Marinette, WI USDA Benefits

Marinette is a city in and the county seat of Marinette County, Wisconsin, United States. It is located on the south bank of the Menominee River, at its mouth at Green Bay, part of Lake Michigan; to the north is Stephenson Island, part of the city preserved as park. During the lumbering boom of the late 19th century, Marinette became the tenth-largest city in Wisconsin in 1900, reaching a peak population of 16,195.

Marinette is the principal city of the Marinette, Wisconsin–Michigan Micropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all of Marinette County, Wisconsin and Menominee County, Michigan. The population was 10,968 at the 2010 census. Menominee, Michigan is across the 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.

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.