Lake Leelanau resident Hayward Draper released a new book just in time for the Biggest Fourth in the north.
‘The Colony’ by Hayward Draper tells the stories of six families who created one of the few remaining communal cottage rows left in the United States, located just across the lake from the Fountain Point Resort on south Lake Leelanau.
In his 144 page book (including many old photographs), Draper guides you through the early years of white settlement in the area in 1853, and then what led to the founding of Fountain Point Resort in 1889 and The Colony in 1908.
Fountain Point was the first place for vacationers on Lake Leelanau.
“You wouldn’t vacation here before then. There was an iron smelting plant in Leland at the time, and two large kilns at the narrows in Lake Leelanau, so the air was too smoky to attract vacationers.” Draper said. “But when the iron plant business closed in 1884, Mrs. Lydia Morrison of Cincinnati purchased the property that is now Fountain Point. She deeded it over to her daughter, Mrs. S.A Whitfield who in 1889 built the main building that still anchors Fountain Point Resort” Draper said.
One fascinating story Draper tells is when French nobleman Marquis de Belloy tried drilling for oil on the property back in the 1860s and hit an artesian well instead. In planning a resort there in 1889, Mrs. Whitfield had wood jammed into the artesian well to make it spray like a fountain. So that’s what they named their resort Fountain Point, and the fountain still sprays there today.
Early vacationers would commonly take the night train from Cincinnati, sleeping overnight until arriving in Traverse City. Then they would take a spur over to Fouch (south Lake Leelanau) before boarding a small steam ferry that ran up to Fountain Point and then to Leland.
“You began to have these families come up every summer. The father could go back and forth on the train, if needed, and the families would stay up here,” Draper said.
Draper explains that people of the 19th century weren’t vacationing like this before the Civil War. But with the industrial revolution, a middle class formed and railroads allowed for easy travel, and vacation spots developed across the United States. Old “Summer Camp” style resorts like Fountain Point were common by 1900, but very few exist today.
Fountain Point was preserved because it was saved from foreclosure in 1937 by the Gebhardt family, who had vacationed there since 1918.
The great-grandsons of the Gebhardts run the resort today.
‘The Colony’ was essentially a miniature Fountain Point located across the lake. It was conceived, planned, and built by Frank Schaub in 1908 on land his father and uncle had homesteaded in 1855. Each of six families would have their own small cottage and they would share a common dining room building.
Draper says they would sit down to breakfast, lunch, and dinner together, wearing coats and ties and dresses, and they had a bell on a pole outside to announce each meal.
“What is so special about The Colony is that the cottages are basically all still the same today as in 1908. Cottage Rows don’t last because it’s hard to go through two generations of six families and keep them all on the same page,” Draper said.
The dining room was torn down in 1945 after The Colony’s original owners mostly passed, but new families from Fountain Point then purchased the old cottages and have preserved them.
“The Voss and Woolsey and Sikes, Carr, and Leugers families still summer there today, as do Meeker relatives.”
The Colony also led to the building of two large summer homes in the 1920’s by the owners of the Hobart Manufacturing Company, who invented and sold KitchenAid appliances, and their story provides a fascinating chapter in Draper’s book.
The idea of writing ‘The Colony’ started after Draper heard about the effort to save the old Cottage Row on North Manitou Island. Then he learned about ‘The Colony’ located right down the street from him. So he started real estate research on the titles and genealogy research on the families.
Draper admits that, when writing history, it takes a lot longer to do the research than the writing itself period. From thought to cover, ‘The Colony’ took four years, with editing and page design taking six months alone.
“Locating on doors and talking to descendants and reading old newspaper articles takes time, but I love it,” Draper said. “I also wanted to do genealogies of everyone all the way back to find out where their ancestors were in the Revolutionary War, and to set out how they then came out to Ohio,” Draper said.
Draper says he was especially lucky to find a stash of old photographs preserved by Leelanau resident Peg Meeker, and he tracked down another old album from a great-great granddaughter of Colony owner Mary Riley in Marin County, California, near San Francisco. Additional photos come from the archives of the Leelanau Historical Society.
Draper’s book will be available at most local book stores in Leelanau and Traverse City, and also can be ordered on Amazon. It has already received some notice, with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.
“In writing that “Draper’s meticulous unfolding of the history of The Colony not only sheds light on the era’s economic history but also encourages readers to explore the histories of their own idyllic vacation spots, including several he mentions by members of the african-american community. Draper’s book is both a fascinating read and a major contribution to scholarship.”
