USA > Michigan > A History of Northern Michigan and Its People, Volume I > Part 25
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HISTORY OF NORTHERN MICHIGAN
maining Indians occupied Mr. Wadsworth's boat. In a short time the party landed at Old Mission in safety. They arrived at Old Mission July 16, 1847.
Mr. Wadsworth remained some time at Old Mission, but being a man that had had much experience in mills he saw the immense water power that was running to waste on the east side of the bay, and bought the land where Elk Rapids now stands. About the spring of 1849 he built a small log cabin near the present site of the town hall at Elk Rapids village. This was the first building put up by the white man in Antrim county of which there is any account; at all events this was the initial movement in the direction of settlement. There, with Samuel K. Northam, his brother-in-law, assisted by some In- dians, he peeled a quantity of hemlock bark and shipped it to Racine, Wisconsin. About that time he was employed by the government in the re-survey of lands, and with the funds arising from his work and his bark, he erected a house on his lands, and late in the fall his family settled therein. Thus was the first shipment made from the pineries east of Grand Traverse bay and a commencement made in the found- ing of Elk Rapids.
In 1851 the Wadsworth family moved again to Connecticut and spent some time in that state. Later they returned and spent some three years more in Old Mission; thence they returned to Elk Rapids, and, finally, after various changes, made that place their permanent home. Mr. Wadsworth died in Traverse City in June, 1871.
In 1850 Mr. Wadsworth began to make preparations for building a sawmill. In the winter of 1850-1 James McLaughlin put up the frame of the first saw-mill on the east side of the bay. It was designed for a picket and lath-mill. In the spring of '51 Wadsworth sold out to a man by the name of Norris, but for some cause the property came back into Mr. Wadsworth's hands and in November, 1851, Mclaughlin moved his family to Elk river.
As Mr. Wadsworth had surmised, the excellent water power at Elk Rapids soon attracted other manufactories besides lumber mills-shingle and planing mills, a rolling pin factory, cement mills, etc.
Northport and Sutton's Bay, on the west shore of Grand Traverse bay, and Leland, Glen Arbor and Burdickville near Lake Michigan, further west, were all the sites of sawmills erected in the fifties. They turned out some lumber and did quite a business in supplying the early steamers with cordwood fuel, in shipping bark to southern ports and (later) in supplying the railroads of Southern Michigan with ties. These statements, in fact, apply to all the lumber camps and towns of Northern Michigan.
CHARLEVOIX COUNTY
Lumbering in Charlevoix county is a comparatively modern indus- ary. In the summer of 1879 J. C. Glenn moved his sawmill from Le- land, Leelanau county, to East Jordan, and erected it upon the shore of the lake. William P. Porter, also of Leelanau county, became a partner of Mr. Glenn under the firm name of Glenn & Porter. The
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LUMBERING
OPERATIONS
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HISTORY OF NORTHERN MICHIGAN
timber had been exhausted in the vicinity of Leland and the mill was moved to this point on account of immense quantities of hard wood timber in this vicinity.
Mr. Glenn was a native of Pennsylvania and settled at New Mission in 1855, being one of the pioneers of Leelanau county. He remained at New Mission about two years, and then engaged in farming which he carried on successfully for several years. He came to Leelanau county with only five dollars to start with, and realized enough from his farming operations to start himself in other business. He engaged in the manufacture of lumber at Leland and carried it on about ten years, until his removal to East Jordan in 1879, as already stated.
The starting of this mill was the beginning of East Jordan as a business center. Some industry was needed as a nucleus of business interests and activities. The lumbering operations of Glenn & Porter gave employment to men, made a market for logs and opened the way for other interests to follow. Mr. Glenn opened a store and carried on mercantile business for many years. At the time the mill was es- tablished at East Jordan there were only five or six families at that point. The firm built a boarding-house and docks, erected a number of store buildings and dwellings and was active in many ways in build- ing up the village.
