USA > Michigan > A History of Northern Michigan and Its People, Volume I > Part 32
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28,675
88,625
11,675
100,300
St. James
6,957
78,140
39,400
117,540
South Arm
21,000
780,725
249,075
1,029,800
Wilson
21,572
197,080
7,925
205,005
City of Boyne City
1,117,148
614,978
1,732,126
City of Charlevoix
1,327,375
326,420
1,653,795
. .
Total
248,111 $5,790,883 $1,560,368
$7,351,256
The grand total, as finally equalized, was $7,192,211.
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HISTORY OF NORTHERN MICHIGAN
Viewed from the standpoint of population, Charlevoix county shows a continuous advance. The details are furnished by the census of 1910, as follows :
1910
1900
1890
Bay township
466
503
469
Boyne city
5,218
912
450
Ward 1
819
Ward 2
1,177
Ward 3
1,828
Ward 4
1,394
Boyne valley township, including Boyne Falls village
952
1,258
509
Boyne Falls village
325
431
Chandler township
397
273
144
Charlevoix city
2,420
2,079
1,496
Ward 1
447
Ward 2
1,045
..
Ward 3
898
Charlevoix township
207
178
22
Evangeline township
228
342
269
Eveline township
768
847
923
Hayes township
854
780
692
Hudson township
673
255
118
Marion township
636
681
441
Melrose township
676
620
436
Norwood township
366
652
484
Peaine township
370
372
St. James township
695
420
. .
South Arm township, including East Jordan village
3,426
2,839
2,103
East Jordan
2,516
1,205
731
Wilson township
806
945
576
Total
19,157
13,956
9,686
.
THE PINE LAKE REGION
The most marked physical feature of Charlevoix county is Pine lake and the adjacent country. It is also the birthplace of its history and the scene of the most interesting and exciting events of its early life. To add to its importance, locally, and to its wider fame it has been cele- brated by many pens, both in prose and poetry, as one of the loveliest of the many beautiful regions of mingled water and land which adorn Northern Michigan.
At the center of the promontory between Grand and Little Trav- erse bays a small river used to wend its serpentine course into Lake Michigan. It was named See-pe-wa, or Green river. This stream was only about a quarter of a mile in length and came out of a small round lake, which was connected by a river about sixty rods in length with
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Long lake. Various names have been applied to these lakes and streams, such as Green lake, Mormon lake and finally Pine lake and Pine river and Pine lake region. The river has been made navigable for the largest vessels and Round and Pine lakes connected by an artificial channel.
Round lake is a park-like body of water, covering an area of about thirty acres, upon the shores of which is situated the beautiful little city of Charlevoix, although its business and civic centers are on the river about three-quarters of a mile away.
Pine lake stretches east and south some twenty miles. About five miles east it divides, South Arm extending, as its name implies, south to the distance of some five miles. Into the finger end of the south arm flows the Jordan river, the famous trout stream. East Jordan lies across the finger northeast of the river's mouth. The shores of Pine lake are bold and its waters deep; it embosoms some beautiful islands, is indented by numerous promontories separated by deep bays and harbors, and presents some really beautiful scenery.
In 1865, long before any one ever thought of locating a summer resort in this locality, Professor Winchell, then state geologist, in one of his published reports said: "From the foot of Pine lake a scene of surpassing loveliness presents itself. We land perhaps upon the wharf at the mouth of Pine river. Before us is a sandy slope, on the left of which we discover the usual features of a new settlement. Be- yond is the forest. It is a pleasant October morning, however, and we follow the well-beaten road through the fresh clearings which stretch out for about a mile inland. We emerge from a screen of forest trees and find ourselves standing upon an elevated bluff overlooking as lovely a sheet of water as the sun ever shone upon. You feel almost a transport of delight in emerging so suddenly from the depths of the habitual forest into a prospect so vast, so gentle in its features, so deli- cate in its tints, and so glowing in the sunshine of a fair October morn- ing. Far away to the southeast for fifteen miles stretches the placid, smiling surface of the water, its white and pebbly shore chasing the contour of the hills in all its meandering sinuosities. The verdant ridges rise on every side from the shining shore line and hold the lake in their enchanted embrace, while rounded hill tops bubble up in rapid succession across the retiring landscape, till hill, vale, and sky, green, purple and blue, dissolve together in the blended hues of the distant horizon." When Professor Winchell wrote these words Charle- voix consisted of little more than a dock, a rude store and a boarding house.
