J: Jack Rollenhagen
R: Ron Kuiper A: (?)
J: …read those old papers.
R: So, when was this published in the…
J: Oh, 1900.
R: Oh. Some of those came from the Tribune. There’s an article from Thursday’s Tribune. “Death on the
Rail. Mr. and Mrs. Charles Hunter, of Crockery, were killed at Ferrysburg.”
J: Yeah, they were residents of this…
R: Is that autobiography of Henry Pennoyer?
J: This is Henry Pennoyer.
R: Let me see that.
J: Well, I don’t know if it’s upside-down or not, but here it is. See, they had quite a house up here on
State Road, the Pennoyers, one time. It’s still there.
R: Is that that big, old…
J: Big, white house up there, where, uh, Spenser lives there now.
R: It’s not the one on the old US-16…
J: No, no.
R: …on the curve there. What is that?
J: It’s on the State Road.
R: There’s some big, old house there too, with yellow brick, that must have been built a hundred years
or more…
J: Oh, that’s right past Nunica?
R: Yeah.
J: No, that ain’t quite a hundred years old, the old Ernst (?) farm.
R: Oh, it ain’t?
J: That was, that was the best house in Crockery Township, when old man Ernst (?) put that up. That’s
his picture here. This is the guy who built her.
R: That’s the man who lived to be over a hundred.
J: He came here from Germany. He had a good education. He was a doctor. Of course, when he came in
this country, see, he couldn’t practice here because he hadn’t got a license.
A: That’s funny, because we’ve been running across some early doctors, uh, in fact, one of the first
doctors in Grand Haven, a man named Monroe, Steven Monroe, Dr. Monroe, he…
R: Did he become a doctor? He was apprentice to a doctor in Jackson, Michigan or something for a few
years to learn the trade. And then he became a doctor, huh?
A: I can’t figure out why, why doctor Anst (?) couldn’t do that?
R: Say, this is, this is good?
A: Yeah?
R: Yeah.
A: How’d you come by this? Is this…
J: Well, it was, the first I run across it, it was all hand written in a little book.
R: Oh, yeah?
J: It was, belonged to Charlie Gibbs. I had the mumps here one time, that was when the country was
polluted with them, remember? Not, well, 20 years or so ago. He brought the thing over to me,
something to read. Course, I wasn’t too interested in history then. But I read it. And then, here, just a
few years ago, the thing showed up again, when Charlie Gibbs passed away, he left it in that old house
here.
A: And then you got a hold of it and had it typed?
J: I got a hold of it and Kenneth ________ up here, he read it, he can type, see, and then, he typed it.
R: Who has the original now?
J: It’s still up there on the State Road.
A: But this has never been published in a newspaper or anything like that? Any excerpts from it and
anything else?
J: Well, I think they got a copy of it in the Grand Rapids Museum. I think that Geesma (?) girl worked up
there. And they Photostatted copies of it.
R: The Grand Haven library would like to have a copy of that. They’ve got archives down there for
documents like that. That, that, I’m certain we can find useful material in that.
J: Yeah, I got a big kick out of reading that.
A: Yeah, well, it’s obvious that Leo Lilley never saw this then.
R: No.
A: Cause he published his book, you know Leo Lilley’s history of Ottawa County and Grand Haven. He
published that in 1930 and so, it certainly was more recently than that that he came across it. This was
then, nobody knew about this in 1930 then.
J: Well, Charlie Gibbs probably did.
R: Now, this, I don’t, much of this, we’d have to find out, we’d have to check out the newspaper, I guess
and document what you say. But we should read some of this stuff. Here’s a fine thing on Isaac
Fairbanks, who was in Holland before, before _______ got there. There’s quite a bit of material involved
in here. The history of Ottawa County, now, we could probably find it in a newspaper. But it’s just good
background material for us, even if we can’t find when it was first printed and where.
A: Who put that scrapbook together?
J: Mandy Cassel.
A: Oh.
J: They lived right up here, just the fourth house from me, that house on the hill there? See, he was a
Civil War veteran and when he came back from the war, he built a general store here in Nunica.
R: This says “1884” on the back.
J: Well, that’s an old hardware book or something.
A: Oh, yeah, Foster-Stevens. That doesn’t mean that everything in here is before 1884 is what I’m
saying.
