Midwest Guest

Michigan's Polar Bears

Sure, the Detroit Zoo has polar bears, but a monument in Troy, Michigan, commemorates the state's most legendary Polar Bears-World War I soldiers who fought in a particularly curious and confusing military engagement.

I knew about this white marble sculpture for many years, and I remembered it again when we discovered the graves of a few Polar Bears while geocaching in a cemetery near Copemish in northern Michigan this past summer. It seemed like the right time to revisit the Troy memorial and learn more about these soldiers and why they remained fighting in northern Russia long after the November 11, 1918 Armistice marking the end of World War I.

Polar Bear graves in Cleon Township Cemetery, Copemish

By summer of 1918, Russia signed a peace agreement with Germany, but the British and French wished to keep Germany occupied on the Eastern Front while guarding military weapons and equipment left in northern Russia by the Allies.

President Woodrow Wilson reluctantly sent American troops to a remote location 600 miles north of Moscow with the provision that they went only to guard the military equipment.

Members of the 339th Infantry trained at Camp Custer near Battle Creek, Michigan, and marched before cheering crowds Woodward Avenue and Fort Street in Detroit before departing overseas.

The 339th Infantry, plus the 337th Ambulance Company, 337th Field Hospital Company and a battalion of the 310th Engineers, arrived in England and received Russian weapons and equipment, along with orders to ship out to Archangel, Russia.

Michigan men comprised about 75 percent of the 339th, with the majority of those from Detroit, according to the historical marker at the Polar Bear monument. Local newspapers dubbed them "Detroit's Own", and the soldiers called themselves the "Polar Bears".

The Americans arrived at Archangel in September of 1918 to join the international North Russian Expeditionary Force under British command.

The Bolsheviks (an early name for Communists) already moved the allies' military equipment, and the Americans quickly found themselves in hostile territory.

Soon, it became clear that no one really knew why the soldiers were in Archangel or who they were supposed to be fighting.

The Bolsheviks went on the attack, forcing the Allies into a defensive position.

Weeks turned into months. The Polar Bears fought one of their fiercest battles on the day of the Armistice. Morale plunged and casualties mounted. Still, the American soldiers remained marooned in Archangel facing food shortages and temperatures as low as 56 degrees below zero.

The soldiers' families, along with Michigan newspapers and politicians, lobbied for their return to America.

President Wilson ordered the War Department to coordinate the soldiers' return in February of 1919.

Meanwhile, men in one of the companies at Archangel protested harsh conditions and their continued presence in Russia, earning threats of court martial and a few ill-founded accusations of mutiny leveled at these soldiers who ultimately became one of the most highly decorated regiments of WWI.

An American commander arrived at Archangel in April 1919 with orders to withdraw the soldiers, but fighting continued through the middle of May. The soldiers finally left Archangel when the harbor thawed enough to allow navigation.

The Polar Bears lost about 245 soldiers, with 94 of them dying after the United States decided to withdraw from Russia, but before thawing allowed them to leave. Some soldiers died in battle, and many died of disease (mostly due to the influenza epidemic). About 30 more went missing and nine became prisoners of war.

In 1922, the remaining Polar Bears began lobbying to bring home the bodies of more than 125 known soldiers left behind in Russia.

In 1929, state and federal officials working with the Veterans of Foreign Wars sponsored a mission to recover those remains. The group identified and brought home the remains of 86 soldiers. The Soviet Union shipped the remains of another dozen men to America in 1934.

Sculptor Leon Hermant created White Chapel's Polar Bear Memorial, dedicated on May 30, 1930. The graves of 56 Polar Bears recovered from Russia surround the statue.

Learn more about Michigan's Polar Bears with an extensive digitized collection of Polar Bear items at the University of Michigan's Bentley Historical Library.

Michigan's Own Military and Space Museum in Frankenmuth, Michigan, also has a large collection of Polar Bear artifacts.

You can also check out A Michigan Polar Bear Confronts the Bolsheviks: A War Memoir by Godfrey J. Anderson, When Hell Froze Over by E. M. Halliday or History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviks: US Military Intervention in Soviet Russia 1918-1919 by Joel R. Moore, Harry H. Meade and Lewis E. Jahns.

© Dominique King 2012 All rights reserved

Midwest Guest and Michigan Companion

As much as I like seeing my byline online, I still get a real charge out of seeing my name in an old-school print publication, so I was pretty jazzed to find a copy of The Michigan Companion in my snail mail box the other day.

