Scott Haumersen donates $5,000 toward pond’s planned multipurpose building 

By Chris Spangler

The great-great-nephew of a 19th-century brickmaker has made a second contribution toward improving Haumerson’s Pond at Fort Atkinson’s Bark River Nature Park.

Scott Haumersen of Stoughton has given $5,000 toward construction of a multipurpose building planned by the Friends of Haumerson’s Pond. This follows $7,000 donated in 2020.

Haumersen is a descendant of pond namesake William F. Haumerson, who changed the last vowel of his surname from “e” to “o” for reasons unknown.

Scott Haumersen and his sisters, Amy Haumersen Smith of Mount Horeb and Holly Haumersen Keller of Middleton, and Holly’s husband, Tom Keller, visited Haumerson’s Pond recently to present the Friends’ board of directors with the $5,000 check.

They shared a family history that dates back to 1867, when their great-great grandfather, Frederick H. Haumersen, came to the United States from Westphalia, Germany. William’s younger brother, Frederick worked in Milwaukee for a little over a month before moving to Racine and founding his own brickmaking operation.

Eventually, Scott said, “There were 16 people employed full time making a million-and-a-half bricks a year. And so pretty much all the cream-colored brick homes in that are were from there.”

According to “The Commemorative Biographical Record of Prominent and Representative Men of Racine and Kenosha Counties,” published in 1906, Frederick learned the brickmaking trade “in the fatherland and followed it there for a few years, but in the spring of 1867, immediately after his marriage, he sailed for America, and has remained in their country ever since.”

Frederick and his wife, Henrietta, had nine children, two of whom, John H. and Charles, joined the family business. Later, it would be renamed J.H. Haumersen and Sons.

John’s son, Milton, and his daughter, Irene, continued the operation, selling bricks made by other manufacturers. The company was incorporated in 1950 when Milton died, and Irene added a new partner, Al Siewert, and later, Al’s son, Willard.

“Our Aunt Irene ran the brickyard for years and years and years until she was 88 years old,” Scott said. “She never married; she was just an incredible woman.”

“She was a sweet, godly woman,” Amy said.

Holly agreed: “Aunt Irene never married. It always astounded me in the 1960s, watching this woman run the brickyard. I don’t think she was more than 5 feet tall. She was just fantastic.”

Milton’s sons, James and John, bought back into the business in 1988, when Irene retired at age 88. Jim’s son, Mike; John’s son, Lyn; and Lyn’s son-in-law, John Pierce, later became the fifth generation at the helm.

Haumersen’s bricks were used in 98 percent of all brick construction in Racine, including for Johnson Wax, the hospitals and schools.

The brickyard itself remained in the Haumersen family until 1917, when the property, located on 60 acres along the shore of Lake Michigan, was sold to the city for $30,000 for the Racine Zoo. In 1918, the Haumersens moved their business to Yout Street.

“When they sold the brickyard where they made them, they just became a brickyard selling other peoples bricks. So the Haumersen family was supplying bricks to Racine until the 1990s,” Scott noted. “If you needed a brick, you went down to Haumersen’s.”

Brother’s business

Meanwhile, Frederick’s brother, William F. Haumerson, was born in 1839 and emigrated to the United States in either 1864 or 1866, according to two different historical sources. He first lived in Milwaukee and then Racine — likely employed at his brother’s business — before working at a Jefferson brickyard owned by Michael Kemmeter Sr.

Ironically, the bricks repurposed from a Kemmeter family house in Jefferson to build the warminghouse the opened at Haumerson’s Pond in 2017 were made when William was working at the Kemmeter brickyard. The Friends of Haumerson’s Pond have some of those cream-city bricks leftover to use in this new building, as well.

Steve Mode, the so-called “grand poobah” of the Friends of Haumerson’s Pond, said that the radiators and cast-iron sink in the warminghouse also came from the Kemmeter home.

