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 2 Woodlands My grandmother Matilda Rauscher went straight to Phillips, a lumbering town, when she arrived in the United States from Bohemia in . With her she brought a small document about the size of today’s passport, her Dienstbuch , or Domestic Servant Book. She must have felt for this document often as she traveled to Hamburg, then to New York by ship, then to Wisconsin by train, and on north to Phillips. There were jobs in Phillips, and she came with her recommendation in that booklet. Each member of the Austro-Hungarian Empire had to register for this work permit on reaching the age of fourteen, and each employer entered in a space reserved for comments opinions of the worker’s job performance. Matilda kept this document all her life, and I inherited it when she died. The single entry in it testified that Matilda had been employed in Bohemia and had completed her work service well. In northern Wisconsin, where many boarding house–keepers were of German heritage, it would have ensured Matilda’s prompt hiring as an experienced worker. Twenty-one years before Matilda arrived, another immigrant domestic worker had similarly come seeking work. This story of women in the woodlands economy begins with Emina, a young woman from Sweden who worked southeast of Phillips at Peshtigo Village. It was  and the lumbering economy was in full swing there. During the next twenty years it would move west, creating lumbering towns such as Phillips—and a demand for women’s work. Forest and Fire Emina’s Story [Johnson, born in Sweden, ] Emina went to church that October evening in  with her sweetheart. Her mistress,Margaret Sheppard,and the youngest son had gone to NewYork State to visit family.An older son was in Racine visiting his grandparents. Her boss, William Sheppard, assistant manager of the lumber mill, and eight-year-old Fred stayed at home. The family home stood on a bluff along the Peshtigo River. Emina’s job was to care for the household and to look after young Fred.¹ Emina came from Sweden to the small logging village on the Peshtigo River because of the job opportunities.Like other young Swedish immigrant women, she took a job as a domestic servant. It was easy for these enterprising young women to find work in the booming PeshtigoVillage.William Ogden,a Chicago developer, declared the site perfect for establishing what he boasted was the country’s largest woodware factory.PeshtigoVillage lay seven miles up the river from its mouth at Peshtigo Harbor on Lake Michigan’s Green Bay.The Peshtigo Company built a dam, and by  a wooden railroad with steel straps spiked to its surface joined Peshtigo Village to the harbor. Within three years, the Peshtigo Company had built docks, a steam-powered mill, and a woodware factory. Sheppard was second-in-command at the lumber mill that stood on the east side of the river just below the dam and provided wood for the gigantic factory that lay farther south of the mill on the same bank. The mill had  saws that cut , feet of timber each day.Workers at the woodware factory daily turned out  boxes of clothespins,  wooden keelers (small tubs used as baby bathtubs),  common pails, , broom handles, plus hundreds of fish kits and paint and tobacco pails and thousands of shingles.² Between the mill and the factory a single bridge linked the village settlements that lined both banks. Streets spread in rectangles east and west of the river. To the east, just across the road from the mill, stood a three-storied company boarding house for unmarried workers. Nearby were company houses for workers with families and a company store. Fred’s school and a Congregational church, probably the one Emina attended, stood near the workers’ housing. Across the bridge to the west, outside company land, a second community flourished. Liquor was not prohibited there, and enterprising businessmen had established saloons. There, too, Catholics were building a church. The Catholic community shared its priest with Marinette, the nearest village, about seven miles northeast of Peshtigo Village. Farther to the west lay three settlements, called simply Upper, Middle, and Lower Sugar Bush. Sugar bush was the name given to areas where maple trees flourished. These settler communities lay away from the river. There families were clearing small areas to farm, and some women were already selling eggs, butter, and vegetables to the companies for their logging and milling employees. Around the small settler...

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