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AN EXAMINATION OF THE SOCIO-CULTURAL ROLES OF
BOARDINGHOUSES AND THE BOARDING EXPERIENCE ON THE
MICHIGAN MINING FRONTIER, 1840-1930
By

Paula Stofer

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Anthropology

1997

 

ABSTRACT

AN EXAMINATION OF THE SOCIO-CULTURAL ROLES OF
BOARDINGHOUSES AND THE BOARDING EXPERIENCE ON THE
MICHIGAN MINING FRONTIER, 1840-1930

By

Paula Stofer

Donald Hardesty (1980, 1985, 1988), Kenneth Lewis (1980, 1984) and
Jerome Steffen (1980) have identified the mining regions in the eastern states and
the American West as cosmopolitan frontiers, a frontier type distinct from the
classic agrarian model. Between 1840 and the 19203, the western half of
Michigan’s Upper Peninsula was also a developing cosmopolitan mining fron-
tier. Wilderness areas rich with copper or iron drew rapid and exploitive (and
therefore often short-lived) settlement, provided necessary transportation, tech-
nology, and labor were available. Strong links to extra-regional financial and
cultural centers tended to produce primarily modal changes, i.e., adaptations
necessary for successful mining or day-to-day survival; other cultural patterns
resisted change. Variable markets and resource availability created boom-bust
economy. These plus additional push-pull factors produced unstable, even errat-
ic, man-land distribution. Lewis emphasizes dominant corporate policy in the
cosmopolitan context; Hardesty sees household as the basic ”colonizing unit.”
Housing, particularly that provided by or strongly influenced by corporate poli-
Cy, is therefore significant to understanding the mining frontier. Companies built
boardinghouses and family homes that accommodated boarders. Through them
companies manipulated community growth and employees’ lives. The height of

MiChigan’s mining industry coincided with the national boardinghouse era.

 

 

 

Commercial boardinghouses and boarding in private homes also became preva-
lent. The institution of boarding is used in this study as a cultural lens through
which frontier settlement and development, corporate manipulation, immigra-
tion, domestic production, and ethnic identity and networking may be exam-
ined. Understanding the physical boardinghouse within its cultural landscape
has been guided by material culture studies, especially E. McClung Fleming’s
model (1982) of artifact study that suggests methods of determining meaning as
well as description. Architecturally, many boardinghouses emphasized
American middle-class ideologies concerning privacy and family, but actual liv-
ing patterns did not always conform to the architecture. Boarding households
often involved extended kin and operated as surrogate families for those unrelat-
ed, and as cosmopolitan frontier theory predicts, ethnicity remained strong.
Boarding on the Michigan mining frontier resembled the experience elsewhere;

significant exceptions are linked to the unique nature of the frontier itself.

Copyright by
PAULA STOFER
1997

For Ron, who always believed
and taught me to do the same

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you’s are always inadequate to those who assist a project such as
this. Nevertheless, I offer my deepest appreciation to those whose help, academ-
ic or personal, made this project a reality.

These fine folks naturally include my Michigan State graduate committee.
Dr. Lily deLeon taught me the important questions to ask of a building; Dr.
Robert McKinley widened my conception of family and its meaning. From Dr.
Harry Schwarzweller I developed a deeper appreciation for both the immigrant
experience and Ontonagon, and from Dr. Loudell Snow an appreciation of the
domestic sphere and of those who work within it. To Dr. Kenneth Lewis no end
of thanks for chairing my committee, for sharing insights on frontier dynamics
and interdisciplinary issues, for sound advice, and most of all for listening. As a
group, they offered accommodation for my situation and tremendous patience
while I grappled with personal tragedy.

