Contributors include Clare County Historical Society Members Andrew Coulson, Jon Ringelberg, and Angela Kellogg-Henry

A few weeks ago, the Clare County Historical Society was contacted by a property owner on the southeast side of Big Norway Lake in Redding township.  A 14-foot hemlock log had recently surfaced, and the water’s edge owner was able to get it ashore.  CCHS members were able to identify it as having an ownership affiliation with none other than W. S. Gerrish.  The log mark, seen below with the “cut” log image, was registered by Gerrish in Clare County in 1881, and an assignment gave Carlton J. Hamilton of Muskegon gave permission to orchestrate the movement of the log from Clare County to the Muskegon sawmills.  The law firm of Norris & Uhle of Grand Rapids, in managing the estate of George B. Warren, built the Gerrish owned narrow gauge logging railroad that ran from the west side of Big Norway to the Muskegon River, a distance of about 2 ½ miles.  It was common practice to stage logs awaiting to be loaded on train cars in lakes.  This would protect the logs from fire and insect damage until they could be shipped.  Of course, a certain number of these logs would become waterlogged and sink before they could be sawn or shipped.  Practically every large lake in the county was used for this purpose and it is believed that many of the lakes still have these “dead heads” at the lake bottoms.

Winfield Scott Gerrish was widely credited for building the first narrow gauge railroad in Michigan from Lake George to the Muskegon River in 1877. While not the first in Michigan, it was the first in Clare County and revolutionized the logging industry in Northern Michigan.   The Gerrish railroad in total was a 7-mile narrow gauge railroad that used the traditional method of banking the logs at the Muskegon River waiting for the spring log drives to send logs to …   More

A photo of horse racing at the Clare County Fair in 1908. In 1908 it was held September 23-25. Typically, county fairs were held just after the farm harvest. The September 25, 1908, issue of the Clare Sentinel reported, “The Clare county fair, held at Harrison is a success. The line of exhibits is most commendable. The horse races yesterday were watched with much interest and the ball game afforded much amusement for the fans. A good crowd was present yesterday Clare and Farwell being well represented. Farwell band furnished music. Credit is due to the present officers J.R. Brown, W.H. Browne, and L.W. Sunday.”

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An ad for Ulch’s Motel in the July 4, 1958 publication of the Cleaver.

Harrison lost a mid-19th century era motel over the Fourth of July weekend with the fire that occurred at the Wagon Wheel Motel. It was originally Ulch’s Motel built and run by Ronald “Jack” and Leah Ulch in the mid-1950s. It was operated by several others over the years under the Ulch’s Motel name. It originally had 8 units and later expanded to 11 units. It touted a TV bar and coffee lounge shown in the inset photo of the postcard.

An aerial view of Ulch’s Motel. It was renamed the Wagon Wheel Motel in the 1970s.   More

Thank you to Rita Lipka Vance for sharing this photo of her mother, Joy Saul Fuller atop of the infamous rabbit owned by John E. “Spikehorn” Meyers and part of his Wildlife Tourist Park. Joy spent summers in Clare County in Lake George in the Silver Lake area. Once she graduated from high school, she moved to Clare County and never left.

The rabbit is still a tourist attraction and resides along with a lot of other Spikehorn history and memorabilia at the Clare County Historical Museum. Visit the museum on Saturdays from 1-4 p.m. May through September at the museum park at the corner of Eberhart and Dover Roads.   More

Happy Mother’s Day from 1915! This unsent real photo postcard of the interior of the Congregational Church in Clare in 1915 is ready to honor mothers. The church was the second building of the Congregational Church denomination in Clare and was built in 1909. The church building became a Michigan and National Historic Site in 1994.   More

By JULIE BERRY TRAYNOR

Cleaver Guest Writer

I need to fall back into my old columnist mode this week and remember some things about my old friend and proud Harrison native Patricia Ryan, who left us March 29 in Traverse City. 

Patty Ryan was the daughter of Stan and Eunice Ryan. She was an HHS grad with the class of 1968, and the older sister of the late and well-remembered Dan Ryan, a lifelong Harrison resident.  Pat was a member of the first class attending the newly minted Mid Michigan Community College in the lower level of the Clare County Building, and that is where we met on day one of Mid.

