Overview of the north Union Street bridge over the Boardman River taken from the tower of the Traverse City State bank. Steamer ”Puritan” on the bay, ca. 1910-20. Image courtesy of Traverse Area District Library, Local History Collection.
Taken from third floor of the Fifth Third Bank building (formerly, the Traverse City State Bank), two photographs taken more than a hundred years apart tell us about the dramatic changes Traverse City has experienced with regard to its water front.The older picture shows a waterfront dominated by industry and the railroads.The original Morgan canning plant, looking like an A-frame, occupies space at the very end of Union Street.The railroad station stands to the left, tracks running along the Bay in either direction.Ramshackle frame stores line the east side of Union, north of the northern-most bridge over the Boardman River.
View from Fifth Third Bank at 102 W Front Street in April 2016, looking north. Image courtesy of the author.
The recent picture startles us with its emptiness: no railroad station, no manufacturing plants, no railroad tracks.Open space and parking lots take their places, along with an expressway (Grandview Parkway), and a marina, with slips unoccupied on this early spring day.
Suitably, the Visitors Center replaces the train station, a change symbolic of how the Bay has come to be seen.No longer was it regarded as a place to load and unload the stuff of industry.Instead, it became a place to appreciate natural beauty in all four seasons.But the capitulation of space to provide for the needs of automobiles poses a contradiction: Can the noise and fumes of cars coexist with the fragile beauty of the Bay?City residents hold starkly different opinions.
Traverse City has been home to many talented artists. Among the best known are William Holdsworth, Fred Noteware, Ezra Winter and Maude Miller Hoffmaster. In 1906 another well known artist purchased a modest house on Randolph St. and moved his family from Chicago, where he had established quite a reputation for his fine art work.Oldrich Farsky, a Servian-born artist, received his training beginning at age fifteen, first in Prague and Bohemia, then in Belgium, Germany, Italy and Paris. Coming to America in 1888, he settled in Chicago and established a studio where, for over sixteen years he created his popular paintings.He is best known for his landscapes, but also created portraits.A life-sized portrait of General Sherman, completed in 1894, was for many years on display at the public library in Chicago.
The Czech-Slovak Protective Society building, Front Street, Traverse City, undated. Image courtesy of the author.
Having studied extensively in Europe, he had been exposed to the best art in the world.He spoke four languages, but struggled with English. During his time here, he found kinship within the large Bohemian community of Traverse City where he could easily communicate with those who belonged to theC.S.P.S club on Front St. The Czech-Slovak Protective Society, a Bohemian fraternal organization, had been established in Traverse City in the 1880s. Because Traverse City had an active lodge, the painter felt at ease with people who shared his heritage and spoke the same language.
In 1907 heinterviewed some of the Bohemian pioneers of Traverse City and wrote an article which was printed in the 1908 Amerikan Narodni Kalendar, an annual journal published in Chicago that featured biographies and stories of Bohemian immigrants in America. The article containedthe stories and photographs of Czech settlers who had arrived in the city as early as the 1850s. Farsky also provided illustrations for the article. It was translated into English in 1977 and distributed locally.
A Farsky original, untitled, 1890s. Image taken from online auction.
The people of Traverse City seemed fascinated by Oldrich Farsky and his art. Described as a modest and gentle man, even with his fame as an artist, he never showed any arrogance. “With all that he has accomplished, so retiring is the man that were one to meet him without knowing that is the artist, Farsky, one would never imagine that he was talking with a man who is known by his work on both sides of the water.” [E R 8-30-1910] He willingly and often shared his work with the community. In 1906, several of his paintings were put on display at the Carnegie Library on Sixth street. The exhibition included eight of his latest works.“Sheep in a Stable”, “A Night on Lake Erie”, “Scene After a Rain”, and “Scene After a Storm” were among the pieces he shared for all to admire and many came to see them. Nineteen of his paintings were put display at the C.S.P.S. hall during theAug. 1908 fair and carnival where they drew hundreds who came just to see his work.