R: Is there anything in here that we may look at?
J: Oh, yeah, help yourself. You’re welcome to use whatever I got.
R: Hey, what is in the top of that thing? Where did that thing come from? Does it say anything on the
very top of it? Who wrote that?
A: This is “Pioneer Life in Ottawa County” by R.B. _________, the whole manuscript’s in another one.
The whole thing. There’s someone, an R.B. Jennings, who lives in Cadillac and he lived in Cadillac when
he wrote the article. Now, this was published in a newspaper and Lilley probably had access to this. I
would like to take time to read through it though.
R: Yeah. This is the same thing, in here?
J: Is that by Jennings?
A: Yes.
J: Yeah, well, that’s typed. If it’s by Jennings.
A: The whole thing is in one of those other envelopes. This is Xeroxed or Photostatted copies of the
newspaper. So the Cassels were early residents in Nunica.
J: Yeah.
A: And Ernst and, uh…
J: I think the earliest settler was, uh…Carpenter.
A: He’s mentioned in there.
R: Does Alvin Waysman still live over here?
J: Al is dead.
R: No, I mean his son.
J: His son, yeah.
A: That was Albert, uh, Albin, he had a house just off this, off the main street near town.
J: Just past the church.
A: Yeah. Does he still have that house?
J: Yeah, I’m sure he does.
A: I used to paint with him in the summertime. And with his brother, Henry and…I knew that family very
well. One of my friends married Irene, one of the girls.
R: Look at this fine picture of that old pavilion in Fruitport.
A: Where the Grand Haven people used to go carouse.
R: Yeah, that was the pavilion.
J: Well, my pride and joy’s my Inter-Urban picture there.
R: Do you have pictures of the Dummy Line? The Grand Haven street railway that ran down Washington
out to the Highland Park?
J: Yeah, I may have. This was taken at Highland Park. But that’s not the old open air car, that’s
probably…
A: That’s what the Dummy Line was.
R: Yeah, that was the things without tops on them. But that was taken at Highland Park?
J: Yeah. If you study it close, you’ll see the lake shore there.
A: Ron’s neighbor has a bell in his basement that came off of one of the Inter-Urban cars. One of the
conductors…
R: No, it came off the, it was a captain’s bell off the Fannie M. Rose.
A: No, he’s got that out in his yard, but he’s got the other bell in his basement.
R: Oh, oh.
A: The one that was mounted on the floor.
R: That’s right, that’s right.
A: And then, he also has the bell off the Fannie M. Rose.
R: Right. Outside he has the captain’s bell.
J: I got quite a few things pertaining to that __________ from the old Inter-Urban.
A: Did you see this picture of Nunica’s main street back, look at that old…what is that? What kind of
motorcycle is that? And there’s the name on that.
J: That guy was ________, the mail carrier from Coopersville.
R: That’s one step in the evolution of mail carriers. Yeah, he’s just in front of a mail box.
A: We’ve got right now in our possession, temporarily, a bunch of the papers of that Grand Haven street
railway, that Stephen L. Monroe, uh, he got the charter for it and there are some papers, uh, records of
their giving, paying people compensation for being hurt on the South pier and things like that. And
somebody was, I guess they had an accident one day and a bunch of people were thrown into the lake.
And they all go 50 dollars apiece or something, getting their clothes and being scared. And then, another
man from Grand Rapids wrote a letter and said his son had been so badly hurt on that railway that, oh, I
don’t know, boy, he really sounded bad. He was ill for over a year and he acted so strangely they
thought he’d been permanently affected, affected for life and everything and they ended up by asking
for 250 dollars damages (laughs).
J: Oh, man.
A: But I don’t think they even paid that. Look, there’s Akeley Hall. The girls school.
R: Right. And that’s the Spring Lake Hotel. Hey, I remember that thing.
J: John Ball Park?
R: Ramona.
J: Oh, Ramona Park.
R: Ramona Park Pavilion.
J: Yeah, that was still in operation along in, in, uh…
A: The 40’s, I know.
R: What is that, at Reed’s Lake?
A: Yes. Where East Grand Rapids High School is now.
J: It was about 1936 when I started running around with a motorcycle, I know, and we used to go up
there once in a while then.
