Midwest Guest

Family matters at the Allen County Public Library and Genealogy Center in Fort Wayne, Indiana

I first discovered that Allen County, home to Fort Wayne, Indiana, has an extensive collection of online genealogy materials and resources while I researched a story about an old church with an interesting cemetery that we spotted along the Lincoln Highway a couple years ago.

I put the Allen County Library's Genealogy Center on our Midwest bucket list, hoping to see the more of the county's genealogy and history research resources, and we finally got the opportunity to check it out the center during our most recent visit to Fort Wayne.

The Genealogy Center's Manager, Curt Witcher, met us and took us on a tour of the center, which houses the nation's largest public genealogy collection.

Witcher was a genial host and generated an infectious enthusiasm for genealogical research and a love of history that made for an especially enjoyable visit to the center for both me and Tim.

The Genealogy Center is on the second floor of the 367,000-square-foot main branch of the Allen County Library in downtown Fort Wayne.

The library opened as the Fort Wayne Public Library in 1895 with 3,606 volumes in a room at City Hall. Today, as the Allen County Library system, it includes the main library in downtown Fort Wayne as well as more than a dozen branch libraries around the county in northeastern Indiana.

The library established the Genealogy Center more than 50 years ago as an outgrowth of the interest of one of the librarians in genealogical research and serving the needs of people searching for information about their ancestors.

Only the collection at the Family History Center in Salt Lake City, which is a private institution, exceeds Allen County's genealogical research holdings in the United States.

The Center houses over 370,000 printed volumes, 513,000 micro form items, 55,000 volumes of compiled genealogies that include research on many families in North America and Europe, plus other physical items like city directories from around the country, military records dating back to the 1700s, passenger lists of ships entering the country, census records and other items for a total physical collection of more than 1.1 million items.

The collection is always growing. Witcher estimates that the Center adds an average of 1,200 to 1,500 items to the collection every month.

Much of the Center's collection is available online, but genealogical researchers going to the Center in person will find free access to even more databases, many available only to libraries by subscription and licensed genealogical databases that would normally cost an individual hundreds of dollars to access all of them.

Genealogical researchers can also access other databases at the Center that include the Salt Lake holdings, census records for 1790 through 1930 with some individual state and territorial records, specialized databases of Native American and African American records and records from other countries like Canada, the British Isles, Ireland and  Germany. There are also many local and regional history resources for Allen County and the surrounding area.

One of the most valuable resources at the Center might be a staff that specializes in genealogy and history. It's possible to schedule a short one-on-one consultation with an experienced staff member if you run into a problem or are not sure where to go next with your research.

The Center's staff estimates that they see about 100,000 visitors each year

The Center also hosts meetings and programs of the Allen County Genealogy Society of Indiana where beginning genealogists can learn about topics like Genealogy and Technology. You can connect with the ACGSI, at their site and blog, on Facebook or on their Pinterest page (where I ended up going off on a tangent while looking when I found a link to an interesting article about the Find-A-Grave website, which I frequently use when researching stories on Midwest Guest).

Witcher tells budding genealogists that they can begin with just the facts that they personally know about their families and begin building their own family tree and history from there.

Staff at the Center suggests that prepping for your in-person visit before you arrive will help you to make the best use your time, especially if it is your first visit to the Center.

A good number of researchers were at the Center during our visit on a weekday afternoon. We enjoyed seeing the different resources available and how organized everything seemed. The Center's moving book shelves particularly fascinated me with how they collapsed to take up a lot less space, yet expanded with the touch of a button to reveal rows and rows of more volumes.

Hours at the Genealogy Center coincide with the library's hours of 9 a.m. until 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. until 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday and noon until 5 p.m. on Sunday. The building is closes on Sundays from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day weekend and on major holidays like New Years Day, Easter, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

You can also connect with the Genealogy Center on Facebook, Twitter or on the Center's blog.

Thanks to Visit Fort Wayne for sponsoring my recent visit to Fort Wayne, Indiana, providing lodging, meals and help arranging interviews and tours of area attractions for my review, with no further compensation. I was free to express my own opinions about this stay and experiences, and the opinions expressed here are mine.

© Dominique King 2014 All rights reserved

Midwest travel links for October 2014

Check out some great Midwest-related stories I found online this past month:

Wisconsin Cranberry Harvest-Cranberry sauce is one of my favorite parts of the Thanksgiving holiday, so I loved Julie's first-person account of harvesting these tasty little gems in Wisconsin's Cranberry County. Call me weird, but I'm definitely jealous of seeing Julie wearing waders and standing hip-deep in a cranberry bed! Check it out at the Wisconsin Parent blog.

West Side Market-This is one of my favorite year-round farmers markets, and we've wanted to get back to Cleveland to visit this market again, Seeing Mike's post about the market really got me in the mood for some holiday shopping, although I'm with him on knowing that if I spent too much time there, I'd spend a TON of money on some really great local food! Check out his story on the OHventures blog.