The name, the Boyne, was given by "Uncle" John Miller, a good Irishman and the first settler near its mouth, to the stream that empties into the head of Pine lake at the present village of Boyne. Next to the Jordan it is the most noted trout stream in this part of the state. It also affords a great variety of picturesque scenery.
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ENTERING THE PINE LAKE REGION
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HISTORY OF NORTHERN MICHIGAN
"THE WAKING OF THE NORTHLAND"
This beautiful "northland" has been celebrated in verse by not a few poets but by none more strikingly than by Rev. W. W. Lamport, whose contribution, several years ago, to the columns of the Charlevoix County Herald is herewith republished :
The slowly northing sun again Calls softly to the slumbering hills. The arbutus, waking in the glen, For joy her cup of fragrance spills.
The wanton wind a-wand'ring goes Along the valley's rugged side, If he may find the sweet wild-rose And woo her for his blushing bride.
From out its Antrim cradle springs The Jordan for its lakeward run, And to the bending willow sings Of summer's joyous reign begun.
Adown the swiftly flowing stream Dances again the light canoe ; And in the sunshine's golden gleam The troutman whips the tide anew.
From yonder deadened hemlock tree The sable crow sounds his alarm ; And on her snowy pinions free Slowly the gull wheels o'er the Arm.
And sweetly trills the warbler's note; The robin sings his cheer-up song ; While bursts from many a swelling throat The chorus of the feathered throng.
Hail, happy harbingers of spring ! Soft winds and flowers and warming streams. All hail ye joyous birds that sing, Responsive to the sun's bright beams.
Ye tell us of the nearing day. That happy day so soon at hand, When friends shall come from far away To share anew our "summer-land."
HOLY ISLAND
Holy Island, situated in the south arm of Pine lake, about a mile and a half below Ironton, is historic and picturesque. It was set apart by the "Saints" as a place for holding the "Feast of First Fruits," in the summer of 1855. At that time it was an isolated spot where the feastings and revelries could go on undisturbed by Gentile settlers. The feast commenced on the first Sabbath after the full moon in Au- gust each year and generally continued several days. One of the prin- cipal articles of food was a roast ox or other animal, large enough to
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feed the multitudes assembled. James J. Strang, the Mormon King, explored the Pine Lake region, and his reports to the Northern Is- lander, the official Mormon newspaper on Beaver Island, gave the place great value in the eyes of the Saints, and Holy Island was to become sacred and devoted only to the worship of God. There was an evident intention to make it the future headquarters of a colony of Saints to be established on Pine lake. The death of Strang in 1856 prevented the realization of their ambitions in this locality as on Beaver island, the nucleus of the Mormon kingdom. Holy Island, which contains a trifle over eleven acres, is covered with evergreen and white poplar, and, commencing with the eighties various improvements have been attempted to convert it into a popular summer resort.
KNOWN THREE CENTURIES AGO
Big Beaver island and the islands scattered farther north are now embraced in St. James and Peaine townships, although much nearer the coast line of Emmet county, to which they were formerly attached in a civil and political sense. The story of the founding, rise and fall of the Strang Kingdom therefore is a chapter in the history of Charle- voix county.
It is an accepted fact that a few years after Champlain founded the French colony at Quebec, in 1608, his operations had extended to Beaver island and that one of his trading houses was in operation at what is now St. James. Writing as late as 1883, Dr. M. L. Leach says: "Utensils left by them at different early periods are frequently found. Extensive fields which they cultivated are grown up to woods, and some remain in grass. But there are strong indications of the presence of civilization at a still earlier period. The French settlement in Can- ada dates in 1608, but there are extensive fields on Beaver which have been thoroughly cleared and cultivated; and some very fine garden plats remain with the beds, paths, and alleys as well formed as the day they were made, and laid out on an extended scale, on which trees have been cut of two hundred and four years' growth. Consequently these places have been abandoned, and grown up to timber, at least since 1650. But cultivated fields are generally several years abandoned before they grow to timber. These were too extensive and show too many signs of wealth and ease to have been the work of a few adven- turers. There is room at least to believe that of the numerous Euro- pean colonies which were planted in America and lost without their fate every being known, some one was carried captive to this recess of the continent, and allowed to remain in peace."
