April 2005 - Dan Kidney and Sons: De Pere's Classic Boatbuilders

The postcard-perfect campus sits peacefully along the banks of the tannin-brown river known as the Fox. Just as they have every autumn since 1898, students at St. Norbert College in De Pere walk the leaf-lined paths, headed for morning Mass at St. Joseph Church.

Upon entering the building, a new student's first reaction may come as his eyes are drawn toward the ceiling - a high, steeply pitched crown that seems to engulf about twice the area required by such a small structure. The student might not stare too long before a companion interjects that the convex covering more than anything else resembles an inverted ship's hull. "Probably because that's one of the strongest structures," a budding junior-architect type might observe. The subject is then, unfortunately, left at that. Had the students nosed into the matter a little further, local historian Max Franc would have told them that it was not so much strength as strategy that caused their church to be so constructed. "In 1889, the steeple of the original church was struck by lightning, and the brick veneer building burned down. There were no con-tractors around, and old Father Durin didn't know what to do," says the former head of the De Pere Historical Museum. "Luckily, Dan Kidney had his shop on the river, right behind the church."

Kidney, Franc continues, was a builder of wooden launches and duckboats, a craftsman of simple means who had never attempted to fashion anything so large and complex as a building. "Father Durin told Dan Kidney, 'You're the only one around; you have to build my church.' Kidney said, `What do I know about building a church?' So Father Durin said, `Just build it like you would one of your boats-but upside down.' "

Today, Father Durin's church is Dan Kidney's largest and most durable piece of handiwork. But it is not his primary legacy. That title belongs, unquestionably, to the thousands of wooden duckboats he designed and constructed over his fifty-one years as a commercial boatbuilder. Wonderful duckboats. Duckboats for which many of today's collectors would gladly part with parts of their anatomy. Kidney's most recognized creation was "The Famous Green Bay Hunting Boat," as described in a 1921 catalogue. Today, knowledge-able boat collectors or plain nostalgia buffs, who are constantly on the clamor for the few remaining craft of this design, do not refer to it by its given name. Instead, more often than not, when such people gather to horse trade you'll hear them say, "That's a Dan Kidney."

"Daniel Kidney was born at Buffalo, New York, on June 24, 1843, and came to this vicinity with his parents," reads the front-page, marathon-length obituary in the De Pere Journal-Democrat, December 17, 1925. "He remained with his parents for several years, and then he left home to strike out for himself, coming to De Pere, which was then a thriving lumbering and manufacturing city. He obtained employment at the Reid Sawmill ....He also worked in the Sorensen Shipyards ...."

The story continues, "Mr. Kidney was possessed of the sportsman's spirit and enjoyed hunting wildducks, geese, and other river fowl. While employed at Reid during his leisure and after working hours he would whittle out decoy ducks from blocks of wood, which he used in his hunting expeditions on the Fox River and Green Bay. He also made a hunting skiff for himself. A sportsman from Chicago who hunted on the Bay purchased Mr. Kidney's first decoys and skiff and was so well pleased with them that he told his friends about the De Pere man's waterfowling ability, and he soon received orders for more decoys and boats. Mr. Kidney started to make these in an old shed in back of his home, and added rowboats to his growing line. He was assisted by his son, William E., and their business grew until it was necessary to build a plant for their purpose."

Erected in 1874, the first plant was a two-story, twenty-by-thirty-foot structure adjacent to the Kidney residence. It was here that Dan Kidney, along with sons Will and Ed, started the concern that would later grow to be "one of the largest and most complete boat building plants in the United States" (albeit by their own reckoning).

Working entirely in wood, with the aid of steam-powered equipment, Kidney and crew hand-built large and small "gasoline launches," canoes, rowboats and hunting boats of diverse design. On August 18, 1887, another Journal-Democrat article tells us, just two years before he tackled Father Durin's fired-up request, Dan Kidney's original boat works suffered the same fate as the church later experienced. And as it happened, Kidney had allowed his fire insurance to lapse. "On September 8 of that year the people held a dance," says Franc. "Dan Kidney was getting to be a big employer, and the people in De Pere wanted him to operate. They raised $75 for him to start over with. In the 1880s that's a lot of money."