West Side Market

Uncovering Secrets at the Clinton County Courthouse-I am definitely a sucker for late-nineteenth-century county courthouses. The architecture and decorative details in Ohio's Clinton County Courthouse are stunning, and like many courthouses of this vintage, there is plenty of great history to go with the building. Read Tonya's story about it at The Traveling Praters blog.

Visiting Marblehead Lighthouse State Park-As much as I love great courthouse buildings, I'm probably even more fascinated with lighthouses. I've written about plenty of Great Lakes lighthouses here at Midwest Guest, and Ohio's Marblehead lighthouse has to be among my favorites. We've been out to Marblehead to take photos in the summer and winter, but we've yet to make it at the height of the autumn color season. Check out Tonya's story about the lighthouse and nearby the keepers house (which is also on my bucket list of places to go), also on the Traveling Praters blog.

Marblehead Lighthouse

A Yen for Yurts-I've never been much of a camper, but I could totally get behind the idea of staying in a yurt. This has long been on my bucket list since seeing one in northern Minnesota a number of years ago. This article at the Midwest Weekends blog reminded me of why the idea of a yurt stay originally fascinated me, and it includes a list of places to find yurts in places like Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and (be still my beating heart!) Michigan.

Can the Hotel Itself Be the Destination?-I'm always on the lookout for unusual and unique places to stay, and I remember hearing about the Hotel Pattee in Perry, Iowa a couple of years ago when several blogging friends stayed there during a conference. Sheila apparently saw the same messages about this hotel during the conference and recently found an opportunity to stay there herself. Check out her story at the Perceptive Travel blog.

Michigan-Henry Ford Museum-We love close enough to this museum and have memberships to The Henry Ford, so we visit fairly frequently throughout the year and sometimes just sneak over for an hour or so for a walk or to take some photos. Terri and her family sagely stuck with just doing the museum during their one-day visit, but hopefully they'll be able to return and spend the day at the Greenfield Village as well. Check out the story of her visit to the museum at the Travel 50 State with Kids blog.

Inside Lamy's Diner at The Henry Ford

Northern Indiana's Tombstone Trail tells tales of the departed-We've long included cemeteries in our travel plans because we like the historic tales we can often learn about a location by visiting the local graveyard. Additionally, these locations are among the best geocaching locations and provide some of the best opportunities for taking great photos we've found in our travels as well. Check out Maggie's story about a self-guided "Tombstone Trail" in northern Indiana's DeKalb and Noble counties at Indiana Landmark's Hidden Gems blog.

Tour a Former Asylum at the Village at Grand Traverse Commons, Traverse City-I remember seeing this complex back in its deserted and derelict days and the excitement I felt when hearing about its proposed transformation into a mixed use development of residential, commercial and recreational spaces. I really wanted to take this tour when we last visited Traverse in northwestern Michigan earlier this fall, but the tour didn't run the days we were there. The place has an interesting history as an asylum, but I love seeing various parts of the complex reborn into more cheerful uses. Read about Connie's tour of some of the buildings still awaiting redevelopment at her Midwest Wanderer blog. Meanwhile, if you do get up to the Village at Grand Traverse Commons, be sure to check out the gravesite of a champion milk cow on the grounds that I wrote about here-Honoring Traverse Colantha Walker.  

That's it for this month's Midwest travel links list. Do you have any favorite Midwest stories or blogs to share?

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Photo Friday: Spooky House at Port Oneida, Michigan

We first saw the Weaver Farmhouse in early 2009 as we toured the Port Oneida Rural Historical District of Sleeping Bear Dunes in Michigan's northwestern Lower Peninsula.

February 2009

It was easy to spot on the winter day when we first saw it, but it gets harder and harder to find again when we visit, especially during the warmer months when the trees have leaves on them.

This house, built in the early 1890s as a home for blacksmith Harrison Weaver and his family, became a ghostly vision after the family lost most of their land around 1940.

The National Park Service appears to be allowing nature to reclaim this particular plot in the Port Oneida district, and we stop by whenever we visit the area just to see if the house is still standing!

July 2010

The most recent images here are from our last visit in September of this year and, as you can see, the house is slipping further and further into oblivion and becoming more and more difficult to even find from the road.

September 2014

September 2014


September 2014

Be sure to check out my previous article about the farm and its history, Port Oneida Rural Historic District celebrates northern Michigan's agricultural heritage.

Want to learn more about Port Oneida? I recently discovered a small group of books about the town and its individual farms by Tom Van Zoeren-The Burfiend and Baker Farms: Images and Recollections from Port Oneida, The Werner Farm and Its Neighbors: Images and Recollections from Port Oneida and The Thoreson Farm and Its Neighbors: Images and Recollections from Port Oneida.

© Dominique King 2014 All rights reserved

Don't Miss the Northern Indiana Center for History in South Bend, Indiana!

We recently made a special trip to South Bend, Indiana to see the Studebaker National Museum, and we found an unexpected bonus when we got there!

The car museum shares a building with the Northern Indiana Center for History, and you get a discount on museum admissions if you decide to go to both museums during the same visit to the Museums at Washington and Chapin campus.

We're both history buffs and we weren't on a rigid schedule, so the decision to include the Center for History into our plans wasn't difficult for us. We ended up spending pretty much the entire day touring both museums, and still didn't see everything!