Farskypurchased a couple of small farms in the area where he tried his had at fruit farming, but hismain residence was a house at 904 Randolph St.In the warm months, he spent many hours walking along the bay or in the woods looking for scenes to paint. “In company with his youngest daughter, many a long tramp has he taken in the woods about the city, the two finding the greatest delight in these walks. On several occasions they have walked the entire distance to Old MIssion, and return, and many choice paintings of the peninsula scenery were the result, which found ready sale in Chicago art houses.” [RE 8-30-1910]
Skilled in cleaning and retouching fine art, he was often hired to care for the collections of wealthy Chicagoans. More than once, he brought a customer’s entire collection of works by “the Masters” to his home for repairs, touchups and cleaning. One collection he worked on belonged to a man named Julius Franc and was reported to be worth $75,000 (in today’s money that figure would exceed one million dollars).
Farskytraveled between Chicago and Traverse City regularly during the four years he resided here because the market for his work was greater in the city. However, local physician Dr. Lafayette Swanton, was particularly fond of Farsky’s work. He purchased several including a scene of two peasant girls carrying their harvest and waiting by the water for a boat. The detail of the painting was described in the paper. One of the girls “is looking off over the water, and in her eyes there is an undefined longing for something, it seems that the girl herself does not realize just what is in her heart. She sees the boat, but she is looking for more than that, and it gives one a feeling of sadness as he studies her face…The detail work in this painting is exceptionally fine…it has been a labor of love with the artist, and every blade of grass, every flower, each ripple of the little river, speak for this.”[ER 8-27-1910] Other Farsky paintings that Dr. Swanton purchased were one of a flock of huddled sheep in an enclosure, and the other of a young girl, the artist’s daughter.
Abraham Lincoln, Portrait in Oil, Odrich Farsky, 1909. Photo of Lincoln Oil provided by Adam Gibbons, teacher at Riverside Brookfield High School in Riverside, IL.
For the 1909 Lincoln centennial celebrations, Farsky created two charcoal sketches and an oil portrait of Abraham Lincoln which were hung on display at the high school.Farsky created the charcoal drawings on site. He set up his easel around 10:30 in the morning and finished them around 5 p.m. “He did not stop for lunch, and would eat nothing until the portraits were completed. “When we work, we do not eat,” he said.” [TCRE 2-12-1909]
Why Oldrich Farsky chose to live in Traverse City is uncertain. The area was well known in Chicago by those who came here in the summers to seek relief from city life. Perhaps he was at a point in his life where he needed a break from the stress of the city. Here Farsky found inspiration in the beauty of the hills and water. How many paintings were inspired here will never be known, but after his time here, he did move into creating more landscape paintings.After only four years, in August 1910, Oldrich Farsky and his wife Beatrice moved back to Chicago. They remained in the Oak Park area through the 1920s where he continued to paint and hold exhibitions.Around 1928,they settled in Stevensville, Berrien County, Michigan, until Beatrice died in June 1939 and Oldrich only a month later. They are buried in the Bohemian National Cemetery in Chicago.
Description of Abraham Lincoln, Portrait in Oil, Odrich Farsky, 1909. Photo provided by Adam Gibbons, teacher at Riverside Brookfield High School in Riverside, IL.
Julie Schopieray is a regular contributor to the Grand Traverse Journal.
The Park Place cannot turn off its Beacon Light without permission of the Federal Government. Why is this?
Although we had several excellent guesses, no reader got the right answer! The Park Place Beacon is a registered Coast Guard Lighthouse. As such, you cannot turn off the light without its permission.
When I was a child, I lived down the street from my grandmother, Kate Smith Wilhelm, who died of tuberculosis. Her death was to affect my growing-up years.