Important ideas came from other MSU faculty: Dr. Sally Helvenston
regarding material culture analysis, Dr. Lisa Fine on researching women, Dr.
David Campbell’s KITE model, and Dr. John Beck on labor history. Scholars
from other universities also provided invaluable help, sharing research, pointing
the way to pivotal sources, and giving generous encouragement. They are Dr.
Russell Magnaghj of Northern Michigan University, Drs. Patrick Martin and
Terry S. Reynolds of Michigan Tech, Dr. Arnold R. Alanen of the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, and Dr. Arthur W. Thurner, Professor Emeritus DePaul

University.

vi

Crucial to this research were the personal stories, documents, and pho-
tographs of the peOple who lived the boardinghouse experience. Andrew
Bednar, June Brunet, Erma Caspary, Clifford Christensen, Isabelle Fortin, Mike
Gemignani, Frieda Guilbault, Ruth Johnson, Mary Manzoline, Lillian Mather,
Ray Maurin, Larry Peterson, Leo Pisoni, and Msgr. David Spelgatti contributed
generously of their time and their memories.

Special library and archival collections also proved invaluable. I am par-
ticularly indebted to Linda Panian and staff of the Marquette County Historical
Society and Longyear Research Library, Gayle Martinson of Northern Michigan
University Archives, Theresa Spence and staff at the Michigan Technological
University Archives, Scott Brooks-Miller at the Fayette Historic Townsite, Tom
Friggens and David Bridgens of the Iron Industry Museum in N egaunee, Bruce
Cox of Wakefield, E. Olaf Rankinen at the Finnish-American Historical Archives
at Suomi College, and the Special Collections staff at MSU, all of whom gracious-
ly opened their records and led me to crucial sources, many of which I did not
know existed. Corporate help from Copper Range Development with coopera-
tion from the Houghton County Historical Society archives provided a rare
photo of a boardinghouse interior. Dale Hemmila scoured the Cliffs Mining
Services Company files for photos and blue prints of company boardinghouses
and provided copies.

Ray Maurin of Ironwood and Harold and Marcia Bernhardt of Caspian
not only shared their respective historical society’s documents with me, but per-
sonally took me on a guided tour of the boardinghouse sites in their communi-
ties and then introduced me to local informants. Mike Gemignani led me
through a foundations-tour of the Quincy locations. Mary Anderson opened the
Rockland museum and archives for me on her day off and provided information

and leads to new sources. Their hospitality was outstanding.

Vii

Additional assistance was rendered by Bruce Johanson in Ontonagon,
Alice Knuth of Menominee, Pat Thorgren at Old Victoria, and the members of
historical societies in Escanaba, Garden, Lake Linden, Munising, Manistique,
Iron Mountain, and Gwinn. Docents and guides in the Delaware Copper Mine,
at the Quincy Mine Hoist, the Cornish Pump Museum, and the Tilden Iron Mine
either knew or found the answers to my questions.

Community library personnel in Iron Mountain, Crystal Falls, Iron River,
at the Peter White Library in Marquette, and at the State of Michigan Library
Upper Peninsula branch (now closed) and the Library and Archives in Lansing
all gave assistance.

Not in least measure do I thank Gary Cocozzoli and his staff at the
Lawrence Technological University Library who tracked down numerous
resources for me when my teaching responsibilities kept me tied to campus, and
LTU staff member Martha Shields, transplanted from the Upper Peninsula years
ago but still fluent in Finnish, who translated records of a Finnish co-operative
boardinghouse for me.

Financial assistance from Lawrence Technological University, the
Anthropology Department of MSU, and the Mildred Erickson Fellowship was
generous and greatly appreciated both for its positive impact on the family bud-
get, and as a vote of confidence in my work.

One of the compensating joys of a project such as this is the special out-
pouring of interest, moral support, and unique forms of help from friends and
family. Among those who have made a difference over the years, sharing trou-
bled times and celebrating minor successes have been my students. Lawrence
Tech colleagues, too, have contributed in many ways, particularly Professors
Richard Michel, Jim Rodgers, Gilder Jackson, Barry Knister, Pat Cornett, and

Harold Hotelling. Humanities Department secretary and friend Joyce McKissen

viii

has smoothed so many of life’s bumps, both academic and personal.