The Michigan Companion, published by Omnigraphics, is an encyclopedia with more than 1,200 entries covering people, places, history, events, and a whole host of other things that made our Mitten State what it is today.

I was one of 25 contributors credited in this 800-plus-page volume, and my topics included women's suffrage, civil rights, the furniture industry in Michigan, lighthouses, various immigrant groups prominent in Michigan's history, traffic firsts in the state, Idlewild, the history of several major Michigan retailers, and Elizabeth Denison Forth (who became Michigan's first African-American property owner with her purchase of land in Pontiac in 1825).

Interestingly enough, the work came to me in large part because of Midwest Guest and my coverage of Great Lakes lighthouses here on the blog.

It was also an interesting reminder of how long the publishing cycle can be for print. I wrote my entries in late 2009, and they're finally reaching the bookshelves now!

Want to learn more about Michigan history? Look for The Michigan Companion in the reference section at your local library, or purchase your own copy online.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Visiting one of Michigan's few remaining old-growth forests at Hartwick Pines

Only a fraction of the nearly 10 million trees once covering what is now Michigan exists today as old-growth forests like the beautifully serene Hartwick Pines near Grayling.

I always wanted to visit the Hartwick Pines and the Chapel in the Pines, and we recently did just that on the way home from a trip to northern Michigan.

The Hartwick Pines State Park forest is a reminder of how the state changed over the years as increased numbers of settlers migrated to Michigan and logging reigned as Michigan's major industry during the late 1800s.

The Salling, Hanson and Company of Grayling logged the land that is now Hartwick Pines State Park during the 1880s and early 1890s, but stopped when the economic "Panic of 1893" caused the lumber industry to falter.

By the end of the 1890s, with Michigan nearly denuded of trees as loggers clear-cut many of the remaining forests, the logging industry moved further west, leaving only a few stands of pines like the trees at Hartwick behind.

In 1927, Karen Hartwick, daughter of Nels Michelson, purchased 8,800 acres, which included an 85-acre stand of virgin white pines, as a memorial to her husband, Major Edward E. Hartwick.

Edward was a lumberman and Army officer who led a troop of the legendary Buffalo Soldiers who fought alongside Teddy Roosevelt at San Juan Hill during the Spanish American War. He volunteered for the Army during WWI and died in 1918 while serving in France.

Karen donated the land to the state, requesting that Michigan build a logging museum there.

The Great Depression slowed the project until men in the government's Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) arrived at Hartwick Pines in 1933.

The CCC built the logging museum, planted trees, improved streams and trails, and expanded the picnic and campground areas at Hartwick Pines over the next two years.

In 1935, Hartwick Pines became an official State Park.

In 1940, a huge wind storm felled nearly half of the old-growth pine forest, leaving only 49 acres of the original 85-acre forest standing.

Today, the Hartwick Pines are the largest stand of virgin white pines in Michigan's Lower Peninsula. The surviving trees are about 350-375 years old. The tallest trees are between 150 and 160 feet tall, with many having diameters of more than four feet.

The best place way to see the trees is along the 1-1/4 mile Old-Growth Forest Trail. The paved trail is fairly level and accessible, although there are a couple of steep grades.

The Logging Museum recreates an 1880s logging camp along the trail and is open from May 1 through Oct 31. There are outdoor exhibits of logging equipment and a statue honoring the CCC workers. Indoor exhibits include recreations of the bunkhouse, mess hall, blacksmith shop, camp office and camp store.

The museum is also home to the Swampers Base Ball Club, a vintage team playing by 1860s rules.

The Chapel in the Pines, built in 1952 by workers using hand tools and wooden pegs in place of nails where possible, is a nice spot to stop along the trail and meditate on the beauty of the old woods. It is also popular as a venue for small weddings.

Visitors can take an 8-mile scenic drive through the 9,600-plus acre park, which draws more than 250,000 visitors each year. The park has several interpretive trails, longer trails for hikers and cross country skiers, trails open to mountain bikers, a modern campground with 100 campsites and a rustic cabin, a group campground, and lakes with boat ramps with handicapped accessible fishing piers where fishers can try their luck catching blue gill, pan fish, largemouth bass and rainbow trout.

The Hartwick Pines visitor center is the official interpretive center for Michigan's 3.9 million-acre state forest system. It is open year round and includes a 1,500-square-foot exhibit hall with displays illustrating the history of Michigan's forest and the history of logging in the state.