The Center for History, first organized in 1867, is the second oldest historical society in the Hoosier state and showcases the history of the St. Joseph River Valley Region.

The Center for History's complex includes a 38-room mansion that belonged to South Bend industrialist J. D. Oliver and his family (which we missed seeing as there was a wedding going on there at the time of our visit) and a workers' home depicting the life of a Polish immigrant family of the 1930s.

There was still plenty to see at the museum during our visit, including a couple of changing exhibits that are still there right now.

One of those exhibits, "World War I: The War to End All Wars", showed life, battle and death during the War.

Visitors enter the exhibit through banks of burlap sandbags arranged to bring to mind the trenches created by soldiers during the war and lots of war-time posters and battlefield still and video images.

Visitor also walk through a general's tent like the many that served as "war rooms" in the battlefields, samples of WWI technology and a triage tent that gives viewers an idea of how primitive the medical facilities, considered advanced at the time of the war, really were.

The exhibit also showed how women played increasingly important roles in supporting the wartime effort at home, and even on the battlefields of the time.

The resident historian here (Tim) felt the exhibit was well done, and I think we both learned a lot about this war that neither one of us knew a lot about previously.

This exhibit opened February 15 and runs through December 31 of this year.

My favorite exhibit had to be "Polished in Public, Fierce on the Field: The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League".

Many professional baseball players became subject to the military draft during the 1940s because of World War II, and teams had trouble fielding enough healthy players for games.

Baseball executive Phillip Wrigley came up with the idea of creating an all-female professional baseball league in 1943 to fill the gap and keep pro baseball alive throughout the war and its shortage of male players.

The All-American Girls' league fielded teams in 14 mid-sized Midwestern towns. The South Bend Blue Sox was one of the first AAGPBL teams and one of two teams that remained active during the entire 12-year lifespan of the women's league.

Other teams in the league were the Rockford Peaches, Kenosha Comets, Racine Belles, Milwaukee Chicks, Minneapolis Millerettes, Grand Rapids Chicks, Fort Wayne Daisies, Muskegon Lassies, Peoria Redwings, Chicago Colleens, Springfield Sallies, Battle Creek Belles and Kalamazoo Lassies.

The players in the league were serious athletes, but team owners and league officials expected them to be beautiful and "lady-like" at all times when there were off of the playing field.

The league folded in 1954, but several former players remained in South Bend after their pro playing days were over and the Center for History is the repository of the league's archive and artifacts.

This exhibit opened on May 31, 2014 and runs through May 31, 2015.

We also caught a showing of "A Free Life" in the museum's Voyages Gallery, a 30-minute documentary film about the history of the African-American community in the St. Joseph River region from the 1840s through the 1920s.

This film, produced by the museum narrated by actor and South Bend native  Michael Warren (perhaps best known for his long-running role in the 1980s "Hill Street Blues" television show), is definitely worth watching.

We found it especially fascinating as it contained a lot of information about the history of the Underground Railroad in northern Indiana and southwestern Michigan.

The Center for History opens 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon until 5 p.m. on Sunday. It closes on New Years Day, Easter Sunday, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Admission for just the Center for History is $8 for adults, $6.50 for seniors 60+, $5 for students ages 6 and up and free for children under 5.

Go ahead and live large by planning to make a day of it and purchase the package deal for admission to the Center for History and the Studebaker National Museum: $12 for adults, $10 for seniors, $7 for students and free for children 5 and younger.

The museum's Web site has a lot of great Indiana history resources online, plus you can connect with the Center for History on  Facebook or view its Flickr stream online.

Want to learn more? Check out South Bend Indiana (Images of America) by Kay Marnon Danielson or South Bend in Vintage Postcards by John Palmer.

Also make sure to check out, The South Bend Blue Sox: A History of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Team and Its Players, 1943-1954 by Jim Sargent, Women's Baseball by John M. Kovach and the 1992 movie, A League of Their Own. The movie, directed by Penny Marshall, tells the fictionalized story of the league and includes a few short clips of some of the original players during the movie's end credits.

© Dominique King 2014 All rights reserved

Witch's Hat Depot and Museum in South Lyon, Michigan

Some of our most fun finds happen when we're on the road and looking for something else.

This was the case when we discovered this distinctive depot in South Lyon, Michigan recently while visiting some metroparks in Michigan's Oakland and Livingston Counties in search of fall color.

We were between parks when Tim spotted the depot's "witch hat" roof. We turned back around to take a look at the building and, as luck would have it, the volunteer docents for the museum housed at the depot arrived to open it for tours while we were there.

Settlers founded South Lyon in 1832 as Thompson's Corners, and the township surrounding the settlement soon became the namesake of a local state legislator named Lucius Lyon.

South Lyon became a busy railroad town during the latter half of the nineteenth century with several different lines operating from the community at one time or another.

In 1871, Detroit, Lansing and Northern built a line west from Plymouth and operating from a Pere Marquette depot at South Lyon and, by the late 1870s that line operated as part of a very extensive Pere Marquette system linking Lansing to Detroit.