Kate was born on South Manitou Island in 1868. The islands were settled before the mainland as a place where merchants sold supplies and wood to ships, the major form of transportation around the Great Lakes in those days. Kate left the island and came to the mainland to work.
My grandfather, Anthony Wilhelm, had opened the A.J. Wilhelm Department Store in 1886 and, in 1891, he hired Kate as a clerk. In 1896, Kate and Anthony were married.
I was born in 1925 and lived just three houses away on the same street from my grandmother and I visited her often.
In 1932, Kate died of tuberculosis, the biggest killer in those days. When she did, the doctor said that, because I was so thin, that I must have contracted childhood TB from my grandmother.
The treatment for TB in those days was fresh air and sunshine, plus plenty of sleep. I had to take a nap every afternoon, although I often pretended that I was asleep.
To provide the fresh air and sunshine for my recovery, my parents bought property next to friends and built a cottage at Crescent Shores on Long Lake. Very few people had cottages in those days and those who did had no electricity or phone, and had to pump for water at the cottage. But my parents wanted to be sure that I stayed healthy and, as you were supposed to in those days, become chubby instead of stick-thin!
After graduation from high school in 1943, I went to the University of Michigan. In those days, students were checked for height and weight. I weighed 100 pounds and was 5 feet and 2 inches tall. I had very long legs and arms and a small body. Legs and arms do not weigh much.
The modern dance class French missed out on. Image taken at the Barbour gym, 1938. “University of Michigan Modern Dance Club; BL006881.” http://quod.lib.umich.edu/b/bhl/x-bl006881/bl006881. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections.
After my exam, they said that I was too thin to take the required modern dance class and that I should take archery and golf instead. I was the envy of all the girls living in Betsy Barbour dormitory.
I graduated from Michigan in 1947, the year that Traverse City celebrated becoming 100 years as a city. Everyone wore the oldest-fashioned clothes that they could find for the celebration. The men grew beards. I wore a beautiful, 100-year-old blue dress, that fit my thin frame well.
I returned to college that fall and got a degree in Occupational Therapy. Part of the training was to spend time in each type of hospital, e.g., children’s hospitals, regular hospitals, and TB sanitariums.
While going a rotation at the Detroit TB Sanitarium (around 1948), the doctor called me into his office. He told me that I never had TB. My Mantioux screening test, which is a tuberculin sensitivity test for screening for TB, had been negative. I had never even been exposed.
All those childhood days treating me for TB- just because I was slender. Today they would say I was just fine!
“The Pines,” Traverse City High School yearbook, 1943. This yearbook and additional years are available at the Traverse Area District Library.
Thanks to Christopher and other readers, we have our answer for the December Mystery Photo! Fulton Park housed the peacock population of Traverse City during the winter months. During the summer, they occupied more pleasant surroundings by the bay near downtown.
Fulton Park is located on Carter Road just outside the city limits in Leelanau county. A building on the property once housed an exotic, gorgeous bird that made outrageous squawks near Clinch Park, downtown. Name that bird!
Who Nailed That Fudge? recounts a sweet-toothed theft in the State Bank building the day before Thanksgiving, 1908, and was published in the November 25, 1908 edition of The Evening Record:
WHO NAILED THAT FUDGE?
The strange disappearance of a pan of home made fudge, turned out in the fudge factory in the State bank building about 4 o’clock yesterday afternoon, created an excitement in that building which has never been equaled at any time, not excepting the time when the screens mysteriously disappeared.
The fudge was brewed by the Misses Lettie Marvin and Florence Rattenbury, its delectable fumes penetrating the air, floating out over the transom and attracting a horde of gentlemen tenants, who flocked around that door in a manner that reminded one of flies around a honey jar in July. They all came to the fudge factory, but it was noticed that two of them, E. Sprague Pratt and C.L. Curtis, the engineer, looked greedily upon the brewing brown mixture while their noses twitched like those of rabbits when they scent the fresh green things in the spring.