Check out Shay Locomotive moves lumber industry in Cadillac to learn more about the railroads and logging in Michigan and Keweenaw Mountain Lodge: Legacy of hope in hard times about another 1930s government works project in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

Want to learn more about the CCC in Michigan? Check out Fires in the Wilderness: A Story of the Civilian Conservation Corps Boys by Jeffery L. Schatzer, whose father worked at a CCC camp in 1935, or Proud to Work: A Pictorial History of Michigan's Civilian Conservation Corps by Annick Hivert-Cathew.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Detroit's Big Stove burns

Michigan shelved its state fair because of declining attendance and revenues after 160 years in 2009. I originally planned this as a post about how much I missed the Michigan State Fair, but it turned out quite differently.

The loss of our state fair makes Michigan the only Midwestern state without a state fair, and one of only a few states in the nation without a state fair.

It's been sad enough to drive by the deteriorating fairgrounds these past couple of summers, but the recent loss of a Detroit landmark at the fairgrounds makes the site seem even more forlorn.

On Saturday August 13, 2011, the "World's Largest Stove" turned into ashes after an apparent lightning strike.

Firefighters arrived around 8 p.m. that evening and secured the scene around 10 p.m. after the stove burned down to its frame.

The wooden replica of the 1890s stove was a reminder that Detroit's industrial history and might pre-dates the automotive industry.

In 1860, brothers Jeremiah and James Dwyer established Detroit's first stove factory.

By 1880, Detroit was "The Stove Capital of the World" with many companies that employed thousands of workers in the city.

The Michigan Stove Company, founded by Jeremiah Dwyer in 1872, was one of the most prominent Detroit stove manufacturer during the late 1800s. The company mounted a huge display for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago with a 15-ton wooden replica of its Garland kitchen range sitting atop a platform with a display of the company's stoves.

The company dismantled the 25-foot-tall, 30-foot-long and 20-foot-wide stove it after the fair and reassembled it next to its factory in Detroit on Jefferson Avenue near Adair Street and Elmwood Cemetery.

The stove's new home was at "Bloody Run", the site of a fierce battle between Chief Pontiac's Native American forces and British soldiers in 1763.

Long-time Detroit News writer and city historian, George Stark, remembered a tree standing at the site before the stove arrived there. The tree met its end, ironically enough, due to a lightning strike, and the stove replaced it as an attraction near the old battle site.

In 1926, the refurbished stove moved up Jefferson to a site just west of the Belle Isle Bridge, close to the Detroit-Michigan Stove Company.

By 1955, Welbilt Corporation became the city's last surviving stove company and inherited the landmark.

Schafer Bakeries leased the stove to advertise their bread from 1957 to 1965.

By 1965, the then-deteriorated stove moved to the Michigan State Fair ground on Woodward at Eight Mile (yes, that Eight Mile).

The year 1974 saw the stove disassembled and put into storage at Detroit's Fort Wayne Military Museum.

A fundraising drive by Michigan residents, businesses and unions funded the stove's rehabilitation and placement back at the fairgrounds with a state historical marker in 1998.

The Big Stove post-fire

After the Michigan State Fair shut down, stove sat behind a high fence that bore a sign warning people that trespassing on the site was a felony.

I'm guessing chances are low that the community will rally to rebuild the stove, given the state's economic woes and deterioration of other fairground landmarks I glimpsed through the fence the other day.

Want to learn more? Check out Michigan State Fair (Images of America) by John Minnis and Lauren Beaver, which has a short chapter about the "World's Largest Stove".

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Nature and history at Michigan's Port Crescent State Park

We discovered Port Crescent State Park near Port Austin on Lake Huron at the tip of Michigan's Thumb when we looked for flat-water canoeing in the area. We've visited this park on Lake Huron many times since our trip on the Pinnebog River.

On our most recent trip to the park we walked the Dunes Nature Trail, a three-quarter mile interpretive trail where visitors can learn about sand dune ecology, wildlife, plants and dune forests. Hikers can access one the park's longer hiking and cross-country ski trails or hop off onto part of the park's 900 feet of beachside boardwalk from the nature trail loop.

The Dunes Nature Trail, converted from a 1970s-era fitness trail and completed in 2009 with an Access to Recreation Grant, has a flat-limestone aggregate surface and strategically placed benches, making it accessible for physically challenged visitors.

