The first Chicago Lumbering Company general store was built in the early 1870’s near the old saw mill. The company store was the only place to purchase the basic necessities. August Klagstad remembered his mother buying denim at the company store which she used to sew jackets and overalls. The few hundred pioneer residents of Manistique depended on the store to meet their most basic needs, including their daily bread. The store was stocked with a large number of provisions in the fall to provide for the residents and camp employees during the long winter months. Then, on the bitterly cold evening of January 13, 1881, an unbelievable catastrophe occurred. The company store burned to the ground.
Monthly Archives: April 2021
Manistique’s Early Hospitals
The flat above the A. S. Putnam Drug Store on the corner of S, Cedar and Walnut served as a hospital from the 1890’s to late 1930. SCHS Photo.
In the days before large medical facilities and regional trauma centers, Manistique’s sick and injured were cared for in small, private hospitals, usually owned by the physician who treated patients there. During a 1949 interview, Dora (James) Middlebrook recalled some of Manistique’s earliest hospitals. Dora was a pioneer resident of Manistique, having visited in the 1870’s with her father, Ebenezer James, founder of the Jamestown mill. She later became the bride of William Middlebrook.