Jens C. “Jensy” Petersen, taken on October 24, 1901 as he was starting his training under prominent Chicago architect, James Gamble Rogers. Image courtesy of Julie Schopieray.
Others came also, among them being Jens C. Petersen, G.W. Power, C.J. Helm, E.S. Williams, E.C. Billings and the greyhound Jack, in fact it is claimed by the fudge manufacturers that every man in the building came and looked longingly at the candy, sniffed the air and swallowed hard in anticipation. But having faith in these gentlemen and never for one moment believing that they could do any wrong, the ladies did not place a guard over their product when it was completed, but set it in the window of the fudge factory to cool, then went down the hall to discuss what they were going to be thankful for on Thanksgiving day.
And now they are looking for that pan of fudge. When they went back to get it, there was no fudge there, not even the pan. It was gone as completely and mysteriously as though it had never been. Search was made for it, detectives were placed on the case, the different offices were visited, the tenants begged threatened, wheedled and bluffed, but none confessed.
A notice was place in a conspicuous place stating that if the pan would be returned no questions would be asked, but even this was ignored. The prosecutor left the city hurriedly, and the ladies believed it possible that the fudge went with him, but this is only suspicion. It is thought that the fudge, pan and all was swallowed by someone, and they are wondering which one off the tenants could have performed this feat. The only one in the building who could make way with the pan in that manner is Jack the greyhound, but he can prove an alibi. The mystery deepens.
The ladies declare that if any of these hungry eyed men had asked them for a piece of fudge, they would gladly have given them some, but to think of being robbed like this of all they had, is hard indeed. When the guilty party or parties are apprehended, they will be dealt with severely.
Fudge recipe from McCall’s Great American Recipe Card Collection, ca. 1980s.
Nothing has been found that indicates that anyone ever confessed to this crime, so it remains a mystery 107 years later. The writing style of the article is suspiciously like that of Jens C Petersen, a local architect. Two weeks after this incident, the editor began publishing letters to Santa Claus, and many local businessmen submitted their own pleas to Santa. The following letter was sent in by Petersen. His obvious love of fudge makes one wonder if he was the one who absconded with the sweet treat the day before Thanksgiving.
Dear Santa Claus: Bring me a bob sled and some fudge and lots of work and some nuts and candy and more fudge. I have been good and will continue to be. Jensy Petersen. –The Evening Record, December 18, 1908
NOTE: I was curious about the use of the word NAILED in this article and found one definition that applies here: “Nailed- past tense of nail- is seize, or take into custody.” I had never heard the word used that way before!
Contributed by local Jens C. Petersen aficionado, Julie Schopieray.
Congratulations to our good friend and contributor Dr. Stacey Daniels, author of The Comedy of Crystal Lake, who provided your editors with the answer to the September Mystery Photo!:
1923 Michigan Bell bought out Citizens Telephone Company
1874 Michigan Bell telephone line comes to T.C. from Charlevoix (Our editors question this date, since Bell’s invention dates from 1877)
But did you know the following?
“In 1877, the American Bell Telephone Company, named after Alexander Graham Bell, opened the first telephone exchange in New Haven, Connecticut. Within a few years local exchange companies were established in every major city in the United States. Use of the Bell System name initially referred to those early telephone franchises and eventually comprised all telephone companies owned by American Telephone & Telegraph, referred to internally as Bell Operating Companies, or ‘BOCs’.” ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_System)
The telephone didn’t come to Benzie County until after Archibald Jones lowered Crystal Lake in 1873, according to History of Benzie County Michigan, The Traverse Region (H.R. Page & Co., 1884, p. 288-298).
“…and telephone lines, daily mails and other conveniences are in operation (as of 1884)”.
The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. -John Stuart Mill, philosopher and economist (1806-1873)
In early 1917 the world was aflame with war. Europe was engulfed with the fire; German tanks and artillery spread over the landscape and German U-Boats patrolled the seas. In the United States, Hearst and other newspapers clamored for the entrance of the United States into the conflict and achieved success in their quest. The United States entered the war on April 6, 1917.
