people Archives - Lost In Michigan

The Hoax and the Hack House

Posted on February 6, 2020 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Houses, people .

Just outside of the southern Michigan town of Milan is a beautiful pale green farmhouse. It is a little more ornate and larger than your average farmhouse. The house was built by Olive Friend on land purchased from her uncle Henry Hack. Olive, who was a native of Milan, built the home for her family with the money from her husband’s business. Henry Friend and Olive created and owned the Electric Sugar Refining Company in New York. It was founded in 1884 and used a unique way of refining raw sugar using electricity.

Henry Friend claimed his secret machine and process could refine sugar for ten percent of the cost of the current method. Investors would go into a room in an old flour mill with a barrel of raw sugar. They were asked to leave so Mr. Friend could process the sugar in secret because he did not want his process to be revealed for competitors to copy. The investors came back into the room and the barrel of raw sugar had been turned into pure refined sugar.

For a short time, investors clamored to purchase stock in the new company and its prices and value soared. In 1888, tragedy struck the company when Henry Friend suddenly died. As experts in sugar refining began questioning the process they became suspicious as to how the process worked. Olive moved back to Milan to live in the house she had built and had promised to reveal the process used for the right price.

Investigators had discovered the whole process and the company was a hoax. The old flour mill in New York was altered with trap doors and a secret room above. When investors stepped out of the room Henry Friend, his wife Olive and some of her relatives helped execute the scheme. The raw sugar was dumped down a hole in the floor and pure refined sugar they purchased elsewhere was poured into the barrel from the secret room above. It gave investors the appearance that he successfully refined the sugar.

Olive and some of her family were arrested in Milan and were extradited and transported to New York to face charges. Olive’s stepfather was convicted and sentenced to 9 months of hard labor in Sing Sing prison. Olive and her mother pled guilty and were sentenced with time served and returned to Milan to live in the house she had built. Olive now a widow remarried and sold the house back to her Uncle Henry Hack.

Today the old farmhouse is known as the Hack House and is a historical museum.

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The Strange tale of Nefarious Arthur Curry

Posted on January 25, 2020 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Murders, people .

If you have been to Petoskey to enjoy shopping or eating in one of the many establishments you have probably seen the historic pale yellow Perry Hotel. It was Built in 1899 by Norman J. Perry to accommodate tourists arriving by train to enjoy the fresh air of Northern Michigan. Today the hotel is owned by Stafford Smith and is a shining example of Luxury and elegance. Before Smit took over the hotel it was owned by Arthur Curry who had brought hope to a struggling city and ended up being a con man and a criminal.

In the mid-1980s Petoskey and especially the historic hotel was struggling in a slow economy. That was when Chicago stockbroker Arthur Curry came along and promised hope to the community when he purchased the Perry Hotel along with the Park Place Hotel in Traverse City. He was a very charismatic guy and people who met him were optimistic about his investments in Northern Michigan. He was able to convince people to invest in his hotels with the hopes that they will be restored and revitalize the other businesses surrounding them.

Things were going well for a short time but as expenses began piling up, investors were having a hard time finding Curry. After being ousted from the brokerage firm in Chicago he was desperate for money and came up with a scheme to rais some more money. In March of 1989, he kidnapped Gayle Cook the wife of William Cook from their Bloomington Indiana home. William and Gayle together built a medical manufacturing firm and were worth over 250 million dollars. Curry kidnapped Mrs. Cook as she carried groceries into her home. After tying her to the back chair in his van he demanded 1.3 million dollars in cash and another half-million in gold bullion. About 24 hours later the FBI found Curry’s van and rescued Gayle Cook and arrested Curry. He was convicted in 1990 and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

If you are like me you are probably doing the math in your head and thinking he will be released because it has been 30 years. He and his brother have been charged with bank robbery. Together the two are accused of robbing about 20 banks in southern Indiana and Kentucky.

Despite being owned by a short time by Mr. Curry, the Perry Hotel continues standing proudly in downtown Petoskey welcoming tourists and guests.

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The Old Church in Skandia

Posted on November 17, 2019 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Cemetery, Churches, people .

Southwest of Marquette on US-41 near the intersection of M-94 is an old brick church that stands in Skandia Township. The Emanual Lutheran Church was built in front of the cemetery in 1904. The cemetery was created in 1892, for a burial plot for the stillborn son of Hjalmer Bahrman after the land was donated by Andrew Haglund.

Laid to rest in the cemetery is William Bakewell who was the only American crewmember of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance, which departed Buenos Aires on an expedition to cross Antarctica. After the ship became trapped in ice and sank he was stranded for months in the frozen wasteland with some of the crew. After being rescued he moved to Dukes Michigan in 1945 and died in 1969 and is buried in the cemetery behind the church. Bakewell Island, on the Antarctic coast, is named for him.