“When they donated those Kemmeter buildings to us, they said, ‘now you do know that people from Jefferson might want to come down and see Michael Kemmeter’s brick,’ and we said, ‘well, that’s OK. We’ll give you a limited number of visas to let them in,’” Steve said with a laugh, referring to the friendly rivalry between the two cities.

Meanwhile, in October 1886, William purchased Lemuel M. Roberts’ brickyard in Fort Atkinson, naming it the Fort Atkinson Brick Manufacturing Co. It opened in June 1887 and 200,000 bricks had been sold by the end of that month.

The company incorporated in 1891.

According to a written history by the Friends of Haumerson’s Pond, “At the time of an 1892 state inspection, the company employed 29 male workers and had a steam engine with the capacity equivalent to 25 horsepower. The property consisted of one single-story frame building and several brick sheds (sheds for drying bricks, not sheds made out of bricks). There was one boiler and one steam engine. Inspectors wanted the company to put a guard on the flywheel of the engine that year. On the 1899 plat map, the building looks square with two long, thin brick-drying sheds, one west of and the other one north of the main building.”

On average, the yard was producing 1 million bricks a year. The majority of the buildings downtown were built using Haumerson bricks, as was the 1901 watertower, located across from the current middle school. By 1905, the company had approximately $10,000 in capital.

However, it then started to face stiff competition.

That year, according to the Friends’ history, William Dempster Hoard opened the Fort Atkinson Cement Block Company, advertising it in his weekly newspaper, the Jefferson County Union. The Haumersons also advertised the opening of their hardware store that April of 1905.

The 1908-09 city directory listed the Cement Block Company, later known as the Fort Atkinson Concrete Company, with $12,000 in capital. Haumerson Hardware was listed in 1908 with $5,000 in capital, but there was no mention of a brickyard or brickmaking company at all.

The family was listed in the 1900-01 “Wrights Directory of Fort Atkinson” as owning and living at the house on the brickworks lot. In 1908, William Haumerson’s original brick home was at 416 East Milwaukee Ave., which was near or on the old brickyard property; the family moved to 301 S. Water St. in 1915.

He sold the property that would become Haumerson’s Pond to the city of Fort Atkinson in 1917.

William and his wife, Johanna, had six sons and three daughters: William Jr., George, Emil, Anton, Frederick, Clifford, Hannah, Lillian and Jessie. William Sr. died on Dec. 9, 1918, at age 80.

The Jefferson County Union remembered him as a well-respected citizen and businessman, as well as the “weed commissioner for 10 years past.”

Name change

William’s great-great-nephew and nieces said they do not know why he substituted the “e” in Haumersen for an “o.” However, his children retained that spelling.

“All the Haumersens are ‘sen.’ William F. Sr. decided to change his last name to ‘son,’ and I have no idea what the story is on that,” Scott said. “I had actually thought of changing my name to ‘son’ when I was younger because people misspelled my name constantly. I thought, ‘well, I should just change my name and then they’ll get it right.’”

“And maybe that was his thing, too,” Amy said.

Scott explained that the vast majority of other Haumersens are in Racine and/or have moved mainly to Washington or New Jersey.

“The best as I know, there are about 89 Haumersens in the United States, and of Haumersons, there’s just a handful,” he said.

As children, Scott and his siblings resided for a decade in England and then moved to Madison. They moved to Racine after their father died in the mid- to late-1970s.

“There are probably more Haumersens living in Racine than anywhere else because that is where Frederick went,” Scott said. “Unfortunately, Henry John, our grandfather, had two daughters and one son. And the one daughter, Irene, who ran the brickyard, had no kids. Aunt Joan, of course, would take her husband’s name. I am an only son and I have three daughters, and between them, I have seven granddaughters. So just like your William, girls have been our lineage.”

Sheer coincidence

While their names were spelled slightly different, the Haumersen and Haumerson brickyards boast several similarities.

First, both made what cream-city brick, a pale yellow brick molded from calcium- and magnesium-rich clay found around Milwaukee, the Menomonee River Valley and western shore of Lake Michigan.

