They were "Yankees and Yorkers."

When Michigan was a new state, many of the residents had come from New England or the state of New York. And a number of the New Englanders had first settled in New York before later moving further west to Michigan.

The eastern influence is still reflected by place names "borrowed" from older places in New York., such as Michigan locations that include Athens, Genesee, Homer, Ithaca, Ogdensburg, Onondaga, Otsego, Ovid, Rochester, Sodus, Troy and Utica.

In Leelanau County we have Port Oneida and Empire, and though these communities took their names from ships trading locally, guess where many 19th century ships Great Lakes hailed from?

The ship that shared its name with the village of Empire may or may not have derived its name from New York, the “Empire State,” but Port Oneida is named for the steamer Oneida and New York has a city, county, river and lake of the same name.

“In 1878, NTC (Northern Transit Company) President Philo Chamberlain acquired Glen Haven in order to assure a reliable supply of wood for a 24-vessel fleet providing service between Ogdensburg, New York, and Chicago and Milwaukee,” Leelanau author George Weeks related in his book, Sleeping Bear – Yesterday and Today.

The man chosen by Chamberlain to be his agent, D.H. Day, was his sister in law’s younger brother. David Henry Day, who involved himself in a multitude of activities, later became something of a local legend.

“Day had grown up in Ogdensburg (New York), where his grandfather had moved in the early 1800s after the Day family emigrated from Wales to Vermont in the late 1700s,” Weeks wrote.
Day’s family clearly fell into the “Yankee and Yorker” category.

Steamers calling regularly at Glen Haven in the early 1880s included the NTC “propellers” Champlain and Lawrence.

Lake Champlain, a “small great lake” in its own right, separates the states of New York and Vermont. The propeller Champlain later caught fire near Charlevoix in June 1887, with the loss of 22 lives, but was rebuilt, re-named City of Charlevoix and continued in operation (finally as Kansas) until the 1920s.

Locally well known running mates of the old wooden ship (built in 1870) were the steel steamers Illinois, Missouri and Manitou.

The larger Michigan cities with New York names may be familiar enough, but, one might ask, where is Ogdensburg, Mich.? Not far away at all. You can, in fact, almost see it from Leelanau – across West Grand Traverse Bay. Ogdensburg is on the Old Mission Peninsula about four miles south of Mapleton and was founded about 1855.

It is not directly named for Ogdensburg, N.Y., but was settled by the Ogden family. Where did this Ogden family come from?

New York state, of course.