A: We should have a camera apparatus along, so when we see these things, instead of taking them all
along, we can just zap them right then and there.
R: Yeah. Hey, that’s early Wisconsin, that’s the place that was…
A: Yeah, that’s a tough town.
R: …for all the bars. It had, uh, I don’t know, about 50 bars.
J: It did.
R: There was 70 people in the town, something like that (chuckles).
J: Holy, man.
A: That was like Muskegon and Seny (?). Seny was a tough place. It’s nothing now at all.
R: And it was a, in iron mining territory.
A: Oh, was it that too? There was lumber first. It was a lumberjack town.
J: Yeah, I’ve been through Seny. We got two kids that live in Menominee.
A: That’s Ann Arbor, Michigan. There’s the Cutler-Savidge saw mill.
R: Yeah.
J: I got them from Doc Eshleman. You ought to see him. He’s probably got some better ones.
R: Eshleman?
J: Yeah.
A: Yeah, he runs the drugstore.
J: I did a lot of picture trading with him.
R: What drugstore?
A: Eshleman’s pharmacy in Spring Lake.
J: Ask for Doc.
R: Now, is this, is this where the Holiday Inn now is, or was this on the other side?
J: Oh, boy, you got me. Well, that, where Crissman’s lumber company stands, you know, that one
cement block building is the last one left of that mill. It’s still there.
R: Well, where does that stand? Is that near the Johnston Boiler Works?
J: Yeah, as you’re going towards Grand Haven it’s on the right hand side of the road.
R: Oh, yeah, it’s around there by that produce market, isn’t it? Past that?
J: Crissman sold out. Who does own that now? Anyway, it’s right up close, right up close to the road. It’s
this side of the produce market.
A: Oh, Lampson’s, yeah. And there’s a building there that was part of the Cutler-Savidge mill?
J: Yeah. A cement block building, it must have been the latest one they built. That’s what, that’s what I
was told anyway.
R: Here’s a fine picture of the old Inter-Urban in the wintertime.
A: Yeah.
R: I wonder if they kept those things reasonably warm? I wonder if you stayed warm going from here to
Grand Rapids.
J: Well, there was electrical heating.
A: Is that Grand Haven, looking west from Lake Avenue or is that Spring Lake? There’s a Lake Avenue in
Spring Lake and there’s one in Grand Haven.
J: Got me.
A: That must be Spring Lake. There’s too much water all around.
J: Yeah, that was taken, I think, just before the Centennial.
A: Yeah, it must be Spring Lake.
R: That’s a fine collection. Fine collection of pictures.
J: Get that black one there. Them are all Inter-Urban pictures.
R: Oh, good. How did you come by all these?
J: They copied them from postcards or anyway they get them.
A: Tough looking guys.
J: I get a kick out of this one. Used to live right over here. He’s always got his hands folded. But it isn’t
on this picture. Yeah, here he is, old John Holstrup (?). And he used to live right over here. Pret’ near
every picture he’s standing like that.
A: That must be a tool, unique to the trade.
J: What is it, a jack? Yeah, that’s a jack. See, they probably got a low spot in the rail there.
A: Jack it up and put something under it?
J: They may tamp under the ties and raise the dirt.
A: Fruitport.
R: Yeah.
A: That building’s gone, isn’t it?
J: Yeah, it burned down. In 1957. You’d never believe that that’s Main Street in Fruitport.
A: That is?
J: Yeah. That must have been taken in 1902. 1902 was when the Inter-Urban, you know, went into
being.
A: Are you still working on your collection?
J: Whenever I run across a picture.
A: You have a camera that you use for copying?
J: Just an ordinary camera.
A: It works well, it works well for you.
J: All you got to do is extend the lens out.
R: Look at that, isn’t it a, old J. Nile Poel (?) was talking about that triangle, Grand Rapids, Grand Haven
and Muskegon? The people in Grand Haven would take a day off, Saturday or something and they’d
make that trip, to Grand Rapids for a while, then Muskegon and then come back to Grand Haven.
J: Yeah, every Sunday morning they’d run an excursion too from Grand Rapids to Grand Haven or
Muskegon, uh, for fishermen. They’d go early in the morning. Sometimes, they’d have double-header.
A: Do you know pretty precisely where the tracks were?
J: Oh, yeah.
A: Do you?
