Outstanding Upper Peninsula Farmers and Promoters of Agriculture

Over the decades, the story of the Upper Peninsula has focused on copper and iron mining. Farming has been left in the sidelines as many people unfortunately do not believe that farming is possible in the U.P. with its poor soils and short growing season.

To counter this, in 1899 the state legislature funded and authorized the Michigan College of Agriculture (now Michigan State University) to develop today’s Research & Extension Center in Chatham in the heart of the Upper Peninsula. It is “a hub for sustainable agricultural innovation and education that it relevant to the environment, economy and needs of Upper Peninsula communities.”

To celebrate the 126th anniversary of the opening of this institution, the following is presented.

Over the last 357 years, agriculture has been part of the Upper Peninsula story. There have been a number of individuals who promoted agriculture in the Upper Peninsula, but have gone unnoticed. A number of their lives since 1668 will be presented in the following pages. Their lives and accomplishments will follow from 1668.

JACQUES MARQUETTE, S.J. (1637-1675) 

French-born Fr. Jacque Marquette became a member of the Jesuits (Society of Jesus) and was assigned to conduct missionary work in New France/Canada. He is best known for his work as a missionary and an explorer, but there is more to his story. In 1668 he was assigned to carry missionary work westward from the St. Lawrence Valley.

He along with Gabriel Druillettes, Brother Louis Broeme, and Fr. Claude-Jean Allouez S.J. established the Mission of St. Mary at Sault Ste. Marie. This is the oldest European settlement in Michigan. To establish the mission they cleared the land built a chapel, dwellings and barn. The initial idea was to develop a farm so that the mission would be self-sufficient. They experimented with planting wheat and vines for wine that were necessary for the service of the Mass. Neither of these crops bore fruit.

However, they also wanted to train the Ottawa and Ojibwe to farm and some Natives learned to farm. This was the earliest European agricultural endeavor in the Upper Peninsula and the state of Michigan.

JOHN ASKIN (1739-1815)

John Askin (1739-1815) was a Scots-Irish migrant to North America who was a fur trader, merchant, colonial official, and farmer. Her settled at Fort Michilimackinac in 1764 and by 1775 he was one of the most prosperous merchants there. He opened a store and farmed. His journal provides us with details of his agricultural activity and his experimental farming on two farms.

The first farm was located close to Fort Michilimackinac by what was called the “garden gate.” The other farm was authorized in the summer of 1773 located three miles southwest of the fort probably in the vicinity of French Farm Lake. Here is had a house constructed. At the beginning Askin enclosed three to five acres of land with a fence.

At this time he had two black slaves, Pompey and Jupiter who were more than likely worked on the farms, thus the forst known black farmers in the U.P. He might have also hired Native Americans to assist farming. 

His journal provides us with an overview of his extensive planting in 1774-1775. Starting in mid-April Askin’s crew started plowing and harrowing the land at “the farm” which refers to land at a distance from the fort. Beginning on April 19 and continuing through the month first  potatoes were set, peas were sowed along with buckwheat, parsnips, oats and more potatoes set. Onions were planted for seed along with squash, cucumbers, and spinach. During the month of May the planting continued with land being plowed and harrowed between “several showers of snow.” The last potatoes were set by May 11th. Then he planted Indian corn, garden peas, beans, clover and rye grass. On July 19 began to cut hay, a month late oats were reaped. The last potatoes were dug up on November 14th and at the end of the month he took up my cabbage out of his garden.

Askin also kept livestock probably close to “the garden” near the fort. He had black, red and white hogs that were pigging a number of piglets. He had sheep and a number of cows.

On April 22, 1775 he harrowed “the large Garden” at the fort and this was followed by sowing peas in the garden along with oats. On May 01 he sowed the large garden with clover seed, garden peas “in drills 3 foot apart,” turnip seed in drills 2 foot apart with dung in the trench under the seeds also parsnips. On the following day the farm laborers sowed parsley, beets, onions, lettuce and barley seed. This was followed with “more garden seeds & sett Shallotts & beans.” This was followed by sowing peas, oats and clover “all this last Week at the farm” and then the first potatoes were set at the fort. This was followed by  sowing more lettuce and carrots. On May 29th parsnips and some cabbage plants were transplanted and more turnip seeds, peas and buckwheat were sowed. In an interesting move on August 29th potatoes were planted in a foot deep hole fertilized with dung. 

