Uncovering Al Capone's presence in the Northwoods

welcome back here we're joined here by board member of the manitowish waters Historical Society Jim Boker and there's a lot of recent history coming out of the Northwoods so Jim can you tell us a little bit about Al Capone and his involvement we learned some more with some new information that we have now yes uh we've just received a new collection from the Hawkinson family and we have found out that Roman swish Waters in Winchester and Mercer Al Capone's present was presence was much greater than we we ever believed before and we got this from the bill cell collection bill cell was a Pioneer logger business owner Resort owner and he was also a top-notch realtor and Al Capone befriended him and that's the source of all of these this is going to be available free at the manitowish waters Historical Society website and people can just send us an email and get the unwatermarked images like the one behind us right here and so we've done a little bit of Stories on we have done a story on this before but for those who aren't familiar can you kind of walk us through what's new here and I know there's a lot to it but if you can unpack maybe one or two key pieces of information that you've that are new discoveries for you sure well first of all we're processing this collection and it is really quite robust of written letters images memorabilia and a firearm from from Al Capone um we possess just images of this not the original documents but um the documents themselves really reveal that Al Capone was very much involved in this neck of the North Woods particularly early on as a lieutenant in the 1924 article and where we get most of the images and there are several on our website for people to access he spent a lot of time in the Winchester area whether at trostel resort property or on Bill's cells property on South Turtle Lake and uh he created a a fast and strong friendship with Bill cell so we get this correspondence it's important to note that prior to the auction of these documents only for the letters of Correspondence within Al Capone had ever been auctioned before and none of them were about his prohibition of gangster era so these really are quite unique the 1924 letter where Capone writes Bill cell and says hey that Moonshiner that I like so much tell them to come down to Cicero Illinois I got a big order of wine and whiskey for them so to have a connection from you know Northern Wisconsin to Al Capone even though he was just a lieutenant that time in the Chicago outfit to solicit moonshine that's amazing then some time passes on in 1925 Al Capone just before he ascends to the ringleader of the Chicago outfit there was an assassination attempt on his life and Bill cell and Al Capone were such good friends that two days after his assassination attempt he wrote a letter to Bill sell and we have that letter and it just talks about how their friends and looking forward to getting together and it is kind of interesting shortly after that Jenny tourio is shot five times and says I've had enough of this and hands off the business now Capone and the rest of history the third letter is when Al Capone is in jail in Pennsylvania he got arrested before he went to Alcatraz in 31 in um Pennsylvania for a weapons violation concealed weapons spent some time in jail so there's a letter from the penitentiary and he's basically looking for a land deal because Bill sellers uh this amazing realtor and uh and he wanted to buy land up in that area to create an enclave and we have so much more to add to this what does this do for the Northwoods Community why is it so important that we share these discoveries well it's part of our heritage and it's part of a story it's a story of Al Capone and the Mobsters but it's also a story of the evolution of the Northwoods and that as a resort area we had the advantage of having a diversity of visitors in the region in the Manchester Waters area we seem to have a concentration of gangster activity and we can cover that at another time but more importantly it's about the locals and how they befriended all sorts of visitors and and made a living some of an honest some of it not so honest and during the 1920s when really there was an Agri recession in the area it made things tough on farmers in this area and also in the Great Depression that's a that's really unique thank you so much for your time we'll be right back after the break

Channel: Manitowish Waters Historical Society

Views: 6,308

Keywords: Manitowish Waters Historical Society

Id: XKaYSNGfivU

Length: 5min 39sec (339 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 08 2023