BLOG: Secrets in the Woods
- 18 hours ago
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Years ago, when we first moved to Virginia, my husband and I had been book-shopping. Loaded with several bags of good reads, we exited Books-a-Million, back when they were a brick and mortar store in Roanoke. As we were walking out of the double, sliding-glass doors, we were greeted by chaos.
Just across the street, an apartment building had flames shooting out of the roof. It was one of those moments that we've all had. Transfixed, we stood by dumbly, hearing sirens wail, people gathering around us gasping; all of us watching helplessly as a rising tongue of fire spread into a complete conflagration before three minutes had passed.
I remember being speechless, hoping and praying people had gotten out. And literally in minutes, we could hear timbers and bricks popping and snapping, due to the heat. It was one of the scariest things I'd ever seen. Later we read in the paper that a mother had left a child alone in the apartment alone, and the kid either figured out how to use matches or a lighter. People lost homes and possessions that day, because the fire took the entire building.
And we saw it happen. Fortunately, the grandmother lived nearby and apparently rescued the child, who later confessed to "playing with fire."
This week, I welcome a new author to Brook's Journal. Susan D. Levitte found a piece of her own Wisconsin history that had not been widely-told in story format. It concerned a terrible fire following a drought that literally consumed the entire Wisconsin Peninsula. Below, she has shared details of this harrowing slice of American history. Take your time reading about it, as well as her book, SECRETS IN THE WOODS, a fascinating piece of historical fiction that shares the tale of this fateful burn. Lastly, I'll add that Susan must be awesome, because she owns TWO Labrador retrievers! :)
Welcome Susan and best wishes with SECRETS!
Read ON, everybody!
When the Wisconsin Peninsula Burned: The Fires of 1871
By Susan D. Levitte
On the top of a hill where on a clear day you can see a strip of royal blue Lake Michigan ten miles away, pieces of stories I had read and a snip of lore from the family that lived on that hill started demanding my attention.
I was curled on the couch with my yellow lab who was a sleepy six-month-old puppy at the time. Winter was running long in Wisconsin, and the cold and dark gave me the excuse to sit longer. Between sips of a gin and tonic, I noticed that one of the local historical societies had emailed me their newsletter which listed an 1871 Fire event. It was the third mention of the fire that I knew as the Peshtigo fire, in the previous weeks.
I’m an amateur genealogist and I use several on and offline tools to do research, including newspapers.com. It was a quick query that led to several pages of stories from 1871, including the town located closest to the very couch I was sitting on.
I Hope They Took Comfort in Being Together
Buried behind the front page of the Green Bay Weekly Gazette was a very brief telling of how two families were never the same after October 8, 1871. It’s the story that drove me to do more research and ultimately write the book Secrets in the Woods.
“Mr. Wendricks reports that his wife ran to the neighbors to collect three of their children and died with their children and the neighbor’s three children.”
The fire was so terrible at that point that seven people from 34-3 years of age didn’t make it to safety. Did 34-year-old Mary Wendricks and 13-year-old Ghislain Dantoin take any solace in being together at the end?
I was haunted.
People needed to hear the story of these women and any others I could find from the Wisconsin Peninsula.
How Did Thousands of People Die in These Fires?
The years after the American Civil War in Wisconsin were marked with an expansion in industry, immigration and emigration.
The railroad, shipping, logging, the telegraph, farming and commerce were growing at a rapid pace. At the heart of this expansion was the largest immigration of Wallonian Belgians. They and others came to the Peninsula to farm and found themselves in a thicket of white pine and hardwoods.
The virgin white pine were enormous. Sepia-toned photos show men in miniature next to trees so dense the horizon is impossible to identify.
Many of the immigrant groups who came to the Peninsula had never farmed in their native village and most had never cut down trees that were so large. They persevered, learning to fell the trees, make shingles and plant crops around the stumps.
Everything was made of wood even the roads. What wasn’t used was usually burned, including unwanted brush and tree stumps.
