John Gurda’s ‘People of the Port’

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Jones Island in 1936

Jones Island in 1936

“It always fascinated me—it was so unlikely, a village in the heart of the city,” says John Gurda. He’s talking about his latest documentary on Milwaukee history, People of the Port: A Jones Island Documentary. Jones Island was the subject of his 1978 master’s thesis. It was where his career as Milwaukee’s historian began.

The 30-minute film focuses on the district before it was devoted exclusively to container ships and sewerage treatment. Jones Island was the site of a Native American village, a French-Canadian trading post, a Yankee shipyard and—starting in 1872, a village of Baltic immigrant fisherfolk, the Kaszubs.

“People of the Port” was a chapter title from Gurda’s 2018 book Milwaukee: A City Built on Water. “They were Polish, speaking a German-influenced dialect,” Gurda describes the Kaszubs. One of their number, Jacob Muza, found his way to Jones Island and saw it as an ideal place in the New World for resuming their life of fishing. He sent word to the Old Country. “It was chain migration,” Gurda continues. Before long a village of Kaszubs established themselves on Jones Island, squatting without legal title to the land.

“The only public service provided by the City of Milwaukee was a schoolteacher who came by rowboat,” says Gurda. He quotes her as saying, “The children of Jones Island live in a world completely apart.” The Kaszubs were on their own in rustic structures lit at night by kerosene lanterns.

The hardy Kaszubs hung on despite efforts by Illinois Steel to seize Jones Island. Later on, the City of Milwaukee began paying the islanders to leave as the port facilities expanded and landfill expanded the area, transforming the wetland into the docks and terminals adjacent to Bay View.

“Internal forces also caused them disperse,” Gurda explains. “The second and third generation weren’t fishing and took jobs on the mainland.” By the Great Depression, most Kaszubs had left Jones Island and as America was pulled into World War II, one stubborn resident, Felix Struck, held fast. The saloonkeeper and seller of smoked fish claimed to be the first baby born on Jones Island—and would be the last to leave. He was finally evicted under wartime port security regulations in 1943. He died five months later.

A sense of heritage continues to bind Milwaukee’s Kaszubs, who come together annually for a picnic. Gurda gathered family photos from them and reached across the Atlantic for visuals of Kaszub life in the Old Country. The historian worked on People of the Port with director Claudia Looze and his son, videographer Anders Gurda.

People of the Port will be screened at 6:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 14 at the Oriental Theatre. The screening is free, but registration is required at milwaukeepbs.org/events. The program will debut on Milwaukee PBS Channel 10.1 at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 17.