He ends his agricultural section with “remarks” which provide us with a his insights into farming at the time:

Thro bracking when Green, rotten Hay or any such Stuff 

on land where pease & Buck wheat have been, plow it in

the Month of Sepr Harrow it in the Spring & Plant Potatoes

with ye Plow without any more dunging.

When Potatoes are dug up in the fall Clover seeds may

be sowed.

Oates, wheat, Clover or Turnips may be sowed in the

spring on Land where Potatoes were the year before

Buck Wheat may be Sowed the 20th of June on Land

twice plowed where Pease have been the year before.

Potatoes may be planted on Stuble Grownd with Dung

New Ground twice plowed I think best for Pease.

Oates may be sowed in old Turnip Ground.

This is an amazing piece of agricultural history and even though it only deals with two years it does provide and overview of farming at Fort Michilimackinac in the eighteenth century. Such overview really would not reoccur until the reports of the MSU experimental farm after 1900, 136 years later.

PHILETUS CHURCH

Philetus S. Church (1812-1883) was an early settler from Riga, New York born in 1812 who originally planned on going to the Copper Country to search for copper. En route while at the Sault in 1845 he decided to engage in a business there but ultimately settled on Sugar Island, down the St. Mary’s River from Sault Ste. Marie in 1846. He created a large farm and developed native crops. In 1850 his farm was valued at $3,000 and a decade later his real estate the value of his property had risen to $12,000 (2025 value: $459,283) as did his personal income. 

Philetus Church Home on Sugar Island

The year 1850 brought a new addition to his activities at Church’s Landing. Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie of Chicago was taking a pleasure cruise when her steamer stopped at Church’s Landing to take on wood. The Churches provided the folks with refreshments that included their home-made raspberry jam. She purchased some and brought it back to Chicago where a market developed by the next year. Church began to commercially make raspberry jam, hiring local Native American to pick the berries and selling the jam in large crocks. By 1878 he was manufacturing six to twelve tons of jam annually which was all that Sugar Island could provide. The jam was shipped to Eastern and Midwestern markets. He also sold quantities of maple sugar. 

Over the years Church’s Landing  numerous celebrities such Horace, Greeley, Charles Sumner, John McLean and May Todd Lincoln were guests of the Churches. As ship used coal as fuel Church’s Landing faded as a settlement especially after the passing of Philetus in 1883, but for years it was the “raspberry capital of the Upper Peninsula.”

DANIEL D. BROCKWAY

A pioneer to the Cooper Country, Daniel D. Brockway was born in 1815 in Vermont. He and his family arrived in L’Anse in August 1843 where he was appointed government blacksmith and mechanic for the Native Americans settled there. The copper boom attracted the family to Copper Harbor where initial copper mining had begun. He has been listed as a blacksmith, hotelier, mine agent, land agent, post master, merchant, politician and inventor but the chronicler failed to note that he was a farmer.

People from the United States and foreign countries literally poured into Copper Harbor and adjoining lands engaging in copper mining or related occupation. Food sources were distant and by the summer of 1860 there was a population of 209 people needing food. By the 1850s Brockway became a farmer and by 1860 his real estate was valued at $10,000 (valued at $371,587 in 2024) which included farmland and an outstanding personal estate worth $4,000 (valued at $148,635 in 2024). It is probable that Brockway’s involvement in farming showed newcomers to the area that working the soil was profitable and the produce needed as Brockway was joined by six farmers. At this time farming focused on potatoes and root crops which satisfied the local appetites along with fish that was readily available and provided by two fishermen. It is interesting to note that in 1870 when Brockway was living in Comstock, Kalamazoo county he was listed as a “retired farmer.” He passed form the scene in Lake Linden in 1899.

