Manitowoc

Manitowoc (Indian, "Spirit-land"), a city and the countyseat of Manitowoc county, Wisconsin, on the W. shore of Lake Michigan, 75 m. N. of Milwaukee. Pop. (1890), 7710; (1900), 11,786, of whom 29 9 8 were foreign-born; (1 9 10 census) 13,027. It is served by the Chicago & North-Western, and the Wisconsin Central railways; by ferry across the lake to Frankfort, Mich., and Ludington, Mich.; by the Ann Arbor and the Pere Marquette railways; and by the Goodrich line of lake steamers. The city is finely situated on high ground above the lake at the mouth of the Manitowoc river. At Manitowoc are the county insane asylum and a Polish orphan asylum. The city has a training school for county teachers, a business college, two hospitals and a Carnegie library. There are ship-yards for the construction of both steel and wooden vessels, and several grain elevators. The value of the factory products increased from $1,935,442 in 1900 to $4,427,816 in 1905, or 128.8 per cent. - a greater increase than that of any other city in the state during this period. There is a good harbour, and the city has a considerable lake commerce in grain, flour, and dairy products. Jacques Vieau established here a post for the North-west Company of fur traders in 1795. The first permanent settlement was made about 1836, and Manitowoc was chartered as a city in 1870. In Manitowoc county, 18 m. south-west of the city of Manitowoc, is St Nazianz, an unorganized village near which in 1854 a colony or community of German Roman Catholics was established under the leadership of Father Ambrose Oswald, the primary object being to enable poor people by combination and cooperation to supply themselves with the comforts of life at minimum expense and have as much time as possible left for religious thought and worship. The title of the colony's land was vested in Father Oswald after the panic of 1857 until his death in 1874, when he devised the lands to "the colony founded by me." The colony had no legal existence at the time, but was then incorporated as the "Roman Catholic Religious Society of St Nazianz," and as such sued successfully for the bequest. Financially the colony was successful, but as there were some desertions and no new recruits after Father Oswald's death, there were few members by 1909. There are no longer any traces of communism, and the colony's property is actually held by an organization of the local Roman Catholic church.