J: sure, they were most all intact right here.
A: The tracks are still laying there?
J: Well, the tracks, they tore them up, but the Consumers brought, bought the right-of-way. They put
their hiking (?) line right down it.
A: Oh. That’s through Fruitport, too?
J: No, no…
A: Where the Consumer lines go?
J: No, they don’t go to Fruitport. See, at Fruitport, you can still see the grade where it crossed right
there by the Bile (?) bait shop. If you’re going north there, it’s right through the lake (?). And then, it
went across the road right down on the edge of the park, right towards the pavilion.
A: I wonder if anybody got hurt?
J: No. George Edwards and that, uh, Johnson was in that wreck. Motor fell out of the car. And it just
rolled it right over. They had her about wide open, I guess, when that happened.
R: You probably know a lot of these people too. That makes the pictures really fascinating to you.
J: Oh, yeah. I get a big kick out of this. Joe Flan (?), he’s quite a friend of mine. He lived here. I got
acquainted with this VanderMolen over at Fruitport. He’s real talkative too. He likes to talk Inter-Urban.
But them guys that had that annual picnic, you know, ever since that thing folded up, there’s only a
handful of them left now. The oldest one was 93 years old and he died on the eve of the picnic last year.
Old Jim Bastian.
A: When did that thing fold up?
J: 1928. April, I think, in 1928, was the last electric car. And then they had a bus service for awhile, and
then they sold out to the Greyhound people.
R: Have you had your collection of pictures here to their meetings?
J: Oh, yeah, yeah. They get a kick out of that. Notice, there’s the bridge across Grand Haven or it went
into the Grand River, or it went into Grand Haven. Notice how they swung the thing.
A: By hand.
J: Yeah. Went around in circles, wound it up like a clock. Here’s that open air car right there.
R: Where was that building?
J: That’s, that’s at Fruitport. Car barns. That building still stands. There’s some kind of shop in there
now. Notice the pretty yards they must have had around that pavilion. See how the shrubs are?
R: That’s where people from Grand Haven who weren’t supposed to dance would go and dance.
J: Those are Hollanders.
R: Um-hum.
J: Yeah, every Sunday they had a dance there. They had intentions of building a big hotel there at one
time. I read that in the paper. But they never, never carried it through.
A: Is that bell there on the cup?
J: No, that’s a light.
A: Light.
J: Carbon light.
A: Yeah.
J: Carbon arc, I guess, here’s that open air car down at the pavilion. See, you can see the people
stepping in the side.
A: Um-hum. “Music Sunday. Highland Park. On the afternoon. Highland Park.”
J: That’s the famous old 99, the work car.
R: Oh. And some of these guys would get together every, er, were on that crew?
J: Well, the Inter-Urban picnic is, is everybody, the conductor and who ever wants to go.
R: Yeah.
J: I don’t know how many was in the, in the, on the work car there. When they went out on a
emergency.
R: What kinds of jobs did they do? The work people?
J: Well, if there was a wreck or something, notice the platform up here, so they could stand on that and
repair the, the wires too, along with the track.
R: Um-hum. Those electric, uh…
J: If one car broke down or something, why, it was the job of that 99 to go out and get it.
R: Well, we should glance at these and, uh, in case we need a picture like that. Maybe you’d let us copy
it sometime.
J: That there one comes from old Doc Eshleman too. What I’ve been trying to do is get all the depots for
the Inter-Urban, but I haven’t succeeded. That supposedly is the first car into Spring Lake. See, the first
car went down the track on New Year’s in 1902.
A: Um-hum.
R: Here’s a pretty important part of the life of, the lives of our parents.
A: Oh, yeah, yeah.
R: They were born about that time and those things were really going strong when they were young.
J: Yeah, yeah.
A: And I can remember my folks talking lots of times about taking the Inter-Urban to Grand Haven from
Muskegon.
J: That thing would go too, sixty miles an hour, at full juice.
A: Oh, yeah?
J: You bet. That was fast for them days.
R: Oh, man, I guess so.
A: Sure, it was.
R: They didn’t have any cars that went that fast.
J: Some of the first one’d go faster than the later one. They had four motors in them, the first ones.
R: I suppose we should do something…
J: See, now here, this is right near the pavilion. This, this, uh, grandstand here was where you got on the
Inter-Urban.
