The history of Oceana is rich and deep, but not all of the stories are long enough to fill a newspaper column. This week I have combed the pages of our history books and collected some smaller stories that might be interesting to bring to light.
One day, back in July 1864, we received a visitor who mysteriously disappeared. He was a Scotchman from Washtenaw County. No name was given, but it was presumed that he had considerable money on his person, as he was out “looking land,” and he talked about making a purchase should he find something that suited him. About the first day of August, this visitor stopped at H.S. Sayles’ house in Elbridge to ask about the lands in the area, but Mr. Sayles was not home. Our guest then set out down an Indian trail to try and find Mr. Sayles and was never seen nor heard from again.
Another interesting story took place on Oct. 14 of the same year. A lady named W. H. Cheney was heading out from Pentwater “mounted on her trusty horse” and heading towards her home near Hart. While on her way, a man sprang out from some bushes, grasped for Mrs. Cheney’s bridle, missed and instead grabbed onto the horse itself. According to Hartwick and Tuller, “Mrs. Cheney, noticing this, gave her horse a cut with the whip and started at a gallop, dragging the man some two or three rods.” The would-be thief then tried to pull himself up by grabbing Mrs. Cheney’s dress, but she struck the horse once again, and “he was obliged to relinquish his hold and fell by the road.” It is noted that she reached home safe and sound, “minus a portion of her dress left in the ruffian’s clutch.”
A few “firsts” were experienced in 1864 by some of the townships as well. Weare saw its first birth, and in Otto the town cemetery had its first body interred. A young man named Edwin Barbed was struck and killed by a falling plate during a barn raising. The first school district in Golden was also organized in this year.
DeHaven’s Imperial Circus visited Pentwater June 18, 1867, and was the first ever “show” to make a stop in Oceana. Local papers estimated that half of the county’s population was present in Pentwater that day. Hart Village had its first celebration on July 4 this year, consisting of “dinner in the woods, speaking, music, etc.” The county’s first formally organized club was also started in Hart this year. It was a baseball club, appropriately named the “Pioneer Base Ball Club.”
July 5, 1867 was also the beginning of daily mail in Pentwater, as opposed to weekly, or, as seldom as one may have gotten. I’m sure this came as a huge relief to the residents of the time. Benona was also born this year, after the Township of Leroy officially changed its name.
The first county church bell arrived in November 1867. It was placed upon a dock and “a continual ding dong was heard all day” as “each visitor tested it by striking it with a hammer or some other hard substance.”
Lastly, Hartwick and Tuller close out the year of 1867 with these “sundry notes,” which I find to be in stark contrast, demonstrating the simple thrills of pioneer life, among the absolute tragedies that could commonly take place: “In July, H.H. Woods puts in the first soda fountain at Pentwater. In November, the schooner Kate Doak is wrecked and two lives lost.”