“When Steve (Mode) was telling me the color of the bricks, I realized there is a real connection there,” Scott said. “The only area you find the cream brick like this in the United States is just south of Racine up to Manitowoc and then out this way, to Watertown, Madison, Milwaukee. It’s kind of a triangle and has to do with the color of the clay.”

Another similarity is that each of the Racine and Fort Atkinson brickyards was sold to its respective city in 1917.

Also, Amy Haumersen Smith and her family lived just west of Fort Atkinson off U.S. Highway 12 for a year-and-a-half in 1985.

She said that she knew nothing about Haumerson’s Pond at the time, which is not surprising since the pond was overgrown and the Bark River Nature Park had not yet been established.

“From the ’20s to the 1970s, it was a skating rink, and everybody knew Haumerson’s Pond,” Steve explained. “But it fell apart. When my kids were young, there wasn’t any skating here, and that is when we came up with this crazy idea (to build a warminghouse and bring the pond back to life).”

Coincidentally, the smaller pond at the Racine Zoo also was used as an iceskating rink for many years.

“About 60 prime acres on Lake Michigan were sold by my great-great-grandfather for $30,000 in 1917. The pond from where the bricks came from, for us as kids, was the zoo at the time, and was the skating pond,” Scott recalled. “So I have memories from 60 years ago of skating on the pond.”

He continued: “That was a favorite place in Racine where the youth got together. There was a warminghouse and there was the Haumersen pond. It wasn’t called Haumersen Pond, though; it was the Racine Zoo pond, which is where the bricks came from.

“But we knew that that was the homestead property,” he added, noting that the zoo entrance bears a plaque describing the former brickyard.

Building project

The project for which funds now are being sought is a $241,270 structure that will provide equipment and vehicle storage, as well as a kitchen, concession stand and pavilion at Haumerson’s Pond.

Measuring 26-by-44 feet, the building will be located out of the floodplain on the far west end of the site, close to the parking lot. It will house equipment for plowing snow from the ice rink, as well as iceskates, hockey sticks, nets and other such equipment.

Also in the structure will be a 10-by-20-foot kitchen with water and electricity. There will be a storage area for tables, chairs and other items used for shelter rentals, as well as a concession area with windows opening to a 24-square-foot timberframe pavilion and a wood-fired pizza oven.

Funds sought

Financial contributions continue to be sought for the project.

Steve explained that the building’s $241,270 pricetag includes materials, as well as the value of in-kind donations and labor.

The city has received a $100,000 state Department of Natural Resources Stewardship Urban Rivers Program grant. In addition, the Fort Atkinson Community Foundation has provided a $45,000 challenge grant. Some private funds such as Scott’s also have been received for the building project.

Tax-deductible contributions for the building may be sent to the Fort Atkinson Community Foundation at 244 N. Main St., Fort Atkinson, 53538, or given via its website at fortfoundation.org. Donors should indicate that the gift is for the multipurpose shelter building. The Friends of Haumerson’s Pond’s website and Facebook pages also have donate buttons.

A donor recognition wall will be located inside ton the gable end of the building.

What’s the future?

The Friends of Haumerson’s Pond group always is coming up with new ways to improve what the park offers. One of Steve’s dreams is to actually recreate the brickmaking process there.

“We’re going to make brick out of here someday,” he said, adding that a Cambridge potter is interested in firing the brick in his wood-fired kiln.

In the meantime, Haumerson’s Pond is open for all area residents to enjoy.

“This summer, we hope to reserve the warminghouse for a family gathering, so this will become a memory place for all sorts of things,” Scott said. “My fiancée and I love nature and are birdwatchers. We actually have come down here … and are very impressed by the property that you have.”

He said that his family has visited the Fireside Dinner Theatre for many years and always has enjoyed Fort Atkinson.

“And now since Steve introduced me to the pond three years ago, we have really a very special attachment to this place,” Scott said. “As outsider Haumersens, we’re happy to contribute.”