Expanding Horizons

Marinette was named after “Queen” Marinette, the Menominee woman married to two traders in succession. “She was not a queen, and her name is probably a contraction of Marie Antoinette,” states the Dictionary of Wisconsin History. She lived here from the 1820s until her death in 1865, and managed her husbands’ trading business and the real estate she acquired. Her trading skills and kinship network enabled her post to remain independent from John Jacob Astor’s fur trading cartel.