Wisconsin Land & Lumber Company.

The Wisconsin Land and Lumber Company of Hermansville, Michigan was originally founded as a subsidiary firm of Charles J. L. Meyer, a successful Chicago and Wisconsin businessman. Meyer, following the Chicago fire of 1871, made a fortune by expanding his door and sash manufacturing plant located in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. As one of the few such facilities in the upper Great Lakes region, Meyer profited handsomely from the rebuilding of Chicago.

By the mid-1870s, lumber supplies in the Lake Winnebago region of Wisconsin were being depleted; and Meyer, to insure himself a supply of wood, purchased the Menominee County, Michigan land holdings of the Hamilton Merriman Company. In 1879, Meyer relocated the sawmill he owned in Fond du Lac to his Michigan property. The site of the mill became Hermansville (named after his son). Mill No. 1, as the facility was called, was a softwood mill, preparing pine for shipment to Fond du Lac. His Michigan property, however, also had significant stands of hardwood trees on it, ands so, in 1882, Meyer began to operate kilns in Hermansville to convert the hardwood into charcoal.

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