Marinette, Wisconsin

Marinette is a city in Marinette County, Wisconsin, United States, and its county seat. The population was 11,119 at the 2020 census. It is located on the south bank of the Menominee River at its mouth on Green Bay, part of Lake Michigan; to the north is Stephenson Island, part of the city preserved as a park.

Menominee, Michigan, is across the Menominee River to the north, and the cities are connected by three bridges. Menominee and Marinette are sometimes described as the "twin cities" of the Menominee River. Marinette is the principal city of the Marinette micropolitan area, which includes parts of Wisconsin and Michigan. During the lumbering boom of the late 19th century, Marinette became the tenth-largest city in Wisconsin, reaching a peak population of 16,195 in 1900.

The town and county were named Marinette after Marie Antoinette Chevalier (1793, Langlade County, Wisconsin – 1865, Green Bay, Wisconsin), an influential Métis woman who ran a trading post near the mouth of the Menominee River. Of Menominee and French Canadian ancestry, she came to be known as "Queen Marinette." Her father was Bertrand Chevalier, a British trader of French Canadian ancestry, who was involved with an early trading post at Green Bay. Her mother was Lucy, the daughter of Menominee chief, Wauba-Shish (Great Marten).

Bertrand Chevalier brought his family, including Marie Antoinette, to Green Bay. There he took a young trading partner, John Jacobs, whom Marie Antoinette later married. They had three children together. In 1823 John and Marie Antoinette Jacobs settled in the village that became known as Marinette. Their son John B. Jacobs later plotted the town. Chevalier Jacob's husband disappeared during a trading trip. She later married his partner William Farnsworth of the American Fur Company. They also had three children together. Marie Antoinette Chevalier Farnsworth continued with the trading post after Farnsworth left the area for the next frontier at Sheboygan. She was known for her business sense, fairness, and influence in the region, as she had ties to both the Menominee and European communities. After her death, Chevalier was buried in Allouez, Wisconsin. In 1987 her descendants had Chevalier reinterred in a sarcophagus at the Forest Home Mausoleum in Marinette. Her original tombstone is on display at the museum on Stephenson Island in Marinette.

The site of Marinette was first settled by a small Algonquin band of Menominee people, referred to by the neighboring Ojibwe as "the wild rice people" for their staple crop. The band consisted of 40 to 80 men and their families. They lived at the mouth of the Menominee River in the 17th and 18th centuries, which, according to their creation story, was the tribe's place of origin.

Before 1830, French Canadians established a fur trading post at the settlement. The first European settler was Stanislaus Chappu, also known as Chappee. After the War of 1812, the United States took over this area and the fur trade. They refused to license Canadian traders to operate on the American side of the border, although prior to the war, they and the Americans had easily passed back and forth across the border. John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company became most prominent in the region, although the fur trade was declining after 1830.

In the late 19th century, the city developed rapidly as a port and processing area for lumber harvested in the interior. Logs were floated down the Menominee River and shipped out on Green Bay to communities around the Great Lakes and to the East. In 1853, the population was 478; by 1860 the number of people in the growing community had reached 3,059.

Due to the lumbering boom, between 1890 and 1900, the population more than doubled from 7,710 to its peak of 16,195. At that time, it was the tenth-largest city in Wisconsin. It had a wide variety of businesses and a new courthouse, city hall, opera house, two hospitals, a street railway, more than a dozen hotels and boarding houses, thirty saloons, and major industries, including the Marinette Iron Works, Marinette Flour Mill, the A.W. Stevens farm implement company, and the M & M Paper Company.