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Community Historical Society

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Colon, MI
Community Historical Society

Our Society is here to preserve and share the history of the Colon/ Leonidas area.

08/05/2025

1906—December. The foundation walls of the new schoolhouse will be finished this week and the school board has under consideration the calling of an election early next month for the purpose of bonding the district to the sum of $7,000 or $8,000 to purchase brick and long timber this winter and turn them over to the contractor in the spring.

08/05/2025

The Central Michigan Underground Railway?

There are a lot of unanswered questions about the “Underground Railway” that we know existed, but there are few clues as to how it operated and where, but we had to be along one of the lines. In case you didn’t know it, the term refers to the smuggling of slaves out of the country during the years before Abraham Lincoln’s “Emancipation Proclamation” officially ended slavery on January 1, 1863. Pamela Brown Thomas wrote about the part her and her husband Nathan played in the route near here. Her husband, a medical doctor, lived at 613 East Cass Street in Schoolcraft. Referring to Dr. Thomas' early days in Schoolcraft, before their marriage and the construction of his office and residence in 1835, Mrs. Thomas wrote, "His antislavery views were so well known, that, while he was a bachelor boarding at the hotel, fugitives from slavery had called on him for assistance and protection." Pamela Brown Thomas estimated that between 1840 and 1860 she and her husband helped between 1,000 to 1,500 fugitive slaves escape into freedom. In her book, Pamela relates that Zachariah Shugart, a fellow Quaker living on Young’s Prairie, Cass County, often brought Slaves to the Thomas House. Dr. Thomas would then shuttle the runaways to Erastus Hussey, another fellow Quaker living in Battle Creek. Coming from New York State in 1839, he and his wife, Sarah, purchased a building located about 125 feet east of the current historical marker on East Michigan Avenue to house their dry goods store and residence. Erastus and Sarah Hussey also had strong antislavery sentiments and in 1840, Erastus became stationmaster of the Underground Railroad's Battle Creek station, located in his home. A May 1885 edition of the Battle Creek Sunday Morning Call featured an interview with "the Abolitionist patriarch," Erastus Hussey. The eighty-five-year-old former editor of the antislavery Michigan Liberty Press recalled Battle Creek's role with the Underground Railroad. The Central Michigan route began in Cass County and had stations every twelve to fifteen miles in communities like Climax, Battle Creek, Marshall, Albion, Grass Lake, Ann Arbor, and Plymouth, then on to Detroit. Hussey stated "I have fed and given protection to over 1,000 fugitives, and assisted them on to Canada." After 1855 the Michigan underground was less traveled -- the runaways took shorter routes through Ohio. When asked if any stationmasters received pay, Hussey replied "No . . . . We were working for humanity."

08/05/2025

Our clues to the date of this photograph is the clothing and the phone lines.
The store names are not a great clue as they were in business for so long. On the far left (now Dawn’s Restaurant) is Bartholomew’s clothing store for men. It was established in 1902 and closed in 1982. The Ice Cream on the second store is the Hartman Bakery which existed at this location from about 1907 to 1945.
No, I do not know the occasion for all the folks in town.
I guess I could ask the lady on the left.

08/05/2025

AS I REMEMBER; By Charles Wagner
Colon, Michigan PART ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-EIGHT

Also, during this time as I grew older and ventured out more, I’d spend time in Findley. For a few houses, general store, grist mill, blacksmith shop and a community building there sure was a lot going on. The general store had a gas pump and sold what the people in the area needed. So, from early morning until the last person left at night, the store was open. In the evening the farmers would gather around at the store just to talk over what was going on. The grist mill was run by Roy Stuart. He also sold John Deere farm machinery. He also bought grain, which was shipped out by train. Roy had a son, Arthur, about my age and we used to play together a lot. During harvest season when Roy was buying lots of grain, he would hire us boys to shovel the grain back in the box cars as they were being loaded. This was fun for us kids.

08/05/2025

Object of 60-year quest found near Leonidas
From a newspaper article of June of 1985, by Jan Gardner: HATCH TRADING POST SITE LOCATED – PART FIVE

The breakthrough came about two years ago as Meyer was driving his stagecoach, drawn by a team of pinto horses. He spoke to Gordon Barton about his search for the trading post somewhere in the area.
“I saw his face light right up like a Christmas tree,” Meyer said.
Barton told him his riverbank land had remains of two old building on it – the site of the trading post.
“There’s no trace of it now,” Meyer said, explaining the buildings were long gone.
The trading post was built about a half mile east of what is now the Bennett Bridge. Another half mile east of the bridge is the site of the Appletree Ford and the ox-bow.
Indians once paddled upriver to the trading post from their homes near the ox-bow to trade their furs for goods brought in on the Washtenaw Trail which later became the Ypsilanti branch of the Territorial Road.