Port Crescent State Park, and nearby Albert E. Sleeper State Park near Caseville, are two hours from the Detroit area, making them great for campers looking for a quick weekend trip. Port Crescent has fewer campsites than Sleeper, but it has a wider variety of day use activities and barrier-free facilities like a recently added 400-square-foot Camper Cabin with a waterfront view and the Dunes trail.

Dunes Nature Trail

Port Crescent State Park is on three miles of sandy shoreline along the big lake's Saginaw Bay where visitors can enjoy swimming and walking the beach in addition to hiking, fishing, canoeing, cross-country skiing, birding and (in season) hunting.

The park sits on the former site of a bustling mid-1800s company town where steam-powered sawmills along the Pinnebog employed hundreds of area residents. Others worked at blockhouses where they extracted brine from evaporated water to produce salt.

The town of Port Crescent had a two-story school, Lutheran church, company store, hotel and tavern along its several streets.

One sawmill became so busy salvaging thousands of trees felled in one of the infamous fires experienced by the Midwest in 1871 that it added a 120-foot brick chimney to help power the plant.

In 1881, another fire swept through the Thumb region, destroying the area's timber resources.

The lumber mills closed, as did the firewood-fueled salt plants. Workers dismantled some of the buildings and an 800-foot dock, moving them north to Oscoda, Michigan. Some Port Crescent residents moved their houses to nearby towns. By 1894, all of the buildings in Port Crescent were gone, leaving few traces of the town behind.

The State of Michigan purchased the site for the park during the 1950s.

Today, you'll find remnants of the brick mill chimney and an old steel bridge in the park.

This visit, we drove to the nearby Port Crescent Cemetery to find a geocache. Seeing the town's old burial grounds requires a short walk through the woods (a welcome relief from the record heat while we visited, but a bit mosquito-ridden). The old cemetery had its share of broken headstones, but it seemed reasonably well cared for and gave us a feel for the old ghost town's residents. We found the cache and a few interesting headstones like this one made from bricks used to construct Port Crescent's brick mill chimney.

Want to learn more about the history of Port Crescent and other small towns in the area? Check out Huron County Michigan (Images of America) by the Huron County Historical Society.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Port Austin

Aboard the 1812 Privateer Lynx in Frankfort, Michigan

We occasionally see Tall Ships on the Great Lakes, but it was a special treat and surprise when we got to board the 1812 Privateer Lynx when she docked in Frankfort, Michigan.

We've always had an interest in ships and maritime history, but it was the 15-star American flag atop the Lynx that really caught our eye. That version of the flag dates from the early 1800s, a time period Tim currently studies as a graduate student in history.

The original Lynx was one of the private boats authorized to augment the United States' small navel force during the War of 1812. Schooners like the Lynx were speedy and easy-to-maneuver ships, serving as effective blockade runners and distractions for British naval warships that outnumbered the American naval fleet.

The original Lynx, commissioned and built at the start of the War of 1812, was larger than most privateers of that time and cost nearly $10,000 to build at Fell's Point, Maryland. She had a letter of marque, or permission, to operate as an armed ship and to take enemy ships as prizes.

The privateers in the Fell's Point that area figure prominently in a battle where the British bombarded Ft. McHenry and Baltimore's protected inner harbor on September 13 and 14 of 1814. It was this battle that inspired Francis Scott Key to write the "Star Spangled Anthem", which became the United States' national anthem 131 years later.

The original Lynx completed one successful voyage to France and back before its capture in 1813 by the British as it waited in the harbor to run a blockade. The British put the ship into service with their Navy and renamed it Mosquidobit for a town near Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The Lynx became a privately owned ship in 1820, and no one knows what happened to it after that time.

The swift schooner's spirit lives on today in the beautiful version built as a living history museum in the late 1990s.

Woodson K. Woods began building a privateer inspired by the original Lynx in 1997. Woods saw the project as an engaging way to preserve maritime history and the history of some of America's most important formative years.

The modern-day Lynx closely resembles the original ship, although it is not an exact replica. The new Lynx features modern amenities and technology to meet U.S. Coast Guard regulations as a passenger vessel, youth training ship and living illustration of early 1800s maritime history and America's fight to preserve its independence during the War of 1812. The modern amenities didn't detract from the period feel aboard ship when we visited it, though.

The current Lynx flies period pennants and flags. The wooden schooner has a sparred length of 122 feet and a 94-foot-tall mast. It also carries period weaponry like functioning carronades, swivel guns, muskets and cutlasses.

The new Lynx launched in Rockport Maine on July 28, 2001.