South Lyon incorporated as a village in 1873. It became a city in 1930.

The village was a stop along the Ann Arbor Railroad line during the 1880s, but that route through town disappeared by the early 1890s.

In 1883, Grand Trunk established a route running from Jackson to Pontiac that ran through South Lyon.

The depot established by the DL &N during the 1870s burned to the ground in 1908, and the Grand Trunk Western system replaced it with a one-story Queen Anne-style structure with its distinctive rounded front and conical roof.

This depot style is relatively rare in Michigan, and it was one of only a few of this type that I remember ever seeing.

One online source guessed that noted architects of the early 1900s, Frederick H. Spier and William C. Rohns, designed the depot because they designed many notable buildings in the state that included railroad depots in Ann Arbor and Durand (and the Kelsey Museum of Archeology in Ann Arbor) that also sported conical roofs. I could not confirm this attribution elsewhere, though.

The wood-framed depot served as a passenger station until 1955.

The city of South Lyon acquired the depot in the mid-1970s, moving it in from a railroad trackside location on East Lake Street to McHattie Park about a half mile away 1976.

The depot became the Witch's Hat Depot Museum in 1981, serving as the focal point for an historical village developing around it.

Volunteers and local historians helped preserve the interior of the depot to resemble a turn-of-the-twentieth-century railroad station.

The historical village, a joint effort of the City of South Lyon, the South Lyon Area Historical Society and the South Lyon Historical Commission, grew over the years with the addition of a vintage-1926 Chesapeake & Ohio caboose (1982), a freight house (built in 1984 to compliment the depot and serve as additional meeting and museum space), the one-room Washburn School (a Green Oak Township built in 1907 and moved to the village in 1984)), the Little Village Chapel (a 1930s Sears kit-house moved to the village in 2001 from East Liberty Street) and a gazebo with a witch-hat roof (built in 1991).

We arrived at the depot around noon on a Sunday and wandered around the village taking pictures for about 30 minutes before noticing the arrival of the docents and seeing them begin to open the building.

We ended up spending another hour at the site touring the depot, its museum, the schoolhouse and the chapel.

These guys knew a lot about the historic buildings, the development of the historic village, railroads in the area and the history of South Lyon itself! We had a great time as they showed us a lot of the museum "toys" like models of the depot, a small model train mounted near the ceiling and ran around one of the rooms of the depot museum and a working early 1900s crank-powered record player.

The Depot Museum and accompanying buildings in the historic village generally open from 1 p.m. until 4 p.m. on Thursdays and Sundays.

The village hosts many special events, and it is a favorite venue for small weddings.

Visitors can also arrange for special tours, teachers can bring their classes for a special day-long program at Washburn School where the kids experience an old-fashioned school day, complete with classes in the vintage one-room school and the opportunity to dress in period clothing.

Want to learn more about South Lyon's history? Check out South Lyon (Images of America) by Jennifer Redfern. This book features a photo of the Witch's Hat Depot on its cover and several pages with pictures of the building inside of the book.

© Dominique King 2014 All rights reserved

Civil War live at Wolcott Mill Metropark in Ray, Michigan

The Civil War lived on earlier this month at the Wolcott Mill Metropark in Michigan's Macomb County when living history enthusiasts gathered to recreate the part of the Siege of Petersburg, a series of battles around Petersburg, Virginia.

The 22nd annual Wolcott Mill Civil War Days saw dozens of re-enactors staging a full weekend of events, including setting up military and civilian camps peopled by re-enactors in period dress, activities like touring the park's historic mill, candle dipping, cooking over open fires, market bazaars and candle light tours, culminating in the re-enactment of a specific Civil War battle each day.

 

 

We visited the park with the Motor City Camera Club in order to shoot some images and learn a bit more about daily life in the 1860s by talking with the knowledgeable re-enactors at this living history event.

 

 

This year, Union Army re-enactors portrayed the 16th Michigan in the September 30, 1864 assault on Confederate re-enactors portraying General Hood's Texas Brigade in a scenario resulting in a Union victory and the death of the Confederate General John Gregg.

The 4th Texas Company E, or Lone Star Guard, is a volunteer group portraying soldiers and civilians from the Civil War. Most of its members are from southeast Michigan, although some of them also come from southern Canada and other places in the Midwest. The group is part of the Multi-Lakes Association for Civil War Studies and organizes the event at Wolcott Mill in conjunction with the Huron-Clinton Metroparks.

 

 

Each year, the Wolcott Mills Civil War Days event focuses on a specific Civil War battle, determined by the calendar and whether the proposed battle fits the topography of the park.

Check out this site for short video clips of the featured battles in 2012 (the Battle of Shepherdstown in Maryland) and 2013 (a battle in Chattanooga, Tennessee that resulted in a Union victory that sent the Confederate forces out of Tennessee and into Georgia).

The Civil War re-enactments are partly campouts, family reunions and a chance to become part of a living history experience.

 

 

Events like the one at Wolcott are smaller in scale than some of the re-enactments staged on some of the historic Civil War battlefields, but this year's event seemed larger than we remembered it being when we attended it six years ago.

