Jeannie Hutchins Turns 90!

A Celebration

by Nina Botting Herbst, Director of Museums, Town of Washington

Jeannie Hutchins of Washington Island is preparing to celebrate her 90th Birthday during the week of the 2023 Door County History Days. The stories of her life, family, and connections to the Island she loves, are many. They have not all been good times but Jeannie’s humor and joy in life have kept her going.

She was born Jeannette Lindal in Sister Bay. When her father first held his second daughter he said she was so tiny a baby and that was too big a name, so he dubbed her Jeannie. At six years old her family moved to Washington Island to live in the house her grandfather, Rasmus Hansen, built in 1888. The same house she now inhabits every spring through November’s Hunting Season.

Rock Island Connections

There is also a close family connection to another local island. At one time Rasmus owned land on Rock Island but sold it to Chester Thordarson to raise the funds so Grandpa Hanson’s homesick wife, Rasmine, could visit her family in Denmark. Later Jeannie’s parents met when her father, a Canadian of Icelandic heritage, came from Winnipeg to help build the Thordarson Estate and her mother would ferry him and other workers over to the smaller island.

Later still, Jeannie’s Aunt Helga, her father’s sister, came to work in Chicago and met Dewey Thordarson, Chester’s son. They married and Jeannie spent happy times visiting with her aunt and uncle on Rock before they facilitated the sale of the Island to Wisconsin in 1965 to become a State Park.

Life as a Young Mother

Jeannie married Richard ‘Dick’ Johnson the week after she graduated from the Detroit Harbor School. Dick then went to serve in Korea and Jeannie worked on the Island switchboard to pass the time.

The couple ran a general store on Washington Island, and Dick was also a commercial fisherman back when fishing was big here. That ended tragically when Dick drowned in 1955 leaving Jeannie with two daughters and pregnant again. Jeannie credits her mother, Agnus, with pulling her through this awful time.

Washington Island Again

Following time away in Florida, a second marriage, and the addition of three more children; Jeannie returned in 1970. By that time her father had died and her beloved mother had met and married Chief Roy Oshkosh, moving to Egg Harbor to help run his Outpost there. How Jeannie’s mother met the Chief is a sweet story, and Dr. Farmer played a role. Farmer, a friend of the Chief, brought him up to the Island to hunt. When the Chief returned home and was asked whether he had bagged a deer he said that he did not get a four legged one but met a doozy of a two legged one! That was November and the couple were married in January, making the Chief Jeannie’s stepfather.

Now a single mother, Jeannie worked at a bar on the Island, Jim’s Up the Road. When the Chief died and Jeannie’s mother became ill, Jeannie took over the Chief Roy Oshkosh Trading Post and ran that store for 14 years, retiring in 1997. But it wasn’t really a retirement as once back on Washington Island Jeannie had other ideas.

Jacobsens Museum

As a child one of Jeannie’s favorite places on Washington Island was Jacobsens Museum on the shores of Little Lake. She would visit with her friends and listen enthralled to the museum’s founder Jens Jacobsen, a Danish immigrant like her grandfather, as he displayed and talked about the Native American artifacts he had found around Little Lake and other parts of the Island. When Jeannie ‘retired’ she wanted to work at the museum she loved and did so for almost two decades. In fact, despite her second retirement visitors still ask for Jeannie and remember how wonderful she had made their past visits. Jeannie Hutchins is a Door County treasure and her family’s history is woven into the history of our beautiful Washington Island.