Mother Schuenemann’s Family Tradition

Monday, December 1, 2014

For many years after the death of her husband, the Christmas Tree Queen of Chicago and her children kept the business and tradition alive.

Mrs. Barbara Schuenemann was the widow of veteran Christmas tree ship captain Herman E. Schuenemann, “Captain Santa.”  The captain and his crew lost their lives off the shore of Kewaunee when his 123 foot, 205 ton, three-masted schooner Rouse Simmons was sunk during a November 1912 snow storm while taking a cargo of Christmas trees to Chicago.

Mrs. Schuenemann carried on the family business and tradition.  The hearty German-born Barbara Schindel Schuenemann worked with her three young daughters: Elsie and twins Hazel and Pearl.  One daughter lived in Chicago to handle the sales and the other two helped the Christmas Tree Queen find the spruce, pine, and fir trees in the woods of Michigan and Wisconsin.  The widow and her children were committed to continuing in their husband and father’s memory.  Elsie, quoted in the “Milwaukee Journal” newspaper said, “Daddy stuck to his ship and we’re going to stick to the ship, too!  Our monument to him will be to carry on, as he would have done it…we have helped father all our lives, and we know the ropes.”   

The first year after her husband’s death, Mrs. Schuenemann toughed it out for eight weeks in the Michigan woods with a gang of lumberjacks.  That year she sent the trees by rail including five believed to be among the largest ever shipped to Chicago, one of which was a 36 foot tall tree for the municipal Christmas tree celebration at Grant Park.  Elsie, meanwhile, worked in the freight yards, walking among the cars, overseeing the men unloading the Christmas trees her mother had shipped. 

In the early days, in Chicago, several ships often delivered trees during the holiday season.  As early as 1875 or 1876 ship captains like Herman’s brother, August Schuenemann, took a load of Christmas trees to Chicago in the William H. Hinsdale and Ahnapee’s one-armed Captain John McDonald brought a cargo of trees in the scow-schooner Lady Ellen.  Trees were sold right out of the ships’ berths.  They would dock at Clark Street and, with lights strung from the bow to stern, customers were welcomed aboard to select their tree.  In addition to trees, the Schuenemanns sold wreaths and garlands which Barbara and her daughters helped to make.

“Every year I shall go to the northwoods,” Mrs. Schuenemann promised.  And she did.  Barbara and the girls shipped trees by rail or schooner.  If they were sent by rail, they would sell them from a docked ship.  Four years after her husband’s death, Barbara chartered a new schooner, Fearless, from Schoolcraft County, Michigan but by 1925, the trees were brought by freight cars to the family’s warehouse and no longer sold from ships on the docks.   

Daughter Elsie Schuenemann 1915

 “…After I am dead there will be others to carry on the work,” Barbara promised.  And there were.  At her death in 1933, Barbara Schuenemann’s pastor said that the sudden death of “Mother Schuenemann” brought much sorrow to the people of Chicago who loved her because of her devotion to the children at Christmastime when she brought the Christmas trees to them.  She was known and loved by hundreds of thousands throughout the metropolis.  After Barbara’s death, her daughter, Mrs. Elsie Scheunemann Roberts, and Elsie’s son carried on the tradition and continued to sell trees from the family’s lot. 

Shirley VerBruggen wishes “The County Times” and its readers a very Merry Christmas and happy holiday season filled with your own family traditions. 

The photo of Elsie is from google.com.