THE TANK FAMILY
OF GREEN BAY, WISCONSIN (1850-1891)

by Mary K. Killough, Ph.D.

The death of Caroline van der Meulen Tank (Mrs. Niels Otto Tank) on April 1, 1891 at her home in Fort Howard, now Green Bay, Wisconsin, a few days after her eighty-eighth birthday, created a flurry of articles in the newspapers of Green Bay and Madison.  These articles included not only brief obituaries but also longer first and second hand accounts and anecdotes.  This cultivated Dutch woman had an aura of mystery about her, as she had chosen to live out her life in her cottage in Wisconsin, enjoying her country garden and a few intimate friendships in spite of her wealthy background.

It may seem surprising that Caroline Tank, or Madam Tank, as she is often referred to in articles about her, did not return to her native Holland after the death of her husband, Niels Otto Tank in 1864.  Her beloved and devoted step-daughter, Mary Tank, had passed on in 1872, leaving her quite bereft.  But by several accounts Caroline Tank felt comfortable in her cozy cottage on the banks of the Fox River, now familiar to visitors to Heritage Hill Living History Museum in Green Bay as the Tank Cottage, one of Wisconsin's oldest standing buildings.

Today, women dressed in gowns of the 1870's and playing the roles of Caroline Tank and a visiting neighbor interpret the personality and possessions of the Caroline Tank for visitors to the Tank cottage.  One or two of the unusual objects in the Tank home are apt to pique the curiosity of visitors and make them wonder about the life in Europe left behind, about the background of Caroline's husband, Niels Otto Tank, and about what brought this much-travelled couple to the Green Bay area.

Who was Caroline's husband, the tall, dignified Norwegian Otto Tank?   Articles about the Tanks in Wisconsin publications seem to create almost a legend about them, referring to Otto as "Wisconsin's Most Romantic Pioneer" and Caroline as the "Lady of the Manor". 

Niels (also spelled Nils) Otto Tank,  known mostly as Otto Tank,  was born March 11, 1800 on his family's country estate of Rod, Halden, Norway, near the border of Sweden.  His father, Carsten Nielsen Tank (1766-1832), was minister of Finance on the governing council in Norway in 1814.  He participated in efforts to depose the weak Danish ruler of Norway and may have even hoped that his son Otto could become the new ruler of Norway.  Instead, Norway was ceded to Sweden according to the terms of the 1814 Treaty of Kiel between Denmark and Sweden.  This union of Norway and Sweden lasted until 1905.

Rumors that Tank's father had threatened to disinherit Otto if he became involved with the Moravian Church or married a "commoner" cannot be substantiated.  Political ambitions for Otto after 1814 would not seem likely.  The Tank family suffered serious financial setbacks in 1828, and Carsten Tank died in 1832.

Tank's mother, Katherine von Cappelen Tank, (1772-1837) had ties to the Moravian Church "diaspora" in Norway.  The state Lutheran Church in Norway was very critical of Pietist groups such as the Moravians.  Yet, in 1813, Otto was sent to a school in Oslo run by a Lutheran pastor with strong ties to the Moravian Church and in 1818 to a Moravian School in England.

In 1825, Tank apparently underwent a religious conversion.  In 1826, at the age of twenty-six, Tank visited Moravian Church headquarters in Herrnhut, Germany, near the Polish and Czech borders. Church records of 1833 show that he had written to the Elders to discuss his hopes of joining their church.  In 1834, the Moravian Church sent him to serve at the Moravian settlement in Christiansfeld, Denmark.  He was named head of the Church-run firm, Spielwerg & Co. there, where he was able to use his considerable business acumen until 1841.

The Wisconsin press paints a very romantic picture of Otto as a "winsome, gallant young cavalier", who when injured on a trip in Germany was nursed to recovery by a kind Moravian family.

. . . it happened that far up in the mountains of Saxony, in the little town of Herrnhut, he looked into the deep, serious and soulful eyes of Marian Frueauf, daughter of a clergyman among the pietistic brethren who inhabited the place.

Forgotten were his father's wise injunctions, the dream of royalty, the honors and ambitions.  His love was unconquerable and in a few weeks he journeyed home with his bride.
However, documents in the Moravian Church archives at its headquarters in Herrnhut, Germany, report these events in a less dramatic way.  Otto Tank met his first wife, Marianne Frueauf, while both were visiting Sweden.