Lennard Gumaer, a former student and now owner of Brilliant Systems,
LLC, came to my rescue when production of this manuscript demanded more
than my limited computer skills. Friend Mark Trupiano quickly and carefully
reproduced precious borrowed photos.

Two extraordinary friends must receive extra thanks. Many years ago I
met Amanda (Mandy) Larson in Marquette. Over the years her sisu, unwaver-
ing faith, extraordinary memory, and uplifting humor have become my touch-
stone whenever I am north of the bridge. She has taught me much about mid-
wifery and boardinghouses, but far more about life. Corinne Stavish is one of
those rare individuals who approaches friendship with total honesty and a will-
ingness to share whatever comes, which is why her comments on drafts of this
work were so valuable and her support through dark days so crucial.

If mere thanks ring hollow against the contributions made by those
already mentioned, adequately acknowledging family becomes quite impossible.
Saying enough is to say far too much. Besides encouragement, their greatest gift
has been time—shopping, painting, scrubbing for me, or sometimes not calling
though they wanted to chat—so I could get on with the writing. Son Jason,
whose interests lie far afield of mine, still offers up an occasional query or com-
pliment, and brags about mom to his friends. Daughter Sara stepped into the
breech, becoming sounding board, traveling companion, and research assistant.

Last, but always first, was Ronald Stofer, my late husband, mentor, and
friend. Forever adamant that I could achieve my goals, he spent his final months
teaching me to read fire insurance maps, waiting patiently while I recorded oral
histories, and braving blizzards and blackflies with me along the backroads of

Michigan in search of one more bit of data.

ix

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................... XiV

LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................ xv

INTRODUCTION ........................................................................ 1
Research Questions .............................................................. 3
Research Strategies ............................................................... 5
Theoretical Bases ................................................................. 7
Organization of the Discussion ............................................... 8

CHAPTER 1

THEORETICAL BASES ................................................................. 10
Concepts of Frontier ............................................................. 10
Conditions Affecting a Frontier ............................................... 13
Industrial Frontiers .............................................................. 15
Material Culture Studies ........................................................ 19
Summary ............................................................................ 23

CHAPTER 2

MICHIGAN ’S WESTERN UPPER PENINSULA

AS MINING FRONTIER ................................................................ 27
Geographical Orientation ...................................................... 27
Mineral Resources ............................................................... 31
European Colonization ......................................................... 33
American Territory ............................................................... 35
Opening the Copper Mining Frontier ....................................... 36
Iron Mining ........................................................................ 41
Timber .............................................................................. 43
Michigan’s Mining Frontier .................................................... 44
Shifting Demographics ......................................................... 45
Analysis of Population Growth Rates ....................................... 52
Gender Distribution ............................................................. 54
Age Distribution .................................................................. 55
Marital Status ..................................................................... 55
Ethnicity ............................................................................ 57

X

CHAPTER 3

BOARDINGHOUSES AS A FOCUS OF INVESTIGATION/

THE BOARDINGHOUSE AS AN INSTITUTION .......................... 60
Boardinghouse Life in Popular Literature
and Popular History .................................................... 62
Boardinghouses in the Comics ............................................... 66
Scholarly Boardinghouse Studies ............................................ 67
Colonial Boardinghouses as ”Dumping Grounds
for the Aged, 111, and Unwanted .................................... 71
Homes for the Urban Genteel ................................................. 73
Occupational/ Seasonal Havens .............................................. 73
Economic Types of Boardinghouses ......................................... 76
Company Accommodation .......................................... 77
Boarding in Single-Family Homes .................................. 78
Private Commercial Boardinghouses .............................. 78
Issues Addressed by Boardinghouse Studies ............................. 79
Boarding on the Michigan Mining Frontier ............................... 81
CHAPTER 4
THE MINING COMPANIES AS COMMUNITY BUILDERS/

