Jane McDonald, Proprietor of the Union House

Monday, June 16, 2014

     Jane Nelson McDonald Lovell Redden was a modern day woman living in a primitive place.  She was a pioneer businesswoman who understood the value of advertising and that when it came to real estate it was all about “location, location, location.”    

     Right off the lake, near the river was a prime spot for a hotel in Wolf River.  Where the Northeastern Mutual Insurance Company office building sits today on the west side of First Street, just south of Steele Street in Algoma, was once the location of the Union House.  According to M. T. Parker in his “Historical Sketch of the Town of Ahnapee” (1873), the hotel was originally called the Lovell House.  It was the first building on First Street and among the first few framed buildings erected in Wolf River.  It was also the first hotel to feature a sign.  It became a principal hotel in the young town.  

     Jane, the proprietor, was born in October, 1810 in Ireland.  She immigrated to America in 1829.  Her eight children were born in New York, except for the youngest daughter.  The widow of Patrick McDonald, she came with her family first to Racine, Wisconsin and then with her second husband, John Lovell, to Wolf River in 1856.  There they purchased the building and she ran the hotel--a boarding house and tavern. 

     There was a great need for boarding in the newly developing area.  Settlers were relocating to Wolf River to establish homesteads.  Many came from southern Wisconsin cities and counties on the lake.  Land that had cost just a dollar an acre around 1851 was selling for five times that much by 1860.  Harvesting the timber created jobs that brought woodsmen to the area. 

     It was said that Jane ran a strict boarding house.  She was a devout member of the Church of England and was described as a woman of “vigorous mind and personality, with a strong Scotch-Irish brogue.”  

     Jane needed to run a tight ship.  When sailors came off the lake to work in the woods and boarded at the Union House, she kept control of any ruffians who were too fond of the grog.  George Wing said that if they wanted to know who the boss was, all they had to do was to “start something.”  Jane McDonald would put them in their place. 

     Eventually the hotel building was used as her residence only.  At one point around 1873, Jane planned to put up a new sign and reopen the business.    

The arrow points to the Union House.
Graphic courtesy of Algoma Library from the Cox/Nell House Histories Collection.

     Jane must have been a spunky lady all her life.  She was divorced from John Lovell and remarried in 1880 at age 70 to Patrick Redden, age 37, a stonemason.  The local newspaper mentioned that “Although the report that they were married was not credited at first, it is nevertheless true.”

     She attempted to sell the building in 1883 but there were no takers.  Then, fire broke out in the upper story of the building in June, 1884.  The fire department had the blaze under control in 15 minutes.  The building was gutted by fire and water, but not a total loss.  Jane continued to occupy it after the fire. 

     By 1916, when the building was razed, it was unoccupied, an eye sore, and a fire trap.  But it had served the pioneer businesswoman, its matron, well as her home and business for 45 years until her death at age 90 in the summer of 1901.