There is also plenty to see at the 2,625-acre Wolcott Mill Metropark the rest of the year.

The park's Historic Center features one of the few remaining grist and feed mills, along with a barn museum with displays of antique farming equipment. The mill, two nearby barns and the mill pond are part of the National Register of Historic Places.

The park also has a 250-acre working farm where visitors can check out farm animals like goats, horses, and farm fowl and see the farm cows during a 10 a.m. milking each day.

Wolcott Mill Metropark also has plenty of trails for hiking or horseback riding through the woods and meadows along the Clinton River.

 

 

Interested in learning more about the history of Michigan's Macomb County? Check out Past and Present of Macomb County, Michigan: Primary Source Edition by Robert F. Eldredge.

Curious about becoming a Civil War re-enactor? Check out The Little Book of Civil War Reenacting by William J. Watson.

© Dominique King 2014 All rights reserved

Sandusky Stroll: Enjoying a Renaissance

I remember making a special trip into downtown Sandusky, Ohio five years ago to visit the Carnegie library there.

I still enjoy the vintage architecture that drew me to the city then, but my most recent visit there revealed a newly energized downtown with some new dining and beverage spots I don't remember being there just a few years ago.

 

 

Late-nineteenth century Sandusky gained fame as the "Ice Capital of the Great Lakes" with a local ice cutting industry providing much of Ohio with the ice needed to preserve food.

The city also had a thriving commercial fishing industry, was a stop along the Underground Railroad and was home to many gifted German and Irish stonecutters settling in the area.  

The limestone lurking just below the ground's surface here helps explain the abundance of skilled stone cutters in the city and the presence of so many beautiful limestone buildings that are on the National Register of Historic Places.

Learn the history of many of these buildings by downloading a Downtown Architectural Walking Tour brochure.

 

 

I enjoyed learning about the Erie County Courthouse, a Second Empire-style structure originally designed by the architectural team of Myer and Holmes and built in 1874. The building had a mansard roof, many ornamental flourishes and a tall tower capped with a widow's walk.

By the 1930s, some folks called for a new courthouse, but the county found they could get grants from the government's Works Progress Administration and opted instead for an extensive renovation instead of demolishing the building. The  renovation stripped the building's exterior of much of its decoration, sheathing it in a streamlined Art Deco-style stone layer and keeping just a few of the building's ornate details like arched windows on the lower floors. I'm not sure how I feel about the renovation, which was controversial at the time, but I'd be curious to tour the building's interior to see how that matches with the late 1930s exterior.  

The official symbol for the city dates back to 1895 when Sandusky citizen Voltaire Scott erected a zinc statue of a boot-toting boy in a city park to beautify the space. The statue suffered damage after a 1924 tornado before being moved in front of the courthouse after its 1930s renovation. The original statue fell victim to vandals in the 1990s and now stands in the City Building's atrium. A replica statue now stands in front of the courthouse.

 

 

 

We checked the working floral clock across from the courthouse and could see that it was time to check out Sandusky's restaurant and bar scene!

 

 

One of the newest Sandusky restaurants is the Small City Taphouse with 45 different beers on tap, 200 varieties of bottled beer, a full bar and an appealing array of Asian and Vietnamese meals, small plates and sushi.

Owner Kha Bui opened Small City Taphouse in the heart of downtown just weeks before our visit. The place bustled with activity on a weekday evening as we sampled a couple of beautifully prepared and tasty appetizers, along with our drinks.

 

 

Our next stop was the ZINC brasserie, a French-inspired bistro owned by Chef Cesare and Andrea Avallone that debuted in 2007. It moved to a larger space on Water Street in early 2014. The Avallones also own CRUSH, a wine bar, and the Dockside Cafe, a seasonal concession at Sandusky's Paper District Marina.

I couldn't resist pretty much making a meal of the restaurant's Lobster Bisque En Cruote, a rich, sherry-laced soup in a pastry shell that I knew wouldn't leave me enough room for some of the great-sounding entrees or wood-fired pizza also tempting to me.

I did find some room for a side order of truffle fries to eat with my soup, though!

Our last stop of the evening? The vest-pocket-sized Volstead Bar tucked along Water Street. The bar has a speakeasy theme and specializes in crafting some of the classic cocktails served before, and after, the passage of the Volstead Act (a.k.a. Prohibition) in 1919.

The bar's small size, discrete signage and swanky vibe make you feel like you're at a small secret club, but the gregariousness of brothers Chad and Ryan Whaley, who tend the bar with Ryan's wife Nikki Lloyd, give the Volstead an easy-going atmosphere.

I'm not much of a mixed-drink fan, but I enjoyed my Moscow Mule, an ice-cold drink of vodka, lime juice and ginger beer served in an ice-cold copper mug.

 

 

The Volstead Bar, opened in late 2013, occupies part of the ground floor of a late-1800s building that saw prior use as a winery and as a high-end brothel called The Green Door.     

Ryan and Nikki purchased the 3,300-square-foot building, gutted it and renovated it to house the bar, Whaley's public relations firm (Green Door Media) and the couple's home.

