SDHS Newsletter

Sunday Supper and Sunset
at the Lakeshore
Sunday, July 12^th
from 6 PM until sunset
Hosted by Ellen & Richard Donovan
2641 Lakeshore Drive
(South of washout) $65 per person

Toast the summer at this lovely lake front home and garden. After a dinner served hot off the grill, sit on the shore to watch the sun set into Lake Michigan.

Tickets are selling fast. Just REPLY to this email to make your reservation and we will be in touch.

Small Plates, Small Talk
Thursday, July 16^th, 11 am - 2 pm Hosted by Ken Carls
325 Water Street, Douglas
$100 per person
Tickets still available.

Dine Around dinner guests at the Red House, home of Ken Carls and Jim Schmiechen overlooking Wade's Bayou in Douglas, have come to count on sitting down to tasty fare around the big dining room table. This time guests will join Ken in the kitchen and watch what's going on as he prepares a selection of Red House favorites. Then guests will enjoy a "tapas style" luncheon as they sample the day's fare - and experience dishes they can add to their own cooking repertoire. Emphasis will be on fresh, seasonal, easy-to-make dishes for casual dining.

For reservations, REPLY to this email and we will be in touch.

Wildwood Progressive Dinner Party
Saturday, Sept. 19^th, 6 - 9 pm
Hosted by Vito Masciopinto,
Susan & Mark Lauterbach,
Sarah Harris & Alex Fink
$100 per person
Only 3 tickets still available.

The event combines drinks, heavy appetizers, and desserts with a look inside three new modern homes and ending up on the roof top patio weather permitting (bring a coat!) on Wildwood Lane in a "progressive dinner" styled tour of homes.

Wildwood Lane, when completed, will be a development of 14 future modern lake houses, each committed to the preservation of the natural habitat and celebration of modern architecture. Come explore the uniqueness of each of the three completed homes while drinking and dining and experiencing the latest in modern living, sustainable technologies, and modular construction.

Inspiration comes from the experimental Case Study Houses by Charles and Ray Eames, Richard Neutra, Craig Ellwood, and Pierre Koenig. These houses blend the openness and simplicity of modern living with craft, durability, and sustainability to make them true modern lake houses.

For reservations, REPLY to this email and we will be in touch.

April Board Meeting Summary

l The Museum Exhibit Opening will include a special event for charter and life members and Exhibit Sponsors/Donors; past and present, which will take place prior to the general membership event.
l Beginning around May 1, the campaign to secure this year's Exhibit Sponsorship donations will begin. Sponsors/Donors will be recognized by a display inside the Museum.
l Board approval was given for purchase of an iPad and specialized stand which will become an electronic guestbook at the museum beginning at the opening this year. The equipment and software will enable follow up communications, membership and donation solicitations to our Museum visitors.
l Funds were approved for completion of improvements in the Peach Orchard section of the Back-in-Time Garden.
l 10 bistro tables and table cloths have been purchased for use at SDHS events and private rental events at the OSH.
l Next month, the Board will consider a written schedule for upgrading computers at the Old School House.
l In the coming months, the Board will consider alternatives to how the organization collects membership dues renewals. There is Board consensus that there are too many classifications of membership dues and that structure needs to be simplified and dues collected in a more direct manner.
l 27 applications have been received for the position of Director of the organization. A committee consisting of Sharon Kelly, Jim Schmiechen, Ed Kelly, Bill Hess, Fred Schmidt, Judi Vanderbeck, Ken Carls and Janie Flemming will review the applications, select those candidates who should be interviewed, conduct the interviews, and recommend a selection to the Board by the end of June.
l In December, Root Camp received a $3,000 grant from the Mignon Sherwood Delano Foundation in Allegan to fund scholarships for children who could not otherwise afford the tuition to attend the camp. The Root Camp Committee is actively searching for scholarship recipients and anyone who has a child in mind should contact Ruth Johnson.
l The SDHS Facebook page has been vastly upgraded through content provided by our departed Curator, Jarrett Zeman. "Likes" of the page have risen from 189 in January 2014 to over 600 today. Social media is an avenue that has been identified by the Board to attract younger members.
l Our Programming Committee is working with the SCA on some cooperative summer programs for kids. submitted by Sharon Kelly

Welcome New Members

We would like to welcome the following new members who have joined the Saugatuck-Douglas Historical Society since the last newsletter.

l Don Straube & Paul Zur Nieden, Fennville, MI

News from the Archives

It's been a busy time at the archives office. A number of people have contacted us recently about research that they are doing and needed information. Among them were two students from Aquinas College and a professor from New York who is inquiring about the agricultural history of our area. As I was researching these requests, I came across some data that I found most interesting. Old timers here know all about this but some of our recent members might not know how famous this area really is.