MAGNUS NELSON (1845-1931)

The first documented pioneer apple orchard man in the Upper Peninsula who was praised in 1923 as the “only real fruit farmer in the Upper Peninsula” was Magnus Nelson (1845-1931). He was born and raised on a farm in Sweden where he thought he had learned everything there was to be known about farming. He immigrated to the United States in 1867 and settled in Dickinson County. In 1880, he was  a laborer working in a sawmill where he drove a team at about 50 cents a day. When he continually complained to his boss about his job and little pay, the fellow told Magnus to quit and go into farming. He figured the Swede would fail as a farmer and return to the mill. 

Nelson built on the advice given him and went out and bought a plot of land on terms with nothing down from the Chicago & North Wesner Railway in southern Menominee County. The eighty acres he purchased was littered with stumps, windfalls and brush. To bring in ready cash Nelson planted and raised strawberries, which were a success.

The first few years were failures in terms of making money off the land. However, he encountered a smooth-tongued agent who insisted that Nelson should plant apple trees. Nelson was sure that apples would not grow in the northern climate but the agent  insisted that he had trees that were “iron clad” and could not be killed by a sledge hammer! Nelson bought fifty trees and planted them on his initial thirty acre orchard. Although they failed to be as successful as the agent claimed, they proved the point that apple trees could be successfully grown in the Upper Peninsula.

When he planted the trees, Nelson knew nothing about apples, but being a poor immigrant he watched his experiment with interest because his daily bread was dependent on the apple crop. For fourteen years Nelson carefully experimented with as variety of apple trees, planting more trees and scientifically studied the conditions under which the apples grew. One year he planted 600 trees and only lost one. By 1896 he had a profitable dairy farm with 80 acres cleared and ten acres devoted to a vegetable garden, five acres to strawberries, three acres to potatoes, and over a thousand fruit trees, primarily apples. It must be remembered that he worked on his own because the experimental farm at Chatham was in the future. He studied apple growing and kept accurate scientific records on the variety of trees, soil and climatic conditions. His orchard flourished though his diligent work and watchful, caring eyes. This was evidenced by the fact at the 1910 Michigan State Fair in Detroit he won all of the apple premiums.

Furthermore, he opened the eyes of people in the Lower Peninsula to the splendid quality of apples that could be grown north of the Straits of Mackinac. One year he was a delegate appointed to attend the Farmers’ Institute at Grand Rapids. Although the meeting was in February he gathered a peck of his #1 and #3 apples and brought them with him. The person in charge expressed wonder that the #3 quality apples were some of the best he had seen compared to those grown in the apple belt of the Lower Peninsula. In 1911 Nelson was declared the first truly successful apple grower and the foremost apple expert in the Upper Peninsula. When he retired in his 60s he was worth $100,000 (2024 equivalent: $3,504,739) all based on his farming business. In the 1930 census he continued to be listed as a “farmer” although long retired.

MAGGIE WALZ (1861-1927)

Although farming was in the hands of men there are a number of examples women who entered the fields of the Upper Peninsula. The dominant individual was the Finnish immigrant, Maggie Walz (1861-1927). She became the “Jane Addams of northern Michigan” who was an angel or pioneer of social welfare. She was an important business woman who was involved in promoting women suffrage, temperance, newspaper editor and female organizations. In 1902 she erected the “Walz Block” in Calumet where her business affairs were centered.

In the early 20th century “utopian community” idea were common luring people away from crowded urban-industrial centers. Walz also realized that there were many Finnish immigrants who hoped to leave the mines and return to farming as they had in the old country. In 1903 she became a land agent with the Scandinavian Land Company and worked closely with the Federal government. Furthermore, she found that there was land to be homesteaded on Drummond Island.

For the coming months she promoted the idea that “like minded” people with a variety of useful trades and talents could follow her to Drummond Island but without alcohol. In early May 1905 the contingent left Calumet with all of the belongings they could carry and sailed for Sault Ste. Marie where Walz guided them to the land office. For $14, fourteen Finns obtained 160 acres of land to be homesteaded which they would have to improve within five years. In the following years other Finns obtained homesteads.

The Finnish colony was located on the southern side of Drummond Island where the settlers cleared the land of trees, stumps and rock and built small homes many of them traditional Finnish log cabins and dug wells for water. In December 1905, Waltz traveled to Chicago where she purchased farm equipment and other necessaries for the settlers

In the spring there were over 120 Finnish immigrants on the island not counting their American-born offspring. Of this number twenty-four were general farmers while thirty-one were homestead farmers. The farmers made money by working in the woods and sawmills during the winter. For the good of the colony a few of the Finns were house carpenters. 

