HISTORY OF THE DISTRICT
Rev. Peter Dougherty and the Founding of Omena
The Rev. Peter Dougherty first arrived in Omena in 1851, then an unnamed quiet “good harbor,” where scattered parcels of land were occupied seasonally by Chief Shabwasung and his band of Chippewa families. Dougherty’s journey to Omena was a short but precarious one, six miles westward across the waters of Grand Traverse Bay from the small peninsula where he had served as a missionary to the Chippewa since 1839, under the auspices of the Presbyterian Church.[2]
Though he had helped build a fine village, by 1850, the confluence of several government treaties brought Dougherty and the Chippewa to a crossroads that would turn Dougherty’s original mission into Old Mission, and would lead to the founding of Omena on the western shore of Grand Traverse Bay. In that year the Indians became eligible for Michigan state citizenship, but only on the condition that they relinquish their tribal ties. Many Indians openly approved of the push for citizenship, because it would allow them to purchase lands and would make their children eligible for education.[3]
In 1848, Chief Aghosa’s band, with forty families, was one of the largest in the area, and already had 350 acres under cultivation on Old Mission Peninsula. This land, though, was not yet available for their purchase. However, the land immediately to the west across the bay was available to them in 1850, and they purchased land north of present-day Omena. Their departure settled, Dougherty decided to follow and establish a mission boarding school nearby, one mile south of Chief Aghosa’s new settlement, Aghosatown.[4]
The site Dougherty selected for the mission boarding school lies one mile west of Omena on a bluff overlooking Grand Traverse Bay, outside of the boundary of the proposed historic district. But it was there that Dougherty oversaw construction of a large balloon frame building that would serve as a schoolhouse and dormitory, a barn, and several other buildings to accommodate the educational and practical needs of fifty Indian children, teaching staff, and his growing family – buildings of which only a few traces survive today.
Even as the buildings were nearing their laboriously slow completion late in 1853, Dougherty pushed forward plans for a church building away from the school which could serve a larger audience of Indians and settlers alike. He also began to imagine a manse for his growing family. In June 1857 Dougherty applied to the county clerk “for a piece of land for a graveyard and church lot at the harbor.” This month was, coincidentally, the same when Dougherty announced that they were “to have a Post Office at our place… the first of July called Omena.” The church was built on land donated by Judge Daniel S. Bacon, of Monroe, Michigan (whose daughter, Libby, would later marry George Armstrong Custer). Dougherty had also solicited donations of lumber and freight, and expected that the Indians would contribute labor to the construction. By July of the following year construction was underway, with much help from the Indians, and in September 1858 he announced the church had been dedicated and named the Grove Hill New Mission Church.[5]
Because building the church involved such little monetary expense to the mission, Dougherty, who meticulously documented the mission finances, left little detail about its construction. The Mission manse and barn were built the same year as the church, but their lack of expense to the governing board has likewise shrouded record of their construction.
Yet even with all of the hoped-for and essential buildings in place, life on the mission took its toll on the family as they sought to teach young Indian children Western methods of farming, housekeeping, and behavior. The graveyard near the church also testifies to the hardship of life in the Old Northwest. Among the more than 200 interred there are several mission employees who died of illness and disease.[6] Due to the growing strain of service on his wife and family, in combination with the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions being unable to fund the boarding school after the Civil War, Dougherty determined to leave Omena, and departed from Omena’s harbor in early 1871.
By the end of his nearly two-decade tenure, Dougherty had become one of the Presbyterian Church’s most esteemed missionaries, and probably one of the most important to serve in Michigan. In a history of the foreign mission published by the Presbyterian Church, Clifford Drury wrote that Dougherty was “the most outstanding of the missionaries to the Chippewa and Ottawa Indians.”[7]
Dougherty had toiled to create in New Mission a realization of his larger vision of a place where, when white civilization inevitably arrived, the Indians might be prepared for and welcome it. He knew that he must impress this vision upon the physical landscape itself, in the buildings he constructed and in the layout of the roads and fields, so that the place might engender a life of inspiring simplicity.
