A week ago I notices a small cardboard box sitting on my porch, now normally this is hardly an unusual occurrence at my house. But instead of the usual markings on the boxes, it said Arcadia! The box was small enough to tell me that my first five books (each author is given 5 books for free) were probably hidden in the wrapping!
With the book not being published until Monday 13th of June, it was surprising to received them so early. But to hold in my hand, the efforts of nearly a year of hard work and research is a wonderful feeling. I have loved lighthouses for a very long time, so this book has special meaning.
This is a 128 page book of vintage postcard pictures and captions describing the Lighthouses of the Great Lakes, encompassing the eight states that touch the lakes, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. Is every Lighthouse on the Great Lakes part of the book, no. But through a lot of research I managed to finds the vintage postcards needed to represent many of the lights that had such importance to the navigation and maritime needs for the mariners that sailed these waters especially during the especially tough times at the start of the century.
Now the planning goes into an open house book launch on Sunday 12 June, 2022 from 1:00-4:00. We found a lovely little meeting house in a restored 1888 building in Armada to launch my fourth book from Arcadia Publishing, ‘Lighthouse and Lifesaving on the Great Lakes’.
‘We the People Meeting House, 23010 Main Street, Armada.
Front of invitationBack of Invitation
On that ‘wee note’ till next month Monday 6 June 2022.
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The many lighthouse keepers would learn to live with danger every day.
The building of Spectacle Reef light was considered on of the greatest engineering feats of its time in 1874. It would take 200 men, fair years to complete this light. The tower was 80 feet tall and had a visibility of 11 miles out into the lake.
Tragedy struck the Spectacle Reef Lighthouse in April 1883 when the head keeper William A Marshall departed in a boat for the lighthouse to open it for the season. In the Straits of Mackinac the lighthouses would close when the shipping stopped because of the ‘Winds of November’ season. With William, was his son James Marshall, who was the second acting assistant keeper; Williams brother Walter Marshall, the newly appointed third assistant keeper, and Edward Chambers, the first assistant keeper. Along for the ride were friends of James Marshall, 16-year-old Joseph Cardran and his brother, 13-year-old Alfred Cardran.
It was not known if there were two boats or just one for thi group of men. At some point the boat capsized when a gust of wind struck as the men were adjusting the sails, throwing throwing all of them into the icy water.
The Cardran brothers, being young and excellent swimmers assisted William and Walter, who could not swim, to safety with much difficulty. Joseph Cardran dove into the water once again and rescued Edward Chambers, but James Marshall would never be found and believed to be drowned.
Spectacle Reef Lighthouse
Unfortunately, they had to petition Congress for reimbursement for all their person effects that had been lost. When Joseph Cardran turned 18, he joined the US Lighthouse Service as a third assistant keeper but resigned after seven months. Five months later in 1889, Alfred Cardran also joined the Service as a third assistant keeper at Spectacle Reef, but he also eventually resigned. The isolation of some of the reef lights would be more than some could possibly handle. During my research I would find many unhappy stories of the dedicated light keepers and how hard they worked, even during the most trying and isolated times.
A publication date for ‘Lighthouse and Lifesaving on the Great Lakes is Monday June 13, 2022.
On that ‘wee note’ till next month, May 2, 2022
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The SS Eastland was a passenger ship based in Chicago. She was owned by the St Joseph-Chicago Steamship Company and made money ferrying people from Chicago to picnic sites on the shores of Lake Michigan. The Eastland was launched in 1903, it was designed to carry 650 passengers, but major construction and refitting in 1913 supposedly allowed the boat to carry 2,500 people. The same year, a naval architect told officials that the boat needed work to change structural defects to remedy and prevent listing, there could be a serious accident.
On July 24th, 1915 employees of Western Electric Company were heading to an annual picnic. The Eastland and four other Great Lakes passengers steamers, the Theodore Roosevelt, Petoskey, Racine and Rochester where chartered to take employees to Michigan City, Indiana for the picnic.
7,300 people arrived at 6 a.m. at the dock between LaSalle and Clark Streets, while much of the crowd boarded the Eastland, with even more people than the allowed number of 2,500. Many gathered on the port side of the boat to pose for a photographer, creating an imbalance on the boat.
A pre-1907 postcard of the Eastland coming into the South Haven Harbor, the area on right is left for writing a message
The crew attempted to stabilize the ship by admitting water into her ballot tanks, but within the next 15 minutes by 7:28 am the Eastland lurched sharply to port and rolled completely onto her port side, now resting on the river bottom, in 20 feet of water. With many passengers having moved to the lower decks to warm themselves on what was a cool and damp morning, it would leave many trapped. Although there was a quick response by nearby vessels a total of 844 passengers and four crew members died in the disaster. It would be found out that twenty-two entire families would be wiped out by this tragedy.
The Eastland was pulled up from the river, renamed the Willimette and converted into a naval vessel, and would be scrapped following World War ll. All lawsuits against the owners of the Eastland were thrown out by a court of appeals and the exact cause of the tipping and subsequent disaster has never really been determined.
The often overlooked importance of the lifesaving stations was realized with the Chicago Lifesaving Station, on Lake Michigan, when built in 1875, it is reported that a lifeboat detachment was indicated in the area as early as 1878. The worst marine disaster within the scope of operations of this station was the capsizing of the steamer ‘Eastland’ on 24 July 1915, with 2500 passengers on board. 280 were rescued by the Old Chicago crew and 400 bodies were recovered. It was estimated that this station was involved in saving at least 6000 lives through 1935.