As at all colleges, the fall class was for the most part a great gathering of recent high school seniors. We came from towns all around to attend this brand new college as freshmen all over again. We came for various different reasons and goals. For some it was an opportunity never thought available. Many students saw MMCC as the best way to get an early college education at a reasonable cost, which has always been one goal of such institutions, affordable education for all no matter your choice. And that it was and remains.

Our gathering of far-flung folks became friends or at least nodding acquaintances. In fact, for the most part, everyone likely knew everyone that first year. We got to know each other in class, at the student lounge over cards, or from the Golden Horseshoe Restaurant, a favorite hangout. It was really a small crowd. If one was fortunate, a lifelong friend or two came your way via Mid. Pat Ryan was one of mine. Everyone knew the very outgoing Pat Ryan, and she knew everyone. She was a Harrison local and a real presence at Mid. As a student worker in the young library, she was a very willing aide, searching above and beyond for student requests. She had the knack of giving clear and correct directions to anywhere and was always ready to pitch in and lend a hand to folks in need, never certain where it would take her. She never …   More

Clare Sentinel - April 23, 1909

FARWELL MILL DAM OUT

Swept Away Three Bridges, Fishing in Pond Was Good

NEW CEMENT DAM WILL BE BUILT

Clare Power Co, Had Dewey Lake Low Ready for Arrival of Flood. The week end spring freshet accumulated so much water in the Farwell mill pond that at 5:30 Monday morning the dam went out sweeping away the bridge at the mill, one mile south of the village and another near Hinkleville, putting the mill out of commission and rolling up a $3,000 loss for the mill firm, Fuller & Harris, who at once announce they will rebuild.

Word was phoned to Senator Doherty as soon as the break occurred to be ready at the dam at Dewey lake for the flood. But owing to accumulation of logs and debris at various points the flood was so retarded that the worst of it did not reach the lake till 11:30 a.m. By that time Dewey lake had been lowered seven inches and the big flow only raised it four inches so that there was no danger to the power dam there at. any time. But in anticipation of a rapid raise of water men were ready to cut out a chunk of the dam at the south end where the water is shallow if the necessity arose.

At the Farwell mill the dam was swept away some 40 feet wide and it was a picturesque sight to watch the big wave sweeping onward piling up behind logs and debris at various bridges. At some points teams were used to pull out logs to let the water down otherwise more bridges would have been swept away. The Tobacco river bridge just north of Clare stood the big wave well. The flood left trace of its course along the banks of the Tobacco river with debris left high and dry and here and there fishing was good on the banks that in a few hours left the stray members of the finny tribe high and dry. At the pond at Farwell all sorts of fish were readily caught and a crowd of fishers were out in search of the.abundant supply.

 The dam’s break is a bad misfortune to the mill proprietors. They however, are …   More

For a few years Dan Moreau of Harrison had been stopping by the Cleaver looking for an old clip of a letter to the editor. Dan and his friends Dan Pursell and Brian Kulp had been fooling around as teenagers do on the football field with golf clubs while drive-in church services were being held. He remembered a little Letter to the Editor in the Cleaver claiming the boys wouldn’t amount to much.

I had looked for the clipping to no avail in the Cleaver archives. Moreau decided to flip pages himself on Monday, Feb. 10 to refresh his memory of what the letter actually said and redeem him and his friends. Moreau owns his own business Kustom Metalworks and works at CTE, Brian Kulp owns several businesses in Idaho and Dan Pursell, now deceased worked in finance. All grew up to be fine citizens. Moreau found the clip on the front page of the August 13, 1970, issue and had a great chuckle.

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By JULIE BERRY TRAYNOR

Cleaver Guest Writer

News of the fires raging in California is foremost in the minds of many these days. What we see on our screens is so much worse than we can imagine. Many of us cannot imagine the scope of the inferno. There is fire experience and stories of loss in all communities and in most families. We all know fire stories, be it witnessing a building burn or the personal loss of a home. My grandparents’ house burned from a chimney fire in 1933. For my dad and his siblings, as long as they lived, time was divided between before and after the house burned. 