In 1688 Baron La Hontan passed the Beaver and neighboring is- lands on his voyage to the St. Peter's early river of Minnesota, and other travellers and explorers, both French and English, became familiar with them while navigating the lakes between Canada and the Illinois and Mississippi valleys. But it was King Strang who made them best known to the people of the United States and first brought them within the pale of civil government.
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RULE OF KING STRANG
James J. Strang, whose personality has already been introduced to the readers of this history, was an eccentric, but a strong and a re- markable man. He was born in New York and passed most of his life until manhood in Chautauqua county, where he gained a local reputa- tion for his wonderful memory and his forensic skill. He borrowed and devoured every law book he could obtain, was admitted to the bar, taught school, edited a newspaper, and practiced his profession as he could, before he married and moved to Racine county, Wisconsin. Here he resumed practice and was recognized as an able lawyer with a substantial future, when he came under the influence of one of those Mormon missionaries who were being sent abroad by Joseph Smith from the Nauvoo Church of Latter Day Saints. In January, 1844, he visited Nauvoo and Joseph Smith, was baptized, and upon the death of the latter, at Carthage, Illinois, with his brother Hyrum Smith, Strang endeavored to supplant Brigham Young by every means in his power. But the Council of Twelve opposed him. Strang seceded and led his followers to the City of Voree, Wisconsin, "on the prairie on White river, in the lands of Racine and Walworth," which he pro- claimed had been designated as the site of the future Zion by Joseph Smith shortly before his death. He challenged all the old leaders of Mormonism to debate with him as to the justice of his claims, but in vain, and with the fall of Nauvoo, the Mormon stronghold in Illinois, and the exodus of Brigham Young and his followers across the Missis- sippi, Strang's colony at Voree alone remained in the northwest of the thousands who had embraced the faith of Joseph Smith.
*It soon became apparent to Strang that the same conditions which had driven the Mormons of Nauvoo to a trans-Mississippi wilderness, would endanger the permanency of his colony in the course of a few years. For the growth of a Mormon community isolation was essen- tial; where Gentile influences controlled the vicinage, there the utter annihilation of Mormonism was but a question of time. In his wan- derings he had caught a glimpse from a vessel's deck of the natural beauty and seeming fruitfulness of a cluster of islands near the door that divides the great inland seas of Huron and Michigan. Here was an ideal seat of power, remote from the obtrusiveness of civil officers whose views of laws might differ from his own; yet not so distant from the line of travel as to render profitable traffic impossible. The wa- ters teemed with excellent fish; the forests would furnish an abundance of most excellent timber; the soil needed but to be scratched to yield in multiplied plenty. To this land of promise could be led his Saints, and here would they wax fat and strong.
If this was Strang's dream of empire, as subsequent events indi- cated, the beginnings were indeed humble. He is authority for the statement that he fixed on the islands in Lake Michigan as a place for a Mormon community in 1846. Nearly a year elapsed before his plans could be set in motion. With four companions he took passage on a
* From article by E. Ledger, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
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ـسالك ـ
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HISTORY OF NORTHERN MICHIGAN
little hooker, the captain agreeing to land them on Beaver island. They sold their blankets to pay their passage and on the 11th day of May stepped from the little sailing vessel upon the soil of the land which the leader prophetically declared would prove to them an inheritance. They were without a cent of money, but had provisions enough to last two days. Their reception was inhospitable in the extreme. At neither of the two trading houses then on the island could five penni- less men arrange for lodging, so they sought the shelter of the woods. Constructing a camp of hemlock boughs, they undertook a thorough exploration of the island. Leeks and beechnuts served for food while they were thus engaged.
Their perseverance brought its reward. They soon obtained em- ployment, and it was not long before they had accumulated a store of provisions, built a log cabin and arranged for the use of a boat. Strang and two of the men returned to Voree to start the migration to the new land of promise. Winter locked upon the island a Mormon population of five men and thirteen women and children. The follow- ing winter the Mormons on the island numbered sixty-two, seventeen of them being men. In the summer of 1849 the Saints began to arrive in considerable numbers. Instead of confining their efforts to working for the traders at the harbor they now felt numerically strong enough to begin for themselves. Twelve elders went in various directions to summon the faithful to the new stake of Zion, and to seek additional converts. The islanders began the construction of a schooner, built a steam saw-mill and made a road to the interior, where the land was excellently adapted for agriculture. They manifested so much energy that the fisherman whose rude huts punctuated the coast here, as well as on the mainland opposite, took serious alarm. A land sale being held about this time, considerable friction occurred between Mormon and Gentile claimants of choice tracts. There arose an unpleasantness that later bore bitter fruit. It was claimed by the Saints that the fishermen induced the captains of vessels bearing Mormon emigrants not to land at the Beaver. Many were carried on to Wisconsin who had been ticketed from the east for the harbor of St. James, for so the Mormons had rechristened the horseshoe bend where vessels came to land, and where in stormy weather they found a safe haven.
