As immigrants came to Manitowoc County and roads become well traveled, stage coach stops were built throughout the state. One of these stops, the Meeme House, still stands today.

 

Immigrating to the United States in 1847, Michael Herr settled in Section 23 of Meeme the same year. Hailing from Bavaria, Michael was one of the town's first settlers to farm the land. Eventually he constructed the Meeme House Inn along the Green Bay Road around 1855.

 

Originating as a Native American trading route as early as the 1820s, the winding corridor connected the Green Bay trading post with the Town of Milwaukee. Completed as a military road in 1840, the Green Bay Road connected Fort Howard in Green Bay with the Illinois border. It's greatest role proved to be in serving as a catalyst for settlement for European immigrants.

 

As the primary form of public transportation, especially in the winter months when Lake Michigan's shoreline was frozen over, the section of road connecting the cities of Sheboygan Falls and Manitowoc Rapids was a principal thoroughfare for stage lines. Through analysis of several plat maps from the 1870s, it can be noted that a general cluster of four hotels lie in the Meeme Township, the midpoint between the two villages which are approximately thirty miles apart. Located along the Green Bay Road, all of these inns denote the area as a major stopping point for the stage which generally would have needed to replenish its team every 10 to 15 miles.

 

The Meeme House's denotation as a hotel on these plat maps as well as the presence of the original livery stable indicates its historically critical role in stage travel and lodging for travelers along an original settlement artery.

 

The Meeme House Inn initially served as a stage inn and tavern while the second floor ballroom hosted dances and social events. The second floor stage and scenery, still completely intact and consisting of original German folk artwork (added about 1890), served as a platform for public entertainment as traveling shows and local acts gave performances for local townspeople. 

Housing Meeme's post office from January 10, 1887 to February 12, 1902 (at which time the rural free mail system was established in the area), the inn served other civic duties as well. Initially the inn itself served as the town polling house until the construction of a small structure on the northern edge of the property, thereby providing immigrants with a place to exercise their new-found right to vote.

 

Also, town meetings were reportedly held in the second floor ballroom and the inn facilitated both of these functions until the construction of a new town hall in 1983. 

 

The typical rate at the turn of the 20th century was around $1 a day which included supper, lodging, breakfast and feed and stabling for a team of horses.

 

As researched by Karyl Rommelfanger the following was written about possible early customers at the Meeme House Inn:

 

In 1847 brothers Michael, Andreas and Peter Herr, along with their widowed father Karl, immigrated from Alzenau, Bavaria, to Wisconsin.  Peter settled in Sheboygan County, while the others journeyed north into Manitowoc County. Andreas and Michael both purchased property along the Green Bay Road in the township of Meeme, approximately one mile south of the village of Spring Valley.

             

This was a time of immense poverty in Germany. The splitting of land parcels into ever smaller slices, poor crop years, and the sudden growth in population could no longer sustain the starving multitudes. To be allowed to emigrate, families had to sell their property and personal possessions and use those funds to finance their trip to America, hoping there would be enough money left over for the purchase of inexpensive land.  In this same time period, Wisconsin is opened up for settlement and governmental lands become available at greatly reduced prices.

 

Another German immigrant, Karl Pflaume, emigrated from Aschersleben, Saxon-Anhalt, in 1851. His situation was a bit different.  He came from a well-to-do family, had earned a degree in agriculture and set out to America to earn his fortune, as it were.  Pflaume purchased land in the township of Newton, on the northeast corner of south 26th street and Silver Creek Road.   He returned to Germany in 1854 to marry, came back to Manitowoc with his new bride, and became active in local politics. For a time he published his own newspaper, Der Buschbauer.  Pflaume, however, was an intellectual whose joy of writing and reading often overtook his interest in farming, and he eventually returned to Germany almost penniless.

 

The lives of the Herr brothers and Karl Pflaume appear to intersect in a narrative written by Pflaume about a trip that he and a neighbor made in 1852 to Cedarburg to buy cattle. Pflaume writes:

 

We traveled a road hewn into the wilderness in an almost straight line from north to south, which was called the Green Bay Road … We followed the road south and found very few settlers along it, hiking long stretches before coming upon a house or two.  We saw some log cabins which had been abandoned by their owners, and some, which were occupied by settlers from Ireland.

 

We reached a place where we thought we would stay overnight.  There was an American living here, who owned an inn and was the postal agent. There was a sign over the door indicating lodging and postal agent … But we could not stay there, the man said, as he had no lanterns.  We told him that was not a problem, to which he responded that he also did not have any tea or coffee …   

 

So we continued on, until, as it grew dark, we reached another house which was occupied by some Germans.  However, since the house was not yet complete, and the room quite small, it took some effort to convince them to let us spend the night there.  This was in March and it was too cold to sleep on the ground in the forest, and too far away from the next dwelling. So we stayed there, and were quite satisfied …The man was from Bavaria.  His brother, a young and hearty lad, explained that in a few weeks they would be heading to the Racine prairie to find work, just like a few others from their neighborhood. They wanted to earn some money in order to establish their own inn …The innkeeper’s wife came from the area around Koblenz… On the next day we came upon a settlement of Welch – people from Wales …

 

While it is impossible to know with absolute certainty that the place being described by Pflaume is the earliest beginnings of the Meeme House, the evidence strongly suggests this is indeed the case. 

 

Pflaume has placed himself between an Irish settlement, the area around today’s Osman, and a Manitowoc County settlement of Welsh immigrants, just south of the Herr property. Even more specifically he has journeyed south from an inn owned by postmaster Henry Edson, which stood directly north of Spring Valley and was later owned by a Peter Phillips.

 

Pflaume infers that the brothers are of contrasting ages, which indeed they are, Michael being seven years older than his brother Andreas. They are also, of course, Bavarians. Additionally, the 1850 United States census shows the two brothers were working on the prairie lands of southeastern Wisconsin, just as they intended to do again in the summer of 1852.  Lastly, Michael has recently married, and his wife is from Laubach, a community directly west of the city of Koblenz in Germany.

 

Doubtless, the two brothers were familiar with the early inns through their journeys along the Green Bay Road.  They may have seen an opportunity to earn extra cash as they slowly began clearing the forested acreage they had purchased.  And Pflaume’s unexpected stay may have provided some extra impetus to their budding idea.

 

The early Meeme House was likely exactly as Pflaume describes – a crude “bed and breakfast” housing the family and a guest or two.

 

William Herr later took over the inn in 1864.

 

It has been said that during the Civil War a rally took place in the ballroom and the next day the Civil War volunteers walked to Manitowoc to join the unit.

 

The Meeme House Inn was owned by the Herr family until 1906 when it was purchased by Peter DeGrott. DeGrott operated the inn until 1909 when it was sold to Joe Schwartz. After Joe's death in 1947, his wife Minnie ran the tavern until 1955.

 

The Meeme House Tavern was then passed on to their daughter Valeria and her husband John Sessler.  It become well known as Sessler's Meeme House.  Valeria operated the establishment until her death in 2012.