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    Victory Township
    Victory Township
    Victory Township
    Ebook190 pages1 hour

    Victory Township

    By Dr. William M. Anderson

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Founded two years after the end of the Civil War, the township's name heralded the Union victory. Blanketed with a variety of hardwoods and some white pine stands of timber, Victory Township was an untamed wilderness when the first settlers arrived. The first pioneers homesteaded in the southwest corner of the township near the Lincoln River. Soon the community of Victory Corners began to emerge and with its growth, aspiration to become the seat of government for Mason County. Until the railroad came to Ludington, this settlement was a legitimate contender. Immigrants, particularly Scandinavians, constituted a larger and next wave of settlers. These new residents tended to cluster, given their common culture and relationships. The Danish settlement became one of the most recognized places in the township. Farming became a way of life while ethnicity gave way to Americanization and Victory Township developed a strong sense of community. This illustrated history extends through the end of World War II when the boys came home and the forces of industrial growth reshaped the rural landscape. Each community had its unique character, yet this township is reflective of the experiences of many rural people in the Midwest.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781439635049
    Victory Township
    Author

    Dr. William M. Anderson

    Dr. William M. Anderson grew up on a farm in Victory Township and attended oneroom schools. He completed a 33year career in higher education as president of West Shore Community College, located in Victory Township just four miles from his family farm. He is the author/editor of six books and currently serves in the governor�s cabinet as director of the Michigan Department of History, Arts and Libraries.

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      Book preview

      Victory Township - Dr. William M. Anderson

      love.

      INTRODUCTION

      This is the visual story of a rural township with no incorporated places but with a big heart and a strong sense of community. Beyond many family relationships, these people intimately knew their neighbors with whom there were lasting bonds of affection. They were melded together by cultural and social and work relationships. They practiced the biblical commission of being your neighbors’ keeper. When Patrick Russell’s barn burned in 1906, the newspaper correspondent from Victory wrote, He had no insurance; his tools and grain, threshed the day before the fire, was totally destroyed. If the pioneering spirit still remains in Victory, some public minded citizen will circulate a subscription to help tide over a time of misfortune for Mr. Russell and his family. And that spirit pervaded the soul of the township.

      Through the use of photographs, the author has sought to re-create rural life and illustrate the unique and varied experiences of living in a farming community.

      Because both parents worked at home, children had a more intense relationship with their mother and father. Beginning as youngsters, they grew up working alongside their parents. Although there was a division of labor between what was understood to be man’s work and woman’s work, women frequently helped outside their self-assigned realm, but it did not work that way for men. Farmers did not clean the house, cook, and do the laundry, yet everyone needed to pitch in to get the work done. The whole family became the workforce for the farming enterprise, and their total effort focused on earning a living off the land.

      Each generation learned by doing, with their parents serving as the teachers. Older children were expected to help with chores before and after school and during the summer, working side by side with their parents. With age and maturity, the tasks assigned became increasingly adult; eventually even the most complex were handed off to the next generation.

      This circumstance of working together generated lots of conversation and provided many opportunities for parents to instill family values and to shape character. Farm life afforded the perfect setting to grow and develop a strong work ethic.

      These close familial relationships insured that family lore and personal stories were bequeathed to each generation. Although their stories may have been embellished over time, their retelling ensured the preservation of cherished family memories.

      Although itinerant photographers passed through the country peddling their services, in most instances rural life was captured on film by amateurs. A Kodak moment occurred over and over on a farm, and fortunately many people in Victory elected to snap a picture.

      As civilization moved west of the eastern seaboard, the vast American frontier began to contract. Just as occurred nearly everywhere, settlement in Victory Township followed a familiar pattern. As the trickle of pathfinders put down fragile roots, others followed, and they naturally tended to cluster, creating a psychological security by circling the wagons. Each place began as a settlement, and some, largely because of geographic location and bodies of water, evolved into villages and cities of varying sizes. Enterprising Victory pioneers had similar visions and because roads were almost nonexistent, the Lincoln River, a small stream that eventually reached Lake Michigan and flowed through section 32, must have seemed like a strategic location to develop a community of commerce. The seed of that dream appeared in a small article in the June 22, 1870, issue of the Mason County Record, announcing,

      A Hotel For Victory—Mr. S.E. Holcomb is building a handsome hotel at Victory Corners. We are not advised as to when the house will be opened to the traveling public, but will inform our readers when the event takes place. Victory will begin to boast of a village at the corners when Mr. Holcomb gets his hotel in running order. It appears to be located in the right place and we hope to see a nice town spring up there.

      Although this ambition withered in a short period of time, others would seek to establish singular businesses conveniently located to serve a very local market of neighbors. Yet it was agricultural entrepreneurs who sunk their roots deep into the soil that transformed a wilderness into a farming community.

      This photographic journey through the lives of farm families begins with the township’s founding in 1867 and progresses through World War II. Clearing the land, constructing roads, purchasing an automobile, and introducing rural mail delivery, the telephone, radio, and electricity revolutionized the lives of people in Victory. These major changes gave people new life choices, yet agriculture continued to dominate their economic well-being.

      One

      CLEARING THE LAND

      Victory Township was heavily forested when settlers began to arrive in the 1860s; most referred to it as a wild and wilderness area inhabited by bears, cougars, deer, wolves, and a variety of smaller animals. The landscape abounded with mature trees, featuring various species of hardwoods and smaller concentrations of white pines stretching out on generally level topography. Two rivers, both flowing west toward Lake Michigan, helped define the terrain, and numerous swamps appeared through much of the township. To the north, the Sauble flowed directed into Hamlin Lake, while the Lincoln River with its two branches meandered down to Lincoln Lake, and eventually some of the water made its way into Lake Michigan.

      Presumably most of the first pioneers purchased their acreage at a land office farther south and set out to find their property. Eventually the roads ran out, and they began searching for a path and slight openings that allowed them to penetrate the interior of the great forest wilderness. If they were lucky, their land included a small clearing on which they built a log cabin and began a rudimentary existence.

      Initially these hardy souls were prisoners in a dense forest devoid of neighbors with very little opportunity for contact with the outside world given the challenges of distance and isolation. The forest did provide building materials for their first homes, but lacking roads, it would take time before logs could readily be hauled to a mill. The closest settlement was Lincoln, a little cluster of buildings centered on a sawmill built by lumber baron Charles Mears of Chicago. He used waterpower created by damming up the Lincoln River to run his mill. This barrier also raised the water level in the river, allowing shallow draft scows to traverse upstream as far as section 32 in Victory Township. Because hardwoods

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