Looking Back: The Sentinel's editor Willard Smith continues to entertain
CHARLEVOIX — One hundred fifty years ago, Charlevoix Sentinel editor Willard A. Smith was not averse to injecting a little humor into his weekly Local and General news column.
Dec. 6, 1873: “The peal of a rich-toned organ is very affecting, but the peel of a high-toned onion will fetch the heart’s inmost tears a little sooner.” Anything for a good cry.
“Navigation is closed. The last boat to leave Charlevoix this season was the Fountain City (a large passenger and freight steamer), which went down (not to the lake bottom, but to Chicago), on Friday the 28th.” Access to East Jordan by water had already been cut off for at least a week because of ice. Now our settlement had an approximately five-month waiting period before contact with the outside world by water could resume. Time to resort to walking, snowshoes, horseback, sleigh and stagecoach.
It was a sometimes hair-raising gamble to try to predetermine how much food and necessities had to be stowed away over summer and fall, because impassable ice could remain in the big lake into May.
“FRESH OYSTERS. Byron (See) is now keeping, and will continue to keep during the winter, a supply of fresh oysters. We have samples, and they are delicious.” Doesn’t seem possible, at that early time, that oysters could be imported from the east coast to Charlevoix and kept edible during the cold season using nothing but ice and natural cold storage.
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Usually in April, Willard Smith would lapse into an expansive mood and pop his buttons over the success of his newspaper. I say usually in April, the month the first edition of Charlevoix’s first newspaper came out four years prior, because he made an unusual error in his current paean to the paper. Unless Willard was referring to the month he arrived here to set the paper up for printing. In any case: “THE SENTINEL.--- In March, 1869, the SENTINEL sprang into existence, a diminutive sheet, with only an apparent temporary lease of life; and indeed, had it not been owned by a person whose bread and butter came from another source, it would have gasped its dying breath long ere the close of its first volume. (He was referring to the Traverse City newspaper owner who sent a precociously talented employee north to establish the paper at one month shy of age 19.) With the enthusiasm of youth we purchased it, and set sail for success or ruin.
“For a time clouds gathered around the little journal, and discouragements were constantly presenting themselves. More than once a desertion of the field was meditated; and our readers will never know how near meditation came near to resolution. But the sky cleared up, little by little; discouragements gave place to encouragements, until we had comparatively smooth water. The SENTINEL was enlarged; its advertising columns began to give evidence of thrift, and its circulation rapidly to enlarge. At the present time our journal sees no disturbing storms ahead, and its strength and popularity are steadily on the increase. When the earthly sojourn of the present publisher shall have ceased, the SENTINEL will possess a vigorous existence, and a power that shall awe corruption and error and maintain right and rectitude.”
And Smith was able to do exactly that for a town he was so passionately devoted to; nothing, but nothing, was too small or too large to escape his eagle eye, discerning mind and increasing wisdom for almost half a century.
Fifty years later, the Dec. 5, 1923 Charlevoix Courier had two major news items to report. One, ”BEAVERS ARE TO HAVE PHYSICIAN. Island Group Long Served at Great Hazard From This City and Petoskey.” At long last, the state had reached the point where only a doctor now had to be found.
“There are approximately 1,200 people on the twelve islands that comprise the Beaver group—Big and Little Beaver, Garden, Hog, Whiskey, Trout and Gull, the three Hat Islands and the two Squaw Islands.” Too many close calls had resulted in pleas to alleviate the situation for good.
“The frequent absence of one of our local doctors for days at a time in weather so stormy that a return trip was impracticable created a situation that was as dangerous for us as it was inadequate and expensive for the islanders.” Modern preventive medicine was about to catch up with the Beavers
The other story, also concerned with health, regarded the city finally clamping down on 15 property-owning offenders who had yet to hook their structures into the infrastructure’s sewage lines. They were still dumping their waste into Round Lake and the lower channel. Some of the offenders were real eye-openers, pillars of society. They had 30 days to comply with “... the eventual ridding of the waters of Round Lake and the channel from the disgusting filth which has been continually pouring into it from a number of sources.”
If that didn’t happen, the state might be compelled to step in and make it compulsory. One outbreak of typhoid fever would do wonders for our reputation as a tourist and resort destination. A few of the offenders, as listed in the week’s council meeting minutes?
George Priest, long-established photographer, at the corner of Bridge and Mason streets, directly across from today’s Subway, once also the Parkside restaurant, now part of East Park; the Charlevoix Hotel on Bridge Street, also part of today’s East Park; the building at Clinton and Bridge now housing Harwood & Gold; the Fountain City House, Charlevoix’s first hotel, on the site of today’s Weathervane Terrace motel; 107 Park Ave., next door to the residence of this writer; two houses in the 400 block of East Dixon Avenue owned by downtown merchant members of the See family; master shipbuilder John Roen, later to become a legend on the Great Lakes, on Belvedere Avenue. The city would provide supervisory services for hook-up to a sewage line or installation of a septic system.
But it wasn’t until the 1940s that the city realized it still had a problem, when people swimming in Round Lake were still getting sick. That led to the realization that pleasure boaters and larger commercial vessels were still dumping their waste in Round Lake, and swimming became forbidden. Several more years went by before pump-out and holding tanks were installed for boaters along the west shore of Round Lake.
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Looking Back: The Sentinel's editor Willard Smith continues to entertain