We saw the ship during its tour of the Great Lakes that included stops in Toledo, Frankfort, Ludington and the Tall Ships festival in Chicago.

We were fortunate enough to board the Lynx for a dockside tour, although we learned about the ship's stop in Frankfort too late to sign up for one of the Lynx's 2-3 hour "sailaway" trips.

I loved taking photos of the Lynx and beautiful details like the ship's wheel engraved the motto "Be excellent to each other and your ship".

You can catch the Lynx yet this summer as it docks in Bay Harbor, near Petoskey, Michigan for an August 19-28 schedule of dockside and sailaway tours.

The Lynx continues with a five-year mission to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812 and the writing of "The Star Spangled Banner".

You can check out the ship's sailing schedule at her Web site or follow the Lynx on Twitter or Facebook.

Want to learn more about the War of 1812 and the role of privateers in the conflict? Check out The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies by Alan Taylor or The Dawn's Early Lights by Walter Lord.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Where I live: Emancipation Proclamation viewing accompanies Civil War exhibit at The Henry Ford

Excitement built through the early part of last week as 21,015 visitors viewed the Emancipation Proclamation during a 36-hour vigil showing at The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan, from 7 p.m. on Monday, June 20 through 7 a.m. on Wednesday, June 22. Museum officials had to cut off the queue at 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday to insure that everyone waiting in line would have a chance to view the document.

It was truly amazing to see people waiting up to 7 or 8 hours to see the document issued and signed by President Abraham Lincoln as a formal proclamation of freedom for all slaves and an invitation to black men to join the Union Army and Navy. The proclamation didn’t insure every slave’s freedom at the time, but it did draw attention to the issue of slavery as a major impetus behind the War Between the States and resulted in almost 200,000 soldiers and sailors joining the Union’s Army and Navy to fight for their own freedom, and the freedom of others.

We checked out the lines snaking through the museum during the initial evening of the document’s display. We opted to skirt the crowds during the wee hours of the morning by skipping the line to file by the proclamation and simply viewing the Museum’s limited-engagement exhibit from the National Archives. It turned out to be a good decision for us as the exhibit itself wasn’t crowded at 2 a.m.

The National Archives show is a traveling exhibit that utilizes various documents, photos, and other records of some of the little-known stories to put a human face on the war and the issues that rent our country apart during the mid-1800s.

The exhibit includes a lot of interactive elements that engage viewers by allowing them to see what it is like to follow the path of evidence through bits and pieces of information to discover a fresh perspective on a war that many of us learned about as school children, but may not feel a close connection to the people who lived, and died, during the conflict.

One interactive video display allows visitors to follow in the footsteps of a researcher as he discovers the truth behind an execution order issued for a half dozen soldiers. What happened? Why did it happen? Who lived? Who died? The answers are all in various scraps of information in the National Archives, which, when put together, reveal the result of the order and why events unfolded as they did.

Another touch-screen based exhibit allowed visitors to discover connections between many of the major players, in the North and in the South, during the Civil War. I never thought about it before, but the exhibit shows how many of the war’s participants knew each other well before the war and ended up on opposite sides of the battle lines during the war.

We were even able to sneak a peek at the Emancipation Proclamation itself as a section near the end of the exhibit overlooked the glass-encased document and the rotating groups of honor guards, garbed in replicas of Civil War-era uniforms, standing at attention before it.

Discovering the Civil War, the National Archives exhibit, continues at The Henry Ford through September 5, 2011.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

First Ladies' National Library and historic Saxton-McKinley Home in Canton, Ohio

The First Ladies' National Library and historic Saxton-McKinley home in Canton, Ohio, started when one woman wondered why some of the nation's most well-known First Ladies were still largely unknown and unsung.

Mary Regula, as the spouse of long-time Congressman Ralph Regula, knew a bit about the lives of political wives and witnessed several First Ladies fulfilling the demanding role of presidential spouses.

When her husband asked Mary to speak at a local civic club, she prepared a presentation on the wife of President Abraham Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln and found there was a real dearth of information about our nation's First Ladies.

I remember my own annoyance about the lack of information about women's history in my local library and classes when I was young, so I can empathize with Regula's frustration and admire her effort to bring more of those stories to light.

We first stopped by the Saxton-McKinley home where the museum's Mary Rhodes took us on a quick tour and told about First Lady Ida Saxton McKinley's life.