‘This Day in History’, hundreds-drown-in-eastland-disaster.
On that ‘wee note’ till next month, Monday April 4, 2022
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Arcadia’s ‘Postcard History Series’ was a step in a different direction for me after the previous three books, I have written. But I found it was a direction I really enjoyed going toward. My interest in postcards, especially vintage cards, does not go back as far as my interest in history or photography does, but it blends the two interests very nicely. It gave me an opportunity to learn more about the subject of collecting postcards, which it turns out has a very immense following.
The Postal Act of May 19, 1898, provided for the extensive private production of postcards to measure 3.25 by 5.5 inches in size. Messages could only be written on the portion set aside on the front where the images were located. The back was reserved “exclusively for the address”. After March 1, 1907, the law specified that messages could be written on the back of cards. Cards of the new style were called ‘divided back’ because of the vertical line, to the left of which a message could be written, and with the address on the right. ‘Undivided back’ cards remained in the inventories of shops for many years, and now they are very collectable.
The most difficult part of working on this book, was coming to the realization that there were lighthouses, very important lighthouses that did not seem to have any postcards printed of them. Today, you would find cards printed of probably every light you could imagine, vintage lights seemed to be a different matter altogether. There were diffidently some that did not have postcards to use, hence the use of some vintage photographic images would be necessary to include these important lights in the book.
Ontonagon Lighthouse, Lake Superior, Michigan and Grosse Point Lighthouse, Lake Michigan, Illinois
If this book cover seems different, it is! I found that as the book was nearing completion I was not comfortable with the images that we had decided on for the front and back cover, when the decision had been made early on in the process. My concern came in with a Michigan image on the front cover. It seemed not quite as ‘inclusive’ as maybe putting a Michigan postcard on the back and using a postcard from one of the other states to highlight the front. I requested we change the images, and find this set up much more appealing and fitting. This book covers lighthouses in eight states, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York.
So now, the postcards have been collected (many, many postcards), the research has been done (lighthouses have such a huge abundance of material about them), the writing is completed (after removing 3000 words over my limit) and the numbering of 227 images is finally correct and in order (thank heavens), now it’s time for Arcadia Publishing to works it’s magic and put my work and idea into book form, with the expectation of an early August publication date.
Sadly, just a couple of months before this book was finished my editor Angel who had been with me through all three previous books, moved on to a new job, and while I can’t thank her enough for her remarkable way of working with new authors, it was her guidance and help that made this a really great experience and help to make these books something I could be very proud of. I thank her and wish her all the success and good luck she well deserves to come her way.
Over the next few months, I would like to write about some of the stories I found during my research. About the lighthouse keepers and families and the life they lived while tending these lonely, isolated lights.
On that ‘wee note’ till next month, Monday March 7th.
Thank you to Q. David Bowers and Mary L. Martin for ‘A Guide Book of Collecting Postcards’.
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Harriett Colfax served as the keeper of the Michigan City Lighthouse for 43 years from her appointment in 1861 until her retirement at age 80 in 1904. The oldest, stanchest and most reliable lighthouse keeper in the United States is a women. A little, fragile, pretty maid of more than 80 years broke the records of all the lighthouse keepers in the country in length of service, in age, and above all in the fact that her light never failed, never went out between the hours of sunset and sunrise during the forty-three years that she tended it.
Her cousin, Schuyler Colfax, United States Representative and former Vice-President of the United States, suggested the lighthouse of the little port in which she lived as a way of earning her living. She assumed control of the lighthouse and the old harbor beacon in the spring of 1861. At eventide each day during the navigational season for forty-three years she would replaced the warning lamp with a fresh one; at dawn for forty-three years she had quenched the beacon and realized that the unfailing light brought safety to many ships and small boats in the rough waters of Lake Michigan.
Miss Colfax on left, Miss Hartwell on right
Miss Harriett Colfax was a native of Ogdensburg, New York where she had been a teacher of voice and piano. She moved to Michigan City in the 1850’s with her brother who had founded a local political newspaper. Miss Colfax worked as a typesetter on the paper as well as a music teacher. Her brother sold the newspaper and moved from the area but Miss Colfax remained in Michigan City with her companion Miss Ann Hartwell, also a teacher and native of Ogdensburg, New York.
At age 37 Miss Colfax took up the position of lighthouse keeper. Harriett Colfax and Ann Hartwell who were known to their friends as ‘Ann and Tat’, spent the rest of their lives together, primarily in the Michigan City Lighthouse. In the late 1800’s after twenty-five years of teaching, Ann Hartwell ran a newsstand and bookstore in downtown Michigan City. Her bookstore had Michigan City’s first circulating library. Miss Hartwell was a founding director of the Michigan City Branch of the Needlework Guild of America, an organization providing clothing to those in need. Miss Colfax and Miss Hartwell were supporter of the Library Association and construction of the Michigan City library which opened to the public on October 9, 1897. Confidants and companions for seventy years when, Harriett Colfax died on April 16, 1905, it was shortly after the death of Ann Hartwell on January 22, 1905. Taken from an article written after the deaths of the two friends.
On that ‘wee note’ see you next month, February 7, 2022
Courtesy to the Michigan City Old Lighthouse Museum.
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Linda Osborne Cynowa 