It was a time of great patriotism and unrest. Locally, the Elk Rapids school district resolved to stop teaching German since doing so only promoted the hateful culture of the Huns. With the Michigan National Guard being sent to Germany, Traverse City created its own fighting force, a branch of the Michigan Home Guard, to protect local property from possible destruction by German sympathizers. One man of the group stated:
Traverse City had enough deer hunters who could still use a rifle to form a company of men who could protect property at home or any other place to which they might be sent.
A local drunk, Karl Temple, was arrested for saying he supported the German side and was imprisoned as a danger to America. Liberty Bonds were sold to pay for the war and those unwilling to purchase them were labeled shirkers. Patriotic fifth graders at Union Street School in Traverse City refused to sing the German song, “Watch on the Rhine.” Downstate, a woman was tarred and feathered as a German sympathizer while her husband, bound to a chair, was forced to watch. Things got so bad that the Michigan Governor, Albert Sleeper, issued a proclamation decrying vigilante action on the part of mobs aroused by hatred for all things German.
At this difficult time in American history, was there national opposition to a war that provoked such patriotic feeling? Beyond that, were there local figures who spoke out against social injustice and pro-war public sentiment? Dissent at this time was dangerous. Besides the possibilities of beatings and social ostracism, there was the very real possibility of being arrested for opposing the war. Congress passed the Espionage Act of 1917, a measure which made it a crime to speak out forcefully against the war. Publishing antiwar views could be a federal offense.
Nationally, Progressive Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin resisted the call to war. Speaking in Congress, he attempted to halt the movement towards joining the conflict. For his efforts he faced an angry response from the Senate and from most Americans. Austin Batdorff, editor of the Record-Eagle at this time, expressed the opinion of most of his paper’s readership:
The hour of the pacifist, the mollycoddle statesman and the pro-German American, has passed; from today on, every true American will bury his beliefs, his fears, his biases in his patriotic love of country, his convictions for democratic government and his determination that, right or wrong, this nation must defend itself against an enemy that has been given every opportunity to avert war and which has replied with insolence, insult and wanton destruction of American lives.
Upon formal declaration of war, the pacifist movement lost the power to influence public opinion: Opposition to the war became suspect: unwelcome if not traitorous. Batdorff wrote:
When [the president] speaks we either must obey like patriotic soldiers or refuse to obey like disloyal renegades.
Courage was called for in questioning the decision to go to war.
An early portrait of Thomas Coxe, editor of “Honest Opinion.” Image courtesy of the History Center of Traverse City.
Opposition to the war came from two centers: religious pacifists and socialists who saw it as a way of exploiting workingmen. Locally there is no evidence that religious pacifists—such as the Society of Friends—protested conscription or the war. There was a socialist presence in Traverse City that, like most socialists nation-wide, resisted the involvement of the United States in the war. Though small in numbers (locally about 8% of the 1916 vote for president went to the socialist candidate, Eugene V. Debs), the group was large enough to support a weekly newspaper, Honest Opinion, which circulated for a year or two—history is not clear on the dates of its founding or demise. In fact, only a few issues survive on microfilm.
Perhaps the idea of socialists in a Northern Michigan small town with such a long-standing conservative legacy would surprise many readers. At this time, Traverse City was an industrial city. It did not survive solely by the cherry industry and summer resorts, but had a large and varied industrial base. The Oval Wood Dish Company had operated here for many years, and cigar factories, the Amniotte candy factory, and the canning factory employed many hundreds of workers, both men and women. In general they were much underpaid even by standards of the time. The Traverse City Record-Eagle did not represent their interests, showcasing the views of wealthy businessmen in town instead. Against the economic power of that paper, Honest Opinion could persist upon the streets of the city for only a short time. Even so, the few thin copies that remain provide us with a window into the lives of working men and women who struggled to survive in a difficult environment.
