How a Howell woodworker transformed a fallen red oak for McPherson Mansion

HOWELL — A towering red oak tree older than the McPherson Mansion itself blew down in a 2021 storm, but its history will continue, thanks to an Oceola Township woodworker.

Garrett Roberson was driving by the mansion in November 2021 when he spotted the downed tree. It sparked an idea. He'd recently started a woodworking business, HMR Custom Woodcraft, while holding a full-time job.

He thought perhaps the mansion's owners, Howell attorneys Roger and Kelly Myers, who converted the mansion into office space, might want him to make something out of the wood.

After more than 500 hours of work, Roberson estimates, he finished transforming the lumber into new furniture for the Taft Room in the mansion. The conference room is named in honor of President William Taft, who visited the home when the room was the McPherson family's dining room.

Roberson said the tree was likely more than 150 years old, based on estimates from Gregory-based sawyer Bob Allen, who sawed the wood into thousands of board feet.

The one-time home was built in 1915 by Robert Bruce McPherson, the grandson of pioneer, blacksmith and businessman William McPherson, who settled in Howell in the mid-1830s. McPherson was involved in establishing a number of the family's businesses, including the McPherson Oil Co.

He was also a director of McPherson State Bank and a charter member of the Howell Rotary Club, among other contributions to the community. The building remained a home for nearly a century until the Myers family purchased it in 2007. They built an addition in back and restored a carriage house.

The Taft Room's new centerpiece is a 10-foot conference table made from a large slab of the tree. Roberson constructed the table from two pieces, turned so the live edge would be in the middle, and placed a piece of glass in between.

He also painstakingly crafted a buffet-style cabinet with rounded edges, and a book pedestal, which currently displays a McPherson family tree.

"The feedback's been great. I think I exceeded what they thought everything would be," he said.

"It's already been subject to rave reviews," Roger Myers said. "Tenants, clients who come in here just can't get over how beautiful it is."

Creating the furniture wasn't without mishaps. Roberson said the buffet didn't quite fit up the stairs when he attempted to move it from his workshop in the basement of his family's home upstairs to the dining room, where he would finish it.

"To get it up the stairs, I had to take a wall out," he said.

He celebrates imperfections. Inside the buffet, a bowtie-shaped wood inlay, known as a butterfly joint in woodworking, marks where he had to cut the buffet in half to adjust its size so the top would fit properly. Two butterfly joints mark a natural imperfection in the wood he used for the conference table. For the sake of consistency, he added another joint to the back of the book pedestal, just for fun.

"One thing I really love is Japanese furniture," he said. "One thing in Japanese furniture design is you don't hide mistakes. You celebrate flaws. You celebrate imperfections, and you do that by highlighting them with something."

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"It gives it character," Roger Myers said.

Kelly Myers said she enjoyed watching Roberson's progress on his Instagram account.

"He did a fabulous job memorializing this whole process on Instagram," she said. "I would check in several times a week just to see what was going on, and through that I could discern a lot of frustration, a lot of joy. But it was good. It was raw. It was wonderful."

— Contact reporter Jennifer Eberbach at jeberbach@livingstondaily.com. 

This article originally appeared on Livingston Daily: How a Howell woodworker transformed a fallen red oak for McPherson Mansion