Clare County is no stranger to fire. During the course of Michigan’s history forest fires raged periodically, consuming thousands of acres. Logging operations could be both responsible for, and the victims of, fires. The coming of the railroads also increased wildfires. Countless homes and businesses were lost because of wood stove or chimney fires, and many schoolhouses went up in smoke. Winterfield’s first Grandon School, a wooden structure, was lost in 1912. The school was replaced in 1914 with a cobblestone structure which stands today. 

Temple lost its first train depot in a fire caused by a Pere Marquette steam engine. Temple also suffered the loss of two school buildings, a township hall and several businesses in her history. Last year saw three structure fires, one with loss of life. 

In August 1921 wildfires were consuming many acres across northern Clare, eastern Missaukee, and Roscommon counties. In that hot and dry season sparks flew and ignited more fires far ahead of the flames. The Winterfield Township Hall, located at the corner of Cook and Haskell Lake roads, in the center of the township, was set ablaze by flying embers as the fire neared the Clam River. 

Miles s Davis was the Supervisor at that time and lived across the road from the hall. Due to some recent issues and security concerns, not to mention the …   More

Harrison Storm and Leota Cyclone and Fire- 1909, 1912 or ?

By ANGELA KELLOGG-HENRY

Cleaver Managing Editor

When I mentioned not a lot of photos of the Leota area exist to Julie Berry Traynor she sent me two photos of an interesting weather event in Leota. The cards were sent between Julie’s grandmother’s sisters. Their parents were at Leota at Dunham’s Mill at the time. Surely such a catastrophic event was mentioned in the newspapers.

Since we don’t have an archive of the Cleaver before 1930, I searched in the Clare papers for news articles and found none. I put this research to the side until last week when I found a clipped-out article from the Cleaver in a scan of a scrapbook shared with by a local family. Julie’s family postcards put this event in 1909, a reliable date as they were mailed but the news clipping has a handwritten date of 1912.

The Clare Sentinel reported a cyclone in Gladwin County in July of 1912. No mention of any such cyclone/fire in Harrison or Leota in the Clare Sentinel or any other paper of the time. It’s hard to know whether the event in the postcards is the same event in this clipping that may be from 1912.

The clippings marked 1912 read in part:

About half past five Sunday afternoon a storm broke over the city of Harrison which surpassed in violence anything within the memory of any of the present inhabitants. The storm was first seen in the northwest as a dark thundercloud and approached at a great speed, catching nearly everyone unprepared, so sudden and unexpected was its arrival. A short period of rainfall, during which the downpour was so dense that it was impossible to see buildings across the street, was followed by a violent wind and a terrific bombardment of hail, the whole being accompanied by lightning. This lasted about ten minutes and then the storm was gone as quickly as it had come.

LEFT DESTRUCTION -IN IT’S WAKE

An immense around of damage was done by …   More

EARLY CLARE COUNTY LEGAL CASES

HERSEY  v  HERSEY

SEPTEMBER 5, 1906 – IT’S ALL ABOUT MONEY AND CHICKENS, BAWK, BAWK, BAWK

George H. Hersey, age 52, filed a Complaint for Divorce on September 5, 1906, against his wife, Mary A. Hersey, age 49, alleging desertion as the ground for divorce.  He stated a marriage in Mt. Pleasant on December 20, 1903, and that on September 3, 1904, defendant Mary “willfully deserted and absented herself  . . . without reasonable cause for the space of two years and upwards”.  The Chancery Subpoena was served on defendant Mary in the City of Clare on October 6, 1906, by Under Sheriff C.B. Lloyd.  The usual default papers were filed.

Testimony to support one of the 8 statutorily permitted grounds of divorce was obtained on December 11th by Judge Peter F. Dodds.   Plaintiff George testified to re-marrying and living with defendant Mary for 8 months before she left.  Also, that he was previously married to her when he was 19 and she 17 and then divorcing about 4 years previous, re-married as to the present matter, and seeking to be “redivorced”.  He stated that he really didn’t know why she left except for the fact that “she insisted upon buying more land and raise more chickens.  I told her though we had a plenty; . . . we had 150 then, -- all she could take care of.”  And, “all she thinks of is money, money.”

