Captain Herman Schuenemann, born in Algoma, Wisconsin, to German immigrants, began working on the Great Lakes at an early age. He married Barbara Schindel on April 9, 1891, and they had three daughters, Elsie and twins Hazel and Pearl. Well liked in Thompson, he became known to Chicagoans as "Captain Santa" because each year the schooner Rouse Simmons, though used mainly to haul lumber, made a final seasonal trip carrying Christmas trees to Chicago, where people waited at the Clark Street Bridge for its arrival. In 1910 Schuenemann bought an interest in the vessel. On the late afternoon of November 22, 1912, despite a falling barometer, rising winds, warnings from people on shore and many of the crew, and reports that rats had left the ship the evening before, he ordered the Rouse Simmons to depart Thompson loaded with Christmas trees. The schooner sank off the coast of Two Rivers, Wisconsin, and all hands were lost. Barbara Schuenemann and her three daughters continued the Christmas tree trade into the 1930s, with Barbara overseeing the cutting and shipment of trees to Chicago by water or rail until her daughters took over. Built in Milwaukee in 1868, the Rouse Simmons was 127 feet long, had a beam of 27 feet 6 inches, a hold depth of 8 feet 1 inch, weighed 220 tons, and cost $17,000 to build. Financed by Mr. Rouse Simmons and originally owned by Royal B. Tousley and Captain Ackerman of Kenosha, it made its maiden voyage from Milwaukee to Manistee for lumber, could carry up to 350,000 board feet of timber or 16,000 bushels of grain, and was one of the largest boats on the Great Lakes at the time. In 1912 its owners were Mannes J. Bonner with a 3/4 interest, Herman Schuenemann with a 1/8 interest, and Charles Nelson with a 1/8 interest.