CONTROLLERS .................................................................... 82
Mining Company Settlements in Michigan ................................ 83
Mine Site Accommodations ................................................... 85
Company Settlements—the "Locations” ................................... 91
Paternalism—First Phase, to 1890 ............................................ 95
Paternalism—Second Phase, after 1890 ..................................... 100
Decline of the Company Boardinghouse ................................... 103

CHAPTER 5
BOARDINGHOUSE OPERATION, COMPANIES,

AND THE PRIVATE SECTOR ................................................... 110
Managing Company Boardinghouses ...................................... 110
Boarding in Family Homes, Locations or Company Towns ........... 115
Boardinghouse Operation in the Private Sector .......................... 118

Commercial Boardinghouses ......................................... 119
The Co—operative Poika Talo ........................................... 125
Boarding in Family Homes ........................................... 132
Economics of Boarding in Family Homes ......................... 134
Boardinghouses and the Women’s Domestic Economy ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, 138
Boardinghouse Overhead—Staffing ......................................... 148

'xi

CHAPTER 6

THE BOARDINGHOUSE AS MATERIAL CULTURE ........................... 153
Building the Boardinghouse—Materials ................................... 154
Log Structures ............................................................ 155
Cabins at Victoria .............................................. 158
Cabins at Fayette ............................................... 161
Frame Construction ..................................................... 162
Company boardinghouses ................................... 163
Commercial styles .............................................. 166
Family home designs ......................................... 170
Private homes ................................................... 173
Boardinghouse Facilities ........................................................ 174
Universal Elements of the Boardinghouse ................................. 181
Interpreting Interior Space—Public,
Private and Semi-private .............................................. 189
Architectural Divisions in Company
and Commercial Houses .............................................. 192
Architectural Separation in Private Homes ................................ 200
Boardinghouses as Signal and Venue of Status ........................... 203
Status of the Boarders ........................................................... 210
Additional Uses of the Boardinghouse Physical Plant ................. 211
Social Meaning of the Boardinghouse ...................................... 212
CHAPTER 7
THE BOARDINGHOUSE AS HOME AND HOUSEHOLD .................... 214
Constituents of the Boarding Household ................................... 214
Boarding and the Notion of Family .......................................... 223
The Nuclear Family in Relation to the Boarders .......................... 228
Behavioral Reactions to Architectural Separation ........................ 232
Boardinghouse Life .............................................................. 235
Rules and Relationships ............................................... 235
Home Economics ........................................................ 237
Romances and Indiscretions .......................................... 239
Food ........................................................................ 242
Housekeeping ............................................................ 250
Services .................................................................... 253
Troubled Households .................................................. 254
Diversions ................................................................. 259

xii

CHAPTER 8
CONCLUSION ............................................................................ 265
The Michigan Mining Frontier ................................................ 265
Boarding Laborers on the Frontier ........................................... 266
The Boarding Experience ....................................................... 268
Summary ........................................................................... 273
EPILOGUE .................................................................................. 276
APPENDIX ................................................................................. 287
REFERENCES .............................................................................. 293

xiii

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Population of Michigan’s western Upper Peninsula, 1850-1930 45
Table 2. Economic types of boardinghouses ....................................... 76

Table 3. Frontier settlement types .................................................... 84

xiv

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. The Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River .......................... 27
Figure 2. Mineral Areas of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula ....................... 32
Figure 3. Lands ceded by Treaty of LaPointe, 1842 ............................... 36
Figure 4. Population of Marquette County, 1850-1910 .......................... 48
Figure 5. Dickinson County population by gender and age, 1894 ........... 56
Figure 6. Italian Boardinghouse, Mass Avenue, Mass ........................... 97
Figure 7. Victoria Mining Company Boardinghouse, next to

