Traverse City Record-Eagle - Record-Eagle 150th Anniversary

TC's early women leaders
Thirteen women who influenced early Traverse City are profiled.
TC history exhibit visits TADL
The Record-Eagle's traveling exhibit of Traverse City and newspaper history will be on display throughout November at the Traverse Area District Library on Woodmere.
Traverse City: A History In Photos
Updated every Sunday, this gallery contains photos published in conjunction with our ongoing history series celebrating the Record-Eagle's 150th Anniversary.
Loraine Anderson: TC's 1925 earthquake
Earthquakes are rare in Michigan, but Traverse City residents definitely felt the earth move beneath their feet and watched electric ceiling lights sway overhead on Feb. 28, 1925. "EARTHQUAKE HERE FIRST EVER FELT: Dishes Rattle, Chairs Rock, Smokers 'Swear Off' and People in High Places Come Down," Record-Eagle headlines shouted after tremors rattled the city at 8:27 p.m. that Saturday night.
Water Wars: Advocating for 'public trust'
It was a busy summer on the water front for Great Lakes advocates in what environmentalists and others are calling "The Water Wars."
Summary of summer Great Lakes water issues
Great Lakes water issues this summer included the following.
R-E editorial decries water diversion
Record-Eagle concern about Great Lakes water diversion dates to the early 1900s, including a Jan. 14, 1925, editorial about the U.S. governments challenge of Chicagos right to divert Lake Michigan water without consulting its neighbors.
150 Years: Bay served as sewer, water supply
The Boardman River in Traverse City wasn't a pretty sight at the turn of the last century. It was a city sewer, and it flowed into West Bay, the source of the city's water supply.
150 Years: Cartographer maps settlements
Helen Hornbeck Tanner, a Beulah summer resident and historian of Great Lakes American Indians and cartography, created a new historical map of the Grand Traverse region that traces early American Indian and white settlement.
Loraine Anderson: Tracking Titus
Harold Titus has been one of my favorite Traverse City historical characters since I read "Timber," his 1922 novel, last year. He intrigues me for many reasons. Part of his mystery is that he is virtually unknown today. He is "new" local history.
TC's Titus swayed public opinion on forests
Sometimes it takes a gripping novel to change things. "Uncle Tom's Cabin," for example, made the world aware of the injustices of slavery. For Michigan's environmental ruin following the lumber era, that book was "Timber," written by Traverse City native son Harold Titus.
'Timber' -- the plot and review
"Timber" is set in the barren pine wastelands of northern Michigan near an imaginary town called Pancake.
A 'Timber' excerpt
An excerpt from the book "Timber," by Harold Titus.
A reforestation timeline 1887-2009
Here's a brief history of the state's reforestation effort that started before lumbering died.
Loraine Anderson: News, community, history
Features section editor Jodee Taylor asked me last week what people would learn if they came to the Record-Eagle's exhibit celebrating its 150-year history in Traverse City. It opens today at the Grand Traverse Heritage Center and will run through July. I stood speechless as 15 decades of life in Traverse City reported by the Record-Eagle and its forerunners scrolled through my head.
150 years of the Record-Eagle on display
An exhibit celebrating 150 years of the Record-Eagle opens at the Grand Traverse Heritage Center Monday. "Once you've gone through the exhibit," said Loraine Anderson, coordinator of the Record-Eagle's history project, "you'll know the history of the paper, understand the history of journalism and know about press and photo technology."
Loraine Anderson: Reading between flu lines
It's amazing how one small personal common detail can link past and present. Ralph Guido Wallace is my connection to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic and World War I. He lived in my neighborhood. I know nothing more about this local soldier other than what I read in a 1918 Record-Eagle. He died Sept. 28, 1918, of Spanish influenza, seven days after he became ill in a New Jersey hospital.
When Spanish flu came to TC
A lot has changed in Traverse City over the last 91 years, but not the threat of worldwide influenza pandemics. From 1918-1920, Spanish influenza infected 1 billion people and killed an estimated 25 million to 100 million people worldwide, or 2.5 to 5 percent of the human population. Spanish influenza showed up in Traverse City in 1918 when 14-year-old Smith Bright died in mid-October. By year's end, influenza and pneumonia had killed 34 local residents -- 31 in December alone.
