Monthly Archives: May 2020

Church In The Middle Of Nowhere

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Although it is in the middle of the lower peninsula about 30 miles from Lansing it sure felt like the middle of nowhere to me. Located somewhere between Potterville and Vermontville the Gresham United Methodist Church has unique looking steeple and stands quietly surrounded by miles of farmland. The historical marker gives a little bit of history and reads:

Members of the Gresham United Methodist Church first worshipped in a school and in homes. In 1879, Palmer and Rebecca McDonald gave this site on which to build a church. In order to erect the church, people in the community donated logs which were cut at Dade Merriam’s sawmill. The building’s pointed arch windows and steeply pitched roof exemplify the prevalence of Gothic Revival elements in rural church architecture. The church was completed in 1881.

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Ghost Town of Afton

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The town of Afton may not be a true ghost town since there are a few houses and a beautiful little church still in the area but the row of old abandoned buildings sure makes it feel like a ghost town.

Located between Indian River and Onaway many people past through the little town on M-68. The town started as a lumber camp in 1887. In 1905 it was given a post office. The nearby Pigeon River was similar to the Afton River in Scotland and thus the town was named after it.

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Thorington School

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This old schoolhouse stands quietly along the road near Romeo. From what I could figure out it is the Thorington School. It looks as if it has been sitting vacant for a while.

This is a bittersweet day for me. My daughter is graduating from high school, but there will be no ceremony as planned. My heart goes out to all the students who have worked for 12 years to graduate from school. Graduation is not the end but the beginning. It may not be the start they wanted, but it is up to them to move forward especially in these difficult times. I am depending on this generation to take care of me when I am old. Congratulations to the class of 2020

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The Cabin Next to the Road

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North of Alpena on the east side of Grand Lake is the small town of Presque Isle. If you have ever traveled through the town you may have seen this log cabin that sit’s near the road. It has an interesting story to tell on the historical marker that stands next to it.

In 1858, German immigrant John C. Kauffman (1833-1913) left Buffalo bound for Chicago aboard a ship that later ran near Bell Bay. John walked ashore and made his way to Burnham’s Landing at Presque Isle Harbor, where he found work cutting firewood for lake steamships. In 1861, John married Elizabeth Woodruff. During the Civil War, he served in the 13th Independent Battery, Michigan Light Artillery. His unit was with the 13th New York Cavalry during the search for President Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth. It helped capture one of Booth’s accomplices. Kauffman returned to Presque Isle after the war. There he served as township supervisor. He was postmaster for the last fifteen years of his life.

John and Elizabeth Kauffman applied for a 149-acre homestead in Presque Isle Township in 1862. He built a log cabin near Grand Lake, but drifting snow off the Lake forced him to move it in 1876. John marked each log to make reassembly easier. Using a team of oxen, he and his family skidded the hand-hewn logs up the hill to this site and rebuilt the cabin. Nearby Grand Lake made the cabin a popular tourist stop in the summer. Visitors remembered John sitting on the porch in his military uniform every Fourth of July, telling stories of his service. After John died, his family loaned, then deeded, the cabin to the Grand Lake Association. The building has served as a community center, recreation facility and gift shop.

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The Park In Michigan’s Hart

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The Small town of Hart is a few miles southeast of Pentwater on the west coast of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. Just north of town is the archway for John Gurney Park welcoming visitors. The park was one of the first auto tourist camps developed along the West Michigan Pike during the 1920s. As the affordability and popularity of the automobile grew Michiganders began to take day trips and the tourist parks gave the motorists a place to stop and rest and even camp overnight. Former state senator Theron Gurney and his wife, Helen, donated land to the village of Hart in 1912 for a park to honor their son. Lieutenant John Gurney died at the Battle of Santiago de Cuba during the Spanish American War.

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Getting Lost This Summer

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I guess summer has officially started here in Michigan but with the current state of things I have not left my immediate neighborhood in a few months. I have underlying health conditions and it would not be a good idea to put myself or others at risk. I hoping I will be able to travel some this summer and most likely to places up north away from lots of people. I still have a lot of photos in my archive to share but I hope to get out and explore new places.

I don’t know what the next few months will be like but I hope to as time goes on things will get better. It may be a little while until I get back up north but I am sure the sun is rising over Lake Huron and setting over Lake Michigan. The water is still flowing down the rivers in the Upper Peninsula. This is a pic of the Lower Silver Falls near L’Anse, I wish I was there now but I will be back.

P.S. I hope you enjoyed seeing some of my cemetery pics last week in honor of Memorial Day. I am looking forward to sharing some other places with you this summer.

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Fort Custer National Cemetery

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Between Battle Creek and Kalamazoo is Fort Custer National Cemetery. The cemetery was created in 1943 and became a national cemetery in 1981. The cemetery is a beautiful place and as I drove through I saw large expanses of beautifully mowed green grass. I thought it was strange that I did not see any headstones. It was when I got out of my jeep and looked that I noticed all the headstones evenly spaced carefully placed on the sacred ground.

The entrance is known as the Avenue of Flags with 152 flagpoles proudly standing along the road that leads into the cemetery. I wanted to stop and take a photo but there was a funeral precession preparing for a ceremony. I had planned on going back to the cemetery in may to take some photos for Memorial Day while but unfortunately I am not able to.

If you are ever near this cemetery or the other national cemetery in Holly and Grand Rapids be sure to take a drive through them to remind yourself of the true price of freedom.

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The Old Cemetery Behind the Church

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St. Mary’s Church stands quietly in the small town of Indianville northwest of Burt Lake. Behind the small country church, is an old cemetery marked with white wooden crosses. As you can see from the photos, I visited in the fall, but I thought it would be a good time to share my pics with Memorial Day coming up.

There were also some newer headstones in the cemetery, and this one fore Julius C. Lewis stood out as his headstone notes he was awarded the Purple Heart and a POW. Thank you to all the veterans and especially the ones who gave their lives for our freedom. We need to remember their sacrifices all year long.

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The Soldiers’ Lot Along the Lake

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Lakeside Cemetery was established in 1877 when the city of Port Huron, purchased 148 acres from local resident John Hoffman. The Soldiers’ Lots were donated to the United States in 1881, when 135 remains from Old Fort Gratiot were re-interred at the cemetery. There were two installations known as Fort Gratiot; the first dated from 1814-1821, the second from 1828-1879. Both were located on the same site, on the west bank of the St. Clair River, approximately two miles south of Lakeside Cemetery. Of the 135 interments in the soldiers’ lot, only 35 are known. On July 7, 1884, the federal government dedicated a monument at the Lakeside Cemetery Soldiers’ Lot to honor the unknown soldiers from Fort Gratiot who fell victims to the cholera epidemic, July 4, to 18, 1832.

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America’s Number 1 Spaceman

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A few miles east of Cassopolis on M-60 is a small memorial with a futuristic-looking airplane pointing toward the heavens. Iven Carl “Kinch” Kincheloe Jr. was born in 1928 in Detroit, but he grew up in Cassopolis. After graduating from Purdue University with a bachelors degree in aeronautical engineering, he received his commission in the U.S. Air Force. He started out as a test pilot, but went on to serve in the Korean War. He flew over 100 missions and downed ten enemy Mig-15s, earning the Silver Star.

After the war, he went back to his duties as a test pilot working on the Bell X2 program. He flew the experimental aircraft over 2000 miles per hour at an altitude of over 126,000 feet. Piloting his plane at this high elevation earned him the nickname “America’s No. 1 Spaceman.” Tragically, He died in an F-104 plane crash on July 26, 1958.

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