Supervisor’s home and company store ..................................... 107
Figure 8. Mme. Buddha’s newspaper advertisement ........................... 125
Figure 9. Wakefield Poika Talo .......................................................... 128
Figure 10. Fellman home, Third near Ohio, Marquette, c. 1910 ............... 137
Figure 11. Batista Perona house, Laurium Street, Calumet .................... 143
Figure 12. Staff at the Stephenson boardinghouse, Wells ....................... 150
Figure 13. Harlow boardinghouse and hospital addition,

Marquette, c. 1863 ................................................................ 156
Figure 14. Dolan House, Colby Mine, Bessemer, May, 1885 ................... 156
Figure 15. Plan of Victoria Mine, locations, and surrounding area .......... 157
Figure 16. Log homes at Victoria Mine, c. 1910 .................................... 159

XV

Figure 17. Interior of one restored log home, Old Victoria;

a. cook stove, b. upstairs beds ................................................ 160
Figure 18. Floorplan of restored log home, Old Victoria ........................ 160
Figure 19. WorkerS’ cabins at Fayette ............................................... 161
Figure 20. Spies Location boardinghouse for CCI managers , c. 1916 ....... 162
Figure 21. Carothers boardinghouse at their lumber mill, Yalmer ........... 163
Figure 22. Bonnie Location boardinghouse, 1886 ................................. 164
Figure 23. Barnum House, Herman Elson family and boarders .............. 165
Figure 24. Double-wing company boardinghouse at Fayette ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, 165
Figure 25. Ewen boardinghouse, 1954. Built c. 1888 ............................. 166
Figure 26. Gabourie boardinghouse, Princeton Location c. 1904 ............. 167
Figure 27. Delta Chemical and Iron Company boardinghouse, c. 1930 ..... 167
Figure 28. Madison House, Marquette .............................................. 168
Figure 29. Franklin House at 115 W. Superior, Marquette, c. 1899 ........... 169
Figure 30. Sketch of the Bay View .................................................... 169
Figure 31. One of two double duplexes, Dober Location ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, 170
Figure 32. Calumet & Hecla House plan #1907 ................................... 171
Figure 33. Hanson boardinghouse, Iron River .................................... 173
Figure 34. I. Stephenson Company boardinghouse complex, 1902 .......... 177
Figure 35. Boardinghouse dining room, possibly the Stephenson ........... 178
Figure 36. Wiesen boardinghouse in Rockland, c. 1900 ......................... 179
Figure 37. Champion company boardinghouse at Freda ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, 180
Figure 38. Close-up of Gabourie boardinghouse ................................. 182

xvi

Figure 39.
Figure 40.
Figure 41.
Figure 42.
Figure 43.
Figure 44.
Figure 45.
Figure 46.
Figure 47.
Figure 48.
Figure 49.
Figure 50.
Figure 51.
Figure 52.
Figure 53.
Figure 54.
Figure 55.
Figure 56.
Figure 57.
Figure 58.

Figure 59.

Boarders, resident family, and staff at Painesdale, 1912 .......... 185

One of three new Quincy boardinghouses, 1917 .................... 190
Floorplan of Franklin Boardinghouse ................................. 191
C&H Mining House Plan No. 31 ....................................... 197
Schematic of Barnum House first floor, c. 1918 ..................... 199
Post-war design for an urban family boardinghouse .............. 202
Fayette Hotel ................................................................ 204
Fayette Hotel with two-story privy and enclosed access ......... 205
Housing for the ”better class” at Fayette ............................. 206
Calumet boardinghouse ad emphasizing the feminine ........... 216
Boardinghouse ”family” outside its Wakefield home ............. 224
Oskar Maki family and boarders, Wakefield ........................ 227
The lock-up at Rockland .................................................. 256
Putrich Croatian boardinghouse in Seeberville ..................... 258
Boardinghouse No. 1 at Hermansville, c. 1878 ...................... 277
Barnum House/Conte residence in 1995 ............................. 279
Laborers’ boardinghouse at Spies Location, built 1909 ............ 280
Victoria Hotel in the 19305 ............................................... 281
Bonnie Location boardinghouse in 1994 .............................. 283
Boardinghouse in Amasa’s Historic District ........................ 284
Baltic Mine boardinghouse built by Mose Charles ................. 284

