revolt to the German government checked out sites in America where they could find their freedom from government interference. The area of Jones Island was perfect for them. The climate was the same as in Europe and the land was very similar to their old home. The shifting sand bars were no problem to these people. They built their houses on stilts and had animals stay under their houses. They added soil to the land to strenghen it. These same people built two churches in Milwaukee. St. Stanilaus
Roman Catholic Church and St. Hedwig's Roman Catholic Church. These people could build in places where
everybody else failed. When they built basements in Bay View, the walls were sometime 1 1/2 feet thick.
They established a great fishing community on Jones Island.
Law and order was one thing that they did not acknowledge. The Milwaukee Police Department was afraid to arrest any Kashube on Jones Island. They waited until they left the island to arrest them. If you got into
an argument with a man on the island, he frequently had several friends and/or relatives to support him. Although they could have placed claims on their land to make it their own, they were too stubborn to do this
since they had no love for any government. When Theo Otjen was Rolling Mill Attorney and Village of Bay View Attorney, he had the people sign documents that would prevent them from filing any claims on their land and would eventually cause them to lose their land in the future.
When the Bay View Rolling Mill was built, Jones Island became a penisula. Some of the Kashubes worked in the rolling mill. St. Stanilaus Roman Catholic Church was the starting point for the strikers in 1886, when
the state militia fired upon the strikers in Bay View. The Kosciuszko Guards were a part of the state militia.
When these soldiers came back after the incident in 1886, they were shunned by fellow Polish members of
St. Stanilaus Church. The priests did not want to give these men communion. Their stores were no longer visited by their fellow Polish friends.
The children of the Kashubes had to ride in a boat to go to school in the early years. After a while a school
was built on Jones Island for them. Life was hard for these people, but they were hardy and could adjust to adversity. Kashube Park is all that is left to remind us of them and their existence.
Fast forward to today. Due to lack of funding, many of our parks are deteriorating in front of us. The blame is not the park workers, but rather due to cuts in their staffing ability. Our city fathers wanted us to
have parks as a legacy to our citizens. If you look at the old pictures of our parks you can see the difference
good care can make in their appearance. I am hoping that the lack of funding does not make any more parks to be the size of Kashube Park. It might be a good idea to create a new Kashube Park near the Lake
Express Car Ferry. The old park is too small to use and also too hard to locate. Please contact your local leaders and ask them to protect our parks. Please support the Bay View community.