One of the copies issued on Memorial Day, May, 29, 1919, tiptoes carefully in raising questions about the justice of the recent war. The editor wrote:
Again let us bow our heads in honor and in memory of these brave men for whom this day has been set apart and if there be any bitterness let it be directed at those who made wars and words but have never fought them. We have no fight with the soldier though we may have with those who teach him and our reverence today does and should go forth to him never to be forgotten while the words of the orator who was at home will pass from our minds as does a drifting perfume on a breath of wind.
The idea that veterans are to receive honor for their service even if high officials have not always acted honorably resonates today after the legality and morality of recent wars have been questioned. It is a humane thought, spoken by a veteran, Thomas Coxe, who had fought in the Spanish-American War.
Coxe had a reputation in Traverse City. In 1917 he refused to stand during the playing of the “Star Spangled Banner” at a city commission meeting in which the sale of liberty bonds was discussed. In fact, three times the anthem was played, and three times he refused to stand. For his efforts, he was beaten by the enraged crowd. Upon being contacted by the Record-Eagle the next day, he gave this statement:
I am a firm believer in democracy and served my country in the Spanish-American war because I believe that the Star Spangled Banner in principle, stands for honesty, justice, equality, free speech, free press, freedom and liberty. I am against using the Star Spangled Banner for advertising purposes or the purpose of coercing public officials to vote against their conscience and what they believe is right.
Honest Opinion had a predecessor in town. Though not socialist, the Traverse City Press promised to present the views of all citizens. In an alliance with the Chamber of Commerce it advocated Open Forums, public discussions on a variety of issues, both local and national. Harold Titus, later to become a well-known novelist, championed the forums and several were enacted at the City Opera House. One was devoted to the inadequate salaries of Traverse City teachers, with Julius Steinberg, a powerful businessman, taking the position that the teachers were underpaid. Several persons spoke out in opposition, including the superintendent of schools. Perhaps the uproar thereby created explains why the Forums were soon discontinued. In the end, free discussion of sensitive issues was not as welcome as organizers had supposed.
The Traverse City Press soon degenerated into little more than an advertising circular with jokes, gossip, and fluff filling its pages. At first, however, when its editor was the same Thomas Coxe who later edited Honest Opinion, the Press dared to publish letters from its working class readers that described life from a perspective not available in the Traverse City Record-Eagle. One woman wrote in February, 1917:
Right about face, Traverse City and see yourself as others see you.
In your City Press of last week was an article stating as an inducement for factories to locate “among us,” it was a fact your manufacturers were paying an average wage of 470 dollars per year.
Statistics tell us that it requires an average wage of 800 dollars per year to keep the average family in just an existing condition. The fact remains that your laboring men’s family are living on half of what it takes to keep an average family. That means that they must depend on charity for the balance or go without. The appearance of most of your people on your streets are doing both.
The writer went on to say how the Chamber of Commerce had induced manufacturers to move to Traverse City playing up the cheap women’s labor force.
The Jackson Firm came in paying a fairly good wage. When they found some of the women could make ten dollars a week, a new forelady came bringing a cut in wages. At present another change of management and another cut in wages, but I hear nothing from you, no protest from your press or Chamber of Commerce. Some of the girls are getting as low as 1.25 per week.
Furthermore, she speculated,“licentious behavior” might be related to low wages:
You probably heard the Rev. Mr. Stevens, of tabernacle fame, make the remark from his pulpit, that Traverse City was the most licentious of any town he had ever been in, that licentiousness lurked on every street corner. …What is the cause? Is it the low wages paid your women and girls?
The Traverse City Press served as a place for women workers to vent their anger at low wages and lack of respect. Such a forum could not continue. Soon the Press began to complain of boycotts directed towards its advertisers. Abruptly, the radical tone of letters vanished. The paper itself underwent a name change to the Grand Traverse Press. Even in that form it did not publish long, disappearing some time around 1920.