xvii

INTRODUCTION

Recently a number of defunct or endangered institutions of the American
built environment have come under scrutiny, prompted apparently by combined
scholarly interest and nostalgia. Among the objects of these studies are small-
town America’s main streets (Francavigla 1996, Read-Miller and Doherty 1988),
the diner (Gutman and Kaufman 1979), the general store (Roberts and Jones
1991), and the movie theatre (Valentine 1994). Moreover, although the automo-
bile is very much still with us, its impact over the past century on courtship,
fashion, travel accommodation, entertainment, and even home design continues
to generate much study (Lewis and Goldstein 1983). Drive-in’s, both restaurants
and movies, are among those once-prolific auto-generated institutions now near-
ly gone.

Both the growth and the demise of these institutions say something about
the society within which they once proliferated. Whatever the institution, it
grew from a felt need, served a portion of the society, and then under pressure of
changed circumstance, it vanished or metamorphosed to serve a new need.

Studying these institutions, therefore, offers an opportunity to understand
the society they served, the priorities they reflected, and the changes within the
society that led to their end. As tangible evidence in the built environment, these
institutions also reflect their society through their physical characteristics, intrin-
sic technology, or a more ephemeral quality such as ”style.” The individual
responses of people directly associated with the institution reveal types and

degrees of meaning the institution had for them, perhaps unplanned or even

1

2

unsuspected by the society at large. The changes over time reflected in and
caused by the institution add further dimension to their study.

Another of those institutions that manifested itself as both a social and
tangible presence in American society is the boardinghouse. As both a living
arrangement and a form of dwelling, the boardinghouse has a long and multi-
faceted history. A legacy from Europe, it became part of the American society
from colonial times and served every stratum of American society until it phased
out around the time of the Depression. Ubiquitous particularly during the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, boardinghouses pervaded not only the
landscape, but the personal lives of Americans and our popular culture, especial-
ly popular literature. Although varied in form, purpose, and clientele, their
numbers, popularity, wide distribution, and longevity establish boardinghouses
and the concomitant phenomenon of boarding as an institution with the capacity
to reveal significant cultural information about the societies in which they
existed.

Scholarly studies of American boardinghouses emphasize two particular
venues—the posh urban boardinghouses of New Orleans, San Francisco, and
East Coast cities, and the urban factory boardinghouses, particularly in Lowell,
Massachusetts, and early twentieth-century industrial towns. Another popular
context for boardinghouses, but one that has received little scholarly attention,
was the midwestern copper and iron mining region of Michigan’s western
Upper Peninsula. Here, between the 18405 and the 19205, thousands of people,
many of them lone male immigrants, came to find work in the mines and collat-
eral endeavors. This flood of humanity needed housing, and boardinghouses
became a standard and reliable answer to the need, as they did elsewhere across

the country during the same period.

3

Researgh Questigns

The lack of generally available information about the boardinghouses of
the Upper Peninsula (U.P.)——when and where they were built, what they looked
like, how many people lived in them, etc—might be sufficient justification to
research them and to compile these data. More compelling is the opportunity to
examine not just the houses, but through them the society that built them, lived
in them, and then phased them out. Superficially, all boardinghouses served the
same purpose, to feed and shelter their residents, but like the one-size-fits-all
garment, prevailing conditions of the wearer produce widely varying results in
the wearing. From place to place boardinghouses adapted to the local situation,
and in that adaptation reflected the society that generated them.