When Dougherty sailed from Omena he left behind several landmarks that are still extant today: the Presbyterian Church ( 5066 N West-Bay Shore Drive) and Dougherty’ original manse and barn, the latter two of which are just northeast of the proposed district. Today the church opens in the summer for services and at other times of year for special events. Guest ministers played such an important role in the summer community that the Presbytery built a second manse in the 1930s to house the clergymen and their families. The Sears and Roebuck building still stands directly south of the church.
Dougherty’s original manse has had a long history as a summer retreat, first as a cottage and then, from 1921 through the 1950s, as a summer resort under several proprietors, the original being John R. Santo, one time mayor of Traverse City. Beginning in 1978 the manse was reclaimed as a single-family residence. The barn is linked to Omena’s enduring theme of hospitality, and in the 1980s opened as a bed and breakfast.
Omena Village: A Water-Directed Life
Even before Dougherty left Omena, the village began to develop its potential as a place of commerce and respite. Omena Bay provided a rare safe deep harbor in the Great Lakes, and over the years had at least four docks. Dougherty had used the natural landing places in front of his manse and near the present site of the Omena Traverse Yacht Club as landing points and later built at least one dock, but as soon as enterprise warranted, two new docks were erected in the 1880s by competing store owners. The latter two have traces remaining within the proposed district. The pilings of John Anderson’s dock, built in 1886, still appear above the water in front of the public beach, whereas the pilings of the Barth dock, built in 1889 or 1891, are below water level a short distance to the west.[8] From the time of Dougherty’s arrival in 1851 until the late 1920s, ships were a vital – and often only – link to the rest of the world. Before the railroad reached into the northern reaches of Leelanau County in 1903, the waterways served as the region’s highway, an often turbulent and unpredictable connection between local environs and the larger world.
Visitation to the area and the demand for a hostelry in Omena was great enough as early as the late 1850s that Aaron B. Page built a rooming and boarding house to accommodate everyone from summer visitors to lumbermen clearing Leelanau County’s yet untapped virgin timber. The boarding house is extant now only as a pile of cement and stone foundations on the west bluff of Omena, across from present day Sunset Lodge (12819 E Tatch Road). The undeveloped land and the view from the boarding house’s perch above the bay, however, remains an important landscape feature for the district. From this vantage point the earliest visitors and residents of Omena did not solely seek summer views, but glimpses of incoming ships. Local community members also gathered here to collect their mail from Page, who served as one of Omena’s first Postmasters from 1859-1881.
The 1880s and 1890s were a pivotal time for Omena, when a critical mass of people had settled in the area and the community could support several businesses. Two buildings in particular, and the businesses that they have contained, have shaped Omena. In 1884, Andrew F. Anderson opened his general store (5039 N West-Bay Shore Drive), followed shortly after by Paul R. Barth opening a store to the east in 1889 (5055 N West-Bay Shore Drive). These two businesses, begun by men of disparate temperaments and ambitions who came to the area as immigrant boys, created lasting anchors for the community that neither man could have envisioned. Anderson’s store now houses the Tamarack Gallery and Barth’s the Omena Bay Country Store.
The stores in the small row of vernacular buildings seemed to promise future growth for the little northern Michigan town. But unlike other communities, the boom never extended beyond the boundaries established by 1890. Three two-story frame houses grew up near the stores, each accompanied by a number of outbuildings meant to serve the interests of the stores as well as the proprietors’ families. Omena preserves, as well, the building which housed an ice cream parlor, built ca. 1890, today the U. S. Post Office (5059 N West-Bay Shore Drive).
Curbside gasoline pumps appeared in front of Anderson’s store in the 1920s. Competition from two other gas stations emerged in the mid 1930s as other local residents also sought to benefit from the increasingly busy highway. Sweetie Bidleman, proprietor of a nearby summer resort, sold Sinclair products on the northeast corner of M-22 and the Omena Shore Road. The business ceased operation soon thereafter and the building and site was used for a series of other enterprises until a private home was built in the 1980s, a non-contributing property in the district.
