Herman Scheunemann wasn’t the only captain carrying Christmas trees across Lake Michigan to Chicago at the turn of the last century, but he was the most beloved. Which makes this episode even sadder.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
What is the significance of Captain Santa?
Yeah, this one has a very cool story around it, though, because in Chicago around the turn of the last century, they did a very cool thing wherein if you needed a Christmas tree. You could head down to the Chicago River and you could go aboard a real sailing ship loaded with Christmas lights and Christmas trees, like a little temporary Christmas tree lot to pick out your tree.
Yeah. And if you were down on your luck at the time and you went to a particular schooner, the Rouse Simmons Schooner, you would probably meet the captain. He was nicknamed Captain Santa. And if he found out that you were down on your luck, he would probably give you one of the Christmas trees free of charge.
Pretty great.
Yeah. So the reason that this was already a thing, this is the late 19th century. By this time, the Germans had been decorating Christmas trees for a very long time. But it wasn't until Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, who was from Germany, introduced it to England and it spread to America. So people wanted Christmas trees by this time pretty badly. And it was hard to come by in Chicago.
Not a lot of forests in Chicago. So sailors who sailed schooners or captains who sailed schooners, which are large masted ships used for shipping cargo, would sail from northern Michigan, from Wisconsin with literal boatloads of Christmas trees and show up at the Clark Street docks in Chicago, string up some lights on their boat and just say, come on aboard and pick out your tree.
That's right. It's a pretty wonderful tradition. Captain Santa was born one Hermann Schoenemann, obviously German, in somewhere probably around 1865. And he was second in line in the family business. His brother Auguste. would also do this along Lake Michigan, sell trees from the schooner. But Captain Santa was not a rich man. He only owned one-eighth share of the Rouse Simmons.
He was heavily in debt because he owned a saloon that – Put him about $1,300 in debt, about $42,000 today. So he wasn't a rich guy, which made the fact that he had some financial hardships even more heartwarming that this guy would still give away trees if he couldn't afford one.
Yeah. So with a failed saloon, he was like, well, I've got to get out there and be captaining the Ralph Simmons as much as possible. He had a wife named Barbara. He had three daughters, two of whom were twins, which is usually how twins come. And so it's important to say he was not the only ship that would sail to Chicago. In
There were plenty of other captains, but he differentiated himself from his generosity, from his jolliness. And the Chicago papers gave him the nickname Captain Santa. And so by this time, this last run that he would make, and yes, that is kind of a cryptic way to put it. It was November, mid-November, and this was around the last time of the year where you could cross the Great Lakes.
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