I wished I'd had time during my Volstead visit to learn more about the building's renovation and that it was light enough to take some decent photos.

I did find a site that allowed me to virtually tour the entire building with plenty of before-and-after images. Check it out and prepare to be wowed by the transformation wrought in this building. Amazing!

Want to learn more about Sandusky's history? Check out Sandusky, Ohio by Ron Davidson.

Thanks to the Lake Erie Shores & Islands Visitors Bureau for sponsoring my visit to Sandusky, providing lodging at Cedar Point's Castaway Bay, meals, and  help arranging visits to area attractions for my review, with no further compensation. I was free to express my own opinions about the stay and experiences, and the opinions expressed here are mine.

The Mill House Bed and Breakfast at Grand Rapids, Ohio

We love staying at a bed-and-breakfast inn where we can relax, enjoy a few good meals, see something new and return home from a short getaway feeling renewed and refreshed.

A long drive home can sometimes erase a little of that chill vibe before you have much of a chance to enjoy it, so I was thrilled to find The Mill House, a relaxing bed-and-breakfast inn just a short drive over the Michigan-Ohio border in Grand Rapids, Ohio.

Grand Rapids is an historic canal town about a half-hour drive southwest of Toledo, Ohio, on the southern shore of the Maumee River.

Our habit of taking the back roads and dawdling on our way home from a trip whenever is to thank for the discovery of this small-town inn as we spotted it while trying to follow the old roads along the Maumee River home from a trip to western Ohio last year.

We'd stopped by on a rainy autumn day when we saw a small cemetery and a couple of historic markers beside the road. The article I wrote here at that time focused on the town's history and the story of the Howard family and their friend Tee-na-Beek, who were buried in the roadside cemetery 

One of the things that caught my eye at that time was old steam-powered mill built in the late 1800s that now houses The Mill House Bed and Breakfast. I made a mental note to return to The Mill House for a later stay, which we did earlier this summer.

We don't have a lot in the way of canal history here in Michigan because we were north of the main routes west, so Ohio's rich canal history and its important role in this country's westward expansion always fascinates me. The Mill House's location on the main route through town and along a piece of the Miami and Erie Canal proved to be the perfect place to experience a bit of canal history up close and personal.

Staying at The Mill House is a special treat for history buffs. The inn is in a restored flour mill, originally built in 1898 from locally quarried stone and bricks from the local brickyard. The inn takes full advantage of the exposed brick walls and old wooden beams to create a cozy atmosphere for guests.

The Phoenix Mill served local farmers who brought their wheat in horse-drawn wagons and trailer-drawing automobiles for many years, leaving with Stump's Best Flour or feed for their livestock.

Once the mill closed later in the twentieth century, the building served as a tavern for a short time and experienced some unfortunate reworking into an apartment building.

By 1992, the building's role as a working mill was long over and it finally assumed its new role as a bed-and-breakfast inn.

Ron and Kathy Munk became the owners/innkeepers in 2006, further renovating the inn and creating a refuge from the big city that is close enough for us to drop down for an overnight stay or a quick getaway for a day or two.

The inn has four first-floor rooms with private baths and many modern amenities like good, strong Wi-Fi, flat-screen televisions, DVD players and air conditioning.  

A small common room has a snack station with hot and cold beverages and baked goods on hand throughout the day. Kathy learned that I'm a big ice tea drinker and even made sure I had a constant supply of my beloved ice tea on hand throughout our two-day stay.

Kathy is also a great cook, providing guests with a full breakfast each morning and adjusting her recipes to produce tasty gluten-free or lactose-free meals for those who have dietary restrictions.

Breakfast is in the common room or, if the weather is nice as it was during our stay, on the riverside patio surrounded by a native perennial garden.

Ron and Kathy learned of our interest in the area's history and quirky sites and readily suggested several sites and things to do that we never have found on our own.

Kathy suggested walking down the towpath trail at sunset behind the inn. It is only a half-mile walk to Thurston State Park along the trail from The Mill House, and it's a great way to watch the sunset over the Maumee River, which the state of Ohio named as a State Scenic River.

Ron and Kathy have a special mission to serve pastors and their spouses by providing a place to relax and recharge at an affordable rate

Look for some more stories in coming weeks about some of the places we explored in the area.

Want to learn more about the Miami and Erie Canal history? Check out the upcoming Miami and Erie Canal (Images of America) by Bill Oeters and Nancy Gulick.

© Dominique King 2014 All rights reserved

Visit Stone Lab at Ohio's Gibraltar Island

The Lake Erie Islands region is a great place to go for a little fun in the summer sun, but summer also brings a chance to check out some serious scientific research going on at Gibraltar Island

Gibraltar Island is home to Ohio State University's Stone Laboratory, where students, educators and other researchers work to identify and address some of the biggest environmental challenges facing the Great Lakes region, and Lake Erie in particular.

View of Gibraltar Island from atop the Perry Monument

Stone Lab is the oldest freshwater biological research field station in the United States, and the best way to see the lab and learn about the work going on there is to take one of the two-hour student-led tours offered each summer.

