TMJ4 Spotlights Bay View's Maritime Marvels: Johanna Brotch & Georgia Stebbins
We are thrilled to share that the story of Bay View's remarkable maritime heritage has found its way to a wider audience. This past Women's History Month, TMJ4's Cassandra McShepard featured two of the Great Lakes' most extraordinary women — Johanna Brotch, Bay View's first female ship owner, and Georgia Stebbins, the first and only female lighthouse keeper at North Point Lighthouse — in a segment titled "Maritime Marvels: The Milwaukee Women Who Ruled the Great Lakes."
For those of us who have long been captivated by Bay View's hidden maritime history, this feature is deeply gratifying. TMJ4 spoke with our own Douglas Mintline, Commander, USNR, Ret., who has spent years researching and preserving this history — and who, as many of you know, is the current owner of the historic Johanna Brotch home. It was Douglas who first brought Johanna's story to light, authored two books documenting Bay View's lake captains, and successfully advocated for the installation of the first historical marker honoring a former female ship owner.
Johanna Brotch, born in Prussia and immigrated to the United States in 1869, settled in Bay View and became not only the community's sole female ship owner, but one of its very first female entrepreneurs. Her vessels, the Sassacus and the Arctic, carried commercial goods — wood, grain, and iron — across the Great Lakes. She outlived her husband and all six of her children, and passed away in 1948 at the age of 91, a quiet giant of Bay View history.
The segment also introduced viewers to Georgia Stebbins, who served as lighthouse keeper at North Point Lighthouse for 26 years — climbing the tower each evening at dusk, logging every passing ship, and on more than one occasion, rowing out to rescue sailors whose vessels had run aground. She never missed a single night at the lighthouse during her entire tenure.
These are exactly the kinds of stories the Historic Bay View Lake Captains Society exists to preserve and share. We are grateful to TMJ4 for helping bring them to life.
To learn more about Johanna Brotch and the historic home she once called hers, visit our Johanna Brotch page.