Marianne Dorothea Frueauf was born in Grosshennersdorf near Herrnhut on July 3, 1804.  She lived in the Manor House, "Katherinenhof", which Count Zinzendorf, founder of the renewed Moravian Church, had made available for Church families.  Charming drawings of life at the Manor House probably penned by Marianne's father may be viewed at the Tank Cottage in Green Bay.

Marianne's father, Reverend Friedrich Renatus Frueauf, was the school inspector in Herrnhut and later founded the Moravian Girls' School in Zeist, the Netherlands.  Marianne herself received teacher training and taught at Fairfield Moravian School, England.  She then assisted her father as a teacher in Zeist before teaching three years at a Moravian School in Montmirail, Switzerland.

Church records show that Otto Tank consulted the "lot" to see if he should marry a distant relation of his.  In Moravian Church practice at that time important questions about marriage of church members or where to send missionaries were put to the lot.  A slip of paper bearing the word "yes" or "no", or perhaps a Biblical verse which could be interpreted in the same way, was drawn from a bowl.  Tank twice received a negative response to this first question.   He then wrote to the Unity's Elders Conference to ask permission to marry Marianne Frueauf, "if she is not indispensable at Montmirail", Switzerland, where she was teaching.  Marianne's father had apparently gained trust in Otto Tank, and Marianne and her family agreed to put this marriage proposal to the lot.  This time Otto received a positive response.

On November 6, 1838, Otto and Marianne were married in Herrnhut.  Their first child, Beatus, was born October 17, 1841, but died the same day and is buried at Herrnhut.

In 1842, the Moravian mission in Suriname (former Dutch Guiana) issued an urgent call.  Someone was needed to administer the mission's business activities in the capital city of Paramaribo.  The Church Elders in Herrnhut thought the Tanks were well suited for this task, and the Tanks readily agreed to go.  On April 24, 1842, while in Herrnhut preparing to go to Suriname, Otto Tank was ordained a deacon of the Moravian Church.

The Tanks arrived in Suriname on September 22, 1842.  Reports from Moravian missionaries had told of the perils of living in this unhealthy, tropical country and the resistance of some of the plantation overseers to mission work among their slaves.  This had not deterred the Tanks.
Otto was put in charge of the Moravian Church trading firm, C. Kersten & Co., a well respected business in Suriname even today.   The Tank's second child, Maria Fredericka, called Mary, was born in Suriname on January 28, 1843.  Less than two years later,  on September 10, 1844, Tank's wife Marianne died.  She had been expecting their third child. 

Tank asked to be sent back to Europe, but the head of the Moravian mission in Suriname died, and the Church mission board asked that Tank stay on in Suriname until a replacement came.  Tank agreed to this.

One of Tank's duties in Suriname was to visit outlying Moravian mission stations.  He made these visits enthusiastically and systematically.  His detailed journals of trips into the interior of Suriname in 1845-46 provide lively reading of value to historians, anthropologists, geographers and linguists interested in first hand reports about this seldom-travelled territory.

Tank's academic training in geology and mineralogy which later acquaintances remember him telling about proved useful on these trips.  He reported finding deposits of gold still unknown to the general public.  But tales that Tank profited personally or otherwise from this knowledge seem to be mere rumor.  Gold was probably not commonly mined in Suriname until 1861, a decade after Tank left the colony.

Tank's greatest contribution to mission work and Surinamese society was his work among the slaves.  The mid-1840's in a Dutch colony such as Suriname, whose economy depended upon slaves for the labor-intensive plantations of sugar cane, timber, coffee, and other tropical products, were unsettling at best.  England had already freed the slaves in her colonies in 1833, followed by France and Denmark in 1848.

Dutch plantation owners were fearful of potential unrest among their slaves, especially when Moravian and Catholic missionaries worked among them and brought them education and religion.  Tank openly criticized treatment of slaves in Suriname.  In 1847, when Tank was finally able to leave Suriname, he visited other colonies in the West Indies and was struck even more by the backwardness of Suriname and the plight of the slaves there.