Kitchen and family breakfast room

Ida Saxton grew up in Canton, Ohio, as the daughter of a prominent banker who stressed the importance of education and independence to his two daughters. He sent them, with a chaperone, on a six-month Grand Tour of Europe, and Ida began working at her father's Stark County Bank when she returned home. She worked as a clerk, cashier, and occasionally as the bank's manager when her father traveled.

Ida married William McKinley in 1871. The couple celebrated their wedding reception in the ballroom at Ida's family home, a two-story, gable-roof house built in 1841 with a mid-1860s addition. The young McKinleys moved into the home's large ballroom area and an adjoining study after their marriage.

The McKinleys lived in the home off and on until President McKinley's 1901 assassination. Ida lived in Canton after his death, visiting her husband's grave nearly every day until her 1907 death.

Piano owned and played by Ida Saxton McKinley in formal parlor

The Saxton-McKinley home later became a tavern and a boarding house, and photos I saw of the building taken in the 1980s showed it as a sadly deteriorated building.

Marsh Belden, Sr., the grandson of Ida's sister, stepped in to save the house from demolition. He restored the exterior and got the home placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

By 1995, the First Ladies Library was established. The next five years saw restoration of the Saxton-McKinley home's interior, Marsh Belden's donation of the nearby seven-story 1895 City National Bank Building to the Library, and Congressional authorization of the First Ladies' National Historic Site and public opening as part of the National Park Service in 2000.

Formal dining room with reproduction wallpaper

Sheila A. Fisher, Ph.D., a retired clinical psychologist and one of the Library's original volunteers, oversaw restoration, renovations and acquisitions for the organization at the request of board members who knew of her love of architecture and interior design.

Fisher's attention to detail was apparent as we toured the Saxton-McKinley home with Rhodes and she pointed out period-style wallpapers and furnishings, many of them meticulously recreated using historic photographs and details remembered by those who visited the home as young children.

Rooms open to visitors include a parlor, sitting room, bedroom and the ballroom, which serves as a gallery for photos and short tributes to each of the First Ladies.

Tribute to First Ladies gallery in the ballroom

Costumed docents usually give hour-long tours of the home, although Rhodes was nice enough to take us on a short private tour of the house and allow me to take a few photos to share here.

The tour also includes a trip to the Education and Research Center housed in the old bank building one block north of the Saxton-McKinley home.

We visited the reception center and exhibit hall on the building's first floor to see the restored marble banking room. The building underwent $7.5 million dollars in renovations, equipment purchases and electronics upgrades, while restoring many of the bank's 1890s architectural details.

Exhibits on the ground floor change every few months, and there is a 91-seat Victorian-style theater that shows videos about the First Ladies and other historically important women.

Abigail Powers Fillmore was the first First Lady to earn her own living, working as a teacher before her 1825 marriage to President Millard Fillmore. She organized the first White House Library, and the First Ladies' Library replicates her 6,400-piece library on the first floor.

The research library and archives take up much of the rest of the 20,000-square-foot building and are available to students and researchers by appointment.

About 500 dresses and accessories worn or used by First Ladies throughout history, as well as books, videos, photos, speeches, manuscripts, scholarly research papers and other artifacts make up this national archive.

Allow a couple of hours to tour the library and home. This attraction is appropriate for older children and adults with an interest in history and historical restoration.

Formal parlor

Researchers will find an annotated bibliography with more than 50,000 entries, articles, First Lady biographies, study guides and other items at the Library's Web site.

Rhodes gave me a copy of This Elevated Position: A Catalogue and Guide to the National First Ladies' Library and the Importance of First Lady History, which I found helpful when researching this article. The catalog is also good for visitors who want to remember their tour with photographs of the home and museum artifacts as the site normally doesn't allow visitors to take photos or video (and the reason I have no photos of the interior of the Library building).

This story is part of a series of posts about Canton museums. Check out Discover something for everyone at the William McKinley Museum in Canton, Ohio, and check back later this week for a story about the Canton Classic Car Museum.

Want to learn about Michigan's own First Lady? I wrote Berry Ford, the Nation's "First Mama" after touring a special exhibit of her clothing and accessories in the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Thanks to the Canton-Stark County Convention & Visitors Bureau for their assistance with planning our recent visit to Canton and arranging for comped media passes to the museum.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Canton

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Discover something for everyone at the William McKinley Museum in Canton, Ohio

Scores of excited school kids streamed into Discover World at Canton's William McKinley Presidential Library and Museum as we arrived there on a weekday in May.

