Two railroad towns, two names: how Nadeau and Carney got theirs

Before there was a township here, there was Bruno Nadeau — “Barney” to the people who knew him. He farmed the first land in this stretch of southern Menominee County. In the 1870s the Chicago & North Western Railway pushed its line north toward the iron country. Nadeau’s sons won the contract to supply the wooden ties, and that work pulled a settlement up out of the woods around the new tracks.

A post office opened in 1878. When a township was organized out of the north part of Stephenson in 1881, it took the family name. The early count put it at about 75 families — a few American, a couple German, some Swedes, and the rest French or of French descent. That is why so many old names in the area sound the way they do.

The village of Carney, a couple miles up the line, got its name from a different man. Frederick Carney built a warehouse at the rail siding, and the stop took his name. Rail stops often worked that way — named for whoever put up the first building worth noticing. The railroad did this all along the route. It hung a settler’s or a builder’s name on each water stop and siding, until a county map read like a list of the men who happened to be standing there when the train came through.

So two neighbors, both born of the same railroad in the same decade, carry two men’s names for two reasons. One broke the ground and fed the railroad its ties. The other built a shed beside the tracks. The depots are long gone, but the names stuck — which is mostly what names do.