Kidney not only rebuilt, he expanded (maybe "exploded" is a better word). By 1891 his new shop was more than twice the size of the original. By 1899 the boat boat builder had Abbot Bernard Pennings, the new rector at St. Norbert, complaining to his friends of recurring "Kidney trouble." It seems the expanding entrepreneur's enterprises were encroaching upon the college, and he refused to sell out. By 1905, with his duckboats rapidly catching on at hunting clubs all over the country, Kidney had not only sold out and moved his operation a few blocks away, he had also made two additions, bringing the total size of Dan Kidney and Sons to a sprawling 40,000 square feet, with some forty persons employed. Boats were regularly sent to such exotic locales as British Columbia, Honolulu and South America. The plant offered freight-on-board shipment by rail or water, deliveries courtesy the Chicago and North Western Railway; Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway; or American Railway Express Company. "You can get us by Wire, Western Union or Postal Telegraph Company," says a Kidney ad. "Wisconsin Telephone Company, Long Distance call 110."

"You'd be surprised how many calls and letters I get. I get more calls about Kidney duckboats than anything," Franc says. "Just recently I got one from Wyoming. And there was one from a doctor in Maine. Any time mail comes addressed to the old, closed-down boat works, the post office routes it to me."

Well, almost always.

A fellow by the name of Bob Kidney could put up an effective argument. Grandson of Dan, Bob says that each year he receives "four or five" inquiries addressed to the defunct factory. Texas, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Rhode Island, Michigan, Missouri and Washington are only some of the states from which the missives have sprung.

Perhaps this ubiquity is best explained by one old timer who was employed at the boat works: "The Green Bay duckboat was the most famous model. That was the one that spread the Kidney name all over hell."

The classic Midwestern duck skiff, "The Green Bay Hunting Boat" was offered in lengths ranging from twelve to eighteen feet in one-foot increments. The twelve-foot model was thirty-six inches wide, weighing in at only eighty pounds.

Light and durable, the boat was built entirely of white cedar, when available. Later on (in the 1930s and '40s under Will and Ed Kidney), when many of the area's cedar swamps had been cut over, Upper Michigan pine was substituted-but never, perish the thought, was it kiln-dried. All the Kidney's pine was air-dried, sitting for years in some 10,000 square feet of basement space that was allocated to that purpose.

In some ways, the long, narrow, double-ended boat was a cousin to the canoelike pirogue-designed with shallow draft and large-load capacity in mind. The boat, some would lead you to believe, could be floated in any environment damper than the Sahara, and it had an extremely large cockpuit in relation to its total size.

The biggest difference between the Green Bay and its Louisiana cousin, however, was stability. Dan Kidney's years of gunning on open water probably caused him to calculate that a hunter had trouble enough contending with rolling seas and had no real use for an undulating craft underfoot. Thus came the lapstrake design.

Also called "clinker build," the design was the answer in the stability department. Such a boat started with a flat bottom, usually a board eighteen to twenty inches wide. Four cedar strakes (planks reaching from stem to stern) were then lapped over one another, much like the siding on a house, form-ing each side of the skiff. The strakes cut into the water, providing more resistance area to hold the boat still in the waves.

White-oak ribs and knees were added to strengthen the hull and to support the short decks of the double-ender. The decks, planking, and a three-inch coaming (a raised frame to prevent water from running below) on top were made of cedar. Pole wells, water-tight pipes that ran from the bottom of the boat to the tops of its decks, were implanted in each end of the skiff. By shoving his push pole through one of these, and into the mucky bottom, a hunter could hold his boat stationary. In this way he could set himself up for a shot much more effective-ly than if he used an anchor on a rope.

Introduced in 1886, the craft was soon recognized by duck clubs as an effective waterfowling tool, and it is estimated that over 10,000 of the popular boats were sold. Pile 'em full of junk, pole 'em anywhere. With its low profile, the boat required little, if any, camouflage for the decoy hunter. And with its shallow draft it worked splendidly for pairs of hunters who relished a push-pole-propelled jump shoot in the reeds.

"The duck club bosses would come in and tell Kidney what size boat they wanted and what fan-cies they wanted put in. The boats were built for stock, but they were special-ordered by the in-dividual club for the type of shooting done there," Franc says.

Yes sir! You're interested in our eighteen-foot model? An excellent choice.

What's that?

Oh, certainly, this is just the boat you'd want for a float shoot down the St. Claire River. Why, this model weighs 165 pounds, empty, and has a forty-six-inch beam! Very stable. Very stable.

Let's see, now. An eighteen-footer .... Three coats of dead-grass paint ....Galvanized iron fittings all around ....

That comes to $72 even-of course, that includes your portable seat, pair of six-foot oars, a ten-foot pole and a five-foot pole.