Letters such as the one printed above paint a different picture of Traverse City from that displayed to summer visitors. It simply was not a sunny town of cherry orchards, resorts, gorgeous beaches, and picturesque winters. It had a dark side, too, with its factories that promised repetitive work for poor wages, a female workforce that was paid less than that of men for the same work, and the prospect of dismal room-and-board arrangements. A state report issued in 1917 lists Traverse City dead last in Michigan for average wages paid to workers. The 1914 Polk directory, a reference book giving names and occupations of residents, tells us that forty percent of people over fourteen years of age were listed as boarders i.e. they did not live independently in their own residences. Even taking into account the early broad definition of “boarder” (boarders could be students or grown children), this figure illustrates the sorry living conditions of many workers. Clearly, homeowners and the people they took in had little money to spend on extras. Life was not easy here.
Perhaps it is natural for a community to want to put its best foot forward, especially when visitors come calling so often. The Traverse City Record-Eagle would not wish to air the grievances of working men and women. Though disclaiming bias, it had a long history of working with the major players of the town—the Hannahs, the Millikens, the Hamiltons, and the Hulls. It would not want to go against the interests of businesses that advertised so regularly within its pages. Instead, the early Traverse City Press and, later, Honest Opinion would have to bear the burden of providing an open forum for all the citizens of the community. Today we recall their valiant efforts with respect, understanding the importance of listening to the voices of all residents—those of workers, businessmen, veterans, pacifists, the uneducated and the educated. It is only through such discourse that we advance as a community and as a nation.
Richard Fidler is co-editor of Grand Traverse Journal. This article was previously published in his book, Who We Were, What We Did: Fresh Perspectives on Grand Traverse History.
This Traverse City landmark and staple of summer fun was recently recognized in a historical survey of Division Street (part of a Michigan Department of Transportation study), and has been proposed to be included on the National Register of Historic Places. What can you readers tell us about the structure? Any idea when it was constructed?
Any avid read of The Ticker should know the answer to this one! Our favorite landmark for creamy desserts opened in 1958. Be sure to get over there before they close for the season, and get a double scoop of history while you’re there!
The October 13th edition of the Grand Traverse Herald displayed a note about a happy event:
Now a Citizen
Willie Lee, one of the proprietors of the Chinese laundry on Front street, has renounced allegiance to the Chinese empire and has the more effectually severed his connection with his native land by having his queue shorn from his head, which forever shuts him out from within the Chinese domain.The ceremony was conducted Saturday night in the Hotel Leelanau with considerable solemnity in the presence of several friends and a banquet followed.The finishing touches to the queue cutting ceremony were effected by Jud Cameron.
Willie Lee is a very intelligent celestial and for a long time has contemplated becoming a full fledged citizen of the United States and has already procured his first papers.
That short note in the newspaper calls up a number of questions.What was it like to be Chinese in Traverse City at that time?What about the shearing of Willie Lee’s queue—was that hairstyle really connected with being Chinese at that time?Did he actually become a citizen of the United States?Just a few words suggest a big story.
The Chinese in America were regarded as an oddly different kind of human being. Many wore their hair in a long braid (derisively called a “pigtail”) and dressed in clothes distinctly un-American. In China the queue was a required style for men and failure to observe the custom sometimes brought punishment. The curious word “celestial” (a Chinese person) is derived from a name for the Chinese Empire of the time, T’ien Ch’ao, the Heavenly Kingdom.
Star Laundry was a contemporary competitor of Sam Wing Kee’s laundry.
