Beaver Island and Michigan - Subject Cards  J-P

Edward Lasley was listed in his death record of July 17, '96, as "lightkeeper." He & his wife, a Native American, are supposed to have lived at the Head. Was he an assistant keeper? Lizzie Gallagher remembers him as a lightkeeper at the Head - so does Nonie.

Nonie says Paddy Mary Ellen worked on this lighthouse - it must have been an enlargement of living quarters, or when the foghorn was put in.

1847 - B.I. erected into Peaine Township; 3 meetings held in year & unable to organize.
Three white families on Island "temporarily settled in the township;" 4 or 5 white men
with Indian wives; several French half-breeds; 20 or 30 single men who had families elsewhere & were spending the winter on B.I. The township organization was granted at the instance of Col. Fisk of Rochester, N.Y., who had commenced a fishing establishment on a large scale, investing $10,000. These men monopolized all the offices, although they neglected to attend to business until -

1850 - Mormons elected majority of officers
1851 - Mormons elected all the other officers
1853 - Emmet & Charlevoix counties united under name of Emmet

P. 62, 114
As early as 1845 steamers called for refueling. Cable's dock (where did I get this?). As late as June 1882 the steamer Champlain called for wood (Life S. S. report at the Museum).

The way the economy worked - they fished in the summer & cut cordwood & hauled it to the docks in the winter. With no horses or oxen they probably got it to the beach, loaded it in boats, & got it to the dock that way. This checks with Mary Conaghan Vesty's description.

The Mormons cut cordwood & erected a steam mill for sawing lumber. By 1900 the southern 2/3 of the Island was in large holdings - the Irish had moved to the northern 1/3, with 90% of the northern 1/2 held by the Irish.
Sweet's Mill on Sand Bay - it must have been running in 1891, because Pat Mulroney was killed there at that time. It stood on the shore property, just across from the end of Hannagan's Rd.

Beaver Island Lumber Co. - the largest operation - hired more than 100 men:
Mill brought in the fall of 1902 - capital $75,000
Put into operation 1903
Ceased operation 1915
Since 1900 - the Antrim Iron Co. cut large acreages for chemical & charcoal wood. The logs were shipped to Mancelona for processing.
Present mill - gets out hardwood for crochet mallets & balls.
B.I. Lumber Co.:
W. E. Stephens, Pres. Payroll: $3,000 per month
John S. Stephens, Vice-Pres. 60 men in woods
- both came from Freesoil, Mich. 60-70 at mill
5-10 transporting timber

The narrow-gauge road's rails were taken up as soon as one field was played out & moved to a new area where needed. Compared with standard-gauge roads, these undersized roads were inexpensive. A locomotive could be bought for $4,000, flat cars no more than $169, & to prepare & metal the right-of-way averaged no more than $4,000 a mile. The old problem of getting logs from the place where the tree fell to the skidways where they could be put on carriers remained. To an extent this was solved by use of the "big wheels" - a pair of wagon wheels ten or twelve feet in diameter, which could straddle a felled tree or several logs, lift one end of the load off the ground, & so make it possible for a team of horses to drag the timber to the place where it could be loaded. A factory in Manistee made thousands of these big wheels during the last quarter of the 19th century."

- Bruce Catton, Waiting for the Morning Train, p. 115-16[1]

"The permanent population is composed of French, Indians, & halfbreeds, with a few businessmen; besides the officers & soldiers stationed in the U.S. garrison on the hill above. The articles of export consist almost entirely of lumber, fish, peltries, & Indian fabrics, while the boats make their short stops for wood, fish, etc..."

- Daniel S. Curtis, in Western Portraiture (1852),[1] quoted in His. Mich.

(From a journey made in the summer of 1848)
"Mackinaw (ac) was a miserable fishing village, composed almost exclusively of timber houses, many of which were occupied by Indians, half-breeds, & a low class of whites. In the vicinity of the lakeshore there are also many half-naked Indians living in tents. Some of these tents were constructed of cotton cloth & others of wood covered with reeds. Driven from the neighboring shores by the mosquitoes, black gnats, & other venomous insects, the savages took refuge here, where there are no insects of any kind. At Mackinaw the Indians support themselves by fishing until the cold season made it possible to return to their homes on the northern peninsula."

He speaks of a Mr. King, a very large man, postmaster of the post (fort); also, in a footnote, of a Rev. Eleazer Williams, who was on the island with a school for Indians maintained by the Episcopal Missionary Society in earlier times.
"The Island of Mackinaw is about ten miles in circumference; a considerable portion is cleared & cultivated in grain, grass, & vegetables. The grass, indigenous to the soil, is similar to the blue grass of Kentucky, & I nowhere out west saw richer milk or sweeter butter."

- John Lewis Payton, Over the Alleghenies & Across the Prairies (1870), p. 187-88

Strang on Mackinac -
The poorer classes are exceedingly dissipated. Their only change is from dissipation to want, and from want to dissipation. Ten times more liquor is drank in Mackinac than any other town of the same population. Among the half-breeds, who formerly made up most of the population, the deaths are as two to one birth, and the class are rapidly disappearing. The Irish, who are supplying their places, are running the same race.

The business of the American Fur Company has ceased. Their mansion is now the Grove House [this must be the place bought a few years after 1856 by James Cable. -HC]; the fur store is a warehouse, and the other buildings are going to decay. The Protestant mission has been abandoned. The county, shorn of its magnificent proportions, has lost its consequence by the growing up of other settlements in its vicinity of more enterprise & better prospects. The fishing business, which grew up in Mackinac as its other trade was failing, is being rapidly transferred to other points, more convenient to the fisheries.

The steamboats, which formerly stopped at no place in the region except Mackinac, now stop more at other points than there... The Indian payments are reduced to a trifle and will soon cease, and the fortress is reduced from an important military position to a mere hospital to recruit[?] the health of soldiers long employed in sickly climates.
The progress of decay is stayed a little at present by the retail trade, and the very extensive sale of liquors. But the retail trade is preserved only by the convenience of docks and storehouses, which will soon be supplied by rival places, and the sale of liquor impoverishes rather than enriches any place.

- An. & Mod. Mac., p. 21

Newspaper article, Dec. 25, 1930 [this is taken from a clipping inserted in the original manuscript; the name of the newspaper is not noted]:

"Mail Service by Airplane -
Two Trips Weekly to St. James"
Thursday of last week the first of a series of mail deliveries was made to St. James on a schedule to be followed by two weekly trips over the air route between Charlevoix and St. James, during the winter period.
In past years the service between the two terminals, from the close until the opening of navigation, has been a source of annoyance to the postal authorities as well as unsatisfactory to Beaver Island residents and patrons generally having business or social relations such as necessitated the use of the mail service to conduct satisfactorily.
Heretofore following the close of the season of navigation all classes of mail accumulated for days in the local office awaiting an opportunity for forwarding to its St. James destination and later shipped to Cross Village, where after other delays, after the formation of an ice route, the mail was taken by team to St. James at infrequent intervals.
The air route established for the winter period appears to be the logical solution of the many years old winter problem and the twice a week schedule if carried out, and no doubt it will be, makes for an ideal arrangement and one that should be satisfactory to postal patrons.