Plaintiff George indicated a 15-month space of time between their marriages and that on re-marrying they had entered into a contract with each to keep their own land – defendant Mary with 64 acres of 160 acres.  On re-marrying they purchased a house and lot in the City of Clare, he owning 2/3rds and she 1/3rd with a plan to both furnishing the house.   According to plaintiff George, defendant Mary did not totally unpack her belongings and “seemed to be …   More

By JULIE BERRY TRAYNOR

Cleaver Guest Writer

    A big part of Christmas is memories; both making new ones and recalling old ones. For many those warm thoughts are triggered when they trim the tree or pull-out Christmas treasures or photos from days and people gone-by. For me, it can be both, and often the memories are unexpected.

This year I gave some much-needed attention to a strap of old sleigh bells. They belonged to my great-grandparents Ward, who farmed 120 acres in Isabella County’s Deerfield Twp., before the turn of the 19th century. My grandpa and his four brothers had a deep attachment to those bells and ownership was passed along to each, in turn. I suspect this was largely because of the wonderful memories they brought each of them and collectively. The bells, strapped around a favorite horse, brought their youth again and the days when behind a horse was the only way to travel for work or pleasure.

The memory these bells hold for me is the look on my grand Uncle Charlie’s wrinkled face when he passed the bells to me on a hot August day in the 1980s. I could see the childhood glee in his eyes as he recounted the wonderful sound of the bells on a crisp winter day. That sound meant Christmas to him.

Along with the Ward sleigh bells were four other sleigh bells, with a different story to tell and acquired in an unusual way. These sleigh bells also carry special memories, these days just for me. My dad literally dug them up near the site of the long defunct Redding Township settlement of Pennock, sometime in the early 1960s. I will explain.

We spent a lot of time traveling the two-track roads of northwestern Clare County when I was a kid. Sometimes we indulged in our favorite pass-time of “dump digging”, which is not quite what the name implies. I still define it technically as the act of seeking, locating and digging through the remnants of long forgotten farm dumps, outhouse sites, roadside …   More

By ANGELA KELLOGG-HENRY

Cleaver Managing Editor

If you research Clare County history a lot, you’ll realize items from Lake are hard to come by. It has always been a small community, and photos, ephemera, and other historical items don’t pop up every day. It can even be difficult to research. If you search “Lake, Michigan” on search engines, auction sites, and antique sites you can imagine what you get; a lot of results that are not from Lake, Clare County, Michigan.

Recently, two postcards popped up on an auction site bearing the postmark of Lake, Michigan. Both were real photo postcards, which means it is probably the only one, and generally not mass produced. It was labeled Lake, Michigan Town Hall and had a Lake postmark. The building didn’t fit with anything I knew to exist in Lake, so it was puzzling. My friend Andy Coulson suggested it could be Brinton. A quick look through the Brinton Centennial guide in the Harrison District Library found the exact photo and it was sure enough it was Brinton. Brinton is just to the south of Lake in Isabella County. Brinton had their own post office from 1888 to 1906 so it makes sense for mail from Brinton to postmarked at Lake after 1906.

When I actually inspected the postcard. In the body of the message at the top it said Brinton and was dated Nov. 19, 1911, but postmarked in Lake, Nov. 21, 1911.

The message reads, “I will you this card to let you know that I have not forgotten you. This is our hall. This ___ of this building is directly across the street. This is where I am every Saturday night. The man that stands with his hand on the pole is the shopkeeper in the lower hall Berk Clark. The women are Rebeckahs just out of lodge. When you come up I will show you all about it. So goodnight. From your ever true friend. J.A. F.”

 This all made sense until the second card popped up and was a store front again with a postmark of Lake. They were written …   More

By Julie Berry Traynor

Cleaver Guest Writer

Everyone who is old enough to remember what happened felt the shockwave across America, recall exactly where they were when they heard about the assassination of the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. These days, 61 years later, a good share of us who carry that vivid memory were in a school somewhere in America, large or small, north, south, east, west, black or white.

