Looking Back: Editor's insights from 150 years ago
CHARLEVOIX — One hundred and fifty years ago, the May 2, 1874 Charlevoix Sentinel reported that “Round Lake is free of ice,” finally.
Lake Michigan wasn’t, quite yet. But somehow, food was getting in, in some cases beyond the necessities of life. “Oranges at Byron See (grocery store). Lemons and other luxuries—fresh.” But how? “ICE—As we go to press the wind is still northerly, and the ice in the bay yet remains firm enough to keep out propellors,” let alone allow boats of any kind, engine or sail, to utilize the great 900-foot Fox & Rose dock that extended out into Lake Michigan. There is the possibility Mr. See’s lemons and oranges arrived by stagecoach.
Almost due west of us, on the Wisconsin border, “There are 125,000,000 feet of logs at Menominee.” It had been a very busy lumbering winter over there.
To help alleviate the usual annual food shortage at this time of year, “The sucker season has come, the luckiest of the year; and well may we rejoice, for there’s neither pork, beef, nor beer.” Suckers are not normally regarded as a food fish now, but back then they were a substantial source of nourishment.
Subscribe: Check out our offers and read the local news that matters to you
Think activity is slow downtown now, with the reopening season soon to be upon us? “Business is livening up considerably. It is said that a man in town actually saw a $10 greenback a few days since.”
And let the welkin ring! We were on the verge of being able to cross a bridge once more, not having had one since the previous fall when the wooden structure had to be removed for the first official dredging and slight widening of the channel. No more wobbly walking across a makeshift pontoon temporary span fabricated out of rowboats and flat-bottomed scows lashed together with planks laid across them. “BRIDGE—Amos Fox, Esq., has taken the contract of constructing the bridge across Pine River in this village, for the sum of $400. Work is in progress.” The prominent Charlevoix businessman paid for it himself, after having almost drowned while falling off the temporary on a pitch dark night.
Willard A. Smith, the Sentinel’s founder and editor, was not hesitant in praising his paper and his success with it, on this fifth anniversary of its founding, when he was 18 years old. “Volume Sixth. In this, the initial number of the sixth volume of our paper, we salute our patrons—salute them with a curtsy of recognition of past favors, and with a consciousness of their appreciative friendship. During the five years of the Sentinel’s existence, its career has been unsullied by any spot of turpitude or dishonor, either political or social, its growth in strength and popularity has been all that we would expect, and today its stands upon a rock, with a promising future before it. We shall aim to make it a live local paper, and solicit the support of every citizen of the region.”
Finally, this tongue-in-cheek item, most probably written by Smith himself, able to self-deprecate at his rather over-the-top reaction at actually, unbelievably losing, and badly, the vote for constable as reported in a recent Looking Back.
“From Torch Lake, April 24, 1874. Last evening our usually quiet village was thrown into a tremor of excitement by the appearance of an apparition in human form. Those who know best say it was the shadow of the once hearty, robust, light-hearted, and happy editor of the Charlevoix Sentinel, and that his present emaciated and forlorn condition is accounted for in the fact that the high and lucrative office of Constable was ruthlessly wrested from him at the late election, just as that long-cherished hope seemed to be a certainty. ‘How are the mighty fallen.’ The aspiring editor had labored faithfully and well to secure the office. He had cordially shaken by the hand nearly every elector he met for ten days previous to the election. He had pled earnestly and long with fair women and brave men, but all was in vain. Alas for human hopes. The writer can and does sympathize with the grief-stricken editor, for he knows what it is to have a longing desire to hold town office. I would seek to console friend Smith, and revive his spirits but think it too late, and fear that he will soon follow the immortal Greeley (Horace, of ‘Go West, young man’ fame). X.Y.Z.”
That is Smith’s very own wry, ironic writing style to a T.
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Looking Back: Editor's insights from 150 years ago