It was not long before the Mormons bade fair to control the island. They but believed that they had come into their own, for this was the revelation given unto their seer and revelator long before their coming : "So I beheld a land amidst wide waters and covered with large tim- ber, with a deep broad bay on one side of it; and I wandered over it upon little hills and among rich valleys, where the air was pure and serene, and the unfolding foliage, with its fragrant shades, attracted me till I wandered to bright clear waters scarcely ruffled by the breeze. And one came near unto me, and I said, What meaneth this? And he answered and said, Behold, here shall God establish His people. For He will make their arm strong, and their bow shall abide in strength, and they shall not bow to the oppressor, and the power of the Gentile shall not be upon them, for the arm of God shall be with them to sup- Vol. 1-18
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port. It hath abundance in the riches of the forest, and in the riches of the earth, and in the riches of the waters. And the Lord God shall add possession unto the faithful, and give good gifts unto them that keep His law, and He will establish them therein forever."
To appreciate the spirit animating the Saints in thus taking posses- sion, one must realize the fervor of their faith in the revelation of their seer. There were among them some who had in mind mere pelf and plunder, but the greater number of the misled people was no doubt inspired by fanatic zeal. The law of Moses was their law, supplemented by the doctrines of Mormon and the visions of Strang. To follow these injunctions was to do no wrong, no matter what laws of the land they violated. Like the children of Israel, they were going from the wilder- ness to a land overflowing with milk and honey. As the people led by Moses had ruthlessly slain the Amorites, the Amalakites and the Midi- anites, so they felt justified in smiting the Lamanities, or Gentiles. There was this distinction, that they lived in an age when prudence forbade violent physical onslaught upon neighboring inhabitants, and legal strategy took the place of physical violence. This, at least, was the policy of the leaders, and they were implicity obeyed as a rule.
The Mormons manifested their sense of ownership by giving new names to the physical distinctions of Beaver island. The beautiful . land-locked harbor was called St. James. The cluster of houses that were reared on the ancient mounds along the shore-in the eyes of the Mormons the evidences of an extinct race alluded to in the Book of Mormon-they dignified by the name of City of St. James. A hill in the interior received the biblical name of Mount Pisgah. The river Jordan discharged into the lake the waters that poured into its bed from the Sea of Galilee. Thus did the nomenclature of the island receive the distinctive impress of its Mormon population.
Encounters between Mormons and Gentiles soon became frequent. The Mormons planned a large tabernacle. While some of them were cutting out the timber for the structure, they were set upon and soundly beaten. Doubtless there is much truth in the claim made by the Mormons that up to this time they were more sinned against than aggressors. Drunken fishermen invaded their homes and subjected the women to indignities; debating clubs were attended by uninvited guests, whose boisterous conduct prevented proceedings. Men from old Michilimackinac came in boats to raid outlying farmhouses. Fam- ilies sent by the missionary elders were met at the wharf and told to return to the boat, as all the Mormons would soon be driven away or killed.
About the year 1850 the Saints began to retaliate in earnest. Their numbers had so increased that they could safely do so. The ambitions of Strang were about being realized. He had reorganized his com- munity of Saints. The Book of the Law of the Lord, which he had "translated" from plates dug out of the hill at Voree, had added an- other sacred book to the Mormon library, ranking in the faith of the Beaver islanders with the Bible and the Book of Mormon. "Written on metallic plates long previous to the Babylonish captivity," as Strang
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explained to his credulous followers, the Urim and Thummim brought to him by an angel's hand had enabled him to interpret the characters thereof. Thus had he restored to the chosen people the ancient manu- script long lost to the Jewish nation. The sacred book kept in the ark of the covenant and lost when the children of Israel were hurried into captivity, came back after all these centuries by revelation given to Strang.