Friday, November 22, 1963, dawned clear and cold in these parts. Enough snow had fallen earlier in the month to please the deer hunter invasion on the 15th. Almost everyone had deer season ‘company’ and a buck or two hanging from an apple tree or in the barn. It was business as usual in Winterfield, late in the year.

At the Grandon School, deer season excitement and general restlessness for the much-anticipated short school week was running high. Thanksgiving was just six days away. The break would begin on Wednesday at noon. Thanksgiving Day fell on November 28, just as it did this year.

Our bus, piloted by Melvin Berkompas, delivered us, as usual. We settled into our daily routine at Winterfield’s two-room, eighth-grade Grandon School by 9 a,m. The twenty or so students composing the higher grades of 5th through 8th worked through the last hours of education before the weekend. All went as usual and uneventfully, including lunch and the noon recess. By1pm we were into the afternoon class routine. Restlessness aside, the week would soon be done.

About 1:45pm the classroom was jarred by a rare occurrence. We all stared at the phone for a long moment, including Bob Dunn, our teacher. If there was any place where a phone could ring and startle everyone, it was in our classroom. Calls to our school were never a wrong number. The ring of the phone meant important news for someone, or all of us.  

Bob Dunn (this is what we called him), the newly minted teacher of the upper grades, rose from his …   More

By Julie Berry Traynor

Cleaver Guest Writer

               The truth told, I don’t know if there is a legend of any kind attached to the person Norman Sanders or not, but there just might be. I can tell you that his name and his work came into our household in the 1980s and have never left. Okay, but how does this name figure into Clare County history, you ask? I’m not sure if it does, but I am sure that someone out there has the answer to the question we’ve been asked more than once, “Who is Norman Sanders?” 

               Let me explain, and of course, it’s a bit of a story. 

               I’ve known Lake George my whole life and it’s given me great friends, an entire family, and memories. When I was a kid Shingle Lake was the first place my dad ever took me fishing. I was five. We had hamburgers at the Swiss Inn, dad let me try to row the boat, and I didn’t land a fish. I got a doozie of a sunburn and had a great and memorable time with my dad. Nearly twenty years later I met my husband in Lake George, and some years after that, I met Norman Sanders on Arbor Drive.    

               In the mid 1980’s my sis-in-law and I made a great sport of going to all the yard sales we could find at Lake George. Treasures abounded. It was on one busy July 4th weekend of yard sale going, that I met Norman Sanders. He was sitting on a table in a shady yard, surrounded by the usual sale fodder.  He was patiently waiting for someone to come along and see what a great piece of woodcraft he was/is. 

               Norman …   More

By JULIE BERRY TRAYNOR

The neighborhood country school was a mainstay of public education and social interaction for generations of children everywhere. For many of our not-so-distant ancestors, learning the fundamentals of reading, writing and arithmetic at the neighborhood country school was the sum and total of education. In the middle of the last century, Clare County counted 85 rural, one- and two-room school districts operating within the county.

Just a few years later, when the 1961-62 school term began, only Winterfield Township’s Grandon School, the Temple School in Redding, and the Dover School in Grant Township remained. At that time, Grandon was the largest of these remaining districts. 

Grandon was a two-room, eight-grade school with an enrollment of 52 children, located on the corner of Partridge Avenue and Forest Road in southern Winterfield. The first Grandon, or the Fleming School, was built here in 1899; destroyed by fire in 1912, and a new cobblestone structure replaced it that same year. 

At the start of 1950, the Winterfield School District No. 1, serving children from the northern and central parts of the township, burned in January. It was decided that the township would purchase a bus, employ a driver and send all K-8 students to the Grandon School. A second classroom and additional bathrooms were added for the booming elementary grades. The original, or upper school, served fifth through eighth grades. High school students were transferred to a Marion bus at the county line. 

The Grandon School enjoyed a standard not afforded to many rural schools. Thanks in large part to tax dollars brought to the district by Clare County’s oil and gas boom, the basement was remodeled to accommodate a kitchen and cafeteria, and a cook was employed to cook hot meals five days a week. The school library was enlarged, and textbooks upgraded. At Grandon, students did not pay for lunches. The school district paid for …   More

By ANGELA KELLOGG-HENRY

Cleaver Managing Editor

On a recent visit to the Rustic Owl shop in Harrison the owner Malissa Dinnan shared with me a beautiful ‘junque journal’ that our mutual friend Lisa made for her. Lisa owns Lismore Paper and has done line drawing art and other projects for the Cleaver in the past as well as is one of our print customers. The journal is a shabby chic styled journal with envelopes for tucking in other papers or letters and unique pieces of paper old and new to create writing pages. Of course, it has an owl on the cover!