This turned into a sizable community of Finnish farmers. During the first year they planted and harvested flax which could be made into linen cloth, rye, rutabagas, corn, and potatoes. Wild berries and fruits were harvested. Women canned fruit, vegetables and meats.

Walz played an important role in the colony during the early days. She had a post office established and she became the post mistress and the governor made her a notary public. A Finn school opened in 1906 and two years later under her direction a farm association was created. At the same time, Jacob Heikkinen donated an acre of land which became the Finnish Cemetery. By 1910 she oversaw 52 Finn households with at least 205 Finns not counting their American-born children. Then in 1913 Finn Hall was opened which became the social and cultural center of the colony. It included a library and ice cream shop. 

Walz remained and directed the colony into 1914 when change approached. She had to return to her many enterprises in Calumet. At the same time socialists came to the colony and tensions arose between the old and newcomers. Further, it was found that thin soil hit the limestone base, which plagued farming and most of the timber which was profitable to the colonists was gone. The Depression of the 1930s drove others off the island and those who remained worked in the limestone quarry at the western end of the island. Despite these set-backs Walz remains the only ethnic or American woman who played such a significant role in the world of farming in the U.P.

There are other stories of a few of the hundreds of women who played direct roles in farming and dairying. However, most of them oversaw small gardens at their homes. Women like Maria Perona in the vicinity of Calumet who supplied the community with butter and cottage cheese. Other woman usually widows operated larger dairies and others developed local markets for their produce especially potatoes. 

BLEMHUBERS, FARMERS EXTRAORDINAIRE

Henry Blemhuber, a German immigrant, was a successful pioneer farmer in Marquette County, who actively promoted the idea of planting new and untried fruits and vegetables. Blemhuber was born and raised in the north German state of Prussia in 1835 and emigrated to the United States in 1857. For two years he worked as machinist in various machine shops in Detroit and at the Wyandotte Iron Works down river from Detroit. On May 19, 1859 as the steamer Montgomery approached Marquette, on board was Blemhuber having come north to seek his fortune on the mining frontier. In 1860 he married Katrina Schmidt (1834-1883) who was also from Prussia and a recent immigrant to the United States.

Until the outbreak of the Civil War in the spring of 1861 he was employed at the Platt Machine Shop until work was suspended. In 1866, after working at such employment as was available. Blemhuber purchased fifteen acres of timber land immediately to the west of the Marquette city limits in the vicinity of modern Grove Street. From the land he provided cordwood for the Marquette, Houghton & Ontonagon Railroad, which was in constant need of wood for fuel for their ravenous locomotives. He constructed a house on the site, acquired adjacent tracts of land from time to time and developed what was known as the Blemhuber Farm and from then he made agricultural history.

Not much progress had been made in raising any crops on a large scale up to that time. It was assumed that potatoes and peas were the only crops suitable to the soil and climate of the Upper Peninsula. Blemhuber changed this misconception through experimentation, improvement of the quality of seed, and most of all through thrift, industry, and ingenuity, traits for which his fellow countrymen were so well-known.

His operation was strengthened with his son, Robert (1861-1950), who joined his father’s enterprise in 1883. They operated for years under the name of “H. Blemhuber & Son.” They were successful in raising apples, crab, apples, apricots, peaches, pears, plums, Japanese plums, Concord grapes, mulberries, currants, blackberries, strawberries and cherries. Robert was especially interested in developing these fruit tree sand proving that they could be grown in the Upper Peninsula. People could hardly believe the fruits that he exhibited at the Michigan State Fair in Detroit were grown far to the north.

At the second annual Marquette County Fair in 1884 Blemhuber won premiums for: spring wheat, black and white oats, barley, garden peas, field beans, sweet corn, eight varieties of potatoes, a large collection of grains and seeds, and the “greatest variety of apples.”