Upon his return to Europe, he visited the Netherlands and voiced his complaints to the owners of plantations in Suriname in a public, "Circular Letter".  He told how overseers on their plantations often hindered mission work by threatening the slaves with punishment if they attended church services. 

Although some plantation owners promised to try to improve this situation, there was general resentment among the overseers in Suriname about Tank's meddling.  Some overseers defended their actions.  Tank sent a second letter insisting that his reports of cruelty were true. 

Whether Tank's efforts had any immediate legal result in improving the lives of the slaves in Suriname is not known.  Tank also wrote a letter to the King of the Netherlands in 1848 pointing out the admirable work of the Moravian mission in Suriname educating the slaves.  He asked that the Moravians be officially recognized and put on a equal footing with other religious groups there.  This petition resulted in an annual grant of two thousand guilders from the Dutch Government for the work of the Moravians in Suriname.

Tank is honored by the people of Suriname today as a "pioneering champion for the emancipation of the slaves" on a commemorative first-day issue.  The title, "Defender of Freedom", and his likeness appear on a bronze relief mounted at the corner of the Kersten Department Store in downtown Paramaribo, a place which hundreds of Surinamese pass every day.  A vocational school in Paramaribo is named for him.

While Otto Tank was in the Netherlands after his stay in Suriname, he renewed acquaintance with his deceased wife's school chum, Caroline van der Meulen.  Marianne and Caroline had been schoolmates at the Moravian Girl's School in Zeist, the Netherlands.  According to an article written in 1901 in the Wisconsin press, Otto Tank's daughter had come across a portrait of Caroline when looking through her late mother's possessions.
[Mary Tank] remarked to her father, "Why can't I have that sweet lady for my mother?"  Whether her artless remark first induced him to turn his attention in that direction with matrimonial designs, we are not able to state, but Mary's wish was finally gratified and the sweet lady became her mother.

Caroline Louise Albertina van der Meulen, who was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, March 29, 1803, had faithfully kept house for her widowed father, Reverend Reinhard Jan van der Meulen, a renowned Amsterdam clergyman.  He had lived well into his nineties, and in 1848, when Tank met Caroline again, she was free to determine the course of her own life.  When Otto proposed marriage, she accepted.  On August 22, 1849, Otto Tank married Caroline van der Meulen at the Moravian Church in Zeist, the Netherlands.

Again a call was issued from the Moravian Church.  A relative of Otto Tank's first wife living in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, told of the need for helpers in the mission field in North America and urged the Tanks to come.  Once again Niels Otto Tank seemed to fit the bill and offered to go.  Caroline had agreed to go with Otto "anywhere, but not to Suriname".  Armed with Caroline Tank's wealth, which according to their marriage contract Otto Tank would manage, a grant of $169,436 from Caroline to Otto, and Otto's seemingly boundless energy, the couple set off for America, accompanied by daughter Mary.  The year was 1849.

The Tanks travelled to Wisconsin where a group of Scandinavians wished to form a settlement and needed leadership and monetary help.  In Milwaukee they met up with Reverend J. F. Fett, who was charged by the Bethlehem Home Mission Board with the task of visiting this area.  Together they reached the Green Bay area in June of 1850.  Reverend Andrew Iverson, a Norwegian recently ordained in the Moravian Church, had been appointed to minister to the Norwegians and Danes in Wisconsin.  Tank agreed to join forces with this group and the settlement of Ephraim was established. 

Tank purchased a tract of 800 acres of land on the western side of the Fox River at Fort Howard, present-day Green Bay.  Tank wanted a communal settlement based on the old Moravian model of Herrnhut and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.  However, the Moravian Church no longer wished to set up communities of this kind, and many of the settlers had left Norway with the hope of owning their own land, so they objected to Tank's plan. 

It soon became clear that Tank and Iverson could not work together.  With Reverend Iverson at their helm, the small band of settlers pulled up stakes and established their own settlement, which they also called Ephraim, in Door County, some sixty miles north of Green Bay.  This was a bitter blow for Tank.  He watched sadly as "one day in May, 1853, a vessel tied up at the dock in front of the Tank cottage, to convey the colonists to their future home . . . it was the darkest day of Tank's life."
The Tanks stayed on in Fort Howard where Otto became involved in civic and business affairs.  He invested heavily in the Fox-Wisconsin River Water Improvement Project.  The project fell apart with the coming of the railroad, and Tank and other investors never got their investments back from the state as they had expected. 