R: Oh.
J: Just where the pavilion stood in relation to that I don’t know. But that’s somewheres right near the
park.
A: Um-hum.
J: That’s a Spring Lake picture.
R: Berline (?).
J: That one burned down and then they built this one. To replace it.
A: That was, must have been before World War One because that’s when they changed the name to
Barn (?), didn’t they?
J: Yep, yep. There it is when they had the bus.
R: That’s what took the place of the Inter-Urban?
J: Yeah.
A: I wonder why that thing folded up? They didn’t have enough, uh…
J: Well, 1929, 28, there was a lot of private-owned automobiles then and people started travelling that
way.
R: Huh. My dad had a car then.
A: Started the ruination. Yeah, I guess mine was either riding motorcycles or cars.
J: 1916 she was right in her heyday. Old Mr. Jugg (?) told me he dispatched over a hundred cars that
day. That was during the fall when the _________________ was on. But they had a good freight service
too, this Inter-Urban.
R: Now, that’s the first…
J: Annual picnic.
A: A lot of those, most of those people aren’t around anymore.
J: There’s not many of them.
R: You know Carl Shaver? He ever seen these? He’s a, well; he’s a young kid, 22 or something. He’s the
son of the guy who runs the antique shop, in Grand Haven. The one across from the old depot. And he’s
a real railroad buff. He’s written some articles for the Grand Haven Tribune on railroads.
J: Oh, he wrote that in here one time about…
R: He took the ride from Grand Rapids or something.
J: He went right through Nunica and he, he missed the boat. There’s a lot of history right here
(chuckles).
R: I was just wondering. I bet he’d like to see all these things.
J: Nunica was the junction, you know, of the Chicago, uh, Michigan lake shore road. That’s why I leave
this plot out here.
A: Oh, that Crockery map.
J: I was reading one time they had as many as five men working here in Nunica in the depot. See right
here is the, is the, well, as near as I can figure it out, they call it the junction and this is the Y. This here,
the Inter-Urban took this up. That’s the old airline right out here. But you can go down here to this
junction now and still see the old grades where she, and then that tapered road that goes by the pickle
factory that’s this road right here. That’s the old Chicago-Michigan…
A: Hum.
J: Chicago-West Michigan, it was. Later.
A: When is this map from?
J: 1876.
A: Oh, my.
J: Come out of an atlas.
A: There is an Zitmo (?) here. That’s an old name in Grand Haven too.
J: See, here you are. Ernst, _________ and Nichols (?) Bond…
A: Chubb (?). There aren’t any Waymas here then yet. There’s a Kuiper here spelled with just an “I”.
R: Kiper (Cooper).
J: Davis in there is one of the old residents. One of them was the second or third postmaster here, I
think.
R: And there’s Spoonville down there. A lumber mill.
J: Yeah, and there’s still a road from Spoonville up here to Thompsonville. Quite a grade. Over here’s
the Indian reservation yet.
R: Oh, yeah, look at that. “Indian Reservation.” Wow. Here’s a picture of Dewey Hill from 1908. Part of
the buildings were still there, at the base of it.
A: Fishing shack.
R: Fishing banks, yes. Huts, yes.
A: But the old, the railroad depot was gone.
R: That was gone, yes. See, if we wanted to do anything with, with the, the evolution of transportation
around here, we’d find some of these pictures very useful.
A: Yeah, I just don’t, I don’t know if it’s a good idea to have a separate chapter on that, though. They did
that in that Grand Rapids book and I didn’t care much for one chapter on this, one chapter on that. And
you started over every time at the beginning. There wasn’t any historical continuity to the thing. The
“Story of Grand Rapids” book.
J: That still stands. That log house. We had some good old parties in there. They got seven double beds
upstairs in that thing.
R: So he could accommodate you if the party got too good.
J: Well, when we went out there we’d generally plan on staying all night. That belongs to Simon Brown
(?) up here. You know the one who runs the hardware? That was his great-grandfather’s home.
R: He still keeps it up?
J: Oh, yeah. He mows the grass.
A: Where is that?
J: It’s between here and Fruitport. His great-granddad used to work over there at that iron foundry.
A: Oh, the one in Fruitport.