Lost In Michigan T-Shirts will be removed from Inventory soon. Now is a good time to order if you want one. I will be at the holiday bazaar at Handy Middle School in Bay City Saturday, November 23rd. It’s too hard for me to keep track of inventory while at the bazaar so if you want to order a t-shirt you can do it HERE

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Win One For Da Gipper Eh

Posted on September 13, 2019 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in people, upper peninsula .

You probably heard the phrase ” win one for the Gipper ” at a football game or from the Knute Rockney movie where a young Ronald Reagan played George Gip. What most people don’t know, is the Gipper was a Yooper.

George Gipp was born in 1895 and raised in Laurium on the Keweenaw Peninsula. He entered Notre Dame intending to play baseball for the Fighting Irish. While on campus, he was recruited by Knute Rockne for the football team, despite having no experience in organized football. During his Notre Dame career, Gipp led the Irish in rushing and passing each of his last three seasons (1918, 1919, and 1920). His career mark of 2,341 rushing yards lasted over fifty years. Gipp is still Notre Dame’s all-time leader in average yards per rush for a season

Gipp died at age 25 of a strep throat infection and pneumonia on Dec 14, 1920, two weeks after being elected Notre Dame’s first All-American by Walter Camp.It was on his hospital bed that he is said to have delivered the “win just one for the Gipper” line and said to Rockne;

“I’ve got to go, Rock. It’s all right. I’m not afraid. Some time, Rock, when the team is up against it, when things are wrong and the breaks are beating the boys, ask them to go in there with all they’ve got and win just one for the Gipper. I don’t know where I’ll be then, Rock. But I’ll know about it, and I’ll be happy.“

After his death, A memorial was erected in Larium honoring the football hero and Yooper.

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A Woman’s Courage

Posted on May 22, 2019 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Michigan Historical Markers, people .

Next to the Genesee County courthouse in Flint is an ordinary looking Michigan historical marker. It has two names on it. One side with a woman’s name and the other side with a man’s name. It is a reminder of a remarkable person who lived in Flint over a century ago.

Sarah Emma Edmonds was born in Canada in 1841. To escape her abusive father she dressed as a man and immigrated to Flint in 1857. During the Civil War, on May 25, 1861, she enlisted as Franklin Thompson in Company F of the 2nd Michigan Infantry, also known as the Flint Union Greys. Extensive physical examinations were not required for enlistment and her true identity was not discovered. She served as a nurse and messenger and participated in several battles. She also dressed as a woman and became a spy for the Union. In 1893 Emma (or Frank) became ill and she deserted the army before she was found out to be a woman.

In 1864, Sarah wrote a book about her experiences in the Civil War titled The Female Spy of the Union Army. One year later, her story was picked up by a Hartford, CT publisher who issued it with a new title, Nurse and Spy in the Union Army. It was a huge success, selling in excess of 175,000 copies. Edmonds donated the profits from her memoir to various soldiers aid organizations. She continued to travel the country lecturing and sharing her remarkable story.

In 1867, she married Linus. H. Seelye, a mechanic and a childhood friend with whom she had three children. All three of their children died in their youth, leading the couple to adopt two sons. She petitioned the government to change her desertion charge and on July 3, 1886, Congress granted Sarah Emma Edmonds Seelye and honorable discharge from combat duty and a pension of $12 a month. She is the only female to be admitted into the veterans organization the Grand Army of the Republic and is laid to rest in a G.A.R. section of Washington Cemetery in Houston after she died in 1897

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The Michigan Pyramid

Posted on April 26, 2019 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Historic Places, people .

The town of Kewadin sits at the northern end of Elk Lake. North of town next to the Cairn Highway is a stone pyramid also known as a cairn. It’s a Scottish term used to describe a man-made stack of stone used as a monument. On the front of the monument is a plaque dedicated to Hugh J. Gray “Dean of Michigan’s Tourist Activity.” The cairn was built in 1938 using stones from all of Michigan’s 83 counties with their name inscribed on the stone. Wexford County’s stone is a block of rubber from the tire factory that was located in its borders. My favorite is Huron County which is a small grindstone most likely from Grindstone City at the tip of the thumb.

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The Girl Raised in this Forgotten House

Posted on March 8, 2019 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Historic Places, people .

Near Arcadia Michigan is this old farmhouse hidden in the trees where a little girl named Harriet Quimby lived with her family. When she was a teenager, she moved with her parents to California where she grew up with a love of writing. She wrote seven screenplays directed by D.W. Griffith, and even acted in a few movies. She eventually moved to New York, and began writing a column for Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly. She would publish articles about her journeys and adventures for the magazine. Ahe visited an airshow where she fell in love with aviation and became the first American woman to receive a pilots license on August 1st, 1911.