We learn about the tiny Chinese community in Traverse City at the turn of the century through snippets of text in local newspapers.Willie Lee was said to be highly educated, the only Chinese person to affect a Western appearance in hair style, clothing, and general appearance.In 1898 he was said to have visited China for two years, touring the country by bicycle.Much esteemed by local people, Willie Lee was described as a generous and kind person.He gave out flower bulbs at Christmas which could be grown in dishes filled with water and stones, and distributed embroidered handkerchiefs among his friends.
An article dated January, 1909, tells us more about Willie Lee.We learn he was a splendid cook, especially skilled in preparing chop suey and bird’s nest soup, a delicacy that requires nests imported from China.Most likely the editor of the newspaper was invited to a New Year’s feast, given the writer’s enthusiastic endorsement of the food.
The laundry presented a frightening aspect to children.In 1962 Jay Smith tells about his experience visiting the place in the mid-1890’s:
About the middle of the 90’s of the past century, Sam Wing Kee came here from Chicago and rented a little building about where the Penney Store is now located, and started a laundry.He imported five or six Chinese men who did the work and the laundry flourished for perhaps ten years.
The Chinese workers could speak no English, wore native costumes and had long braids twisted about their heads.We recall very well going in there with some older person and looking out in the steamy back room where the laundering was being done, and then being mighty glad to get out alive.They scared the daylights out of us.
The cachet of foreignness frightened children of the time.Persons of a different race, different dress, different customs—all speaking a foreign language—made them want to run for their lives out of the laundry.
What happened to Willie Lee? Another article dated six months later informs us that Sam Wing Kee, better known as Willie Lee, after 14 years in the laundry business, sold out to one Lem San of Chicago.Lee was said to have taken out the necessary papers and become an American citizen, wearing American clothes and cutting off his queue.His business was successful in Traverse City and he made many friends, his success related to his hard work and earnestness.The newspaper reports he will return to California and marry “the girl he left behind him,” later planning to attend school there.
With regard to the marriage, it must have been a long wait for the couple; some 13 years he toiled in a tiny Northern Michigan town as she presumably waited patiently somewhere in China.Lee would have been in his mid-thirties when he left Northern Michigan.
Image from Frank Leslie’s illustrated newspaper, vol. 54 (1882 April 1), p. 96. – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3b48680.
Former residents of the Heavenly Kingdom had a hard time in the United States in the latter part of the nineteenth century.After helping to build the transcontinental railway, completing it in 1868, they suffered a catastrophic defeat in Washington with the passage of the Exclusion Act of 1882.Passed by politicians responding to widespread hatred of Chinese workers in Western states and elsewhere, this legislation cut off immigration completely from China, even going so far as to forbid citizenship to immigrants already settled here. The Act was repealed in 1943 when the Chinese were seen as the “good” Asians (as opposed to the Japanese) during the Second World War.
Given the forces working against any Chinese getting United States’ citizenship during the 1890’s, this writer wonders how Willie Lee (Sam Wing Kee) ever became an American citizen.Was the editor of the newspaper ignorant of the Exclusion Act—or did Willie Lee have special papers made that got him around the brutal effects of the law?We don’t know.
What we do know is that Traverse City had a Chinese laundry around the turn of the twentieth century, that its proprietor was highly regarded, that he moved away to find a wife and a better life for himself.With regard to minorities of any kind, Traverse City was isolated, situated far away from larger populations to which minority settlers eventually returned.The area never had a substantial black population.Even the tiny Russian Jewish community melted away as children left for other places.Julius Steinberg’s daughters departed for Chicago, presumably to find husbands of the same religion. Traverse City never seemed to gain the critical mass required to maintain communities of diverse ethnic background.Only Bohemian and Polish immigrants stayed long enough to exert an impact on the area.
Still, we wonder what happened to Willie Lee/Sam Wing Kee.Did he achieve citizenship?Arrive in California and marry there?Go to school?Have children?We may never know.Some persons live with us only a short while, only to set sail and vanish.That is the way it was with Willie Lee.
Locally-produced digital magazine featuring nature and local history from the Grand Traverse Region.
