Oceana County Historical & Genealogical Society is a historical society representing the local history of Oceana County, Michigan. Its Research Headquarters and Library are located in Hart, Michigan. The organization runs Historical Park Museums located in Mears, Michigan, about 4 miles away.
In the 1880s, the society originally was called the Oceana County Pioneers and Historical Society. Sometime during World War II in the 1940s, formal meetings were discontinued. In 1967 a formal meeting took place in the town of Pentwater, Michigan to reestablish it as the Oceana County Historical Society. The original 112 members of the new organization were from families well known in the county, e.g., the Royals, Chases, Stubbs, Tates, Goodriches and Lathers. [1]
Admission is free to the Society's library in Hart. The staff of this nonprofit organization consists mostly of volunteers. Funds to run the Society are from private donations and fundraising programs. Their mission statement shows their main goal is collection and management of history pertaining mostly to Oceana County. The material of the Society consists of 1850-1950 photographs, genealogy records, scrapbooks and artifacts, many of which were donated by local residents. [2] [3]
The Oceana County Historical Society formed a Genealogical Chapter in 1983. It became "an organization within an organization" when the Society incorporated it. The final society name then became "Oceana County Historical & Genealogical Society. [upper-alpha 1]
Acquired in 1984, the Society's facilities are in the historic Chadwick-Munger house of Hart, Michigan. It officially became the Society's headquarters in 1986. The house structure containing the Society was built in the late 1800s as the home of Harvey Jenner Chadwick. a physician and druggist. It later became the home of L.P. Munger, a physician and fruit-grower. It eventually became the offices of the Health Department for Oceana County. Chadwick-Munger, The Story of a House details the house's history. [4]
The exterior of the house is built with glaciated deposited bedrock stones. It would be characterized as ashlar stonework, even though it started as heterogeneous mix of "fieldstones" (not one type of stone) like rubble masonry. This sort of stone building construction is common in the glaciated areas of the United States. The sedimentary rock construction material was obtained from an assortment of bedrock in western Michigan . The igneous rock and metamorphic rock used in the construction came from Canada. The rock material was hewn to give flat surfaces on the outside. The sedimentary stone material is not especially hard, so could have been hammered smooth flat without to much trouble. However, the igneous rock and metamorphic rock are very hard and difficult to break. It was a very laborious chore to work this rock material to a flat smooth finish. Usually these hard rocks are used unbroken and typically in retaining walls and building foundations. [5]
Oceana County Historical & Genealogical Society has the Oceana Historical Park Museum Complex. Admission is free. The park is a set of structures and buildings throughout Hart and Mears in Western Michigan. The main Oceana County Historical Park itself, located in Mears which is about 4 miles from Hart, has the majority of the museums and associated buildings. The Swift Lathers museum is the key structure for the Mears historical park. The museums represent the local history, mostly of the nineteenth and twentieth century. The Society presently has seven structures and a storage building. The grouped Mears historical park itself has five of these structures as museum buildings, which are the Robinson Museum, the Swift Lathers museum, the Transportation Museum, Boynton Cottage Museum and the Swedish Mission Covenant Church. The Old Town Hall, which is part of the total complex, is located one block east of the historical park in Mears. [4]
The Oceana Historical Park and Museum contains buildings, exhibits and gardens. There are also antique railroad items and railroad tracks on the property. The Park also contains a Transportation Building of antique vehicles and a Swedish Church. The Boynton Cottage, originally from the Little Sable Point community, is now within the Park as a hands-on beach cottage museum of the early 1900s. [1]
Oceana County is a county located in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2020 Census, the population was 26,659. The county seat is Hart. Long known as part of the large Ojibwe territory, the county was founded by European Americans in 1840 and organized in 1855.
Ludington is the largest city and county seat of Mason County in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 8,076.
Golden Township is a civil township of Oceana County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 1,810 at the 2000 census.
Pentwater is a village in Oceana County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 857 at the 2010 census. The village is located within Pentwater Township. Pentwater is home to Mears State Park. The name Pentwater comes from Pent or Penned up waters. The entrance to the channel is notoriously shallow and for many years dictated the size of vessels that the village was able to accommodate.
Alexander Jackson Davis, or A. J. Davis, was an American architect, known particularly for his association with the Gothic Revival style.