J: Yeah. I got part of a picture of it. Right after she ceased operation.
A: This says, “Don’t give up this ship.”
J: That’s old Ironsides.
A: Oh.
J: I got the original negative.
R: What is that?
A: The Ark.
R: It looks like Noah’s Ark.
J: Yeah, that’s old Ironsides. See, at one time, they had that thing housed over on the deck. That thing
was about a hundred years old when they took that picture.
A: It has a museum? They, they built this thing over the top of it?
J: Well, well, now they’ve restored her. See, the…
R: Yeah, I know, I’ve seen the thing in Boston Harbor there.
J: Well, that picture there was taken in the early 1900’s.
A: Oh.
J: Old Mr. Livey (?) up here, he took a lot of pictures, uh, and his first and last plate seems to be dated
around 1901. And, uh, he never throwed them away. And we got into the mess after he passed away
and that’s how I come by the picture.
R: Hey, this, you’re talking about the old, uh, War of 1812, uh…
A: Old Ironsides.
R: …ship, the Constitution.
J: Yeah, that’s the Constitution. This is her deck, right here.
R: Did they actually do that to it?
J: At one time they did, yeah. They must have, cause there’s the…
A: But I’ve seen the thing in Boston Harbor, it was in 1960.
R: It’s there now.
A: Yeah. And there was a time when they were going to do away with it altogether and, uh, somebody
wrote that, who wrote that poem?
R: Oliver Wendell Holmes.
A: Yeah, that’s right. I guess he saved it only to have them do that to it. Look at this church. These are all
from these pictures that this old man took?
J: Yeah. As near as I can figure out, that church stands over there at West Olive. There’s the iron foundry
in Fruitport. That’s a dock. You’re in Coopersville now.
R: That’s Coopersville?
J: Yeah.
A: Is there a saloon in Coopersville?
R: Not now. I think all the saloons are gone.
J: There was a good one on Main Street. Garotosoways (?) Trophy Room they called it.
R: Coopersville is not dry?
A: Yeah, I’m surprised the Grand Valley crowd hasn’t hit upon that place to go. Could get there almost
as fast as to the Embassy.
J: Yeah, there’s two, two saloons in Coopersville. There’s one right on the old highway. Right across
from the supermarket there. The pizza place.
A: Nunica used to have a good, nice, old saloon there. They made it into a fancy restaurant.
J: That’s where my wife is working now.
R: Oh. Shoot, you used to go in there and spit on the floor. Now, you…
J: Yeah. You can still do that up to this other one. That’s quite a place to go.
A: The one near Coopersville?
J: No, right up on Main Street here. There’s still two.
A: That’s right. That’s right. There is an old bar in town here. I forgot about that.
J: Dolly and the Dolls they call it.
A: Dolly and the Dolls, yeah (laughing).
R: Kirk’s (?) restaurant is a nice place to eat, though.
A: Yeah.
J: Their cook is sick right now. She had an appendicitis operation.
A: We can use some of these.
R: Some of these I’ll scan, yeah.
A: The Inter-Urban pictures…
J: Some of them concern the farms, did you see that? Yeah, that’s more up to date.
A: Still looks like something out of “Gunsmoke.” Like Dodge City. The store fronts and things. Just see
Matt Dillon step out there with his, uh, ready-drawed gun.
J: About 1880 Nunica was right in her heyday. There was a chair factory here, candle factory, quite a
place.
R: 1880.
J: Then they tore up the railway in 1883. It went across here and that folded things up.
A: Uh-huh.
J: Cause Bolt couldn’t ship his lumber. He shipped his lumber in the winter time on the railroad. The, uh,
chair factory, they couldn’t get their, their product out and…
A: Yeah, that’s bad. Fold up already in 1883.
R: Sure, that’s when the lumber industry was going great guns.
J: But it was still quite a town when I was a kid. There was three general stores here. Two hardwares.
A: Yeah. It was an agricultural town.
J: Yeah, there was a lot of little farms.
A: Make a living at it.
J: Forty acres, eighty acres, even a hundred, that was a big farm. And now, man, that’s a drop in the
bucket.
A: Yeah, Ward Orric comes from here too. Do you know the Orrics?
J: Yeah, I know Ward, yeah.
A: He was, uh, he was one of my students in the first…
(End of Tape)