The Wings of The OWL

Wednesday, February 12, 2014



George W. Wing was the “father” of the Kewaunee County Historical Society. He wrote stories endlessly and documented all aspects of life from the earliest pioneer days of Wolf River (Ahnepee, Ahnapee, later Algoma) and Kewaunee, Wisconsin.  From “how Ahnepee got its name” to politics to the Indian lore of the Winnebagoes, G. W. Wing wrote about it. His stories also included those of his own family’s history in a newsletter he called The OWL (Our Wing Lineage).




George W. Wing (standing) and his mother Mary Elliott Wing with his son, George D. Wing
Seated is George W. Elliott (Mary's father)

 G. W. Wing was the son of a prominent Kewaunee attorney, Rufus Wing, and Mary (Elliott) Wing. Rufus and Mary Wing came to Wolf River in 1858 from Chilton, Wisconsin.

Having had experience at age 16 starting the Ahnapee Record newspaper with Charles W. Borgman in 1873, G. W. Wing set up a small printing press in the upper story of his Kewaunee home for his 12 year-old son, George Dikeman Wing.  They called the room The Owlery. There, George W. (who was affectionately called Col. Wing based on his role as division colonel in the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War) and his son wrote The OWL as a family newsletter. “We ‘hoot’ monthly for fifty cents a year” advertised young editor George D. Wing in Vol. 1, No. 1., September, 1899.

“The OWL, Vol 1. October , 1899  No. 2

…published and edited by George Dikeman Wing, Kewaunee, Wisconsin.  The publisher is a boy 12 years of age…He has a small press and a stock of type in his playroom in his father’s residence, and is compositor and editor and publisher of The OWL, which is notably well written and presents a creditable typographical appearance.  In this connection, we might as well confess that ‘the Colonel’ comes in occasionally and sweeps out the office and wipes the dust off the press, just to keep his hand in.”

Initially G. W. and George D. interviewed all of their local relatives for the paper. Their articles shared tales of overland journeys from New York to the wilds of Wisconsin territory; firsthand accounts of Civil War experiences and Revolutionary War diaries; photos and drawings; and, of course, the begets and begots of each collateral family back to the arrivals of their ancestors to the colonies.

The paper included newsy updates about new births and who visited whom sent in by family members.  These tidbits were chronicled in columns called “Kith and Kin” and “Winglets”. “Our Household Department” featured favorite recipes submitted by the ladies of Algoma and Kewaunee. The newsletter caught on. It really caught on.

Soon this newsletter was being subscribed to by the likes of the New York Public Library. Within a year, The OWL was publishing extensive ancestor pedigrees mailed in from Wing relatives living far and wide and others researched by G.W. and George D.  By October, 1900, The OWL was hooting monthly for a dollar a year.

Given the extent to which this project must have occupied the time of young student George D., his father took on more and more of the work of family correspondence. There was an ever-growing interest by Wing relatives and much research to be done.

Then G.W. Wing visited the homestead of the earliest Wing ancestors in Sandwich, Massachusetts. There he met distant Wing cousins and saw the original home of the family founders in America. The idea for a family reunion and creation of a Wing Family Association (WFA) was proposed in The OWL in 1901.

A reunion was held and papers of incorporation for the Wing Family of America were filed.  The founder of the WFA, its first president, was George W. Wing.  By March, 1902, The OWL had become “A Genealogical Quarterly Magazine” and a real deal at a dollar a year or 25 cents for a single issue, still published by George D. Wing in Kewaunee.  The OWL continued to be published quarterly through June 1934. Eventually its publication was moved to Massachusetts. It became an annual issue in 1936 and, except for a few instances, has been printed yearly as The OWL to this day. The reunions are still held, nearly every year.  The home of The OWL stands in Kewaunee today.

George W. Wing, who was an attorney by age 21 and County Judge by 1885, died April 12, 1924 in Kewaunee. The OWL didn’t let the story of G. W. Wing’s impact go unrecognized. Many articles honored the man who started it all with his idea for a family newsletter.   

