"The life of Perry Hannah has been the history, for half a century, of Traverse City and the Grand Traverse region."
-- Evening Record
Aug. 17, 1904
Thomas Bates spoke for the whole town in his tribute to the city's legendary father the day after the funeral.
Perry Hannah drew his final breath at 7:15 a.m. on Aug. 13, 1904, at his Sixth Street mansion, three days after going into a coma following a paralytic stroke and just a month short of his 80th birthday.
Within minutes, flags dropped to half-staff as the news spread across town that Saturday morning. Workers draped Hannah & Lay Mercantile Co. in crepe. The mercantile was closed the day of the funeral, but Hannah's Traverse City State Bank had to stay open until noon because of a state law that required banks to open at least a portion of all days except Sundays and holidays.
For three days after his death until his funeral on Aug. 16, the Evening Record relived Hannah's life, doled out funeral information, listed pall-bearers and printed tributes from other places to the city's father.
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.
City fathers don't live forever -- at least in physical form. Perry Hannah's legacy, however, still ripples throughout our lives. Almost half of the Record-Eagle's top 10 stories of the last 150 years can be traced to him.
He helped open the remote Grand Traverse region to the "outside," and the company he and A. Tracy Lay started in 1852 made Traverse City a regional hub for retailing, industry and land development in less than 30 years.
"Perry Hannah, more than anyone else, is responsible for what Traverse City is today," local historian Steve Harold said.
Legacy of firsts
Hannah, Lay & Co. operated the first schooners and passenger boats that plied local waters to Chicago. It had the first and only retail store in Traverse City until 1860. In 1883, it opened its mercantile, known as the Big Store, at Union and Front streets, considered one of the most elegant stores north of Grand Rapids. It was also the city's first brick-block building.
Hannah and Lay organized the city's first bank, The Banking House of Hannah, Lay, in 1878. He likely would have been appalled by our plastic economy; Hannah always refused to sell on credit, saying it increased costs for customers. Local history writer Robert Wilson, author of "Grand Traverse Legends," said that policy helped spare Traverse City from some of the effects of national recessions and panics.
Hannah had a hand in almost every economic development for decades. He played a pivotal role in getting the Newaygo-to-Northport state road in 1859 when he served as president of a state committee that selected road routes.
In 1872, Hannah inspired local leaders to invest in the Traverse City Rail Road Co., and to build a 26-mile spur from Walton Junction to Traverse City. Seven years later, he bought and refurbished the six-year-old Park Place Hotel and was the first to envision a local tourist-summer resort economy.
In the early 1880s, the governor appointed him to the panel that selected the location of the new state asylum to be built in northern Michigan. Perry Hannah shrewdly made sure Traverse City was selected by selling the state land he owned, then buying the timber that grew on it from the state for at least twice his selling price, Harold said.
Hannah gave land to churches, local government, schools and he encouraged people in business to set up their own, often competing businesses. One was J.W. Milliken, father of James T. Milliken and grandfather of the future Gov. William G. Milliken.
The asylum, later renamed a couple of times, also had its own spin-off effects, chronicled in the life of James Decker Munson, its superintendent from 1885 until 1924. In the 1920s, Munson headed a fundraising campaign for a new general hospital that was named for him when it opened. Today, that hospital has grown into Munson Medical Center, while the adjacent state hospital grounds are part of a massive redevelopment project called the Grand Traverse Commons. The project includes apartments, restaurants, a nursing home called the Grand Traverse Pavilions and assisted living facilities, as well as shops.
Retirement concept dismissed
Hannah believed in a diversified economy and was highly interested in agricultural matters. Nor did he appear to understand the concept of retirement -- in 1903, the year before his death, he became was one of three partners in the Traverse City Canning Co.
On June 20, 1903, barely a year before his death, he set the granite cornerstone of the Traverse City State Bank, just across Union Street from Hannah, Lay's "Big Store." Today, that building is the home of Fifth Third Bank.
Hannah also sent his farm manager William Ingersoll to Saginaw and Bay City that year to investigate whether sugar beet farming would be a good farming and business prospect for this region. Ingersoll returned with a favorable report. Hannah then had 20 acres planted on his farm, and the local newspapers published a lot of sugar beet stories that year.
Hannah was one of several area pioneers who planted trees on the grounds of the new Grand Traverse Courthouse in a local Arbor Day celebration in April 1903. He reminisced in a courthouse gathering afterwards about the first time he saw the area in May 1851, and the trip he took up one side of the Boardman River and down the other looking for pine lands.
He found them. Hannah, Lay & Co. would cut more than 400 million board feet along the banks of the Boardman over the next three decades. By 1889, the firm's timber lands totaled 50,000 to 60,000 acres.
"I little thought then that I should be planting in half a century hence a shade tree on these grounds, where nothing but solid forest then stood," he said in the speech reported in the April 24, 1903, Evening Record.
"Today we have a beautiful growing city of 12,000 inhabitants with railroads, telephones and electric wires to numerous villages surrounding us, which notes the wonderful progress made in this part of Michigan," he said.
"If I should be allowed to remain here another half century, then fly way to the Spirit World, I am certain I should still be watching Traverse City grow, and wishing to know that its people were prosperous, happy and contented ... ."
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