By 1892 Henry was growing: sweet corn, bush and dwarf peas, rutabagas, beets, red and yellow onions, cabbage, savoy cabbage, green and ripe tomatoes, fall squash, pumpkins, winter radish, at least seven varieties of potatoes, 18 varieties apples, yellow and green gage plums, blackberries, and currants.

In May 1908 the Marquette Mining Journal reported: “The Creator made the Canadian northwest, but if Mr. Blemhuber’s theory is correct it remains for a Marquette farmer to show the settlers how to farm it. And Mr. Blemhuber is right about most things in the farming industry.”

The Blemhubers also developed a truck garden. Vegetables were grown and supplied to many Upper Peninsula markets. They included: tomatoes, sweet corn, various cereals, and green corn whose stalks were excellent fodder for livestock. However, their interest in agriculture did not end there. They also focused on horticulture and trees. Shade and ornamental trees and shrubbery were in stock in their shop. 

Robert operated a store in the rear of his home at 150 W. Ridge Street in Marquette where he sold seeds, plants, and fertilizers. Even after the death of Henry in 1914, Robert continued in business under the same name. The seeds and information he provided inspired many home gardeners. He went further into new methods of horticulture culture — budding, grafting — and he was constantly experimenting to see how far agriculture could be expanded. 

Blemhunber traveled extensively throughout the United States seeking new plants and trees. He was convinced that there was no part of the United States adapted to growing as many different varieties of fruits as could and were grown by him in Marquette County and in other parts of the Upper Peninsula, At the Land Shows held in Chicago in the fall of 1911, he exhibited, among other products, a peach gown in Marquette which measured 10 1/2  inches in circumference!

This fall, however, Robert Blemhuber of Marquette brought to light a type of peach which, experts declare, even surpass the famous California and far-western product. And the feat was accomplished in the backyard of the Blemhuber home.

Marquette peach artist’s drawing. US Department of Agriculture.

This type of peach originated from the pit of a California peach planted some ten years ago in the rear of the Selander home at Marquette and, in respect to that fact Mr. Blemhuber has named his product the Marquette peach. John and Betty Selander were Swedish immigrant and lived at 224 W. Ridge Street a few doors from Blemhuber. Although the tree in question bore only a half dozen of the fruit, the peaches were of such size, flavor and texture, generally as to cause widespread comment.

Success of Peach Assured

Mr. Blemhuber is rated among the leading farmer-citizens of upper Michigan, and it is his conviction that, under the right kind of soil and climatic conditions, the Marquette peach can be made one of the most profitable enterprises, agriculturally, in the peninsula. A hardy type of tree which has repeatedly proven its resistance to frost, heavy rains and other unfavorable conditions, there exists, in the discovery of this type of peach, a possibility hitherto unheard of. In his experimental work Mr. Blemhuber has pitted the Marquette peach against various other types, and invariably the former has outlived every other type. This type of peach has been found to thrive more successfully in the light, sandy soil – a surface formation which permits of the straight down-shooting of the roots, resulting in a strong, healthy tree. Given these conditions, Mr. Blemhuber declared the success of the Marquette peach is assured.

And right here enters the function of a fruit nursery for upper Michigan. Repeated statements that upper Michigan is particularly adapted to fruit, and subsequent successes in small-measure experimental work have created an urgent demand for some means whereby the more hardy type of tree may be selected from the others, and determined as distinctively suited to the northern Michigan region.

Consequently, Mr. Blemhuber, as one of upper Michigan’s most energetic fruit enthusiasts, is hard at work with the state farm bureau, and the state agricultural department, in an effort to establish a fruit nursery for upper Michigan. “If we could get into this thing on a big scale, set out various types of trees and the satisfy ourselves, from the results achieved, of the best type of tree to produce, I am sure that the upper Michigan farmer would soon come to realize the great possibility of this region for fruit,” declared Mr. Blemhuber.

It is to be hoped that the state agricultural college and the farm bureau will look upon the suggestion as distinctly vital to the agricultural development of the upper Michigan region.

Robert Blemhuber actively promoted the development of the Upper Peninsula agriculture and tourism. He was a founding member of the Upper Peninsulas Development Bureau whose task it was to introduce farmers to settle cut-over timber land. He served on its board of directors for the region, even prior to good highways and the completion of the Mackinac Bridge, had a great future in the tourist trade and the Upper Peninsula could become a resort mecca. Today the Blemhuber family is honored by a street named after them in south Marquette, which ran through the Blemhuber Addition.

