A Story of Roots

Anderson House Museum and Corner of the Past

By Myles Dannhausen Jr.

For four decades the property sat quietly on the corner of Highway 57 and Fieldcrest Road, visited only by ghosts and those drawn to taking photos of homes in decay.
It was the sort of decrepit building that spurs the mind to wander, and wonder. What made its owners abandon the property? Something sad? Something tragic?
In 1993 the Village of Sister Bay decided it was tired of wondering and bought the one-time home of Emma Anderson with plans to demolish the eyesore and erect a sign welcoming visitors to Sister Bay. But David Lee, a Gibraltar High School biology teacher, had other ideas. Not everyone could see something worth saving beneath the overgrowth and the wear and tear Emma Anderson’s home had endured over the latter half of the 20th century, but Lee was never a subscriber to conventional thought.
A teacher of limitless enthusiasm known to bound excitedly into random classrooms and pose a question out of the blue or explain some wild experiment before leaving as inexplicably as he arrived, Lee was not one to take things at face value.
He convinced the village board to give him the money they had earmarked to pay for demolition so he could restore the home, saying the restored house would be a more meaningful welcome to the village than any sign.
Lee led a crew in replacing the roof in 1994, but sadly died of cancer that fall. His dedicated spirit lived on, however, and by 1997 the house had been painstakingly restored by a team of volunteers who had come together and formed the Sister Bay Historical Society (SBHS) in his memory.
But who was Lee, or anyone else, to declare this old house historical? What was so special about this old farmhouse? No treaties were signed on its front stoop, no famous people born within its humble walls, and no local hero or founder lived there. But evidently, something about it drew people in.
Michael Stevens, Wisconsin State Historical Preservation Officer, says grandeur, fame, and infamy are not the only measures of historical significance. Rather, efforts like those of the SBHS have become an important part of telling the story of America. “History belongs to everybody,” he says, “not just generals and presidents. It took a lot of people to create the history of our nation.”
Tom Sadler, a member of the SBHS who joined the project in its early stages, said that as the landscape around us changes rapidly, “communities are looking for what we can preserve, what ties us to our past.” Stevens says it’s a trend he’s seen statewide. “There is an immense interest in the importance of preserving a piece of the fabric of communities,” he says. “Today there are at least 330 local historical societies in Wisconsin and we’ve seen about 20 percent growth in that number in the last 10 years. These are voluntary groups of people working together to preserve their past.” And the decline of agriculture and the state’s traditional way of life has given preservation efforts a boost. “I think you have to lose some of those things to trigger the desire to preserve them.”
Sadler says the rising interest in community history goes hand in hand with the increasing popularity of genealogical research. “Individuals are looking for something other than a name, something other than the fact that someone existed,” he says. “First they want a picture, then a signature or a letter. It’s another form of this connection to the past.”
No small factor in the surge in heritage tourism and historical research is that Wisconsin is a relatively young state. There is now enough in the rearview mirror that people have come to value it. As Stevens points out, “It takes a period of time for any community to create its history.”
Door County Visitor Bureau Director Jack Moneypenny spoke to the increasing impact of historic preservation in determining the destination of today’s traveler. “The history of a place is what makes that place relevant,” he explained. “The world is a complicated place, so any time you can step back a bit, I think it tugs at the heartstrings, especially post 9/11, when everything became a little more about family and gatherings.”
Stevens says heritage tourism is now the second most important driver for people making travel decisions. Small communities and main streets, he says, are an integral part of the draw. “It’s a desire for authenticity in a world where we encounter the rest of the world through the web,” he says. “It’s something real that we can feel, smell and touch. Something tangible.”
In time, the project evolved far beyond the simple restoration of a house. The historical society convinced the village to purchase the property adjacent to the house, enabling them to expand the museum into more than Anderson’s home. Don Howard has been involved with the project for over a decade and suggested they name the expanded grounds the Corner of the Past, based on the idea that the museum was not just a collection of buildings, but also the activities of the past. “It gives it a sense of place where it’s not squeezed amongst other modern buildings,” Howard says. “You get a sense of everything that used to take place there. We’re very fortunate to have had a village board and planning commission [of which Howard is a member] that is so supportive of this. We couldn’t do this without their help.”
The Anderson House Museum and Corner of the Past is a recognition that history at its most evocative is not just the preservation of buildings and artifacts or a room full of documents. Rather, it is the stories unearthed and the people breathed life anew by those remnants of the past. Stories not of a place, but what was done in that place – the work, the conversations, the joys and the sadness, the success and the struggle.
Inside the old Koesel machine shed today are photos of a fledgling village built by hardscrabble pioneers named Anderson, Erickson, Bunda, and other entrepreneuring families. Standing proud are early 20th century versions of the Sister Bay Bowl, Village Exchange, Husby’s, and the Inn on Maple. Proud men and women stand before their homes and businesses. There’s even a photo depicting the day the women’s suffrage movement visited the village to drum up support.
The pictures bring perspective, telling in silence the story of a community as it evolved from lumber town to fishing village to tourist destination. A community overcoming the loss of one industry only to embrace another, or rebuilding after a tragic fire roared down Main Street.
Many visitors find grandparents, uncles, and aunts in the old black and white images. Howard says viewers often recognize things in the photos they have at home – an old workbench, a father’s tools, or furniture – then donate them to the museum. “Now we need a building to house an office and serve as a storage facility for all of the artifacts and documents,” he says.
Hanging on one wall is an old billboard enticing visitors to Sister Bay with the promise of fishing glory, a quaint reminder of the days when cottages and campsites lured families and sportsmen to the upper reaches of the peninsula. That cottage era is is also represented in the latest addition to the grounds. Century-old cottages were moved to the site from Liberty Park Lodge this winter, a reminder of the days when city dwellers “looked forward to the sparse boarding” of the primitive dwellings.
Among the structures on the grounds today is a barn from the old Koesel farm once located where the Birchwood Lodge now sits, a century-old sawmill once owned by the son of noted Door County historian Hjalmar Holand, and buildings from the Erickson farm. Near the entrance to the Anderson house is the bell from the old Sister Bay School House, and inside is much of Emma Anderson’s old furniture.
The museum is open weekends from June through October, when the grounds bustle with a Saturday farmer’s market, a heritage series of craftsman demonstrations, and music.
As for wondering what the story of the house was, there are no morbid tales. As it happens, the home standing on the corner wasn’t built there. It was constructed in Marinette in the 1870s, then towed in 1895 across the ice on the bay of Green Bay, up the hill, and finally to where it rests today. Alex and Emma Anderson lived there until Alex died in 1915. Emma remarried and eventually moved to Ohio in the 1930s, occasionally vacationing at the home until 1952.
Then the vacations stopped, and the house stood empty for 42 years, waiting for Mr. Lee.