i '" ~-\i (\ . ' '-\ R--.f:\) '\,\' ~ ~--...A.-"--.A.. \\ . ~ t5'"e.;w;r &l :&& ...,., .~,.t z·:::::::::iil Lynnet Johnson 1038 LindellA"" . J Fetoslrey, Ml 49770 PEOPLE PLACES . HAPPENINGS IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN BY WILLIAM H. OHLE A warm thank you to the Little Traverse Bay Sea Serpent for permission to use his portrait" on the front cover. For well over a centnry his riant self has been sighted from time to time playing out on the Bay. He is a good natured mascot, who never hurt a fly. 'As it appeared in the May 14, 1895 issue ofthe Petoskey Independent Democrat. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS "PEOPLE, PLACES AND HAPPENINGS" is a collection of articles that have appeared overthe past two decades in "The Graphic" , a tabloid published by the Petoskey News-Review for the enjoyment of vacationers_ The author extends his thanks to that fme newspaper for permission to reprint them in book form. Photographs in this volume come from many sources. The cover portrait of the Petoskey Sea-Serpent was drawn by some unknown local artist almost a century ago. The drawing of a voyageur canoe on page 1 is reprinted from The Graphic for Sept 17,1992; the photo oflames Strang on page 5 is reprinted from The TraverseRegion, H.R. Page & Co, Chicago 1904; the Indian River Stagecoach on page lOis a reproduction of a John Kilborn photo that was printed in the The Graphic, June 24,1982; the John Askin's volumes picnrred on page 14 appear courtesy The Petoskey PublicLibrary. The photo ofH. O. Rose is copiedfromNorthernMichigan, by B.F. Bowen & Co, Chicago, 1905; the photos of the New Arlington Hotel and its ashes on page 23 and 26 respectively, appear courtesy of the Little Traverse Historical Society; the Passenger Pigeon's likeness on page 28 was borrowed from the same source; Madame La Framboise's house on page 32 and the early photo of the Grand Hotel, both are copied from Mackinac Island, It's History in Picture, by Eugene Petersen, Superintendent ofthe Park Commission, published by the Commission in 1973; The photo of a Charlevoix City plat map is reproduced from The 1901 Plat Book ofCharlevoix County, Michigan; the picture of Ephraim Shay at the throttle of his "Hemlock Central" engine on page 48 appears courtesy of the Little Traverse Historical Society; the photos of the Horton Bay Store on page 51 and the old Horton Bay Methodist Church on page 85 are from How It Was in Horton Bay, by William H. Ohle, Horton Bay, 1989. The photo of Mark Twain is reproduced from the frontispiece photo in Mark Twain's West, editied by Walter Blair for the Lakeside Press, R.R. Donnelly & Sons Company, Chicago, 1983; the ice pick on page 59 is owned by Mr. & Mrs. Dick Dixon of Boyne City; the Petoskey R.R. Station photo on page 62 appears courtesy The Little Traverse Historical Society collection; the photo of John Redpath, page 68 is reproduced from Opening and Closing With Prayer, the Centennial account of the First Presbyterian Church of Boyne City, compiled by William H. Oble 1983; the photo of Edger Conkling's portrait on page 73 appears courtesy of Ken Teysen of Mackinaw City; the picture of Father Charlevoix on page 75 first appeared in the Traverse Region, H.R. Page & Co., Chicago, 1904; Henry Schoolcraft's likeness on page 79, is from "Hiawatha" by Charles S. and Stellanova Osborne, The Jaques Cattell Press, Lancaster, Pa, 1944; Amelia Earhart's favorite picture is from "The Sound ofWings", by Mary S. Lovell, St. Martins Press, New York, 1989; the picture ofSilas Overpack's Big Wheels on page 92 appears in Pictorial HistoryofMichigan, TheEarly Years, by WilliamB. EerdmansPublishing Company, 1967. Publi,shed by the Author, at 05081 Lake Street, Horton Bay, Boyne City, Michigan 49712 FOREWORD Northern Michigan is truly a unique area. Besides being the home of many rematkable people in its short recorded history, and the famous sea­ serpent; its wetland area is host to a big-foot creature, heatd but not seen, and first reported by Henry Schoolcraft a centnry ago as "The Windigo". Natives of this beautiful land know about such local fauna, of course, but spend little time confiding in visitors, being too busy making your stay enjoyable and scratching out a living during our short growing season. So, come spend a few hours with an eighty-year·old fudgie who has pored over many a curious volume oflocallore to dig out a few truths and a few fictions about people,places and superstitions to season your Os" programs - sunset-watching, swimming, sailing, sunning and skiing in this great patch of Michigan. II INDEX Page Acknowlegements ................................................................. i Forward ................................................................................. ii Rapid Transit Michigan Style ................................................. 1 James J. Strang, King of the Beaver Island Mormons ........... 