LEO M. GESIMAR

Now I would like to honor the first director, Leo M. Geismar of the Upper Peninsula Research and Extension Center (UPREC) at this 126th anniversary. The state of Michigan saw the need to become involved in the development and expansion of farms and crops in the U.P. and established the Upper Peninsula Research & Extension Center at Chatham in January 1899.  Its first director, Leo Geismar (1857-1929), was a strong promoter and advocate of scientific agriculture in the UP and can be considered the “father of Modern Upper Peninsula Agriculture.” Born in Alasce-Lorraine, France and his family left when the Germans took over in the early 1870s. He was trained in practical scientific farming in Paris and Berlin and he was familiar with sugar beet cultivation from both nations. He came to the United States in the 1879 and settled in Detroit. He married Johanna Schumacher  in 1883. A few years later he worked as a bar tender in Detroit before getting government land in Bruce Crossing. He developed it scientifically and studied weather for the Department of Agriculture. 

Soon after the creation of the farm, the State Board of Agriculture appointed Geismar, director. His work philosophy was based on the following statement made in 1903 in the Mining Journal: “We can raise something else besides snow and icicles on the Upper Peninsula. We have a fine a country as there is in Michigan and we are making it our business to demonstrate this to the public. His other statement shows is deep devotion to UP farming: “I believe that it is a great deal more important that I should work for the general agricultural development of this section than that I should grow prize turnips at Chatham.” By 1906 the Detroit Free Press singled him out as the individual who had greatly enhanced the profitable crop harvests in the UP. He promoted sugar beet farming and hoped that the sugar refinery in Menominee would be followed by refineries in Marquette and the Sault. He developed a small orchard at the farm and raised plum, cherry, apple and pear trees that did well along with grape vines. He traveled across the UP during the winter months and continually promoted scientific farming and worked with school children to get them into farming. His door was open to anyone seeking to advance farming. He also promoted the idea of the development of a fair that would promote agriculture in the Upper Peninsula. The newspapers throughout the U.P. and even as far as Detroit are filled with stories of his work to promote scientific farming.

Over the years Geismar found new and interesting crops. He wrote about “large excellent gooseberries” brought by an Englishman and then reported that wild white raspberries were growing in the Copper Country. In 1914 Geismar visited the Catholic mission at Assinins and found plums that surpassed any from California! He found one plum tree of European origin that he felt was planted by Fr. Baraga and had borne fruit regularly for many years. He lost no time in preserving this rare tree and had farmer J.C. Mann growing 150 trees and planned to have several hundred more the following year. His plan was to plant these plum trees across the U.P. and concluded, “we will make California second to Cloverland some day soon.” There is no indication as to the results of these aspirations of Geismar.

Over the years Geismar promoted U.P. farming at institutes, sugar beet, alfalfa, hemp, and fruit cultivation. At one point he took on the farmers’ pests – grasshoppers and published in newspapers a poison to get rid of them. In 1912 he helped establish the Belgian colony on St. Nicholas Road between Rock and Perkins. Throughout his career as supervisor of the experimental farm at Chatham or as Houghton County agricultural agent he promoted agriculture in the U.P.

His heyday at the farm and around the Upper Peninsula lasted for about a dozen years. Then tragedy set in. In 1909 his 22-year old son, Albert, a student at the Michigan Agricultural College (now Michigan State University) died a victim of tuberculosis, despite the best treatment. Two year later his wife passed away of appendicitis. He was left with four daughters and no longer wanted to travel but to care for them at home. He resigned his position at Chatham in 1912 and soon after became the first farm agent for Houghton County. Here he continued his fastidious promotion of scientific farming and his work was acclaimed by all. He remained as agent until his death in 1929. 

He was so admired by UP farmers that more than 400 farmers attended his burial service in Chatham, many of them joining the funeral cortege from Hancock.  His legacy, continues with the work of the Center as the hub for integrated crop and livestock research.