Loraine Anderson: Newspapers face change
This column is, in part, a request. The Record-Eagle is preparing for its Grand Traverse Heritage Center exhibit in June and July, part of a year-long celebration of our 150th birthday. This column also is a commentary on newspapers today and predictions of their doom. It's true that the newspaper industry faces serious challenges today, but I don't believe the forecasts.
Assassination spurs heated response
The assassination of President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865, was at least as shocking then as John F. Kennedy's murder almost a century later. But in Civil War-era northern Michigan, most residents probably had few, if any, details for a week.
Editorial reflects nations anger
Merritt Bates retired from his pulpit in 1862, during the second year of the Civil War, but the twin brother of Grand Traverse Herald founder Morgan Bates never gave up his strong anti-slavery views. His editorial on the Lincoln assassination reveals more than his strong sentiments.
Murder was 'most horrid wickedness'
Excerpts of an April 28, 1865, editorial in the Grand Traverse Herald, penned by retired abolitionist minister Merritt Bates, brother of the publisher.
Sea monster allegedly spotted in bay
No one called it Nessie, but reports of a sea monster in Grand Traverse Bay and Lake Ann had folks on the lookout in 1907.
More than 100K men join CCC
From 1933 to 1942, more than 100,000 young men in CCC crews at camps across northern Michigan planted 484 million trees, spent 140,000 days fighting forest fires and constructed 7,000 miles of truck trails, 504 bridges and 222 buildings.
Traverse City weathers Great Depression
The October 1929 crash came at a time when economists, President Herbert Hoover and the American public brimmed with optimism and confidence in prosperity and the U.S. economy. Traverse City weathered the Great Depression-era of the 1930s better than many places, for several reasons.
TC hosts 'hobo' roundup
On July 10, 1933, city, county and state police rounded up 200 men from the 'haunts of hobos' around Traverse City with the help of American Legion volunteers.
Scrip solves jobs, cash problems
The local public works project-scrip program solved two problems in 1933. It gave local unemployed workers jobs in the months before New Deal programs got rolling, and it solved cash flow problems for local governments, merchants and businesses.
Loraine Anderson: Knickers raise eyebrows
Women's History Month is upon us. Here are two stories from the Record-Eagle History Project bound to raise eyebrows, elicit chuckles and increase 21st century awareness about how growing freedoms for women played out in more than voting booths.
Suffrage had loyal activists in TC
The Library Hall in Traverse City "was crowded as never before," on March 7, 1879, when Susan B. Anthony stumped here for giving women the right to vote -- what then was called women's suffrage.
Manistee publishers hosted suffragists
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, second only to Susan B. Anthony in women's suffrage fame, also came to and campaigned in northwest lower Michigan.
Michigan suffrage timeline: 1846-1922
TC contingents fought in Civil War
It all happened so fast for Curtis Fowler, after the Confederates bombarded Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. President Abraham Lincoln called for volunteer troops three days later. Grand Traverse County resident Fowler answered, enlisting in the 1st Michigan Infantry, the state's first regiment. Its 10 divisions were made up mostly of trained and practiced men from independent military units in the state.
Two Northern Michigan Men, Two Destinies
Two men from two worlds -- one dawning, another disappearing. Charles H. Holden and Garrett A. Graveraet were two lieutenants who helped recruit northwestern Lower Michigan's largest contingents of soldiers during the Civil War.
Excerpt: 'Their war whoop rang out...'
This excerpt from "Michigan In the War," an 1882 state report by Adjutant Gen. Jonathan Robertson, describes a May 1863 battle at Spotsylvania, Va., between the Confederates and New York and Michigan infantries and Company K of the 1st Michigan Sharp Shooters. Second Lt. Garrett Graveraet's father, Henry Graveraet, was one of 17 sharpshooters killed that day.
Breakdown of area soldiers by unit
Here's a breakdown of units that included large numbers of soldiers from northwestern Michigan and Pentwater along the mid-Michigan shoreline. Soldiers from both areas were recruited at the same time for these units.
