Joseph "Joe" Albert Neubauer

Joe Neubauer died Saturday evening, September 15th at the Lakeside Nursing Home in Pine City at the age of 91 years. Joe was born in Pine City to Albert W. and Minnie (Ververka) Neubauer on January 27, 1921. He attended the University of Wisconsin as well as Marquette University. Joe’s grandfather, Julius Neubauer, an 1870 veteran of the Prussian Army, immigrated to Pine City, Minnesota, in the mid-1870s as a pioneer blacksmith. Joe’s father, Albert Neubauer, was born near the Snake River and was also a respected blacksmith all his life. Joe continued to expand upon the family’s legacy in metal and was a practicing metal smith and manufactured copper tools to within three months of his death. Joe was born in 1921 and traveled the Snake River in the early 1930s with a twelve-foot wooden rowboat with the task of pulling driftwood and snags home for his mother’s wood stove. During those formative years, he visited and was befriended by local Annishinabe Indian families, trappers and “river hermits” who showed him old artifacts and the location of old homesteads, logging sites and ancient Indian villages. It was in this environment that on a spring day in 1932, at age eleven, Joe discovered the 1804 North West Company post’s foundation and numerous artifacts in a plowed field on the Snake River. In 1942, Joe enlisted in the US Navy and was assigned duty as Metalsmith First Class on the US Delta AK29/AR9, a newly commissioned repair ship. Joe survived combat under Nazi dive-bomber attacks during his duty on the US Delta in the Mediterranean Ocean while docked in Morocco. During the War and while in Officer Training, Virginia and Joe were married and later raised three sons, Joseph Jr., Ben and Bob. Following Navy training and science studies at Marquette University, Joe was a professional metal smith with applied expertise in physics and sheet metal fabrication. His ONE consistent life-long hobby was to explore and study the forests, plowed fields, valleys, sandbars, riverbanks and waterways of Minnesota, always searching, for over eighty years, with his “nose to the ground.” He walked very deliberatively in a half slump so his eyes were nearly perpendicular to the ground and never tired of turning over every unusual rock. When it began to rain, Joe continued his quest with renewed vigor with every step made as though it would result in his best discovery. During the years of 1998 to 2002, Joe was introduced to some individuals from Michigan with similar interests, and through them he discovered many forms of native silver and copper. With these specimens and native nuggets, Joe annealed and pounded preforms from which he mastered techniques of “copper culture” manufacture and created, in his first three years of experimentation, over three hundred duplicated ancient style copper tools, ornaments and miscellaneous items. Joe’s reproductions have been displayed at several public events including the Keweenaw Red Metal Retreat, Gopher State Archaeological Society, Mid-West Archaeological 2003 Conference in Milwaukee, and Northern Lakes Archaeological Society. Several of Joe’s copper master-pieces are currently on display at the Keweenaw National Historical Park. Through decades of actual metal smithing, acquiring knowledge of metal manufacturing techniques and gaining ideas from his mentors, Joe studied actual copper artifacts, perfected annealing (utilizing white oak embers) and applied pounding to produce copper culture artifact reproductions. Over the last decade, this full time “hobby” has been sustained by thousands of hours of pounding effort, often with three annealing wood fires going at one time. The precise manufacturing technique that Joe developed is termed the “Neubauer Process.” It is published in the 2003 and 2004 Central States Archaeological Journal. The reproductions are hallmarked with “JAN.” Joe has given hundreds of reproductions away to friends and mentors. Virginia used to say, with a smile, “He’s obsessed with copper.” As a deservedly proud Navy Veteran of WW II, Joe was very persistent in his love and protection of the freedoms provided by the United States. Freedom of speech was his top priority. He demonstrated a deep commitment to an honest life, discovering secrets of the ancients and in taking the time to develop lasting friendships. Joe enjoyed lecturing and demonstrating Lake Superior basin mysteries of copper. David H Peterson officiated at memorial service 11:00 a.m. Saturday, October 6 at Swanson Funeral Chapel, Pine City with a memorial visitation 1 hour prior to the service. Inurnment was in the Birchwood Cemetery of Pine City with Larry Furo officiating. Arrangements were entrusted to the Funeral and Cremation Service ~ Swanson Chapel, Pine City, Minnesota www.funeralandcremationservice.com