History of Peach Growing Along the Lakeshore

Early settlers to Saugatuck and Douglas began setting out fruit trees to supply their home needs as soon as they had a clearing. In fact as early as 1800, local historian, May Heath writes that there was a peach orchard of 200 trees along the south bank of the Kalamazoo River about a mile east of Douglas. Although it was known as the "Indian Peach Orchard" it was probably planted by early fur traders as the trees were planted in rows and the Indians never planted that way.

In 1839 Harrison Hutchinson was one of the first to bring peach trees to the lakeshore, quickly followed by more. (Fruit trees did especially well along the coast of Lake Michigan because the cold winds off the Lake delayed blossom time. Early frosts further in-land often killed delicate blossoms, decimating an entire crop.) Early on there was no foreign market and the peaches and other fruits were peddled locally to families and mill hands.

As early as 1870 the peach industry in St. Joe had gained headway and Mr. McCormick, Hutchins and Loomis went to investigate. They came back well pleased and the following year each set 1,000 trees of a variety of peaches. This was the first start of raising peaches with a commercial aim in mind. As the fruit ripened it was sold to buyers who bought it on the trees and hired harvesters to pick the fruit. Prices ran at $1 a peck net on the Chicago market. According to reports gathered at the close of the 1879 season over 600,000 peach trees yielded an estimated 3,000,000 baskets of fruit. This report included those portions of Allegan and Van Buren Counties bordering Lake Michigan. In Saugatuck alone, 1200 acres were set to peach-trees and over 400 acres were in full bearing.

Click on the image for a higher resolution copy

One of the principal growers, William Corner, was born in Devon, England in 1819. He purchased one hundred acres in the township of Saugatuck in 1852, and by 1880 had 6,000 bearing trees on one of the most attractive farms in the township. The drawing below is of his farm from the 1880 History of Allegan and Barry Counties with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches.

Click on the image for a higher resolution copy

To be continued next month.
submitted by Mary Voss

Find A Grave Web Site
A Wonderful Tool for One and All

In the March 2015 Newsletter we had an article about Sophia Goucher, who claimed to have been 107 years old at the time of her death. Whether she was really that old is very much open to question, but she certainly presented an interesting story.

As a part of the research into her life, one of the references located was her grave record in Find A Grave. Sophia is buried in the Poplar Hill Cemetery, Monterey Center, Allegan County, Michigan. Among the many services offered by this web site is the ability to ask that someone take a photo of the actual gravestone at a plot and then to post it with the person's record. The Find A Grave system will share the request with a number of volunteers living near the cemetery. The request remains open until action is taken to close it . . . for example, either providing the photo or reporting that no stone can be found on the burial plot. The person who created the grave record for Sophia in 2013 goes by the pseudonym "Scout". She was also the person who went back to the cemetery with a camera in hand and uploaded the following photo on May 10, 2015 to satisfy my photo request.

Sophia Goucher, Born Oct. 22, 1783, Died Dec. 31, 1897
Click on the image for a higher resolution copy

This wonderful photo not only adds to our story by confirming that (even in death) her claim of 107 years lives on, but it also gives us a claimed month, day and year of birth - Oct. 22, 1783 (a date which we did not have before).

"Scout" is a very active Find A Grave participant. On her profile page we can see that she has created 128,636 individual memorial records. She has been a member of the Find A Grave community for 7 years, 7 months and 10 days and has added an average of 508 memorials each week. She has posted 147,158 photos to varying records and has taken 917 photos of gravestones in reply to requests, like the one I made for Sophia. "Scout" is by no means unique. There are over 121 million grave records in Find A Grave, and the number grows each day. These are predominantly (but not exclusively) American cemeteries, to include military cemeteries overseas. It is very likely that deceased parents, grandparents, and great grandparents of each one of you readers can be found through a search on Find A Grave.

Click on the image for a higher resolution copy

Records often will include biographical details, gravestone and family photos, and links to the graves of spouse, parents, siblings, and children. In our area, a very thorough survey has been conducted by SDHS volunteers of the Riverside Cemetery in Saugatuck; The Douglas Cemetery; in Laketown Township - Gibson Cemetery; and in Ganges Township- Taylor, Plummerville, Loomis and Hutchins Cemeteries. The extensive photo records of the Historical Society have been used to post portraits of many of these locals, and the collected obituaries from the Commercial Record have allowed us to provide detailed historical information on our local citizens of the past. All of this is available over the internet to a world-wide audience at the click of a finger. Find A Grave provides this same capability to one and all, without any charge for the user. An example of one local record from the Riverside Cemetery is shown below as an example:

Click on the image for a higher resolution copy.

For a short-cut to the local cemetery links (and many other information resources), see the SDHS On-Line Research Center.
submitted by Chris Yoder