Bio: Sallet, Friedrich Wilhelm (Commemorative Bio - 1895)

Poster: Crystal Wendt

Friedrich Wilhelm Sallet

Friedrich Wilhelm Sallet was born December 16, 1859, in Oestpreussen, Germany, and up to his fifteenth year attended school at Koenigsberg, after which he went into the printing business and studied the black art thoroughly at the institute of A. Keiwning, in said city. But, possessed, like most Germans, with a passion for wandering, he left his home at the age of twenty, and, in the summer of 1880, went to Russia, traveled through the Baltic provinces, and found employment in the Herold at St. Petersburg, the Russian metropolis on the Neva. After having, during the year spent there, acquired considerable insight into the customs of the Russian people, and also quite a competency in their language, he went over to Finland. In Helsingfors, the capital of that country, he found remunerative employment as compositor in a printing office, remaining there but seven months, yet long enough to make himself master of the Swedish language.

Driven by a thirst for adventure and information, Mr. Sallet then crossed the Baltic Sea to Sweden, and in Stockholm worked about a year in a large printing establishment, the Central Tryckeriet, taking a prominent part in that concern’s work in foreign languages, thus earning good money. Thereafter in the summer of 1882, he left for Germany in order to fulfill his duties to Kaiser and Reich, traveling across the entire kingdoms of Sweden and Denmark, and entering Germany at the old Hanseatic city of Luebeck, he then made a journey through Northern Germany, visiting parents and friends, soon, however, leaving home again to see other sections of Germany. After many happenings and adventures, he, in the autumn of 1882, found himself in Leipsic, where he found employment for some time in a printing establishment, and then went to the capital of the empire, working there for some time in the Reichstag. Printing Department, about Christmas of the same year proceeding to Hamburg, followed his trade in that great seaport.

Once more, however, the Fates taking him to Finland, that romantic “land of the thousand lakes,” Mr. Sallet readily took advantage of an officer from the Finnish Literary Society in Helsingfors. Accordingly, leaving Hamburg in March, 1883, after a long ride by rail through Germany, Russia and Finland, he arrived six days later at his destination. Here, in 1886, he married, became first foreman over the greatest printing establishment in that country, and as foreman on daily papers, etc. Some seven years were thus passed, during which times became harder and harder in a pecuniary as well as a political aspect. The liberties of the press became more and more restricted and ignored, and Finland’s free and time sacred constitution was trampled upon by Russia. So his ardent longing for the freedom of speech impelled him to cast his lot with America. Nor did he tarry long, for on May 31, 1890, he left his working place in Helsingfors, moved with his family up to the extreme northern part of the Bothnic Gulf, where, in latitude 70, he saw in midsummer the sun rise at 1 o’clock in the morning and set at 11 o’clock in the evening. Fishing and sailing was always his passion, and finding, there the best opportunities for gratifying it, he thoroughly did so. After thus spending a most pleasant summer, he took his family to Germany in order to see his relatives and make them acquainted with his wife and child before his departure to this country.  

On September 10, 1890, the family got aboard the “Normannia,” at Hamburg, and after eight days set foot upon American soil, remaining a while in the metropolis on the Hudson, when our subject came westward to Chicago, to make that marvelous city his home during the time of the World’s Fair. His interesting reports regarding the great Exposition were duly appreciated by several German and Swedish newspapers in Europe, which game them a foremost place in their issues. While in Chicago, Mr. Sallet also amply utilized the opportunity of making observations about capital and labor, about liberty, anarchism and partisanship. Becoming tire at last of the humming and buzzing life of the “Windy City,” he looked around for some place more suited to his tastes and instincts, and soon found one in the woods of Northern Wisconsin. On July 2, 1894, he bought the Lincoln County Anzeiger, a weekly German paper published at Merrill, and started seven years ago by C. W. Honigmann. During the short time he has been in charge of this paper he has succeeded in doubling its circulation, making full headway toward securing to the Anzeiger the place of a leading German paper in that part of that State.

---Source: Commemorative Biographical Record of the Upper Wisconsin Counties of Waupaca, Portage, Wood, Marathon, Lincoln, Oneida, Vilas, Langlade and Shawano. publ. 1895 by J. H. Beers & Co., Chicago 1110 pages, illustrated; Page 711-712