Extraordinary Photo Captures Northern Michigan Prize Log

This photo is extraordinary for several reasons; it’s size, that it captured the log marks so clearly and the photographers who took the photo.

The cattle brand of the lumbering business, log marks were important outposts of law and order in pioneering communities where law enforcement was often weak. A mark on a log carried the right of ownership and was recognized on every lake and stream in Northern Michigan.

The owner of the log is Patrick Glynn, an immigrant from Ireland who started his career as a land looker and then went into lumbering by buying 4,000 acres in Midland and Gladwin Counites with several Saginaw businessmen in 1871.

Glynn’s camp was located four miles east of Coleman which was on the Flint and Pere Marquette rail line. The camp was located at the junction of MacGruder and Shaffer Roads.

William Goodridge, photographer, visited the camps in the winter of 184-75 and took a set of 12 stereo views of the operation. Goodridge and his brothers operated Goodridge Brothers Studio out of East Saginaw. The family is known as one of the most prolific African American photographers in North America. Their work was highlighted by John Vincent Jezierski in 2000 with a book called Enterprising Images: The Goodridge Brothers, African American Photographers, 1847-1922.

Several other photographers created stereo view sets of logging in Michigan, including a Goodridge competitor J.A. Jenney. While Jenney or Goodridge didn’t create any stereo view sets in Clare County, the men and the logging processes highlighted in the photos were on their way to Clare County in a few short years.