1871 was dry. According to the University of Wisconsin Madison’s Weather Almanac, “precipitation on the eastern shore of Green Bay measured only 4.75 inches (120 mm) of rain during July, August and September rather than the normal three-month total of around 12 inches (300 mm).” This left the rivers, streams and hand dug wells struggling to keep up with human demand.
The Green Bay Weekly Gazette printed one paragraph on August 12th, page three, stating there were “fires raging extensively” between Peshtigo and Menominee on the west side of the Bay of Green Bay. The Kewaunee County Star reported that on September 22nd, residents lost their 48-hour battle and “fled to Grimm’s Pier in Lake Michigan with whatever they could carry and pulled up the boards closest to the shore”, so the fire wouldn’t reach their only shelter.
When the winds wound to more than 25mph the evening of October 8th, the fire drove north and east quickly chewing through the already dry underbrush, often leaving firefighters just minutes to run to shelter. Some went into the hand dug wells or cellars, some buried themselves in plowed fields, others made it to streams or creek beds and rolled around trying to stay alive. None of these methods were a guarantee.
Why Didn’t They Leave Before It Got Bad?
It’s easy for us to look at the 28-mile distance between where the woman and children perished and the City of Green Bay as an easy answer. That 35-minute drive today would have been more like 8-12 hours of riding in a wagon. The wooden roads and bridges were burned making it an even longer trip and they wouldn’t have known for sure if they were running away or towards something worse.
Newspaper coverage of the fires was scant. There could be several reasons for this. Even in the 1870s, newspapers survived on advertising. Could businesses have encouraged the publishers to tamp down the severity of the situation to keep people coming to town and buying their advertised product? These newspapers were small shops where the reporter might also be the publisher, maybe they couldn’t leave to report first-hand. It’s more likely that they didn’t want to sensationalize the lead up or the aftermath of the fires.
A Maryland newspaper, who had a front row seat to the 1862 American Civil War battle at Antietam, reported that there were likely a few people dead that day, but they didn’t want to exaggerate. Antietam is known as the bloodiest day in U.S. history. It wasn’t until 1883 when Joseph Pulitzer told his editors to use sensationalism to sell more copies of the New York World, birthing “yellow journalism”.
A Wistful Close
Even if the news coverage was robust or titillating these forest farmers would have been reluctant to go. These women, men and children worked so hard and those that survived built the Wisconsin Peninsula twice.
For more, visit: https://1871fireproject.com/
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References for the images:
WI Family.jpg -American Farm Yard in Winter, 1867. Wisconsin, by George T. Lindeman. Page 278, Dressed for the Photographer, by Joan Severa. Note trousers worn under dress. Checked apron.
White Pine.jpg - Wisconsin White Pine Forest. Pinterest.com
Map.jpg - National Weather Service Map, Peshtigo Fire 1871
Cabin.jpg - Susan Levitte, 1858 Dhuey Cabin, survived the fire in Kewaunee County
ALL ABOUT THE BOOK
On October 8, 1871, fire turned night into a living hell.
While Chicago's blaze claimed the headlines, a fiercer and more devastating inferno swept across Wisconsin's Green Bay peninsula-obliterating farms, forests, and families in its path.
Here, among immigrant settlers carving new lives from the wilderness, survival came down to split-second choices: to run, to hide, to fight the flames. Mothers shielded children with their bodies, fathers vanished into smoke, and neighbors faced the firestorm with nothing but faith and will.
Inspired by forgotten accounts and newspaper fragments, Secrets in the Woods brings to life the untold human drama of one of America's most harrowing nights-a story of resilience, loss, and the fragile hope that rises from the ashes.
ALL ABOUT SUSAN
Susan was born and raised as the fifth generation to live on the family land in Northeast North Dakota (nearly Canada). She moved to Wisconsin in 1997, living in Door and Manitowoc County and now resides in the pastoral Kewaunee County. Married to Quentin, they share their home with Olive and Penny, their silly Labrador retrievers, and Gil, their ever-lazy cat.
As a devoted reader of historical fiction and nonfiction, she brings her passion for history and desire to educate readers into her work. With twenty-five years of experience in global advertising and marketing, she holds a master’s degree in communications and currently contributes her expertise to the Green Bay Austin Straubel International Airport.
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