In 1923, Stanley Newton published, “The Story of Sault Ste. Marie and Chippewa County.” This is part twenty of a continuing series about the history of Sault Ste. Marie and area in its early years. I have left punctuation and grammar intact. – Laurie Davis
The First Sawmill
“The first sawmill, if I mistake not, in the peninsula, was erected at the foot of the mill race at Portage and River Streets. It had an up-and-down saw, and we thought it a wonderful thing in those days. The logs were floated down the raceway. The first wood sawed by this mill was a maple log, and the lumber made material for a table that was used by Henry Schoolcraft, the Indian Agent and historian, and by all the interpreters since. As I was the last interpreter, the table fell to me and I still have it. Great amounts of silver and gold were counted out on that table when we paid the Indian annuities.”
This table, which Schoolcraft no doubt used in the writing of many of his works, afterward came into the hands of Judge Joseph Steere. He presented to the Sault Ste. Mrie Carnegie Library, where it stands with one of the ship knees of the famous old propeller, Independence.
“In my boyhood days,” continues John McD. in his memoirs, “my father had near our home, a fish house twenty-five or thirty feet square. Each season he would have forty pork barrels of salted whitefish and from five to six thousand fresh fish. These were strung in pairs by their tails and hung over rows of poles. They were allowed to freeze and would keep all winter. It was nothing strange to take 500 or 1,000 whitefish at the foot of the rapids in a single night, and sometimes 1,500.”
Thus the old Saulteurs, even long after John Johnston’s time, had two gardens, one behind their homes and the other out in the rapids, the latter affording them without cultivation or trouble other than going after it, an unending crop of the finest food that ever passed the lips of man.
The First Newspaper
The first newspaper published in Chippewa County was The Lake Superior News and Mining Journal, a weekly, brought out by John N. Ingersoll in the spring of 1848. This paper featured mining news, and moved later to Marquette, in the heart of the iron country, where it has continued to this day under the caption of the Marquette Mining Journal.
The Chippewa County News was the next local paper, originated by Dr. Williams in 1878, and purchased the following year by J.H. Steere & Co. Mr. Steere edited the News until his election as Circuit Judge in 1881, when it passed into the hands of Wm. Chandler & Co. Two years later Mr. Charles H. Chapman became its editor and publisher, Mr. Chandler retaining an interest. In 1887 the paper rechristened the Sault Ste. Marie News became the property of Messrs. Chase S. Osborn, M. A. Hoyt, and A. W. Dingwall. This paper, since continued as an evening daily, is now owned by George Osborn, Emma Osborn, Chase S. Osborn, Jr., Norman H. Hill, J.P. Chandler, and Charles Zylstra as the principal stockholders, and dominates the daily field in the eastern part of the Upper Peninsula. A weekly edition is issued also, sharing the territory with The Soo Times, a thriving Saturday issue weekly under the able management of Mr. Loring Chittenden.
Another weekly, the Sault Ste. Marie Democrat had been started in 1882 by Mr. W.K. Gardner. The paper was printed on a homemade wooden press. The Democrat suspended issue after a few months, but in the following year, Mr. Charles R. Stuart bought the printing plant and revived the publication. In 1887, the year of the first water power boom, Mr. John E. Burchard and Mr. D. W. Brownell became interested in the Democrat, and in 1891 Mr. Burchard became sole owner. In the same year Mr. M. J. Magee acquired an interest in the paper and three years later he took over Mr. Burchard’s title. In 1901, the Democrat became a daily morning paper under the name of The Record, dividing the field with the Daily News, then as now issued in the afternoon.
The field being too small for two dailies, negotiations resulted in the combining of the two papers by Mr. Magee’s purchase from Mr. Chase S. Osborn – by that time sole owner of The News – of his ownership in the latter paper. Mr. Osborn had many other interests which required his attention, and he relinquished with honor a field in which he had been singularly successful. Thus Mr. Magee became general manager of the Sault News Record. The paper was issued every weekday morning until November 1901, when it became an afternoon daily of four pages.
After Mr. Charles H. Chapman had sold the Sault Ste. Marie News to Mr. Osborn, he published several weekly papers in this city, The Soo Herald, The Sault Ste. Marie Tribune, and The Church Herald. In August 1901, he launched The Lake Superior Journal. The Journal was a weekly, but it announced in the initial issue its intention of becoming a daily. Mr. E.W. Kibby was associate editor with Mr. Chapman, and at the time of its purchase by Messrs. Knox and Muehling, it was published semi-weekly.
Mr. Frank Knox and Mr. John Muehling were Grand Rapids newspapermen, and when they bought The Journal they converted it into a daily evening rival of The News Record. In April 1903, the two papers merged under the caption of The Evening News and the editorship of Mr. Knox. Mr. Muehling was business manager and continued in that capacity until 1912 when he and Mr. Knox established The Manchester, N. H., Leader and moved to that city. Later the Leader was consolidated with the Union. At that time the Sault News Printing Company was acquired by its present owners, Mr. Norman Hill having bought an interest in the company in 1915 and having succeeded Mr. Chase S. Osborn, Jr., as managing editor. Mr. Osborn is now associated with his brother Mr. George A. Osborn in the publication of The Herald in Fresno California.
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