Memoirs

Some sixty years ago a boy lived on a farm between three beautiful lakes. There were miles of lovely wooded shores for a playground and several thousand acres of water on which to row and sail in summer and skate and ice-boat in winter. There were also hills for coasting out on to the ice on the lakes. Instead of the “old swimming hole” there were clean sandy beaches and clear water to go swimming in. On a hot summer’s day this boy was known (or rather unknown by his parents) to have gone in swimming as often as five times a day. This was his method of keeping cool. Whenever he liked, he amused himself by wading on the clean lake bottom along the shores catching clams or going fishing. He became acquainted with every kind of song bird in the groves and forests, their habits, the kinds of nests they built and the color and size of the eggs they laid. He recognized each variety of wild ducks as they halted several weeks on these lakes each spring and autumn during their migrations. He learned the names of every variety of trees, shrubs, vines and wild flowers that grew about. All this seemed like heaven to the boy. His boyhood memories of it have been perhaps the brightest side of his life, something that nothing afterward could deprive him of. Do you wish your boy to have such an heritage? If you do, this boy of sixty years ago has provided it for him.

Caroline E. Campbell Island House September 3, 1928 “Me-na-sa-gor-ning” Loving Tributes, Lovingly Inscribed “The Place of Apples,” Our Avalon. Note: Mother’s Island Song was written for Jeanie and me, to eliminate “Little Brown Jug,” which we found entrancing. It failed. Years passed before our Mother’s Song became at all dear to our hearts. Years after Jeanie had passed on, I found her copy in pencil.

Win Hamlin Interviewer: Jim Laarman, GWBHS member Visting Mr and Mrs. Hamlin in their beautiful house on gGrland in Keego Harbor. Mr. Hamilin, spent time on many different farms and has agreed to tell us about them. Date is Jan. 19, 1988 Tape Quality: sometime muffled voices, tape ends ¾ through on side 2. L = Jim Laarman WH = Win Hamlin, age 90 MW = Mrs. Hamlin, age 86

Isabelle King-Harger, daughter in law to Laura Harger, first woman township clerk of WB; also teacher at Scotch School for 20 years. Interviewer: Jim Laarman, Member, GWBHS Sept. 14, 1987 Transcribed June 2010 Tape quality: good Opens with discussion about her name . . .Laarman says this is added info from interview with Frances Gadds . .

by Betty Bradbury

Early Keego Harbor - Purple Gang - Attended Roosevelt School 10 years - Lost homne during Depression - Strong's Pavillion Dance Hall

1911 thru 1980 - Early Keego Harbor - Schools - Beginning of West BLoomfield Library - Women's Association - Becoming a City

Apple Island - Michigan Military Academy - Scotch School - Worked for Albert Kahn - Interurban Trolley

Written by Charles W. Buck

1911 - 1936, Roads, Pine Lake Country Club, policing, Interurban Trolley, introduction of automobiles

By Eleanor Pekkala - early township settlers - farming - DUR - St. John's Corners - Footnotes and bibliography

1898, Daily journal of Cadet Wilmer Harris, Born in Ovid, MI,

Interview Date is January 22, 1988

Scotch School, Oliver Farm at Greer and Hiller Roads, Farming, Ice boating on Cass Lake, German club and Kaleva Finnish Camp

Interview Date is Jan. 19, 1988 - Lived on Apple Island - farmed ice from Orchard Lake - Worked for Flanders

Apple Branch Boarding HOuse on Upper Straits Lake - Uncle George Browning