Among the Sturdy Pioneers: The Birth of the Cheboygan Area as a Lumbering Community, 1778-1935 by Matthew J. Friday (review)

168 Michigan Historical Review social attitudes rather than taking the lead. That caution kept Michigan from becoming the utopia that boosters from an earher era proclaimed itwould become. This collection is particularly timely as it provides a series of short essays on important topics that tend to reside only in specialized texts. Although some of the entries address familiar themes, such as temperance, essays on theMichigan Women's Commission and Thomas Cooley provide insights into institutional and individual actors' roles that typically receive scant notice in reference texts, if they arementioned at all. The essay on conservation also highhghts a topic of great importance, but provides only limited scholarly historical analysis. This collection offers readers new perspectives on several issues and adds greatly to the existing literature. The length and clarity of the pieces make them excellent choices for classroom use at both the secondary and university levels. Matthew Lawrence Daley Grand Valley State University Matthew J. Friday. Among the Sturdy Pioneers: The Birth of the Chebqygan Area as aLumbering Community, 1778-1935. Victoria, B.C.: Trafford, 2006. Pp. 162. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Photographs. Paper, $19.99. "I never inmy hfe saw or heard of a place so absolutely jinxed as that town is" (p. 105). Despite this rather dismal recollection by a former resident, writing from Tacoma, Washington, in 1930, the history of Cheboygan, Michigan, has not always been one of gloom and doom. Although this small northern Michigan lumber town has had the characteristic ups and downs of any community dependent on exhaustible resources, Cheboygan managed to thrive for a remarkably long time and eventually sustain itself into the twenty-first century with a population not much smaller than it had in its halcyon days one hundred years ago. In his brief but very thorough community biography, Among theSturdy Pioneers: The Birth of theCheboyganArea as aLumbering Community, 1778-1935, Matthew J. Friday combines narrative history with perceptive insights that remind the reader of the challenges confronted by this resourceful community. The natural resources of northern Michigan drew Native American setders to the tip of the Lower Peninsula, and Friday begins his book by recounting both the lives and the legends of the early Chippewa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi inhabitants. The author continues his narrative by smoothly integrating the Indians' transient settlement patterns with the Book Reviews 169 history of French, British, and early American occupation. In 1853 Cheboygan County was organized, and soon thereafter lumbermen were buying up pinelands and constructing sawmills at the mouth of the Cheboygan River, attracted by the area's timber and its convenient, navigable waterways into the interior chain of lakes. Actually, Cheboygan began as two lumber-town settlements. Just a short distance to the east of the city, a Philadelphia entrepreneur named Jeremiah Duncan built a company sawmill town, Duncan City. Until Duncan's untimely death in 1854, his town inmany ways led the area's setdement. From then on, however, Cheboygan led the lumber boom and eventually absorbed the smaller town. Friday gives a thorough account of Cheboygan's internal prosperity, its growth and expansion, as well as its businesses and churches. He focuses upon the lumber-manufacturing business, of course. The author makes extensive use of the records of M. D. Olds and Company?one of Cheboygan's largest sawmills?from the Clarke Historical Library at Central Michigan University. Olds was apparendy a careful and precise record keeper, and his business and personal writings provide valuable information for this narrative. Aside from his examination of what hfe was hke for the shanty boys and sawmill workers in the Cheboygan area's logging camps and lumber towns, Friday touches upon areas often overlooked by lumber historians. His descriptions of the physical dangers of lumbering and the accidents that occurred in the camps and mills are a reminder of how hazardous work could be in the nineteenth century. In addition, his tabulation of the economic consequences of devastating forest fires points out the financial insecurities lumber-town residents often faced. Cheboygan's tragic past is recounted in the author's descriptions of the fires that destroyed Duncan City and several of the large sawmills that provided employment. In 1883 Cheboygan experienced one of...