5 Stagecoach .................................................... ,........................ 10 John Askin of Mackinac !4 Mr. Hiram Rose, Father of Petoskey...................................... 18 -/Petoskey's Arlington Hotel .................................................... 23 Ectopistes Migratorius 28 Two Madames of Mackinac 32 "Please excuse Mistakes" ....................................................... 35 The Grand Hotel 38 Ephaim Shay, Self·Made Inventor Friend of Harbor Springs Kids 48 The Rescue of Horton Bay ..................................................... 51 Tom Sawyer Visits Petoskey 54 lceAIa Mode 58 When The Railroad Came To Town .............. 62 A Servant of God 68 Metropolitan Mackinac City 71 Keshkanko The Beautiful 75 The Song of Hiawatha ........................................................... 78 Flying Lady 81 Horton Bay Wedding Bells 84 Michigan's Oldest living Thing? 89 iii Voyageurs en route to Mackinac RAPID TRANSIT MICHIGAN STYLE! The only way for people to come to northern Michigan in the old days - the very old days - was by canoe. Not only were there no trains or autos to help travelers, usually curious Frenchmen or British in search of the fabled "northwest passage" to the Orient, but all were so mortally afraid of the Iroquois who lived in present western New York State and northern Ohio that they shunned the Lake Erie region like the plague. The stayed so far away from the Iroquois that Lake Erie wasn't even discovered until the other Great Lakes were familiar territory. Under the circumstances, to get to the Mackinac region and the Sault and Lake Superior country, the best way was to paddle endless miles up the conveniently situated Ottawa River for hundreds of miles, then portage south via the Mattawa and French Rivers, and follow the north shore of Lake Huron west to Mackinac, the fIrst civilized outpost. One could then keep going, up the St. Mary's River to the Sault and across Lake Superior and still farther, using the Canadian river systems. A certain group of men made their living doing that, yearafteryear, in search offurs. The fur trade was dominatedflrst by the French, then the English and later by the Americans, but all three were in on the act from the late 1600's to the early 19th century. 1 ---~.,-------~ No matter which country was at the top of the heap, the mode of travel There were 36 portages to negotiate between Montreal and Mackinac. stayed the same. The folks who did the hard work -the paddling -were the From Mackinac to Lake Winnepeg there were 36 more! voyageurs. They were almost all French-Canadian with sometimes more The nature of the job established a few basics for voyager candidates: than a splash of Indian blood. - They had to be short because leg-room was limited in a canoe. A more hairy-chested vocation could hardiy be imagined, and, as Dr_ -They had to be very strong, especially from the waist up, in order Grace Lee Nute, long afront-rank authority on the subject, put it: "It is time to endure the rigors of paddling 15 to 18 hours a day for weeks to write the history of the voyageur. His canoe has long since vanished on end. from northern waters; his red cap is seen no more, a bright spot against - They had to have a good singing voice_ the blue of Lake Superior and a thousand streams. His sprightly French Canoes carried from 6 to 14 men. They normally traveled in groups of 3 conversation punctuated with gestures, his elaborate courtesy, his to 30 canoes. incurable romanticism, his songs, his superstitions are gone... but, in certain old books and unpublished manuscripts, he still lives ... "The En route they sang in their native French of their canoes, their lives, their voyageur was a standard part of the scene at Mackinac. He contributed at loves, their church - in jingles and lofty poems, with bawdy variations. least as much to the opening of his frontier as the American cowboy. He was "in" for almost two hundred years_ His role in the fur-trading world Water distances were measured in "pipes", which varied in time and was to supply raw power for the beaver-men, theJohnJacob Astor straw­ distance according to the difficulty of the particular stretch of water they bosses and other "company" men. happened to be traveling. These were brief respites, signalled by the leader forthe express purpose ofa few minutes "time out" for resting and Once upon a time, before the voyageurs, the Indians had hand-delivered smoking a clay pipeful of tobacco. furs from the far north to Montreal and Quebec, but fear of the Iroquois slowed this activity to a crawl. When the leader called" AIIumez" (free translation: "the smoking lamp is lighted"), paddles were shipped, tired shoulders laid back on thwarts or French traders recognized the problem and decided to go into the field for baggage, "sacs a feu" opened, pipes fliled and lighted. Jokes were traded beaver, otter, mink and bear pelts. for ten minutes, or so, then back to paddling until the next pipe, perhaps an hour along the way.