And the Beaver island Mormons believed what he said.
It was now open war between all the fishermen of the region, whether of Beaver and Mackinac islands, or the coasts of the Grand Traverse region, and the Mormons under Strang. Their energetic leader had announced the date of his coronation as July 8, 1850, and the opposi- tion plotted to destroy his power and his budding kingdom before that decisive event should transpire. In May a general invitation was given by the Gentiles on all the fishing grounds to come to Whiskey Point, near the scene of the proposed coronation, and there celebrate the glo- rious Fourth-and "incidentally" to get into a fight with the Mormons who had called a general assembly at the same time and place. But the Mormons, under the alert Strang, had forestalled their intentions and provided themselves a real live cannon and heated balls, and their twelve artillerists were prepared to level all the shanties at Whiskey Point if they were molested in their legal services to be held in the un- finished Tabernacle near by. In a word, the plans of the Gentile fish- ermen quite miscarried. The threatened invasion having failed, the coronation occurred, according to programme, July 8, 1850.
King Strang was now supreme on Beaver island, and bade fair to soon control the entire group of islands. His policy was to foster the fisheries as a source of profit to his colony and to use the power of political machinery to secure immunity for infractions of the law. As the population of the island multiplied and the power of the Mormons with it, the hatred of the traders and fishermen on the opposite coasts became more intense. The border feud became so bitter that the news- papers of Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo and New York devoted consider- able space to its incidents. As a rule, these accounts represented the Mormons as a band of pirates engaged in plunder and crimes of all kinds. The center of the hostile camp was at old Mackinac, and here plans were made for discomfiting the Mormons. It is difficult at this day to judge how far the Gentiles were in the wrong and in how far the Mormons. Doubtless there was much wrong on both sides.
At first the advantage was with the Gentiles at Mackinac, for they had the machinery of government in their hands. The sheriff aided them by arresting Mormons and taking them to Mackinac for trial. On one occasion Strang and a company of workmen had gone to Hog island to save from the wreck of a vessel a yawl boat frozen in the shoals. A man named Moore, who had been chased off Beaver for sell- ing whiskey, went before a justice of the peace at Mackinac and swore out a warrant for the arrest of thirty-one men on the novel charge that they had "put him in fear of danger." Sheriff Granger, with a posse of thirteen white men and thirty-two Indians, went to the island, where
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the men were, seized the boat of the Mormons, and, believing their prey secure, proceeded to the camp of the Mormons a little past mid- night. A wild Irish hurrah and an accompanying Indian war-whoop awoke the Mormons to a night of terror and suffering. Hatless and shoeless they rushed into the woods and sought the protection of a swamp, while the sheriff's men plundered the camp and divided the spoils of war. The Mormons found a leaky fish-boat at the opposite end of the island, and this launched. It was a cold April morning. According to the account they afterwards gave, "the lake was spotted with vast fields of drift ice. With a boat preserved from sinking only by the ice frozen in it, without sails or oar locks, and with three unsuit- able oars; not half clothed, no provisions, without a line to tie their boat nor an ax to repair any accident, they set out on the broad blue waters for a place of safety." It took twenty-four hours for them to reach Gull island, and here they spent five miserable days in a fish shanty before they managed to repair the boat sufficiently to proceed. After this a price was set on Strang's head, and several hundred armed men, including Irish fishermen and Indians hunted for him weeks to earn the reward of $300 offered by the sheriff for the body of Strang, "dead or alive."
The arrest and trial of Strang and his followers in the spring and summer of 1853 have been described as the "first regular law case" in the Grand Traverse region. He was discharged and returned to his own, more autocratic than ever. Not a few of the Mormons them- selves deserted the kingdom and joined the hostile fishermen on the small islands and mainland. King Strang conceived the idea of get- ting them back into the fold by strategy. A grand jury was therefore called at St. James and the Mormon sheriff and his posse went to Charlevoix (Pine river) to serve a summons on ex-Elder Savage, sev- eral other Mormons who had fled being also summoned as jurors or witnesses. When the papers were served on him Savage tore them in pieces and when the sheriff attempted his arrest a score of sturdy fisher lads attacked the Mormons, drove them to their boats and wounded several before they got out of reach. King Strang at once took steps to punish the colonists at Charlevoix, but the fisher boys and men had fled.
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