Kenosha

Kenosha, a city and the county-seat of Kenosha county, Wisconsin, U.S.A., on the S.W. shore of Lake Michigan, 35 m. S. of Milwaukee and 50 m. N. of Chicago. Pop. (1900), 11,606, of whom 3333 were foreign-born; (1910), 21,371. It is served by the Chicago & North-Western railway, by interurban electric lines connecting with Chicago and Milwaukee, and by freight and passenger steamship lines on Lake Michigan. It has a good harbour and a considerable lake commerce. The city is finely situated on high bluffs above the lake, and is widely known for its healthiness. At Kenosha is the Gilbert M. Simmons library, with 19,300 volumes in 1908. Just south of the city is Kemper Hall, a Protestant Episcopal school for girls, under the charge of the Sisters of St Mary, opened in 1870 as a memorial to Jackson Kemper (1789-1870), the first missionary bishop (1835-1859), and the first bishop of Wisconsin (1854-1870) of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Among Kenosha’s manufactures are brass and iron beds (the Simmons Manufacturing Co.), mattresses, typewriters, leather and brass goods, wagons, and automobiles—the “Rambler” automobile being made at Kenosha by Thomas B. Jeffery and Co. There is an extensive sole-leather tannery. The total value of the factory product in 1905 was $12,362,600, the city ranking third in product value among the cities of the state. Kenosha, originally known as Southport, was settled about 1832, organized as the village of Southport in 1842, and chartered in 1850 as a city under its present name.