In the early 1920s, a price of $72 or, for that matter, the $44 a duck hunter would have to lay out for a twelve-foot model (oars and other trimmings in-cluded, of course) was a goodly piece of change.

"Really, the Green Bay was a dude boat at the time," says the ex-Kidney builder. "It was for the guy who could afford to pay extra. That dude wasn't the old-type guy with a rusty of gas pipe for a gun. A guy who hunted a lot was usually the type of man that could use tools and build a boat for himself. But the people and clubs who had Dan Kidneys swore by 'em."

As they do today.

John Streicher, of Berlin, Wisconsin, has milked three decades of hard hunting out of his Dan Kidney and figures that, before him, his father-in-law got at least that many.

"I found it in his barn loft thirty years ago, and later on I gave it a coat of fiberglass," he says. "I've used it every year. For marsh hunting you can't beat it. I can get into blinds that no one else on the lake can reach. With a pole, I can get into places with a half-inch of water over the top of muck." And all this, Streicher laughs, with a payload consisting of Chip, his 120-pound Chesapeake, forty decoys, gun, six boxes of shells, lunch, paddle, pole, and 220 pounds-worth of himself.

"I'd never sell it. At my hunting club I'm asked at least a dozen times a season to sell. They always say, `Well, okay, but if ya ever want to sell that thing. ..' "

Like any of the few remaining owners of Kidney hunting boats, Louis Cattau of Shawano has found that over his eighty-one years, he's mastered one three-word phrase without really trying: "I'll never sell."

In 1915, Cattau says, he and his father took their four-cylinder Dodge touring car with trailer and traveled the forty-five miles to De Pere. Here, they picked up young Louis' birthday gift. He's had it ever since.

Cattau chose "Kidney's Special Hunting Canoe," one of four lesser-known styles of hunting boat purveyed by Dan Kidney and Sons. These models differed from the well-known Green Bay Hunting Boat in that they were not of the clinker (lapstrake) design. All had "strip-built" (or smooth-build) hulls. Constructed much like a barrel, the smooth design was meant to make the boat noiseless and swift, sacrificing the stability offered by a lapstrake hull. Here, then, is a sampler of Dan Kidney's "other" hunting boats. Prices are vintage 1920.

KIDNEY'S SPECIAL HUNTING CANOE. A high, flat-bottomed craft, this canoe was designed for rough, open water. Cedar decking and a high coaming-Kidney trademarks-topped the boat. Available in fifteen-foot lengths only, $60.

KIDNEY'S SPECIAL HUNTING BOAT. Pro-bably most popular of the "other" designs, this boat was also called the "turtle deck." It was basically a fifteen-foot kayak; the theory behind its design was a low profile that would throw no shadow on the water to scare ducks off. One size only, $60. SNEAK BOAT. Another fifteen-footer, this boat was an even lower-floating version of the turtle deck. Only deck and coaming rode above the sur-face. One size only, $50.

HUNTER'S SAFETY DUCKBOAT. A high-sided, smooth-build version of the Green Bay. It was noiseless but drew more water than its more famous cousin. Riding slightly higher in the water, this was a safer craft. Three sizes: thirteen, fourteen, fifteen feet-$44 to $48.

It is somewhat ironic that the innovation that has kept old boats like Streicher's and Cattau's afloat is the very reason that the Kidney Boat Works and others like it have gone underwater. No matter how durable a wood used, progressive boat building materials-chiefly fiberglass-will beat it every time. And while it is true that fiberglass can weigh a ton, it is also true that you can now get an outboard that will push a ton.

The Kidney Boat Works, in one form or another, operated until the mid-1960s, when the demand for handmade wooden duckboats, rowboats and sailboats ran to a trickle. Today, a few romantic col-lectors and the occasional nostalgic hunter still sing the praises of "The Dan Kidney "...people much like R.S. Winship, a satisfied pleasure-craft customer whose eloquent testimonial appears in the back of several Kidney catalogues, circa the turn of the cen-tury:

Gentlemen: I enclose herewith a picture of the boat I purchased from you some time ago. You will note how really safe this boat is for family use. I dare say that it is the handsomest boat on Fox Lake that carries an Evinrude motor. Yours very truly ....

As for the proud owners of Kidney hunting boats, says Max Franc in slightly less elegant, yet equally effective, parlance: "When you said Dan Kidney was your duckboat, it was like saying that sterling was your silver."

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Presently, I do not believe that Dan Kidney and his family are descended from John/Jan Kidney. Census records indicate that Dan is the son of either Dennis or Lawrence Kidney who immigrated from Ireland just before 1850.

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