I had never heard of a junque journal by name, but I instantly recognized it as familiar. A junk or junque journal is a book of recycled or found materials or old papers used to write, draw, paint, or whatever the owner would enjoy. It’s often used for journals or an idea book.

The concept was familiar to me because my friend and co-author Cody Beemer had shared such a book from the 1920s and 1930s with me several years ago. Beemer’s great aunt Marie Beemer Bailey had a used a large 16x11, leather bound journal from the Wilson Bros store in Harrison and retrofitted it as a diary and scrapbook. Beemer and I lamented at first that the ledger which dates to the late 1880s in Harrison was partially covered in girlhood poems, diary entries, photos and other entries which covered names and business information from that era. For history lessons, Marie’s musing and memories proved just as interesting or more as an old store ledger.

I’ve written other articles about Marie Beemer Bailey in the past as she is a compelling and interesting citizen of Harrison’s past.

The ledger originally kept track of sales and payments for the Wilson Bros store and includes entries for many businesses, citizens, the village of Harrison and even the infamous James Carr, all customers of the store in 1887. The Wilson family founded most of Harrison with their sawmill, ice works, …   More

View of Harrison businesses and homes in 1991 from the Centennial collection at the Harrison District Library. While the talk of the town this year has been the gray and black colors on newly remodeled and constructed buildings, in 1991 Harrison was in its “brown era.” It makes one wonder in another 30 years what color will be trending!   More

By ANGELA KELLOGG-HENRY

Cleaver Managing Editor

This photo hangs in the Harrison District Library, formerly the Surrey House Bar and Restaurant. We get a lot of questions about just who Mother White is. I usually edit photos that have writing in them, but I didn’t frame this particular photo and I’m glad the original writing is still on it. The woman in the shown in this photo of Second Street was Mary Etta Reese (1876-1955). It was taken in the mid-1920s.

Mary was born in 1876 in Ohio. She married Samuel Trowbridge in 1894 in Eaton County, Michigan. They had a son, Ira J. Trowbridge in 1895 and Samuel passed away in 1896. Later she married Richard White, and they had one daughter Gladys and a son Howard.

The April 30, 1943, issue of the Clare Sentinel reported this item under their Harrison News column. “Mrs. Ira Trowbridge and son, Wayne, and Mother White were Midland and Bay City callers Thursday of last week.”

At the time this photo was taken she was in the restaurant business and ran the Sanitary Café on Second Street. She passed away in 1955 at age 78. She is laid to rest in Maple Grove Cemetery in Harrison along with her husband Richard. In 1955 the Cleaver published her obituary and in part it reads, “She was a devoted wife and other and her cherry disposition endeared her to all. The many beautiful floral pieces silently bespoke the esteem in which she was held.”

The family moved to Harrison in 1912. Ira J. Trowbridge (1895-1956) graduated from Harrison in 1915. He later became mayor and was a respected citizen. He married Marion McNaughton of Carson City, Michigan and they had three children: Wayne, Doris and Donna Faye. He worked and in lived in Midland for a time before moving back to Harrison.

Many locals may remember Wayne Trowbridge and his wife Beverly (Merrill) Trowbridge. Wayne and Beverly both graduated from Harrison Schools in 1946. They worked in local banking and were prominent …   More

A photo from the May 29, 1958, edition of the Clare County Cleaver announcing new vehicles in use for the Clare County Road Commission. The article reads in part, “Along with the above shipment of highway trucks of a heavy nature were several pick up trucks used extensively by the employees of the road commission. Every county road truck was received by the county with a state highway insignia and the Clare County Commission marking painted in black and silver. It's a good way to announce to visitors in the area that they are observing one of the best road commissions in the state, you can bet your life on that.”   More