In the case of Michigan’s U.P. mining region, that society was of a distinct
and peculiar type: it was a frontier society—more specifically, an extractive
industrial frontier. As such, it was essentially a temporary society, dominated by
the mining companies but dependent upon the natural resources at its base and
the feasibility of exploiting those resources. Mining settlements too had a tem—
porary quality about them. Not only would residents come or go according to
the economic ebb and flow, but at a mining company’s behest entire buildings,
even whole settlements, could be dismantled and reassembled elsewhere, or
relocated intact on other company land. Clearly this was a boarding venue
markedly different from fashionable nineteenth-century Philadelphia or Boston.

The boardinghouses and the institution of boarding had to serve thou-
sands of residents, many of them immigrants, in this dynamic mining frontier
society, but not only the residents had an interest in this institution. Housing is
itself a central concern to most human society. Boarding introduces additional
dimensions of economics—the household as a business and women operating a

domestic business—plus added complexity in the relationships between

4

members of the household. When, as in the Michigan frontier, a definite link
exists between the institution of boarding, the companies representing the cen-
tral industry, and its employees/ boarders, another whole set of dynamics is
engendered.

During the period of greatest mining activity in upper Michigan, board-
inghouses and the boarding process flourished, suggesting that the institution
popular in urban America had adapted appropriately to serve the frontier soci-
ety. How it provided that service, and what the institution became in the pro-
cess, is the central question of this study. What roles did boarding and the
boardinghouses fill in the mining frontier of Michigan between 1840 and the
19205?

Specifically, how prevalent was boarding? Who built the facilities, com-
panies or individuals? How were they distributed spatially and temporally
within the developing frontier? Did they serve any other function besides hous—
ing? Questions regarding the physical houses considered their architectural
style(s), sizes and materials, technological facilities, internal arrangement, and
ultimate disposition.

Who operated the boardinghouses; who set and enforced the rules? Who
resided in the houses, why, for how long, and how did they view the experience?
How were ethnic and family identities expressed in and through boarding in the
UP? What differences in the Michigan experience may be tied to the frontier
venue, and what are their significance?

Concomitant questions led to comparisons to other frontier societies, such
as the mining regions of the American West, and to Eastern industrial boarding-
houses and company towns. They also sought to place the frontier boarding-
house into a developmental context, examining the changing forms and purpos-
es of American boardinghouses through time to the point where they became

obsolete.

5

Researgh Strategies

Answering these questions required considerable creative investigation,
since the evidence of boardinghouses in Michigan’s UP. is scattered, fragmen-
tary, and in a myriad of forms. The first step was to locate sources of informa-
tion. Initial library searches pointed in two general directions: 1) popular
expressions of boardinghouse culture in America and 2) scholarly work on
boarding structures and the institution in various nations. Popular literature and
history showed how extensively the boardinghouse as place and social institu-
tion had permeated American society. Preliminary investigation identified
scholarship on company towns, boardinghouse studies on Lowell specifically
and the institution in general, but only one short article on a single U.P. Michigan
boardinghouse. Readings in history and geography of the UP. provided tempo-
ral and physical context for the search. Federal and state census schedules iden-
tified boarding residences in specific years and Michigan locales, the names of
householders and boarders, their ages, marital status, occupations, and ethnicity.
Annual state mining reports provided additional statistics.

Meanwhile, the physical and personal links to actual boardinghouses in
the target region had still to be discovered. One member Of the project guidance
committee arranged an informant interview. COpies of a flyer requesting leads
to informants or documentary information and a letter explaining the project
were sent to every historical society, oral history organization, and genealogical
group in the state. Responses identified numerous boardinghouse sites, former
residents, and documentary resources, and often included offers of personal
introduction to local informants or guided tours of significant sites.