CHEBOYGAN COUNTY
The first sawmill in Cheboygan county was built in the winter of 1846-7, by A. and R. McLeod. It had two old-fashioned upright saws set in frames and a lath mill attached to it. It cut in its best days from ten to fifteen thousand feet of lumber in twenty-four hours.
In the winter of 1848-9 Peter McKinley built the first steam saw- mill in Cheboygan county. It was situated at the mouth of the river and had two upright saws, capable of cutting from eight to twelve thousand feet of lumber in twenty-four hours. It was kept in running order for only a few years and then allowed to go into decay.
In 1865 the property was purchased by the firm of McArthur Southwick & Co. In the fall of 1866 they sold the Duncan property, including about 1,200 acres of land and some village property, to Messrs. Sanford Baker, Archibald Thompson, and Robert Patterson, who took hold of the business under the firm name of Baker, Thomp- son & Co. This was really the beginning of Duncan City as a business point. For ten years or more the property had lain idle, and the buildings were little more than wrecks. The new firm immediately put the property in condition to be operated. In 1868 Messrs. Thomp- son and Patterson sold their interests to Mears & Co. of Chicago, and the firm was changed to Baker, Mears & Co. In 1870 Thompson Smith, of Toronto, Canada, purchased the interest owned by Mears & Company, and two years later Messrs. Baker and Smith divided the property, Mr. Smith retaining the Duncan property, and Mr. Baker taking other property.
By 1883 Cheboygan had become established as one of the leading
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lumber centers of Northern Michigan, as is evidenced by the following list of establishments, with a statement of their output for that year :
Thompson Smith: Sawed lumber, 26,000,000; on dock, 10,500,000; lath, 10,000,000.
William Smith: Sawed lumber, 7,000,000; lath, 3,000,000.
W. & A. McArthur: Sawed lumber, 14,000,000; on dock, 500,000; lath, 2,000,000; pickets, 30,000.
Southern Michigan Cedar & Lumber Company: Sawed lumber, 4,000,000; on dock, 1,000,000; shingles, 8,000,000; shingles on dock, 1,000,000.
Quay & Son: Sawed shingles, 2,500,000.
J. B. McArthur : Sawed lumber, 7,500,000; on dock, 1,000,000.
Nelson & Bullen : Sawed lumber, 20,000,000; on dock, 2,000,000; lath, 2,000,000.
Young & Co .: Sawed lumber, 2,500,000; on dock, 700,000.
Mattoon, Ogden & Co .: Sawed, 3,500,000; on dock, 1,200,000.
There were also a few small mills in the county not included in this list that would slightly increase the aggregate product for the year.
FIRST MILLS IN ALPENA COUNTY
The first sawmill in Alpena county was built at Ossineke, or Devil river, by the firm of Birch & Eldridge, in 1844. Mr. Birch had pre- viously visited the mouth of Thunder Bay river in pursuit of a mill site, and decided to build one on the river at the rapids. He com- menced getting out timber for a dam, but Indians interfered and drove the party away.
On the first day of August, 1845, Isaac Wilson, a native of the State of New York and his wife, who was a native of the State of Rhode Island, with their little son, Charles Henry, then seventeen months old, accompanied by Mr. Wilson's sister, were landed by the good schooner "Baltic" at Devil river. Mr. Wilson had come to this wilderness home, on the west shore of Lake Huron, to run the recently abandoned sawmill built by Birch & Eldridge. This isolated family lived there six weeks before seeing the face of a white person, and claim to have been the first actual settlers between Lower Saginaw, now Bay City, and Thunder Bay island, which was at this time occu- pied by a few temporary fishermen from the latter place and Detroit, who usually left for their homes in the fall. During this time the mill at Ossineke was the solitary monument of permanent industry in all this wilderness.
In the fall of 1847 the old Ossineke mill property was purchased by David D. Oliver. That was a watermill, and was afterward torn down, when in 1866 a steammill was built. That mill was destroyed by fire in 1872.
The pioneer lumbermen at Alpena were Geo. N. Fletcher, James K. Lockwood, John S. Minor, Archibald & Murray, A. F. Fletcher, J. Oldfield and Hillyard Broadwell.
