Histories

Newspaper Date : 9/10/1880 12:00:00 AM
Volume : 4
Number : 21
Page : 1
Column : 5
Newspaper : Review
Description : Toledo Blade article describing Alcona and how the people helped during the Marine City disaster. Rather dark description of the village of Alcona.
Transcription : PRAISE FOR ALCONA. How the People Exerted Themselves in Behalf of the Survivors of the Marine City. Correspondence of the Toledo Blade. Alcona, which has suddenly acquired prominence by reason of the Marine City disaster, is one of the many little lumbering places that dot the long stretch of inhospitable shore between Saginaw Bay and Mackinac. It is situated in a slight indentation, hardly deep enough to be called a bay, with Sturgeon Point farming one cape, and a nameless projection about three miles to the northwestward of the other. At each of these points dangerous reefs project out, that at Sturgeon Point extending two miles, and frequent disasters upon these and neighboring reefs give the locality a bad reputation among marines, who accord it a wide berth when the weather is at all threatening. There is a light house and life-saving station at Sturgeon Point. The town owes it existence--of which it has 10 or 12 years--to its being the seat of operations of the extensive lumbering firm of James Beard & Co., who have there a large saw mill, a lath mill and a shingle mill, which are supplied with lumber from the pineries by a well-built railroad--3 feet 6 inches gage and 12 miles in length. The employees of these various institutions and their families make up the 600 population the village possesses. It looks like all other places of its class--puffing mills, piles of odorous pine lumber, laths and shingles, other piles of jagged refuse, acres of saw logs, and sawdust as plentiful as sand in a desert, forming its principal features. The pine forest immediately around the town has, for some reason been deadened, instead of being cut off, and the leafless, barkless tree-skeletons from the border of depressing grimness to a place that, far from being inviting in appearance at any time, must look as dreary and desolate as Greenland in autumn and winter. The outlook is upon a boundless waste of rolling waters, that, chafed for hundreds of miles by the chill northwestern winds, sweeping down from bleak Canada, coming racing in great hungry waves that lash the stubborn reefs and sullen shore, until they break themselves in clouds of spray. But, whatever their surroundings, the people of Alcona, one and all, bear that stamp of genuine nobility, which nature frequently delights in setting upon even the humblest. They have that grandest of nobilities, where Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Noblish blood. Certainly there never was a community in which everybody bore the test of a great emergency more admirably, and which has absolutely no one who did not do more than his whole duty. In all the 130 survivors of the disaster there is not one breath of complaint against any man, woman or child in Alcona, but on the other hand enthusiastic laudation of everybody and all they did. I challenge duplication of this anywhere in the whole world. How Alcona escaped having at least one mean man, anxious to make merchandise of the miseries of others, is a secret I wish she would communicate to other places. If her pine industries bring about this blessed result, then let us all pave our streets with sawdust, and perfume the air with resiny odors arising form piles of lumber, lath and piney refuse. I will not repeat the sickening story of the disaster, which has grown distressingly familiar to all of us. At the first sight of the flames rising from the Marine City, the only two boats on the beach were hastily manned and rowed as rapidly as strong muscles, keyed with intense excitement, could do it. These did superb service in picking up the people in the water, and as fast as the rescued were landed, either from these boats or the tugs Vulcan or Grayling, the people of the town took them in hand. Those who had been in the water were undressed, rubbed and clothed again in dry garments furnished by their benefactors, who in some instances almost stripped themselves to do this. Thousands of dollars were taken from the dripping pockets, dried and returned without the loss of a cent by any one. Remember this was done by people who think #30 a month good wagers, and $40 almost affluence, and from whom gifts of clothing, etc., meant the donation of weeks of hard toil with the ax or the handspike. McElroy. (Mr. McElroy is managing editor of the Toledo Blade and also the author of that celebrated book entitled "Andersonville." He has been stopping at Alcona for the last ten days where his wife, who was one of the survivors of the Marine City disaster, still lies very ill from the effects of fright and exhaustion. It will be remembered that his son Guy and Mrs. McElroy's father were drowned at the time of the disaster. Editor, Review.