The Numbers
Northwest Lower Michigan in the Civil War from 1861-65
Loraine Anderson: Erasing hatred, bigotry
The 1924 Ku Klux Klan violence in Traverse City has been the biggest surprise, so far, in researching and writing stories for the Record-Eagle's 150th Anniversary History Project. Local history writer Richard Fiddler tipped me off to this story in late 2007. His account of that Aug. 9 "night of terror" is the first chapter in his book.
Ku Klux Klan terrorizes TC in 1924
The city never had a large black population, but it did not escape a visit from the Ku Klux Klan during a frightening night of downtown explosions and cross burnings on Aug. 9, 1924.
KKK was active in early '20s
The 1924 bombings and cross burnings in downtown Traverse City were not the first Klan activity in northern Michigan.
American Indian found after serving U.S.
Isaac Pabo pinned a note to his World War I uniform and lay down along the road to die -- too sick to walk to his home in Northport, too tired of living.
American Indians die waiting for $21
Three Indians died, and hundreds of men, women and children flocked into Traverse City in late July 1910, only to wait days, some at least two weeks, for one of the 1836 treaty payments still due them.
Fate of Peshawbestown was at stake
World War II was breaking out in Europe in 1939, and life for Peshawbestown Indians was about as bad.
Loraine Anderson: Mysteries have long life
Mystery flared in the night skies over Traverse City 126 years ago, burning questions and awe into minds -- then and now. A particular great ball of fire, big as a pail, "passed low down over town ... leaving a trail of fire 25 to 50 feet long."
Top 10 Stories of Last 150 Years
The votes are in. The life and career of lumber baron Perry Hannah in 1851 and a landmark early Indian treaty lead the Record-Eagle's list of top 10 local stories of the last 150 years.
Founding Father: Perry Hannah
Perry Hannah's story is, in fact, the story of Traverse City's first half-century. He planted it, nurtured it and benevolently controlled it through his visionary leadership, his insight, business savvy, money and donations of land.
Important people of TC's past
A list of people, other than Perry Hannah and A. Tracy Lay, who did much to shape our region's history and destiny: Morgan Bates; James W. Milliken; James T. Milliken; William G. Milliken; R. Floyd Clinch; James D. Munson; Con Foster; Ben Peshaba; Emelia Schaub; John Parsons; Les Biederman; and Arthur Duhamel.
Baron 'wannabes' who became even more
Perry Hannah and A. Tracy Lay were lumber baron "wannabes" in their mid-20s when they started Hannah, Lay & Co. in the virgin forests of northwestern lower Michigan. They became self-made millionaires through their ambition, business sense and hard work.
Move over, Columbus
An excerpt from the Oct. 27, 1892, Grand Traverse Herald.
Santa Claus comes to town
Christmas was not always a major holiday in America. The early Puritans did not celebrate it, and on the frontiers of northern Michigan, it took a while to catch on. 'Twas the night before Christmas in 1858 ... but you'd never know it by reading the Dec. 24 issue of the Grand Traverse Herald.
The Birth of a Christmas Notion
There were a few reasons for the lean look of Christmas in 1858, as reflected in the columns of that year's Herald. "There was nothing to advertise and no one to read it if inserted," publisher Morgan Bates reminisced years later. Something else, however, was also at play. The modern American notion of the "old-fashioned Christmas" was still in its infancy.
'A community is as good as its newspaper'
On Feb. 7, 1917, four days after Austin Batdorff took over management of the Record-Eagle, the paper published a 1,700-word editorial under the headline, "The Value of Cooperation in the Making of a Newspaper." It offers insight into his view of the relationship between newspaper, reader and community. Here are the beginning paragraphs
Changing Hands: The Batdorff era, 1917-1972
By the beginning of 1917, the year America entered World War I, the Bates family had come to a decision. It was time to sell the seven-year-old Record-Eagle, the offspring of two pioneer weekly newspapers founded by Morgan Bates and Elvin Sprague in 1858 and 1865.
The growing commercialism of news, 1919-1972
This timeline of commercialism in news was compiled from "American Journalism in Historical Perspective," an essay by Michael Schudson and Susan E. Tifft in "The Press," a 2005 anthology.