The museum's hands-on science center is one of several attractions that draw as many as 20,000 students each year for class field trips at the museum. We ducked into the gift shop as the kids filed by and talked with staffers there who told us as many as 9,000 students visit each year during April and May, and fall field trips bring visits from several school groups each day.

The museum draws about 50,000 total visitors each year and is definitely family-friendly, but we found plenty to like for visitors of all ages.

The building is next to the McKinley Monument, the final resting place for the 25th president that sits on a hill overlooking the museum. The monument draws 200,000 visitors each year and is worth a story of its own (which I'll tell when the next Presidents' Day rolls around).

The Stark County Historical Society organized in 1946, establishing a collection and moving into the permanent museum building next to the McKinley Monument in 1963.

Alice, an animatronic allosaurus, welcomes visitors to Discover World where aspiring young scientists learn about archaeology, paleontology, electricity, ecology, and other subjects through clever interactive exhibits and cool things like a real mastodon skeleton, unearthed in Canton during excavation for an apartment building.

There is even a special room for toddlers where the youngest visitors can explore under parents' watchful eyes.

Hoover-Price Planetarium shows take place weekends year round, with daily shows scheduled during the summer and some holidays. Children must be 5 years old to attend planetarium shows, which are 30 minutes long and included with admission to the museum.

We have a special interest in presidential and local history, so we spent much of our time at the museum in galleries devoted to McKinley's life and life in Stark County through the years.

The museum has the largest collection of McKinley artifacts in the world and includes those displayed in museum galleries, as well as papers, manuscripts, photographs, books, audio-visual recordings, and other items in the Ramsayer Research Library's 25,000-piece collection of McKinley and Stark County items.

McKinley was one of eight presidents from Ohio. He moved to Canton in 1867 as a young lawyer, meeting and marrying Ida Saxton a few years later. McKinley's career progressed as he became a prosecuting attorney, U.S. Congressman, governor of Ohio, and, in 1897, President of the United States.

The McKinley gallery has a large room with several sections containing furnishings used by the McKinleys during his early career, his time campaigning for president, and his time as president.

Animatronic figures of the McKinleys sit among some of the furnishings from the home where McKinley ran the "Front Porch Campaign" that propelled him into the White House. It is difficult to imagine campaigns where voters traveled to see candidates at their homes, but both presidents McKinley and, in 1880, Garfield drew crowds to Ohio as part of successful campaigns run from their own front porches.

An assassin killed President McKinley in 1901. The gallery includes memorial souvenirs issued after his death and covers the McKinley Monument construction.

One of the museum's newest exhibits is The Stark County Story, which opened in 2009 and tells the county's history in decade-sized chunks from its founding in 1805 through the present day.

The Stark County Story exhibit includes household artifacts, including one of my favorite items in the museum-a transitional piano.

This instrument represents the transition from harpsichords and grand pianos to upright pianos as we know them today. Henry Beatty of Massillon, Ohio, purchased the piano in 1858 for his five-year-old son Harry. He paid what must have been the astounding sum of $1,000 for it, and it is one of only a few such pianos known to exist today. (I sure hope little Harry enjoyed piano practice more than I did as a child!)

The museum's Street of Shops recreates life in Canton during the 1800s, reminding me of similar exhibits in Michigan's Grand Rapids Public Museum and Detroit Historical Museum.

Storefronts include a general store, blacksmith shop, toy shop, photographer's studio, doctor's office, hotel, saloon, fire station, and a printing office where I picked up a copy of The Ohio Repository newspaper from December 14, 1815 for a penny!

Saloon in the Street of Shops

Trains figured strongly in Canton's development as the city was Ohio's main distribution point for the Pennsylvania Railroad. The Street of Shops' train station houses a massive HO model train layout recreating various Ohio railroad stops during different eras in miniature.

Check out museum curator Kim Kenney's blog for behind-the-scenes information about museum activities and upcoming exhibits, visit the museum's Facebook page for historic Canton photos, or check out the museum's genealogy guide to see if you are related to President McKinley. The teacher resource area has lots of downloads and preparatory material to enrich the museum experience for K-12 visitors.

Want to learn more about the history of Canton, Ohio? Check out Canton: A Journey Through Time by Kimberly Kenney or Canton Postcard History by Gay Morgan Moore.

I picked up The William McKinley Presidential Library & Museum by Christopher J. Kenney in the museum's gift shop for a couple of bucks on the clearance table. This publication came out before the museum opened The Stark County Story exhibit, but it still offers some good information about the history of the museum and some of its notable artifacts.