John Putnam’s Texaco station grew over the years from a 14’ x 16’ building on the bay into a full-service garage, bar, and living quarters.[9] Keith Brown, the new owner in 1957, expanded the restaurant and living quarters and added marina facilities. The Harbor Bar building has been the focus of the most significant changes in Omena during the twentieth century, gradually expanding directly on the shoreline (5019 N West-Bay Shore Drive). Except for the construction of a fire station and community room, just a minute’s walk from the main row of buildings, the establishment of a memorial park after World War II, and grooming part of the bay front into a swimming and playground/recreation area – little else has altered the landscape.
The most notable addition to the landscape has been the arrival of the Putnam-Cloud Tower House, moved to its present location in June 2004. True to Omena residents of the past finding practical and creative new uses for old buildings – most often involving physically moving them – the Putnam-Cloud Tower House continues a tradition begun in the days soon after Rev. Dougherty departed in the 1870s. Portions of at least three buildings within the district have been moved from previous locations, and others are partially built from materials salvaged from other buildings, including the mission buildings themselves. In one instance, the Barth barn, the building was moved out of the district, but the foundation remains.
Such frugality and buildings on the move has extended the history of many buildings throughout the Omena area, most recently the Putnam-Cloud-Tower House. (5047A N West-Bay Shore drive). The Greek Revival gable-end house was built ca. 1876 by Rinaldo Putnam, a newly arrived settler from Canada, and is now the second oldest farmhouse standing in the Omena area. After farming the rocky land for nearly two decades, Putnam moved to more fertile property inland, and sold his land and farmhouse to Frank Cloud of Cincinnati, and the house was used as the Cloud family summer home for nearly forty years. In 1936 the land and old modified farmhouse passed by will to the Second Provincial Chicago Province of the Society of Jesus, and became known as Villa Marquette. The farmhouse gradually fell into disuse, until the Detroit Province manager determined it should be razed.
Local residents banded together to save the Putnam-Cloud-Tower House, and under the auspices of the Omena Historical Society moved the building to the center of Omena, between the Tamarack Gallery and the Anderson House. The house’s gable-end continues to gaze across Omena Bay, only a mile north of its original location, but where it maintains its integrity in the Omena area. Rinaldo Putnam had been a major land-owner in Omena in the nineteenth-century and the building was moved from one piece of his original property to another. Omena’s changes have been adaptations built upon its existing structure, and the village has not suffered the wholesale eradication, wasteful misuse of resources, and reconstruction that is so common in this country.
Omena Summer Resorts
In the late nineteenth century countless towns and villages in the Great Lakes Region welcomed summer visitors from the cities and other places in the Midwest that broiled in the summer sun. The more famous watering spots in the region are Harbor Springs, Petoskey, and Mackinac Island. Omena, however, once had seven summer resorts at different locations on the bay which boasted as loudly as any, in colorful and poetic brochures, about the healthful offerings of their particular bay and lake breezes. Omena businesses cultivated the image of Omena as a summer destination, especially A. F. Anderson, who catered to summer visitors and residents as heartily as he did to his farming clientele.