Harriet Quimby in her Purple Flying Suit: Wikipedia

She became a famous pilot, traveling the world flying in her vibrant purple flying suit, and paved the way for female pilots like Amelia Earhart. She was the first woman pilot to fly across the English Channel in 1912, but received little press coverage, because the Titanic had sunk the day before her crossing.

On July 1st she was Tragically killed in a plane crash when her plane pitched upward when she and her passenger were thrown from the plane and fell to their deaths. Strangely the plane glided back down, and her accident still remains a mystery as to what happened.

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The Strange Story of Wellington Burt’s Fortune

Posted on November 18, 2018 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Cemetery, people .

In the back of Saginaw’s Forest Lawn Cemetary is a massive stone mausoleum where lumber baron and railroad tycoon Wellington R. Burt is entombed. At the time of his death in 1919, he was the 8th wealthiest person in America and the second richest person in Michigan with Henry Ford holding that title. He is the only one who knew why he had one of America’s strangest last wills. It had a “spite clause” where he stated his money was to be given out 21 years after the death of his last surviving grandchild who was alive at the time of his death. No one knows why he had such a strange request in his will. He left money for some of his servants who had worked for him at his Mansion in downtown Saginaw. He must have really hated his family. Burt’s last grandchild, Marion Lansill died in November of 1989. 21 years later his trust, valued approximately 100 million dollars, was split between 12 descendants in 2010.

There is a lot more to this story and you can read about it, along with several other interesting stories from around the Mitten State, in my book available on Amazon by clicking HERE

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The Remarkable Story of War Nurse Ellen May Tower

Posted on November 9, 2018 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in people .

This monument stands in an old cemetery in the small town of Byron near the southeast corner of Shiawassee County. The historical marker at the cemetery tells her remarkable story.

The daughter of Civil War Captain Samuel and Sarah Tower, Ellen May Tower was born May 8, 1868, in Bryon. She attended Chaffee School, the Byron Village School and a nurse’s training program at Detroit’s Grace Hospital. She worked for several years at the Michigan School for the Blind. On April 21, 1898, Tower volunteered for service as an army nurse “in the event of war between the United States and Spain.” War was declared by Spain three days later. She took her oath in September 1, 1898, and was sent to Camp Wikoff, located at Montauk Point, New York. Known as one of the “Camp Wikoff Angels,” she cared for soldiers who had been returned to the United States to recover from injuries or disease. In late September 1898, she volunteered for duty in Puerto Rico where she died less than three months later.

During the Spanish – American War, approximately ninety percent of American casualties resulted from disease. On December 9, 1898, Ellen May Tower, an army nurse from Byron died of typhoid fever in a hospital tent after only ten weeks abroad. Her remains arrived in Detroit on January 15, 1899, and her funeral took place in Byron two days later. The Owosso Evening Argus hailed the event as the first military funeral in Michigan for a woman. Thousands of servicemen, villagers and visitors attended. Dr. Sterling, who had awarded Tower’s nursing diploma five years before to the day, delivered her eulogy. The Tower family had moved to Onaway in the 1880s. Nearby, the village of Tower was named for the nurse when it was founded in 1899.

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The Strange Story of Michigan’s Grizzly Adams

Posted on November 8, 2018 by Mike Sonnenberg Posted in Forgotten Places, people .

Near the intersection of old 127 and M-61 not far from Harrison is an old wooden fence with stone pillars. It may not look like much now, but back in the day tourists from miles around would stop for what was behind the fence. John E. Meyers moved to the area in the 1920’s and known by his nickname Spikehorn he built the Spikehorn Bear Den behind the old fence. The sign read “where you could shake hands with a bear” I am not sure why you would want to but tourists flocked to the site to see the bears and meet the strange man known as Spikehorn. He must have been a character with his leather mountain man clothes and his long white hair and beard. He was fond of telling tall tales of lumberjacks and trapping in Michigan’s forests.

Spikehorn traveled with his bears, and was happy to show off his big furry friends during interviews with the media. He took some of his bears to Detroit for a radio interview, and one of his bears got loose, as they usually do. Needless to say, the workers in the radio station were not too fond of a bear roaming the office. When he was 87 years old a devastating fire destroyed his bear den and park. He was too old to rebuild it and a few years later at the age of 89, he passed away at a nursing home in Gladwin. All that remains is this old wooden fence and some stone pillars.

You can read more about Spikehorn and other weird Michigan places in the Lost In Michigan books available on Amazon by clicking HERE

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