Wednesday, August 11, 2010
churchy-pedia, perhaps
I will spare you the detailed theory behind this... but trust me that there is an interesting Sceney Richmondy theory behind this. But, be warned, this post contains is alot of history of Northern Michigan. And it's not very organized, because I am just trying to put the facts together...
So yeah, I went on vacation, and did some research tourism related to my obsession with the 1830s. In Northern Michigan, almost nothing remarkable happened before 1850 and Charlevoix wasn't much of a place until sometime between 1870 and 1890. Growing up there I had almost no sense of pre-civil war history in the United States. In Richmond it is kind of the opposite; all our good history (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, E.A. Poe, John Marshall, John Tyler, Capital of the Confederacy) happened before 1865 and the historians rarely have time to talk about anything that happened after that.
Long story short, I went back a couple weeks ago and geeked out on local Northern Michigan history. I went to the public library and read up on Pioneer John Dixon and how the Strangite Mormons drove him away while during the era of their cult kingdom on Beaver Island from 1846 to 1856. I learned how the John Dixon fled by boat across the Grand Traverse Bay to the Old Mission Peninsula and Northport (on the Leelenau peninsula). When I convinced my parents to tour Northport with me, we learned how the founder there was a Congregationalist minister who had come from the Holland area to set up a mission to the Native Americans. Northport, Charlevoix and Beaver Island were not only locations of Native American encampment (and Christian Missions to Chippewa and Ojibway tribes), but they were also chosen as lighthouse locations by the US Lighthouse service. In short, Northern Michigan was originally settled in the 1840s and 1850s by Missionaries and Lighthouse keepers.
Later settlement in the area occurred after the Civil War, as veterans paid $1.25/acre via the Homestead Act and began chopping down all the trees to build their farms. Lumber speculators came north (lured by all the virgin forests) and set up sawmills all over Northern Michigan. The Industrial Revolution was in full effect. Later, the city fathers of Charlevoix ensured that a rail connection was made to Chicago. That was 1870s-ish, and with the establishment of convenient rail transportation to and from Chicago, the clean, beautiful, and temperate Charlevoix began to establish itself as a vacation spot for Chicagoland. So ... that's the setup for the REAL research that I want to do in the future. I want to investigate cultural connections between Charlevoix and Chicago.
So anyways ... I do have an inside clue into some of the cultural influences... the church I grew up in in Northern Michigan... the First Congregational Church of Charlevoix, Michigan ... has had a number of pastors over the years. While at church, I snapped a picture of a plaque listing every pastor that the church had for 100 years.
Being that there are no seminaries in Northern Michigan, I though it would be interesting to trace the background and training of these pastors and where they went after their time in charlevoix.
So basically this post is a setup for future google research into the identities of these folks. I don't know if there is a story to tell there or not, but I like that I have sketched out a possible research project that will give a little more insight into the culture of the town where I grew up.
I will send the pics from my phone as separate blog posts ... and maybe merge them later.
-M
So yeah, I went on vacation, and did some research tourism related to my obsession with the 1830s. In Northern Michigan, almost nothing remarkable happened before 1850 and Charlevoix wasn't much of a place until sometime between 1870 and 1890. Growing up there I had almost no sense of pre-civil war history in the United States. In Richmond it is kind of the opposite; all our good history (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, E.A. Poe, John Marshall, John Tyler, Capital of the Confederacy) happened before 1865 and the historians rarely have time to talk about anything that happened after that.
Long story short, I went back a couple weeks ago and geeked out on local Northern Michigan history. I went to the public library and read up on Pioneer John Dixon and how the Strangite Mormons drove him away while during the era of their cult kingdom on Beaver Island from 1846 to 1856. I learned how the John Dixon fled by boat across the Grand Traverse Bay to the Old Mission Peninsula and Northport (on the Leelenau peninsula). When I convinced my parents to tour Northport with me, we learned how the founder there was a Congregationalist minister who had come from the Holland area to set up a mission to the Native Americans. Northport, Charlevoix and Beaver Island were not only locations of Native American encampment (and Christian Missions to Chippewa and Ojibway tribes), but they were also chosen as lighthouse locations by the US Lighthouse service. In short, Northern Michigan was originally settled in the 1840s and 1850s by Missionaries and Lighthouse keepers.
Later settlement in the area occurred after the Civil War, as veterans paid $1.25/acre via the Homestead Act and began chopping down all the trees to build their farms. Lumber speculators came north (lured by all the virgin forests) and set up sawmills all over Northern Michigan. The Industrial Revolution was in full effect. Later, the city fathers of Charlevoix ensured that a rail connection was made to Chicago. That was 1870s-ish, and with the establishment of convenient rail transportation to and from Chicago, the clean, beautiful, and temperate Charlevoix began to establish itself as a vacation spot for Chicagoland. So ... that's the setup for the REAL research that I want to do in the future. I want to investigate cultural connections between Charlevoix and Chicago.
So anyways ... I do have an inside clue into some of the cultural influences... the church I grew up in in Northern Michigan... the First Congregational Church of Charlevoix, Michigan ... has had a number of pastors over the years. While at church, I snapped a picture of a plaque listing every pastor that the church had for 100 years.
Being that there are no seminaries in Northern Michigan, I though it would be interesting to trace the background and training of these pastors and where they went after their time in charlevoix.
So basically this post is a setup for future google research into the identities of these folks. I don't know if there is a story to tell there or not, but I like that I have sketched out a possible research project that will give a little more insight into the culture of the town where I grew up.
I will send the pics from my phone as separate blog posts ... and maybe merge them later.
-M
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