Keweenaw National Historical Park is a unit of the U.S. National Park Service. Established in 1992, the park celebrates the life and history of the Keweenaw Peninsula in the Upper Peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan. As of 2009, it is a partly privatized park made up of two primary units, the Calumet Unit and the Quincy Unit, and 21 cooperating "Heritage Sites" located on federal, state, and privately owned land in and around the Keweenaw Peninsula. The National Park Service owns approximately 1,700 acres (690 ha) in the Calumet and Quincy Units. Units are located in Baraga, Houghton, Keweenaw, and Ontonagon counties.
White Pine Village is an outdoor museum in Ludington, Michigan, containing nineteenth-century buildings and related historical items. The thirty buildings in the village contain artifacts relating to pioneer lumbering, music, farming, shipping, sports, and businesses. Occasionally performances are done on blacksmithing, spinning, leatherworking, candlemaking, wood carving, and basket making. The museum's centerpiece is an 1849 farmhouse.
Mason County Historical Society, located in Ludington, Michigan, is a private, non-profit, educational organization. It has an outdoor museum dedicated to preserving the local history of Mason County, Michigan. Nineteenth-century history is shown with White Pine Village, and the Mariners Old Time Baseball Team, also known as the Ludington Mariners, a professional Class D minor league baseball team of the early 1900s. There is also a Michigan Research Library containing a genealogy department.
The Hancock House is an historic structure in Ticonderoga, New York. It is a replica of the Hancock Manor on Boston's Beacon Hill that was the residence of Thomas Hancock, the uncle of Founding Father John Hancock.
Aaron Burr Caswell (1807–1896) was an American frontiersman and the first white man to occupy any part of Mason County, Michigan. He became the county's first coroner, probate judge and surveyor; and constructed its first framed building that functioned as a home, courthouse and jail—it is also the only surviving landmark of Mason County's earliest history. Caswell was also the progenitor of a prominent Mason County family.
The Ludington Public Library is one of the two branches of the Mason County District Library administrative system. This library, as the main branch, is located in downtown Ludington, in Mason County in the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. The library started as in 1872 as an association. A 90-day trial for a free reading room was undertaken; later a small building was acquired for a definitive reading room.
Charles Mears was a Michigan lumber businessman, capitalist, merchant, transportation executive, engineer, and farmer. He owned thousands of acres of timber in Michigan, and had 15 sawmills to produce lumber. Mears built cargo boats to transport his lumber to Chicago, and developed several harbors in western Michigan.
Stephen Carpenter Earle was an architect who designed a number of buildings in Massachusetts and Connecticut that were built in the late 19th century, with many in Worcester, Massachusetts. He trained in the office of Calvert Vaux in New York City. He worked for a time in partnership with James E. Fuller, under the firm "Earle & Fuller". In 1891, he formed a partnership with Vermont architect Clellan W. Fisher under the name "Earle & Fisher".
The Mears Newz was a twentieth-century newspaper published in Mears, Michigan.
Swift Lathers was a businessman, newspaper publisher, teacher, and poet of Mears, Michigan.
The Swift Lathers Museum was the home and property of Swift and Celia Lathers that is now the main part of the Oceana Historical Park in Mears, Michigan. In 1971 the home was given to the Oceana County Historical & Genealogical Society on the proviso that it be turned into a museum in memory of newspaper publisher Swift Lathers.
Rasmus Rasmussen (1850–1921) was an American merchant and businessman of Manistee and Ludington, Michigan. He operated a Great Lakes schooner and was in the lumber business transporting lumber related material around Lake Michigan. He also owned and operated a boardinghouse and saloon.
House of Flavors is a manufacturer of ice cream based in Ludington, Michigan. It started as a dairy business as part of a farm operation before 1930. In 1935 the business had become known as Miller's Dairy and started expanding the operation. By the 1940s they processed milk, buttermilk, cottage cheese, and ice cream. In the late 1940s a businessman with a decade of dairy experience moved to Ludington from a city 60 miles south to become a partner of the existing business. He became the general manager and the name was changed to Park Dairy. The milk and butter segments of the business were sold off and the enterprise concentrated from then on into just making ice cream.
The Hart Downtown Historic District is a commercial historic district located in Hart, Michigan along South State Street, and is roughly bounded by Main, Dryden, Water, and Lincoln Streets. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2015.
Dune Forest Village was an "island" retreat of the Michigan newspaper publisher Swift Lathers. It was constructed between 1939 and 1957 for the purpose of having a place to go to for a simple life away from a cosmopolitan lifestyle. It was finally removed in the 1970s to make way for a state park.
Coordinates: 43°42′03.6″N86°21′43.3″W / 43.701000°N 86.362028°W