The first paper mill in Menasha was built in 1876 on the northern channel of the Fox River by Reuben Scott, Henry Hewitt, Jr., and other stockholders. They bought the Dutchman and Potter sawmill and converted it to the new Menasha Paper Company which made wrapping paper.
The company made money for a year and then began to have financial difficulties. First it was leased, then went into receivership in 1879, then sold, and finally newly organized as Menasha Pulp and Paper Company. This time Hewitt and Scott were the sole owners. In 1884 the mill closed and the equipment sold.
In 1888 a group of investors built a new paper mill on the site and Charles Howard came into control and called it the Charles W. Howard Paper Company. He then sold out to some Oshkosh capitalists who went bankrupt. In 1898 he regained the property and rebuilt and added an extensive sulphite plant so that a heavy strong manila wrapping paper could be made from hemlock logs. The mill was operated with great success until 1905 when it was sold again. It used both water and steam power and ran 24 hours a day. It even had a sprinkler system. This time it was sold to the Island Paper Company which was controlled by Duncan T. H. MacKinnon and Alexander Noble Strange. n 1905, Renamed as the Island Paper Company, the mill made corrugated paper which aggravated the citizens because of the odor which it emitted. They called it "strawboard."
info courtesy Herziger, Caryl Chandler; Pawlowski, Winifred Anderson (ed.) /Memories of Doty Island : A Link Between Two Cities (1999)
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