Gibraltar Island, sometimes called the "Gem of Lake Erie", is 6.55 acres and sits just across from Put-in-Bay on neighboring South Bass Island. Gibraltar Island eventually gained its name because it reminded people of the dolomite rock ledges of the European Rock of Gibraltar.

Gibraltar Island, part of present-day Put-in-Bay Township, passed through several different owners during its earlier years.

The State of Connecticut once owned the island and sold it to New York banker Pierpont Edwards in 1807.

View from Perry's Lookout

The island served as a likely lookout point for Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry and his soldiers during the climactic Battle of Lake Erie in 1813.

Edwards sold the island to Jose DeRivera in 1854, who in turn sold it to Sandusky native and Civil War-era financier Jay Cooke for $3,001 in 1864. Cooke built a 15-room home on Gibraltar Island as a vacation getaway for his family. Cooke died in 1905, but his daughter Laura Barney kept the island until selling it to Julius Stone in 1925.

Stone happened to be an Ohio State University trustee and the son of Prussian mathematician and astronomical researcher Franz Theodore Stone.

Julius Stone knew about the school's Lake Laboratory, which started operating in 1895 on the second floor of a fish hatchery in Sandusky, Ohio. Stone's connection to OSU and his respect for his father's work led him to donate the land at Gibraltar Island to the university as a lab location and ask the school to name the facility for his father.

The school completed the lab's main 21-room building in 1928 and began offering classes there in 1929.

Stone Lab works with the Center for Lake Erie Area Research (CLEAR) and the Ohio Sea Grant Program to operate OSU's Lake Erie program.

The lab offers more than two dozen college-credit courses for undergraduate, graduate and advanced high school students each summer. Grade school students also come to the island throughout the year for science workshops. There are even opportunities for non-credit classes and remote learning with lectures, research papers and publications available online.

Much of the lab's research focuses on western Lake Erie. The lake's shoreline between Detroit and Cleveland has a high concentration of residents and businesses, making it an ideal place to study the effect of a heavily populated area on the lake.

Our tour of Gibraltar Island started at the main Stone Lab building where university students shared some information about ongoing research, classes and scientific projects in subjects like biology, geology, natural resources and conservation issues at the island.

We learned a little bit about the Lake Erie water snakes, a subspecies of the northern water snake that developed about 3,000 years ago in the wake of glacial movement in the area that resulted in separating large groups of the northern water snake from the mainland. The water snake population of the islands developed some unique characteristics like a dull grey coloring that more closely matched the grey bedrock terrain than the distinctly banded patterned skin of the mainland water snakes.

Today the federal government classifies the Lake Erie water snakes, which have one of the smallest ranges of any snake on earth, as threatened.

The non-venomous snakes are especially important to Lake Erie because they have a taste for gobies, an invasive species that disturbs the natural food chain for smallmouth bass, wall eye and other bottom-dwelling fish native to the area and popular among fishers and diners.

The Ohio Division of Natural Resources Division of Wildlife classifies the snakes as endangered, and there are fines for killing or harming them.

Stone Lab is also doing interesting work and research in the area of energy production and conservation.

The lab installed a number of solar energy and thermal panels on Gibraltar Island in 2012 and 2013 as part of an effort to decrease the facility's dependence on the conventional electrical grid. One goal of the program is to reduce conventional energy use at the lab by 10-25 percent. The solar energy project also gives students a chance to study and research the process of creating sustainable energy and compare the effectiveness of different energy collection options.

Our tour of Gibraltar Island also included learning about the island's history, visiting Perry's Lookout, looking at the exterior of Cooke's Castle and glimpsing glacial grooves on the island.

Glacial grooves

The tours run from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m. on Wednesdays from mid-June through mid-August. We arrived at the Boardwalk Restaurant Harbor Taxi Landing in Put-in-Bay by 10:45 a.m. to take a water taxi to Gibraltar Island for the tour. Cost is $6 for a round-trip water taxi ticket. The $10 tour fee ($5 for children 6-12) helps support Stone Lab student scholarships.

The summer tours generally draw 5 to 50 people each week (we toured the island with a group of about 40 or 50 folks).

There is also an annual open house and tour at Gibraltar Island in early September.

You can also connect with Stone Lab on Facebook or Twitter.

Want to learn more about Gibraltar and other Lake Erie Islands? Check out Ohio's Lake Erie Island by Chad Waffen or Lake Erie Islands: Sketches and Stories of the First Century After the Battle of Lake Erie by Michael Gora.

Thanks to the Lake Erie Shores & Islands Visitors Bureau and Miller Ferries  for sponsoring my visit to Put-in-Bay, providing lodging, ferry transportation, help arranging visits to South Bass Island and Put-in-Bay attractions for my review, with no further compensation. I was free to express my own opinions about the stay and experiences, and the opinions expressed here are mine.

© Dominique King 2014 All rights reserved

History and Mystery at Ohio's South Bass Island Lighthouse

The story behind the beautiful Queen Anne-style lighthouse and tower on South Bass Island near Put-in-Bay, Ohio and its proximity to the site of a key Lake Erie naval battle during the War of 1812 tells of its place in early American history.