We need your help for Top 10 Local Stories
The Record-Eagle will publish a list of the Top 10 Local Stories of the Last 150 Years at the end of this year as part of our ongoing celebration of the founding of the area's first newspaper, the Grand Traverse Herald, on Nov. 3, 1858. It is one of the Record-Eagle's ancestors. Please send your thoughts, nominations and lists.
TC joined war effort after Pearl Harbor
What a day it was, the day Japan bombed the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor and catapulted a reluctant America into the belly of World War II.
Fears of attack brought contracts to TC
Defense officials feared the Nazis might have planes capable of bombing America, and wanted to spread the defense work around to "military safe areas" at least 150 miles away from Detroit. That decision brought major changes to Traverse City in the form of war contracts.
Local man remembers wartime in Traverse City
Tom Ghering, the great-grandson of Old Mission Peninsula pioneers, was 7 years old on Dec. 7, 1941, but he clearly remembers that day.
Bates helped take TC into 20th century
In our continuing history series, a 20-year-old Thomas T. Bates arrives in Traverse City in 1862, where would see this stump of a town grow into a city and play an important part in that transformation.
Railroads in Traverse City by 1892
By 1892, three railroad lines served the city: Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad; the Chicago and West Michigan Railroad; and the Manistee & Northeastern.
Editorial calls daily paper 'a good thing'
An excerpt from a May 18, 1897, Morning Record story explains how the railroad aided delivery of the daily paper, and why the new daily was a good deal.
The Record-Eagle's origins -- 1858-1912
A timeline of the Record-Eagle's origins through 1912, from the Grand Traverse Herald's first issue in 1858, to the debut of the Traverse Bay Eagle in 1865, the start of daily newspapering in 1893, and the transformation and eventual merger of area newspapers to become the Traverse City Record-Eagle.
D.C. Leach: A man of many opinions
Dewitt C. Leach and predecessor Morgan Bates, the first two owners of the Grand Traverse Herald, fit into a swashbuckling era of U.S. newspaper history that ended with the American frontier. They were proprietor-publishers of partisan weeklies that chronicled the region's transformation from wilderness to a farming, resort, manufacturing and commercial center.
Pioneer newspapers served important role
The Grand Traverse Herald, the Traverse Bay Eagle and other pioneer newspapers of northwestern Michigan played an important non-political role in the growing communities they served.
NW Lower Michigan newspapers of 1876
In 1876, Gov. John Bagley ordered that a history of Michigan's press be compiled for the nation's centennial that year. Most area newspapers had been established between 1858 and the early 1870s.
Editor's Trials: Editorial of 12/22/1870
D.C. Leach: It is a very difficult matter to make the best possible selections for a weekly newspaper.
Under the Oaks
About 3,000 to 5,000 people attended the 1854 political convention in Jackson, where former members of the Whig Party, Free Soil Party and others created the Republican Party and drafted a platform that called for the end of slavery.
Loraine Anderson: Undertows in tide of time
Someone asked what I learned from researching and writing the "Then and Now" history sections published on Nov. 9 to launch the Record-Eagle's year-long 150th birthday celebration. It's hard to put into words, but I'll try. I also have a request. First, what I learned:
Record-Eagle 150th Anniversary Section
On Nov. 3, 1858, Morgan Bates, a one-time New York and Detroit newspaper man, introduced the Grand Traverse Herald -- the forerunner of what eventually became the Traverse City Record-Eagle. In this 40-page special section, Record-Eagle columnist and editor Loraine Anderson tells a compelling story of Traverse City, its newspaper, and the colorful characters who drove each to success.
Morgan Bates: Product of the times
Morgan Bates, colorful, ebullient and outspoken, was a product of his times. Abolition helped shape him, his politics and his highly partisan Republican weekly.
Morgan Bates described
Morgan Bates resigned as lieutenant governor in 1872 just before the end of his term to attend to unspecified "urgent business." Here are excerpts from a tribute to "venerable, white-haired president of the Senate," written by Lewis Miller, a legislative clerk in the 1871 volume of the Michigan Manual.
19th century American political terms
A guide to some of the political terminology of the mid-1800s.
The Grand Traverse Herald's first editorial
Record-Eagle's 150th celebration kicks off
150 years ago, a businessman named Morgan Bates printed the initial edition of the Grand Traverse Herald. In doing so, he helped give birth to the Traverse City Record-Eagle.