The decline of the lumber industry in Michigan was an economically and socially stressful time for lumber towns like Ludington. The period is of personal interest to me, as my paternal grandparents, born in 1903 and 1906, were residents of Ludington during the latter part of the lumber era.
The departure of local lumbermen in the 1890s and early 1900s was not the first such occasion, however. In an earlier out-migration in 1883-84, Chauncey Gibbs and Richmond D. Mallet moved to Duluth, Minn., Oliver O. Stanchfield to Mitchell, Dakota Territory (now in South Dakota), and Edward A. Foster and his sons Harry H. and George E. Foster to Wausau, Wis. Harry H. Foster later engaged in lumbering in Malvern, Ark., while resident in Little Rock, and George E. Foster organized the Foster-Latimer Lumber Company at Mellen, Wis., with Charles F. and Harry I. Latimer, brothers of Ludington druggist Frank N. Latimer.
Lumber production peaked at Saginaw in 1882, Muskegon in 1887, and at Ludington and Manistee in 1891-92. The consequent decline in production, part of the boom-and-bust cycle of extractive industries, saw numerous lumbermen move on to new lumbering areas or withdraw from the business entirely.
George W. Roby and his son-in-law, Lewis C. Waldo, moved in 1890 to Detroit, where they managed the Roby Transportation Company and Northwestern Transportation Company. By contrast, David Clark Pelton moved on to new lumbering opportunities at Cheboygan in 1890 and Portland, Ore., in 1901.
Pardee, Cook & Company moved during 1891-92 to Klamathon, Calif., where the firm became John R. Cook & Sons.
Oliver N. Taylor dismantled his mill at Taylorsville, on the west side of Pere Marquette Lake, and moved in 1895 to a new lumbering area at Brunswick, Ga.
John Joyce moved in the late 1890s to the lumbering area at Ashland, Wis.
Frank Filer and James E. Danaher moved to Detroit in 1902. Cornelius D. Danaher moved to Tacoma, Wash., where he engaged in lumbering until his suicide or murder in 1921.
Some departures were rather sudden. Peter Collier was a lumber inspector, a member of the firm of Weimer, Rath & Collier, when he built a new home in 1902-03 at 309 S. Washington Avenue. (The story that the house was moved there from another location is unfounded.) The house was described in detail, including its pocket doors and the rooms in its round corner tower, in the Ludington Chronicle of February 11, 1903. Little more than a year later, Collier moved to Boyne City, selling the house to James A. Rye Sr. on April 30, 1904.
Continuing to reside in Ludington, Justus S. Stearns established the Lac du Flambeau Lumber Company at La du Flambeau, Wis., the J.S. Stearns Lumber Company at Odanah, Wis., and the Stearns Coal & Lumber Company at Stearns, Ky. Operating as Stearns & Culver, he and Wilmer T. Culver purchased the Simpson & Company sawmill at Bagdad, Fla., in 1903, selling it in 1912 to the Bagdad Land & Lumber Company.
In 1916, Stearns & Culver purchased Marshall F. Butters’ sawmill at L’Anse in Baraga County. This mill was sold to the Ford Motor Company in 1922. In the meantime, in 1920 Stearns & Culver purchased the National Lumber & Manufacturing Company at Hoquiam, Wash.
A group of Saginaw lumbermen, chief among them William B. Mershon, established the Saginaw Lumber Company in 1893 and built a sawmill at Williams, Ariz. In 1899 the Manistee Lumber Company purchased a large share in the concern, which became the Saginaw & Manistee Lumber Company. This transaction brought Antoine E. Cartier of Ludington, James Dempsey and William Wente of Manistee and E. Golden Filer of Filer City into the ownership group. The concern operated the mill at Williams until 1941, thereafter leasing a mill at Flagstaff until the company wound up its affairs in 1953-54.
Wellington W. cumme*r of Cadillac moved in 1902 to Jacksonville, Fla., where he built a sawmill and logging railroad. His sons joined Philadelphia vessel interests to form the Cook-cumme*r Steamship Company to carry lumber to northern ports. At Wellington cumme*r’s death in December 1909, the line owned the tug Wellington, schooner Jacksonville and barges Dom Pedro II, Julia Rollins, South East, South Land, South West and Virginia.
Charles E. Cartier moved to Grand Rapids in 1915, later moving to South Bend, Ind. As Ludington’s last surviving mill owner, he helped Francis Caswell Hanna with information for her 1955 book, “Sand, Saw Dust and Saw Logs.” Charles Cartier was 83 when he died at South Bend on March 2, 1959.