Roger M. Andrews (1875-1943)

He was born in Stamford, Connecticut on April 2, 1874 and graduated from Yale Law School in 1894. His newspaper career began shortly after when he began work for the New York Report. He then worked for the Inter-Ocean and the Chronicle in Chicago, the Milwaukee Journal and Daily News and the Advocate at Green Bay. He served as press secretary for Wisconsin Senator Robert LaFollette.

He arrived in Menominee at the turn of the 20th century and in 1901 purchased the Menominee Herald, a weekly. Three years later he purchased the Menominee Leader and merged the two papers into the Menominee Herald-Leader, which he directed until his death.

He was best known in the Upper Peninsula for founding the Upper Peninsula Development  Bureau, which in the early days was successful in encouraging the development of agriculture in “Cloverland.” In the interests of U.P. agriculture a monthly bureau magazine, Cloverland was published at Menominee from 1916 through 1923.

He was active in efforts to develop the Upper Peninsula, he also was politically active although never a candidate for public office. He was appointed state commissioner of mineral statistics in 1910 and was president of the Mackinac Island State Park Commission in 1933-1934.

On the west coast in the early 20s he was active in the banking business and was vice president of the Bank of America in California. In 1926 he became vice president and publisher of the Detroit Times and was otherwise connected with the Hearst newspapers for several years.

GEORGE S. BUTLER

When George S. Butler passed away at 101 years of age, Northern Michigan University president William E. Vandament said “George Butler was one of the Upper Peninsula’s foremost agriculture educators.” Born In Allegan County in the Lower Peninsula in 1892 Butler was educated at Michigan State University and worked his way north as Northern Michigan University developed an agricultural program.

As early as 1905, courses in agriculture were taught through the Biology Department. When Samuel Mager came to campus in 1911 he taught a course to introduce future teachers to agriculture so that they could teach their pupils in planting and cultivating school gardens and beautifying areas around pupils’ homes. A gardens was developed on the south edge of campus along Kaye Avenue where students grew vegetables and flowers.

In 1912 the State Board of Education made it mandatory that rural school teachers had to take courses in agriculture. The curriculum included Babcock test for milk with TB, testing seeds, working in the school gardens and “regular textbook work.” In November 1914, Magers told a reporter for The Quill a school newspaper, “I refuse to pass any girl who fails to develop blisters on her hands!”

The Department of Conservation and Agriculture was created in 1912 to fill these requirements. The Smith-Hughes Act passed in 1917 provided federal aid to states for the purpose of precollegiate vocational training in agriculture and industrial trades and home economics. It paid for teachers in high school, teaching agriculture.

Onto the scene came George Butler, superintendent of schools at Grand Marais with a landscape background. After teaching for a few summers he joined the Northern faculty in 1935. He was convinced that the UP was good country for potatoes and dairy farming. He led woodland environmental tours, took students to the MSU Chatham Agricultural Experiment Station, dairies, Seney wildlife refuge and a silver fox far. He was a one-man-show teaching: forestry, soils, animal husbandry, field agriculture and agrarian economics. On campus he found lab space and built a greenhouse.

His courses were readily transferred to Michigan College of Agriculture (now MSU). In 1938 he found time to develop his own research on improving the low bush blueberry. Two years later visiting professors from MSU and Western Michigan College complimented him on his courses.

To enhance the environmental programs and get field experience, in 1948 Butler got President Henry Tape to obtain the Munuscong Bay field station in the eastern U.P. for a dollar from the state of Michigan. It was popular with students but was returned to the Department of Conservation in 1960 because faculty found it inconvenient to travel over 3 hours to their classes!

Butler retired in 1959 and Roger Norden and Alfred Niemi, both with Ph.D.s in agriculture took over and within a year the agriculture program became part of the geography department. However agriculture as such was discontinued in March 1963. 

At this point students interested in agriculture would have to attend Michigan State University. However by the 21st century a new set of interests developed that we see today in the programs that have developed in Biology, Chemistry and Geography, but based on the legacy of George Butler.

Although farming is not as exciting and dramatic as mining with its dynamite charges, ore docks and ship loads of ore or the timber industry with its crashing timbers in the dense woods, agriculture has had a longer history and has played a critical part of the history of the Upper Peninsula.