The first move toward lumbering was the building of a dam. This was partially done in the summer of 1858. At that time John S.
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Minor and J. Oldfield had acquired portions of Mr. Lockwood's inter- est at Alpena, and, in company with Geo. N. Fletcher, they located the dam and arranged that Mr. Fletcher should go ahead and build it. It was intended to build canals and furnish water-power for mills, but they found so much quicksand that the project had to be abandoned. The dam was not entirely finished until 1863.
The first lumbering was done in the winter of 1858-59 by Archibald & Murray. They had a contract to put in the river one million feet, more or less, of logs for Lockwood & Minor. The logs were taken from
STEAM LOG LOADER IN THE THUNDER BAY REGION
town 31 north, range 6 east, and the contract price was about two dol- lars per thousand feet. Men's wages were from fourteen dollars to sixteen dollars per month, the lumbermen agreeing to stay until the drive was done.
Mr. Samuel Boggs felled the first tree cut into saw logs; Mr. E. K. Potter scaled the first log, and also measured the first cargo of lumber that left Alpena, which was carried by the schooner "Meridan," Capt. Flood, in the latter part of the summer of 1859.
The first steps toward building a sawmill on the site of the city were taken in December, 1858, when John Cole arrived at Alpena, accompanied by a number of mechanics, for the purpose of building two sawmills, one at each side of the dam which had been commenced
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that season. One of the mills was for Lockwood & Minor and the other for George N. Fletcher. The timber was got out and framed, but neither was finished at that time. The timber for Mr. Fletcher's mill was burned up in one of the numerous fires that afflicted the place.
E. K. Potter, one of the lumbermen who was in the first Lockwood & Minor camp, thus writes of these pioneer operations in the great Alpena pineries: "In the fall of 1858 Lockwood & Minor inaugurated the first lumber operations on the Thunder Bay river. Contracts were let to Archibald and Murray, and Alvin Cole. It being something new to provide a supply of everything for six months, in a country as new and undeveloped as this was, it is not to be wondered at that the supplies run short long before spring, and by the first of February, 1859, that 'General Scarcity,' you spoke of, was here in full dress uniform. I was in the lumber camp that winter, and with sorrow be- held the last piece of pork hung up by a string, over the center of a rude table, as a reminder of happy by-gone days of peace and plenty. Mr. Whitefish stepped in and took the place of honor which had been occupied by Hog, and held the balance of power from that time until the 16th of March. Mr. J. K. Lockwood being informed of our sad state, had his good schooner, the J. S. Minor, fitted out and started for Alpena, or Fremont, as it was then called, with pork, beef, sugar, etc., and she arrived as above stated, on the 16th of March, and to all ap- pearances, it was just as cold and winter-like as at any time during the winter. We felt rejoiced to hear the news in camp, that the Minor had arrived with provisions, and we all sang Mr. Lockwood's praise, as many a poor man and his family have had occasion to do since; and I will here say to Mr. Lockwood, more than to any other man, belongs the credit of starting and keeping in motion the then small lumbering operations which gave employment to the few who were here, and thus securing the necessaries of life until better times should change the then discouraging situation of affairs, it being right after the dreadful panic of 1857, which will be remembered by all as the hardest times this country had seen for fifty years. Messrs. Lockwood & Minor built the so-called 'Island Mill,' in 1860, which was the prin- cipal means of support for this then small and poor village, for three or four years. One pair of horses did the log hauling for the mill in the summer and the lumber woods was the present site of Alpena. Down timber and burnt timber, and in fact everything that would make a piece 6x6, was hauled to the little mill, and squared, and the block ends cut off, and shipped to Cleveland, and pork, tea, sugar, etc., brought back in return; and thus, from year to year, the 'log' was kept rolling, until today we have, from this small beginning, which has been so im- perfectly described, a city of nearly, if not quite, five thousand inhab- itants, an honor to the founders, who, while striving to advance its in- terests and that of its inhabitants, in all proper ways, have not, by selfishness, grown rich in this world's goods, but they have the satis- faction of knowing that they helped their fellowman."