08/04/2025

BURR OAK: From the Burr Oak Portrait, Vol 2, 1977.

RECOLLECTIONS BY FRANK NOFSINGER

I attended High School in Burr Oak the following years, 1911-1915. I remember accompanying Leon Parkham (Eva Parkham was his mother) on his rounds to put new sticks of electrical carbon in the street lights. There were several street lights in Burr Oak that were held up by ropes that hooked on the poles. Every so often someone needed to lower the lights and change the insides, new sticks of electrical carbon, resembling charcoal, but harder, replaced the old ones. The lights were electrical carbon arc lights and cast a brilliant glare. The electrical current came from Seaver’s Electric Plant which was built in 1912.

08/04/2025

A new Michigan Registered Historic Site in St. Joseph County, Michigan. It is located at Lakeside Cemetery on Farrand Road just West of Colon, Michigan.

08/04/2025

COLON GO-GETTER WRITES OF PIONEER DAYS

From the Colon Express, June 7, 1928: ”As promised last week, we are continuing our history of the community, with a brief outline of the village: -PART ONE

In 1832, George Shellhouse and an Indian trader, named Hatch, laid off a plot of ground for a village. In casting about for a name, Lorensi Schellhouse turned to a dictionary, one of the few books of the day, for an inspiration. His eyes fell on the word ‘colon’, and he turned to his brother and said, “let’s call it Colon, for its two lakes form two dots on the map.”
Things were very quiet in the village for the next two years and it was not until the completion of the flourmill by Dr. Isaac Voorhis, in 1839, that Colon began its upward climb. The first run of stones for this mill was dressed by Wm. Eck of Three Rivers, and he also ground the first grist.
We now hear of John H. and Wm. F. Bowman, who were very prominent in the formative period of the village. In January 1844, they made the first survey to be recorded. The first retail stock of goods was displayed by Chas. L. Miller in 1841, using a cooper shop until he could build a store building. Then followed other industries. A wagon shop, operated by Erastus Mills, in 1846, and the foundry, by Shuert & Duel, in 1847. in 1854 Wm. Bowman opened a planning mill on the site of Anderson’s blacksmith shop.
Sometime just prior to 1860, l David Brownfield built the tannery, which of course was in operation since many of us today can remember.

08/04/2025

AS I REMEMBER; By Charles Wagner
Colon, Michigan PART ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-SEVEN

About this time, you were into the lambing time if you had sheep, which we did. Soon the farm there was always something going on and something to do. Come spring, you were thinking about plowing the fields for oats, which was the first crop planted, then it was plowing for the corn crop. All of this work was done with horses, so it took some time to do it.

08/03/2025

August 1906: Michigan Central Railroad excursion from Colon to St. Joseph. Sunday. Price: $1.15. ($1.15 in 1906 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $41.08 today, an increase of $39.93 over 119 years. The dollar had an average inflation rate of 3.05% per year between 1906 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 3,471.83%.
This means that today's prices are 35.72 times as high as average prices since 1906, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index. A dollar today only buys 2.799% of what it could buy back then.
The inflation rate in 1906 was 2.27%. The current inflation rate compared to the end of last year is now 2.35%. If this number holds, $1.15 today will be equivalent in buying power to $1.18 next year.)

08/02/2025

The photographer was standing on top of the Hill Opera House (gone) and taking a picture of the St. Jo House Hotel (also gone) which stood where Hemel Chevrolet now stands.
On the other side of the hotel stood the Lamberson grist mill (gone) and beyond that I can see the Anderson Buggy Factory and Blacksmith shop (also gone).
On the center, far right, stand the brick house between the mill race and Swan Creek. It is still there. So is the church (steeple removed) that you can see over the top of the hotel.
Can’t tell you the year, but that hotel was built in 1844 and torn down in the early 1940s, the grist mill was built in 1839 and also torn down in the 1940s.

I can see the steeple sticking up that was on what is now Cornerstone church.
Across from that is what was the High School with the clock on top which was installed in 1912.

08/02/2025

AS I REMEMBER; By Charles Wagner
Colon, Michigan PART ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-SIX

Then when the weather starts to get good, Uncle Dan would bring in his buzz saw down and then we would set up a day when the neighbors could help. We would then buzz up the wood, that is cut it up into about fourteen-inch lengths for the stove. After this was done, the next operation was to spit the larger chunks into smaller pieces for the cook stove. After splitting the wood, it was then ranked up so it would dry out. We had a large woodshed on the back of the house, so we would haul the wood up here to the and fill the woodshed. One side of the wood shed was for the kitchen wood and the other side was for the heating stove wood.

Address

219 N Blackstone Avenue
Colon, MI
49040

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