Thanks to the Canton-Stark County Convention & Visitors Bureau for their assistance with planning our recent visit to Canton and arranging for comped media passes to the museum.

© Dominique King 2011 All right reserved

Things To Do
Canton

Family-friendly fun at Michigan’s Grand Rapids Public Museum

Cool objects like the 76-foot-long fin whale skeleton and functional 1920s Driggs biplane suspended from a ceiling high above the ground floor at the Grand Rapids Public Museum draw a lot of attention from young visitors. Exhibits like an alphabet-based hunt throughout the museum, dinosaurs, an authentic mummy, and a working 1920s carousel keep young visitors’ interest, making this western Michigan museum particularly family-friendly.

It’s difficult to imagine this spacious, light-filled museum on the west bank of the Grand River as a small collection in a rented room, but that’s exactly how this museum started out over 150 years ago.

In 1854, civic leaders established the Grand Rapids Lyceum of Natural History, which they envisioned as a library and museum. By 1857, the group leased a room and displayed mineral specimens, birds, reptiles, and other natural artifacts arranged in strict, scientific categories.

The group suspended operations at the outbreak of the Civil War, but the Lyceum group re-emerged by 1868 to merge with the Grand Rapids Scientific Club, forming the Kent Scientific Institute and Museum.

The Kent Scientific Institute Gallery in today’s museum replicates its pre-1900 exhibit hall with artifacts arranged in a Victorian-era setting featuring dark wood, formal furniture, and a big stuffed moose head.

Today the museum is a modern museum of cultural and natural history, primarily housed in the Van Andel Museum Center. The building, named for the principal donor and fundraiser involved in its 1994 construction, has 80,000 square feet of permanent exhibition space and a 9,500-square-foot gallery for traveling exhibits.

The building’s architecture is a nice blend of vintage and modern with its red-and-cream brick exterior reminiscent of the nineteenth-century furniture factories and mills (like the flour mill that once occupied the site), with an interior that incorporates natural light and a riverside view as a major architectural element. 

Our most recent visits to the museum came in autumn of 2010, when the museum drew 240,000 visitors as a venue for 27 ArtPrize artists, and early this year during a quiet winter weekday when we had time to tour the museum’s permanent exhibits.

Visitors can start on the ground floor and work their way up to the third-floor galleries that include temporary exhibits and the 145-seat Roger B. Chaffee Planetarium, named for the Grand Rapids-born astronaut who died in the 1967 Apollo 1 launch pad fire, or they can start on the third floor and work their way to the ground floor, saving the ¾-scale recreation of 1890s Streets of Old Grand Rapids and a ride on the carousel for last.

Visit the Streets of Old Grand Rapids, Furniture City, Newcomers, and Anishinabek displays to learn more about the history of Grand Rapids.

Grand Rapids earned its nickname as “Furniture City” in the nineteenth century for its fine furniture. The Furniture City gallery follows the story of the industry in Grand Rapids through its present-day preeminence in manufacturing office and commercial furniture.

The Newcomers exhibit is the newest permanent exhibit, sharing the stories of the more than 45 ethnic groups calling western Michigan home through the years.

The 5,000-square-foot Anishinabek: The People of This Place gallery on the third floor examines the life, work, and art of the Grand Rapids area’s earliest inhabitants, featuring audio recordings, photographs, documents, weapons, tools, and some beautiful decorative clothing, baskets, and other artwork. The Anishinabek (“the real people”) refers to tribes like the Ottawa, Potawatomi, and Chippewa already living in the region as other settlers arrived, with as many as 25,000 direct descendents of those tribes still living in the Grand Rapids area.

Upcoming special exhibits at the Grand Rapids Public Museum include; Thank God for Michigan! Stories from the Civil War, featuring uniforms, weapons, photographs, and other artifacts from the museum’s collection and opening later this month; Great Lakes Shipwrecks, opening in November 2012; and an exhibit featuring the Titanic, the famously “unsinkable” ship that sunk in 1912, with artifacts recovered from the ship in 1985, opening in early 2013.

Check out the museum’s searchable collections catalog online, or connect with the museum on Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. You can also check out the Chaffee Planetarium’s Twitter account.

I’m just a big kid at heart, so you know I had to ride the museum’s carousel. Be sure to check back here later this week for that story and photos.

Want to learn more? Check out Grand Rapids Furniture: The Story of America’s Furniture City by Christian G. Carron or Historic Photos of Grand Rapids by Karolee Hazelwood.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Grand Rapids