Mr. Fletcher and the firm of Lockwood & Minor having failed to build the two water mills referred to were anxious to have their logs manufactured into lumber, and gave sufficient inducement to Messrs.
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Obed Smith and Harman Chamberlain, of St. Clair county, to deter- mine them to erect a steam sawmill at Fremont; and in the spring of 1859 they commenced the work of building the first steam sawmill in Alpena county. They pushed forward the work with vigor, and in August or September of the same year they sawed the first boards. This was an important and an encouraging event. All before had been failure, disappointment and expense, without any adequate re- turns. Now the mill would give employment to the people, and the proceeds would furnish the means to purchase the necessaries of life. The first work done by this mill was to cut the logs belonging to the firm of Lockwood & Minor. This occupied the balance of the season of 1859, and a part of 1860. The mill was destroyed by fire on April 17, 1863, but was immediately rebuilt by George N. Fletcher, who was interested in the property.
The next mill was built by Hillyard Broadwell in the summer of 1859 about four miles up the river, where a dam was also built. It commenced running in the fall of 1859 and Mr. Broadwell operated it until 1870. In 1871 it was sold to Speechly & Lee, who run it a short time. The mill stood idle for a number of years and finally burned in 1882, and the dam was carried away soon after.
About the first sale of logs was made by Geo. N. Fletcher. They were white pine logs and were sold at three dollars and fifty cents per thousand.
As late as 1864 a few houses and sawmills constituted Alpena; it was but a small, crude lumbering camp.
Iosco COUNTY LUMBERING
The old Whittemore mill at Tawas City was the pioneer of the in- dustry in Iosco county. It was built in 1854 by Charles H. Whitte- more, who was the owner of the property until it was bought by McBain & Whitney in 1878. In the early 'eighties the product of the mill was about 7,000,000 feet of lumber a season.
In the year 1863 the firm of Smith, Van Valkenburg & Company commenced the erection of a sawmill at Sand Point, but after the tim- bers were partly prepared, decided to locate the mill at East Tawas, and early in 1864 the timbers were removed to that point. In 1869 the property passed into the possession of the Tawas Mill Company, and was popularly known as the Company mill.
The Emery mill, located at East Tawas, was built in 1867-8 by the firm of D. J. Evans & Co. They operated it about two years, and were succeeded by the firm of W. G. Grant & Son. In 1875 the firm of Grant & Son failed, and H. W. Sage & Company, Bay City, came into possession of the property under mortgage. In May, 1877, it was purchased by Temple and Hiram A. Emery, under the firm style of Emery Brothers.
Absalom and Albert S. Backus, composing the firm of Backus & Brothers, settled in Au Sable in the fall of 1865, before any dock was built on the shore thereabouts. Steamboats and sail craft landed sup- plies on the banks of Sable river, lightered by small fish-boats, Mes-
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sers Backus built their little sawmill, which had a cutting capacity of but 10,000 feet a day, and represented the pioneer of the kind between Tawas and Harrisville. It was burned in 1867, but was afterward rebuilt and greatly enlarged. This was the first sawmill to be erected at the mouth of the Au Sable.
ALCONA COUNTY
By the early fifties the reputation of the pine along the Huron shore was established at all points, and at no locality from Bay City to Alpena was such pine visible from the lake as that seen in the for- ests of Alcona county. In 1854 Messrs. Holden & Davison, two pio- neer fishermen, became partners in logging and lumbering and pur- chased the pine lands and valuable mill privilege at Harrisville; built a small water mill of one saw, and commenced the first manufacture of lumber in Alcona county. Mr. Davison continued his fishing busi- ness, intending to close it up as soon as his numerous advances had been realized, and then invest in pine lands, whose rapidly increasing value offered better inducements in his sagacious judgment, than either fishing or lumbering.