 

 

On the other hand, the curious tale behind the deaths of the tower's first keeper and his assistant is a mystery we'll probably never solve.

Revolutionary War veteran Pierpont Edwards purchased South Bass, Middle Bass, Green, Sugar, Ballast, Gibraltar and Starve Islands 1807 for $26,087.

After the War of 1812, Edwards developed South Bass Island, shipping its natural resources like timber and limestone to the mainland for sale.

The Edwards family sold the islands to Jose de Rivera Saint Jurgo for $44,000 in 1854.

The new owner found the area's climate hospitable for planting vineyards and making wines that became very popular, bringing many tourists to the "Wine Islands" area.

The 1892 opening of Hotel Victory at Put-in-Bay, then one of the largest hotels in the United States, brought even more visitors and private boats to the island.

The increase in tourist traffic during the late 1800s finally led the Lighthouse Board to request $8,600 for a light station on South Bass Island in 1890. The appropriation for the money finally came through in 1894.

The government purchased two acres on the southwestern tip of the island for $1,000 in 1895.

 

 

The lighthouse consisted of a 2-1/2-story dwelling with an attached 60-foot-tall light tower. The home had many features not common among other lighthouses like a laundry room, full basement, kitchen range, pocket doors and a hot water reservoir.

The station seemed like a lovely home for the keeper and his family...but the mysteries still unsolved soon marred the idyllic atmosphere.

The first light keeper, an experienced naval officer named Harry H. Riley, assumed his duties with the initial July 10, 1897 lighting of the light. A Fourth-Order Fresnel lens costing $1,500 soon replaced the original oil lamp.

Details of what happened next differ a bit from source to source, but the basic story and its sad result remains the same.

Riley hired a man named Sam Anderson, who also worked part-time at Hotel Victory, to help maintain the grounds and light at South Bass.

 

 

Anderson was at the lighthouse for about three weeks, living in the basement with some live snakes he collected on the island, when the area fell under quarantine because of a small pox outbreak during the summer of 1898.

An agitated Anderson reportedly tried to leave the lighthouse for a safer area, but troops sent to enforce the quarantine order sent him back to the lighthouse.

Anderson walked back to the lighthouse, but he refused to enter it. He stayed outside, howling for most of the night according to at least one report.

The noise suddenly stopped late that night.

Searchers found Anderson's body at the bottom of a cliff near the lighthouse the next day.

Two days later, police in Sandusky, Ohio found light keeper Riley wandering around town, and they arrested him on drunk and disorderly charges.

Officials soon committed the distraught light keeper to a state mental hospital, and his wife temporarily took over his lighthouse duties.

 

The Lighthouse Board ruled Anderson's death a suicide. They relieved Riley of his post on February 23, 1899, and Riley died in the mental hospital later that year.

Speculation swirled around the mysterious story. Did Anderson really commit suicide? What set Riley off, and did he know more about Anderson's death than he could tell anyone?

A story in a 1907 issue of Ohio Magazine mentioned rumors about the connection between the deaths and stories that Anderson's ghost supposedly haunted the lighthouse basement.

Another death occurred near the lighthouse in April of 1925 when Charles B. Duggan, who assumed duties as the light keeper in 1908, died after falling from a cliff on the west end of the island. His 20-year-old son Lyle temporarily assumed his father's duties until the Christmas after his father's death.

Paul Prochnow, the last light keeper at the South Bass lighthouse, retired in 1962.

The Coast Guard replaced the South Bass light with an automated beacon atop a steel tower beside the lighthouse after Prochnow's retirement, sending the Fresnel lens to the Lake Erie Islands Historical Museum, where we saw it last year.

 

 

In 1967, the Coast Guard offered the lighthouse for sale.

Ohio State University became the lighthouse's guardian under a 30-year quit-claim deed to use as a research site with the school's Stone Laboratory on nearby Gibraltar Island.

The school assumed permanent ownership in 1997, making the South Bass Island Lighthouse possibly the only light house in the U.S. owned by a university.

In 1990, the South Bass Island Lighthouse earned a spot on the National Register of Historical Places.

The South Bass Island Lighthouse is one of the first things visitors see as they approach the island via ferry, and it is just a short walk from the Lime Kiln Dock.

 

 

The lighthouse is still home to researchers and students in OSU's Sea Grant College program, and students began offering tours of the lighthouse in recent years during limited hours.

Tour the lighthouse and climb the tower from 11 a.m. until 5 p.m. on Mondays and Tuesdays from mid-June through mid-August. Cost is $3 for adults and $1 for kids. The grounds are also open to the public from dawn until dusk for free.

Want to learn more about Ohio lighthouse history? Check out Ohio Lighthouses by Wil O'Connell and Pat O'Connell.

Thanks to the Lake Erie Shores & Islands Visitors Bureau and Miller Ferries  for sponsoring my visit to Put-in-Bay, providing lodging, ferry transportation, help arranging visits to South Bass Island and Put-in-Bay attractions for my review, with no further compensation. I was free to express my own opinions about the stay and experiences, and the opinions expressed here are mine.

© Dominique King 2014 All rights reserved