Green Bay - Wisconsin - History

In 1818 it was the seat of Brown county, north-eastern Wisconsin, U.S., where the Fox River empties into Green Bay, an inlet of Lake Michigan. The metropolitan area includes the city of De Pere and the towns of Preble and Allouez. A trading post was established in the vicinity in 1634 by Jean Nicolet, a French-Canadian explorer; in 1671 Claude-Jean Allouez, a Jesuit, founded a mission at De Pere, at which time the settlement was named La Baye. A fort built by the French in 1717 at the mouth of the river became the heart of a small French-Canadian fur-trading community until after the War of 1812. British traders called the site Green Bay, and the French name was gradually dropped.

The United States took possession in 1816 when the army built Fort Howard within the present limits of Green Bay. The village was laid out in 1829, and Wisconsin's earliest newspaper, the Green Bay Intelligencer, appeared in 1833. With the decline of the fur trade and the opening of the Erie Canal, Green Bay developed as a lumbering and agricultural centre. Chief products are wood pulp, paper products, machinery, and cheese. A Great Lakes port of entry with heavy shipping, the city has a large wholesale and distributing business.

In 1812, Brown County, named for Major General Jacob Brown, a hero of the War of 1812, had a population of 2,107. By the 1990 census, the county’s head count had risen to 194,594, making it one of the fastest growing counties in the state. Much of the county’s population gain is due to the growth of the City of Green Bay, which was incorporated in 1854. The city’s population in 1850 was 1,923. The 1990 census tapped 96,486 good people who live and work here. That makes Green Bay Wisconsin’s third largest city, behind Milwaukee and Madison.

Green Bay developed under three flags: The French laid claim to the region at the mouth of the Fox River in 1634, just 14 years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. British control of the area was established in 1761 and ended in 1783 when the Americans took over.

The French came as fur trappers and missionaries to the Indians. But at the end of the French and Indian wars in 1763 Wisconsin became part of the British colonial territory. Twenty years later the Wisconsin territory was annexed by the United States. A land office was set up in 1834 and a bank was opened a year later. Statehood in 1848 was also a lure to immigrants from a Europe suffering famines and political and social upheavals.

Timber drew settlers to the area, but by 1908 North-eastern Wisconsin had been logged off. The cleared land was a magnet for German, Bavarian, Belgian, Dutch, lrish and Danish farmers and dairymen. Lithuanian and Irish workmen worked their way north with the railroad in the 1860s.
As early as 1825 Norwegians were attracted to the area by the religious freedom and political equality, which the area offered. Bohemians began arriving in the 1860s, and hardworking Polish immigrants brought their love of freedom and the land to Pulaski in the 1870s.

Emigration tapered off in the late 1800s, although small emigrations came in the first half of the 19th century from the Baltic countries. The local Italian community is made up of the second and third generations of turn-of-the-century quarry workers and tunnel diggers from northern Italy, lured to the mines and quarries of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and spilling over into Northern Wisconsin.

The area in the 20th century also has added a goodly number of Asians, Afro- Americans and Latin Americans to the Native American population, which the French found here