In 1858 Tank offered to help fund the establishment of a Moravian College in Wisconsin and applied for a charter from the Wisconsin State Legislature.  The Provincial Elders Conference of the Moravian Church, however, rejected this proposal on the ground that they could not maintain a college in Wisconsin in addition to their Theological Seminary at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Niels Otto Tank died on May 4, 1864 at his home in Fort Howard, Wisconsin.  It is said that he never fully recovered from a case of chicken pox.  He was buried in Niesky Hill Moravian Cemetery in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where daughter Mary and second wife Caroline would also rest one day.

Unfortunately, in compliance with Caroline Tank's will drawn up in 1883, all of Otto Tank's manuscripts, letters and sermons found among her possessions were destroyed after her death in 1891.  Caroline Tank even managed to avoid having a long obituary appear in the local papers after Otto's death.  This was meant to curtail any further unpleasant publicity such as that arising from problems with the Moravian settlement of Ephraim or difficulties with  business investments. 

Caroline Tank felt that her husband died because of the many heartbreaks in his life - his disappointments with the mission in Suriname and their problems with slavery, his failure to lead the Wisconsin Moravians, and his failed investment in a Wisconsin canal system. 

Caroline Tank remained in Fort Howard until her death in 1891.  Although she purchased a house in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania  in 1868, there is no evidence that she ever lived in it. 

Friends and acquaintances who contributed to articles written shortly after Caroline's death in 1891 liked to tell of Caroline's illustrious family background.  Her maternal grandmother was the daughter of Baron van Boetzelaer, who had led the resistance to Napoleon in the Netherlands.  Her mother had been a lady-in-waiting to the consort of King William I of the Netherlands.  Caroline's father, Reverend van der Meulen, was  not only a renowned Protestant clergyman but also an ardent art and book lover and a respected citizen of Amsterdam.  Caroline herself was  an artist of considerable talent.  She was well educated and spoke several languages. 

It was Caroline's father's impressive library of 5,000 volumes, many of them rare editions, that she had shipped to her home in Wisconsin.  In 1867, she donated these books to the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, which in turn transferred them to the Wisconsin Memorial Library at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.  It is said that in a boundary dispute between Great Britain and Venezuela in 1899, a rare map from the Tank collection was used in deliberations about the line of demarcation between British Guiana (now Guyana) and Venezuela.

Caroline Tank was a very generous and staunch supporter of church mission work.  She donated much of her wealth to furthering that cause.  Among her donations were bequests for church and school buildings in Fuchow and Peking, China.  After her death $10,000 was donated by her estate in memory of her step-daughter Mary Tank to build a "Home for Children of Foreigners Missionaries" in Oberlin, Ohio.  She left a bequest for the benefit of "freedmen".  She donated park land to the city of Green Bay.

After the death of her husband and step-daughter, Caroline Tank adopted two young girls, who helped her in her household and who were educated by her in return.   

A few days after her eighty-eighth birthday, on April 1, 1891, Caroline Tank died at her home in Fort Howard.  She is buried beside Otto and Mary at Niesky Hill Cemetery in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.  Caroline's death marked the end of the more than forty-year presence of the Tank family in Wisconsin.  It also marked the end of this branch of the Tank family. 

The Tanks rightfully deserve a place in the annals of Wisconsin history.  It is fortunate that their memory is kept alive at their home in Heritage Hill Park in Green Bay.

The author wishes to thank the following for their help:  Ingeborg Baldauf, Herrnhut Germany; Rev. Hartmut Beck, Karlsruhe, Germany; Jacqueline Bauder, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; Dr. Ingrid Guentherodt, Trier, Germany; Vernon Nelson, Moravian Archives, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; Ann Stiller, Green Bay, Wisconsin; Laurel Townes, Heritage Hill Park, Green Bay, Wisconsin; Dr. Just Wekker, Paramaribo, Suriname.

VOYAGEUR (Northeast Wisconsin's Historical Review) Volume 17, Number 1  (Summer/Fall 2000)

URL revisited 11/21/2009