Already the land hunters were swarming on every stream and wa- ters adjacent to the lake, and the stroke of the woodman's ax was echoing along the rivers and lake. Many were the struggles to be first to locate the government and state pine lands that were in close prox- imity to the lake shore. Conspicuously successful in this important business was Edward Chappelle, a son of Francis LaChappelle, Sr., one of the pioneer coopers of the region. He had been under the teaching of D. D. Oliver, of Devil river, a noted woodman, and learned much of his woodcraft that required all the sagacity of an Indian, combined with the endurance of a white man trained to the business.
HISTORIC SUMMARY
It is a fact not generally known that as early as 1836 a sawmill was built at Van Ettan Lake, near the Au Sable, by the firm of Howard & Van Ettan. They expended quite a sum there to build a watermill, but after their dam had been carried away or undermined two or three times they were obliged to abandon the enterprise. They never sawed any lumber.
In 1844 a sawmill was built at Devil river, now Ossineke in Alpena county, by the firm of Birch & Eldridge. In 1854 Messrs. Holden & Davison built a small watermill at what is now Harrisville. The Whit- temore mill, at Tawas City, was built the same summer.
The first lumbering in Alpena county was done in the winter of 1858-9, and the first mill built in the spring and summer of 1859. From this time the lumber business continued to increase, and the hitherto unknown region of the shore began to come into notice.
For purposes of comparison the following figures are presented representing substantially the lumber business of the Huron shore re-
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gion in 1867-8 when the first reliable figures were collected, and 1882-3, which was a high-water mark.
1867-8.
Mill and location
Capital Invested
Lath
Mason, Doty & Luce., Alpena
$ 70,000
Lumber 5,200,000
2,167,000
L. M. Mason & Co., Alpena.
150,000
9,750,233
4,403,450
E. Harrington & Co., Alpena.
125,000
10,000,000
2,000,000
B. H. Campbell & Co., Alpena
. 87,000
5,795,539
1,518,850
J. Oldfield & Co., Alpena.
150,000
6,500,000
3,000,000
H. Broadwell & Co., Alpena
8,000
1,500,000
John Trowbridge & Co.,
Trowbridge Point.
15,000
1,000,000
John Trowbridge & Co., Corlies
60,000
3,000,000
1,500,000
Loud, Priest & Gay, Au Sable.
300,000
12,700,000
3,294,000
Backus & Bro. Au Sable
75,000
1,200,000
A. Burrows, Au Sable
8,000
800,000
C. H. Whittemore, Tawas City
45,000
3,800,000
Smith, Van Valkenburg & Co.,
East Tawas
50,000
7,100,000
1,500,000
Adams, Swanky & Co., East Tawas ..
50,000
2,800,000
700,000
Weston, Colwell & Co., Harrisville
60,000
6,850,000
2,000,000
D. D. Oliver, Devil River
36,000
2,497,606
504,867
Other mills, Devil River
84,000
5,000,000
1,000,000
Number of mills
19
Amount of capital invested
$1,380,000
Lumber cut in 1867
85,335,872
Lumber on the dock unsold
8,979,772
Number of men employed
772
The following is the number of feet of logs run out of the Au Sable river from 1867 to 1882:
1867
48,800,000
1868
34,102,341
1869
44,500,000
1870
60,000,000
1871
52,000,000
1872
105,000,000
1873
96,148,000
1874
52,000,000
1875
55,000,000
1876
47,150,000
1877
68,800,000
1878
62,000,000
1879
113,000,000
1880
138,500,000
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1881
160,232,347
1882
200,000,000
Total 1,337,232,688
THE AU SABLE OF TODAY
The following table gives the total cut of logs on all streams trib- utary to Au Sable and Oscoda during the season of 1882-3:
PINE RIVER
Pack, Woods & Co.
25,000,000
D. A. McDonald 2,500,000
O. S. & L. Co. 21,000,000
B. Killmaster & Co.
3,000,000
J. H. Killmaster 2,000,000
Joseph Dudgeon 3,500,000
Roberts & Cowley 500,000
Mckay Bros. 500,000
58,000,000
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D. A. McDonald
7,000,000
O. S. & L. Co.
5,000,000
Moore, Whipple & Co.
