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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This beautiful old house built by Issac Cappon stands near downtown Holland. He was born in 1830 in the Netherlands and came to the United States when he was 17 years old. he came to Michigan’s Holland Colony in 1848. Here he worked as a laborer in a local tannery. With his experience working in the tannery, he was the founding partner in the Cappon & Bertsch Leather Co. which was founded in  1857. When Holland incorporated in 1867, Cappon became its first mayor.

After the devastating fire that destroyed Holland in 1870, he began construction of his Italianate style house which was completed in 1874. It remained in the Cappon family until the death of Isaac’s daughter Lavina in 1978. After Lavina’s death, the home was willed to the city of Holland and is now used as a museum.

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This brick house in Fremont was the home of Daniel and Dorothy Gerber. If you have cared for a baby or not that last name is probably familiar to you. I know when my kids were babies we went through a lot of those little jars of baby food with the Gerber label on them. In 1927, When the Gerber’s children were babies, a physician recommended they eat strained vegetables. After cooking and painstakingly straining the vegetables she told her husband that there had to be a better way. Daniel’s family owned the Fremont Canning Company. They could can pureed tomato sauce, why not strained vegetables.  After a little bit of trial and error, they came up with their first five flavors. They were a big hit and within six months Gerber baby food was sold in stores across America.  Ther Gerber house is now a bed and breakfast and the Gerber processing plant in Fremont still produces Gerber products.

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What seems like the middle of nowhere near the southern border of Michigan is an ornate Queen Ann mansion.  Ezra A. Beardsley was born in Monroe, Connecticut in 1839. He manufactured hats in Younkers New York.  In 1870, he moved to Michigan and purchased 650 acres of land North of Bronson. In 1874 he was married to Florence A. Holmes.  In 1887 he built the 15 room mansion where his wife and their two children raised race horses. Ezra died in 1916 and Florence in 1924. Their two children who never married lived in the house until their deaths in the 1960s. The house sold and over the years became weathered and dilapidated by the harsh Michigan weather. Some say the old home was haunted by the spirits of the Beardsley family. In 2010 a retired physician began restoring the old Beardsley house and five years later after countless hours of work the restored home was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The house is part of Ancestral Acres Lodge and rented out of social events and wedding receptions. You can see more photos of the house before and after the restoration at their website HERE. 

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This is the James Scott residence on the corner of Peterboro and Park in the Midtown District in Detroit.  James Scott’s father also named James Scott was a prominent businessman in Detroit and when he died in the 1870’s he gave a large fortune to his son. He built this house in 1887, but from what I read Mr. Scott was not the most well-respected person in Detroit. When he built his house he wanted to purchase the property south of his, when the owner would not sell it to him he built a giant wall to block the sun from reaching his neighbor’s house, that is supposedly why the south wall has no windows.

when he died in 1910 he left the city $200,000.  to build a fountain and stipulated that there needs to be a statue of him. Many of the citizens did not want to build the fountain because of the stipulation and felt he was not worthy of a statue.  Some pointed out that he apparently never worked a day in his life and was best known for the time he spent in downtown bars. eventually, it was decided to spend his money and expand Belle Isle and build a fountain.

The home eventually was converted into apartments then suffered from a fire in the ’70s and was left abandoned,  A developer completely restored the old building. It is unbelievable to see the transformation.

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This brick house with the gingerbread style roof and beautiful stained glass windows was constructed in downtown Plymouth in 1875. It was built for Henry William Baker who was the president of the Plymouth Iron Windmill Company. With windmill sales struggling the company decided to giveaway an air rifle with the purchase of every windmill.  The air rifles were more popular than the and the company became the Daisy Manufacturing Company producing BB guns in Plymouth until 1956 when new owners moved the company to Arkansas.  It was the Daisy Red Ryder BB gun that Ralphie in the movie A Christmas Story asked Santa for Christmas to which he got the response “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid”

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