Sunset Lodge (12819 E Tatch Road) preserves the built legacy of the resort era in Omena, not only in the survival of most of the Victorian buildings known to have been built between 1898 and 1907, including the main building, separate guest cottages, dining and staff facilities, barn and other utilitarian structures, but in continuing operation as a hostelry today.[10] Sunset Lodge also has ties to Omena’s years as a mission. Leonard H. and Rhoda Spicer Wheeler moved to Omena in 1868 from Odanah, Wisconsin, where they both served with Leonard’s father at the Odanah mission boarding school, and had corresponded with Rev. Dougherty. After three years they decided to rent out their buildings and acreage, and returned to Wisconsin to work in the family’s new Eclipse Windmill enterprise. Nearly thirty years later they returned to Omena and built Sunset Lodge, so named because they saw it as their “final home dwelling place.”[11]
The array of buildings shows that running a resort at the turn of the twentieth century involved skills both social and agricultural, with many of the labors taken on by the Wheelers themselves, later with help from family. Surviving records also preserve the struggle by the owners of modest resorts to appeal to the changing tastes of resorters, who in the years Sunset Lodge operated arrived first solely by steamer, then by train and steamer, and then motored in for shorter and shorter periods by automobile. Factoring in, as well, the effects of World War I and the Depression, it is surprising that Sunset Lodge stayed in operation nearly four decades as a full-service resort. Even after the resort closed, the family rented out the cottages and continued to live on the property until it was sold in 1976. In the mid-1990s it reopened as a bed and breakfast, with patrons, like those of the past, taking walks to explore the village, to purchase refreshments at the country store, and to test the waters of Omena Bay.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Archival Materials and Manuscripts:
Dougherty, Reverend Peter. The Correspondence of Reverend Peter Dougherty. American Indian Correspondence. Collection of Missionary Letters, 1833-1893. Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Grand Traverse Herald. Traverse City, Michigan.
Leelanau Historical Society. Leland, Michigan.
Marbach, William A. “Summer Ministry Recollections.” William A. Marbach and Marbach Family Collections.
Minutes of the Old Mission and New Mission (Grove Hill) Church, 1843-1871. Text transcript on-line at www.members.aol.com/Vwilson577/mission.
Omena Historical Society. Omena, Michigan.
Register of Deeds. Leelanau County Courthouse. Leland, Michigan.
Sunset Lodge and Wheeler Family Papers. Omena Historical Society, Omena, Michigan, and Leelanau Historical Society, Leland, Michigan.
Tax Roles of Leelanau Township. Tax Assessors Office. Leelanau County Courthouse. Leland, Michigan.
Taylor, Hazel. “First Days in Omena and Ingalls Bayside.” Typescript, 1981. Omena Historical Society, Omena, Michigan.
Maps and Property Abstracts:
Ferris, Charles E. Atlas of Leelanau County, Michigan. Knoxville, Tn.: Charles E. Ferris, 1900.
Greene, W. O., Surveyor. “Plat of First Addition to Omena Heights.” 1894. Omena Historical Society, Omena, Michigan.
Hayes, E. L. Atlas of Leelanau County, Michigan. Philadelphia: C. O. Titus, 1881.
Wadsworth, Abram S., Deputy Surveyor. “Geological Survey, Township No. 31 North, Range No. 11 West.” 1851. Register of Deeds, Leelanau Court Courthouse, Leland, Michigan.
Published Articles, Books, and Reports:
Cleland, Charles E. Rites of Conquest: The History and Culture of Michigan’s Native Americans. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992.
Clifton, James A., George L. Cornell, and James M. McClurken. People of the Three Fires: The Ottawa, Potawatomi and Ojibway of Michigan. Grand Rapids, Mi.: Michigan Indian Press, 1986.
Craker, Ruth. First Protestant Mission in the Grand Traverse Region. N.p., 1931.
Dougherty, Rev. Peter. “Diaries of Peter Dougherty.” Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society 30 (1952): 95-114; 175-192; 236-253.
Drury, Clifford Merrill. Presbyterian Panorama: One Hundred and Fifty Years of National Missions History. Philadelphia: Board of Christian Education, 1952.
Fennimore, Keith J. The Heritage of Bay View, 1875-1975. Grand Rapids, Mi.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1975.
Flink, James J. The Automobile Age. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1992.
Green, A. D. Omena, the Beautiful. Grand Rapids, Mi.: Dickinson Bros., ca. 1903.
Holmes, Amanda J. Omena, A Place in Time. A Sesquicentennial History, 1852-2002. Omena Historical Society: Omena, Mi., 2003.
“Hotel Leelanau: A Beautiful Family Summering Place on Lake Michigan.” Grand Rapids, Mi.: Valley City Engraving & Printing Co., ca. 1895.