What would George W. Wing say (or write) if he could have known that what he began as a little writing project for his son would result in creation of one of the oldest family history associations in America?  The WFA will celebrate its 112th anniversary this year and The OWL newsletters have become one of the family’s most treasured heirlooms.

For more information about the WFA organization and the impact of George W. Wing, see Wing Family of America.

Shirley VerBruggen blogs about family history.  This article was written for her "Remember When" column in the Kewaunee County Times newspaper.    

In His Own Words

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

In commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, I would like to honor my great-great grandfather Michael McDonald in a series of blogs including his written accounts of his Civil War experiences.

Some of my best treasures are the stories written by my ancestors about their pioneer lives.  Among my favorites are those written by Michael McDonald.

Once, when asked “What one incident in your life as a soldier made the greatest impression upon you?” he wrote the following piece for the family newsletter, The OWL.

The low rumble of heavy guns in action came down the river in the early morning from Shiloh—twelve miles away. The battle was on! A thousand boys, fresh from the farms and pineries of Wisconsin, listened with hushed voices to the deep intonations of war!


All the morning long we bent the straining ear to catch the ominous sounds that came from afar and clamored with our officers to be taken to the scene of the combat. Later on in the war we would have used more prudent discretion, but at that time the Fourteenth Wisconsin Infantry had yet to win its title of the "Fourteenth Wisconsin Regulars."


Fresh from the North, a few days before, we were doing guard duty at Savanna. We had no particular business at Shiloh, and possibly might have kept out of the fight, but we argued the matter with our captains, and the captains with the colonel and the colonel with the general. About noon there came an order for us to exchange places with a regiment on its way up the river to the front, and soon afterward, embarked upon a transport, we swung off into the river. At last we were going to the place where there was real war!


It was eleven o’clock at night when we pulled in to Pittsburg Landing. Beuel's army was coming to the rescue. Steamboats were discharging their cargos of human freight; shouts, commands, cries, confusion! In the midst of it all down came a heavy rain-pour that lasted all the long night. We went shore in the darkness and rain, and saw dense masses of men cowering under the river banks. It seemed as if the whole of Grant’s demoralized army was there, but there are still other thousands, up over the banks, out in the darkness of the woods valiantly holding the shattered lines.


We march over and through the skulkers and jeer them for their cowardice as we pass. They shout back at us: "You will all be here to-morrow night!"


We are taken up over the muddy banks out into the woods beyond the landing and halted and there we stood, at "secure arms," in mud ankle-deep, in the darkness and drizzling rain through the long hours of the night.


Who that spent that vigil of the night upon the battlefield of Shiloh will ever forget it! Around and behind us lay Grant’s tired and shattered army. In the dark woods before us were the victorious rebel host, massed, as we fancied in imagination, for a sudden midnight assault. We pictured the dead and wounded in the uncanny and weird shadows of the forest and wondered what the morrow would bring forth for us. The long ranks of the regiment were strangely silent. There had been considerable loud talk on the steamboat that afternoon coming up the river, but now, in the awful presence around us, each man was busy with his own thoughts. I was only a lad of sixteen then, but a thousand memories of home and friends by the far-away blue waters of Lake Michigan hurried across my mental vision. Occasionally during the night, a shell from the federal gunboats howled and shrieked over and through the woods on its way to the rebel lines, and then, again, some excited picket would discharge his gun at some spectral or fantastic shadow in the darkling shades of the bushes. And so the long night wore away; daylight came, and with it, action—a blessed relief to our overstrained nerves.


We were ordered to advance. The first sight of the horrors of war, were two dead men setting up against a tree with their brains oozing out and spattered over its trunk—the work of a cannon ball.


That night we stood around the captured cannon of the famous Crescent battery—our trophy after three desperate charges—and shouted ourselves hoarse. Our ranks were a little thin and one could walk across the open field we had just crossed upon winrows of dead bodies; we had had nothing to eat since noon the day before, but in the delerium of our first victory we recked not—we had passed through the baptism of fire; we were soldiers at last!

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