5,000,000
Cristy Bros.
8,000,000
Moore & Tanner
4,000,000
Penoyar Bros.
2,000,000
Platt & Millen
1,500,000
Dease & Hayes
3,000,000
T. F. Thompson
3,000,000
I. P. Pulcifer
2,000,000
Jones & Porter
3,000,000
Kinney & Beard
1,000,000
Gardner Bros.
1,500,000
Joseph Dudgeon
1,000,000
Thickstan & Manwarring
2,000,000
W. H. Clough
500,000
49,500,000
SOUTH BRANCH
Moore, Whipple & Co.
2,000,000
Emery Bros.
6,000,000
Wm. Jenkinson
3,000,000
11,000,000
UPPER SOUTH BRANCH
Pack, Woods & Co.
2,000,000
J. E. Potts
1,500,000
Moore, Whipple & Co.
8,000,000
O. S. & L. Co.
4,000,000
The B. L. Anderson Co.
3,000,000
Wonderly, Rimington & Co.
4,000,000
Martin Bresnaham
2,000,000
24,500,000
NORTH BRANCH
Pack, Woods & Co.
15,000,000
J. E. Potts
17,000,000
Gratwick, Smith & Fryer Lumber Co.
25,000,000
Cheesebrough & Charleton
7,000,000
S. O. Fisher
8,000,000
Stephen Moore
1,500,000
Penoyar Bros.
1,500,000
Platt & Millen
3,000,000
78,000,000
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PERRY CREEK
J. E. Potts 5,000,000
Grand total 226,000,000
MELTING OF THE PINE FORESTS
The early logging railroads and the extension of regular lines into the interior of Northern Michigan have so decimated the pine forests which lie far from the lake counties that lumbering in soft woods is a dying and, in most sections, a dead industry. Lumbering in this age and day is an entirely different proposition from the operations of forty or even thirty years ago. Most of the pine is gone and it is the hardwood that is now being largely lumbered. As has been well stated, "the lumbering industry while tending toward the vanishing point is still flourishing." It may be added that its hopes are now largely centered in the development of the hardwood products used in the manufacture of furniture and all cabinet work, flooring and much in- terior woodwork, and a variety of other articles.
Wexford county is a fair illustration of this transformation. In 1872 Cadillac was a crude railroad station on the G. R. & I. line stand- ing in the midst of a dense pine forest extending from a mile in one direction to three or four in others. George A. Mitchell commenced lumbering in the summer of that year, and twenty years afterward Cadillac was a flourishing city of over 4,500 people, but with the pine woods nearly gone in the vicinity of the place. The nearest solid body was about five miles away toward the southeast, and for some years her large mills had been supplied from timber brought from ten to fifty miles away. As announced by a local print of Cadillac in the early nineties: "Within the last year one of the largest mills in North- ern Michigan has been built here exclusively for the manufacture of timber which grows at a distance of from forty to sixty miles. What the pine forests have done the others will do. The pines have led the way and the hardwoods are already following."
And still later, 1903: "The year 1872 witnessed the inauguration of the stupendous lumbering operations which have at last swept away nearly the last vestige of the large tracts of pine timber which the county then possessed. In addition to the heavy operations along the Manistee river the new village of Clam Lake (Cadillac) was a genuine lumbering town. As early as June, 1872, there had been two sawmills (each with a capacity of twenty-five thousand feet per day) put in operation, and a few months later two others were started, with a capacity of forty and sixty thousand feet per day, respectively. These four mills manufactured about four million feet of lumber per month, or nearly fifty million per year. If one stops a moment to contemplate the work of these mills and those built soon afterward at Haring, Long Lake, Bond's Mills, McCoy's Siding and on the shores of Clam lake, and their constant operation for ten, fifteen and twenty years each, Vol. 1-14.
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