Leach, Dr. M. L. A History of the Grand Traverse Region. Traverse City, Mi.: Grand Traverse Herald, 1883. Reprint. Chelsea, Michigan: Book Crafters, Inc., 1988.
Leelanau Township Historical Writers Group. Lawrence Wakefield, ed. A History of Leelanau Township. Revised Edition. Chelsea, Mi.: Book Crafters, Inc., 1983.
McAlester, Virginia and Lee. A Field Guide to American Houses. New York: Alfred A. Knoph, 1998.
McClurken, James M. Gah-Baeh-Jhagwah-Buk: The Way It Happened, A Visual Culture History of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa. East Lansing, Mi.: Michigan State University Museum, University Publications, 1991.
Morse, Robert L. “From Ferry Route to Cherry Route: A History of the Traverse City, Leelanau & Manistique Railroad.” Omena-Traverse Breeze, May 1965 3-6.
Pittman, Philip McM., with George M. Covington. Don’t Blame the Treaties: Native American Rights and the Michigan Indian Treaties. West Bloomfield, Mi.: Altwerger and Mandel Publishing Company, 1992.
Vogel, Virgil J. “The Missionary as Acculturation Agent.” Michigan History 3(1967): 185-201.
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[1] Chippewa is the word used by Dougherty to describe the tribe of Native Americans he served at the mission. The tribe today is commonly identified as Ojibway (also spelled Ojibwe or Ojibwa), though I use Dougherty’s historical terminology in this report.
[2] Peter Dougherty to Walter Lowrie, September 13, 1851, Box 7. Vol. 1, #18, American Indian Correspondence. Collection of Missionary Letters, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Abram S. Wadsworth, Deputy Surveyor, noted the “good harbor,” and that Chief Shabwasung occupied “Shobwasson Point,” at the end of what would soon become known as New Mission Point, appear on his map, “Geological Survey, Township No. 31 North, Range No. 11 West,” 1851, Register of Deeds, Leelanau County Courthouse, Leland, Michigan.
[3] Charles E. Cleland, Rites of Conquest: The History and Culture of Michigan’s Native Americans (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), 243.
[4] The term Dougherty used for the educational facility was “manual labor boarding school.” The idea was to teach through example and work, instilling in the children what they called “the arts of civilization.”
[5] Minutes of the Old Mission and New Mission (Grove Hill) Church, December 26, 1858.
[6] In 2002 the Historic Resource Foundation conducted a survey of the Presbyterian Church burial ground, which had become overgrown and most of the unmarked graves further obscured. Using a pair of trained dogs, the Foundation discovered over 200 gravesites. According to Betty Armstrong, a descendent of one of the mission families, the first burial occurred April 17, 1855.
[7] Clifford Merrill Drury, Presbyterian Panorama: One Hundred and Fifty Years of National Missions History (Philadelphia: Board of Christian Education, 1952), 140.
[8] The date for Anderson’s dock construction comes from the Grand Traverse Herald, December 16, 1886. There is some unresolved conflict in the historic record regarding Barth’s dock, however, as the Grand Traverse Herald announces Barth erecting a dock March 7, 1889, but the tax records have him purchasing land “for the purpose of building a dock” March 13, 1891, from Rinaldo D. Putnam. See, Liber 17, page 532, Tax Records, Leelanau County Government Offices, Leland, Michigan.
[9] John Putnam started his business enterprises on the site with a fruit stand, though the building expansion seems to have developed from the tiny gas station rather than the stand.
[10] Leonard H. Wheeler Jr. to C. E. Wheeler, August 27, 1904; Horace Wheeler to Rosalina Wheeler, July 14, 1907, Leelanau Historical Society (LHS), Leland, Michigan.
[11] Leonard H. Wheeler Jr., “Newsomes Camp,” to Rhoda Wheeler, Omena, February 5, 1871, LHS; Charles Eugene Wheeler to Miss. Viola Rutledge, May 19, 1925, Omena Historical Society, Omena, Michigan.