These leads opened the next phase of the research: on-site investigation.
Personal referrals were followed up, resulting in site tours, access to photos and

other privately-held documents and interviews. Ultimately fourteen informants

6

were taped specifically for this project and over one hundred additional oral his-
tory tapes and transcripts were consulted. Local archives and libraries held
town directories, historic maps, historic building surveys, company records, pio-
neer diaries, photos, news accounts of local boardinghouses, and family histories
of those identified as boardinghouse keepers. Town libraries and used book
stores yielded anniversary publications containing reproduced documents and
pioneer memoirs detailing the founding and early growth of mining communi-
ties, including specifics on boarding accommodations, their residents, and opera-
tors. Museum book shops were a source for limited-distribution local histories.

Field work also afforded opportunities for personal contact with profes-
sional scholars of the UP. including those supervising historic sites through the
Michigan Bureau of History, professors of history and archaeology at the univer-
sities in the area, and others attending and speaking at the annual Upper
Peninsula History Conference, the sesquicentennial celebration of the Michigan
iron industry (Marquette, 1994) and at FinnFest ’96 (Marquette). They shared
their work and resources, adding to the data base of this project.

Despite methodical work plans and field itineraries, some discoveries
were serendipitous. Reference to an oral history project among the UP. Italian
community led to a wealth of information already taped, to additional infor-
mants, and to a tremendously helpful professional contact. Discovery of a
Boardinghouse Road on a modern map inspired an informative detour from an
afternoon’s planned route. One regional scholar, encountered by chance in a
university archive, offered guidance to an obscure source he had used in his
third book on the area, then in press. Such interest and generosity from many
local folks led to numerous valuable bits of information, such as the gift of a file

Of original mining company documents at a Quincy Hill garage sale.

7

Theoretical Bases

Theoretical support for this study comes from several avenues of scholar-
ship. Particularly important are the concepts of industrial frontiers developed
by historical archaeologists Jerome Steffen (1980), Kenneth Lewis (1980, 1984),
and Donald Hardesty (1980, 1985, 1988). Their identification of the vulnerable
nature of an extractive frontier dependent upon transportation and outside mar-
kets, upon adequate but flexible labor supply, and on unpredictable resources
provide a clear model against which the Michigan mining settlements may be
matched and understood. Steffen’s (1980) argument regarding the nature of
change on such a frontier and Hardesty’s refinement of that argument (1980,
1985) make clear both various company policies (including the universal adop-
tion of boardinghouses for employees) and the reactions of the many ethnic
groups to their new situation.

Analyzing and understanding the physical entity of the boardinghouses
produced special challenges, particularly since so few still stand. Boarding-
houses themselves exhibited wide variation in the physical context, and there-
fore no single example may be considered totally representative. Moreover, this
project hoped to learn more from the physical boardinghouses than simply their
construction details. The scholarly discipline of material culture provided a
research model useful for looking beyond the mere physical entity of a building
in a search for meaning, and at the same time was flexible enough to allow for
the bits and pieces of evidence available. This model, designed by E. McClung
Fleming (1982), lies at the heart of the physical analysis presented below.

Whereas Fleming’s model suggests ways to extract meaning from an
object, the personal stories of those who had lived the boardinghouse experience
made meanings explicit. Several articles discussing family experiences in board-

inghouses other than in Michigan were helpful points of reinforcement or com-

8

parison to the primary Michigan materials and simultaneously linked the board-
inghouse experience to notions of surrogate and fictive family.

The result to this project was to continually seek wider implications of
facts, and to periodically ”change the focus” of scale. Thus, for example, the con-
sideration of boardinghouse landladies as employers of local young women
enlarged to considerations of their role in stimulating female immigration and its

consequences.

Organizatign of the Discussion

In its presentation, this study follows an outside-in progression. After
laying some historical and theoretical groundwork on the institution of boarding
and the nature of a mining frontier, it demonstrates how Michigan’s mining
region fits the pattern. Demographics of the population and need for housing is
shown. With that established, the mining companies are introduced as commu-
nity builders, both a major source of the boardinghouses as physical venue and a
primary instigator of boarding becoming as institution in the region. A develop-
ing interconnection between company policy and boarding is a central issue in
this section.

Next, boarding in private homes and in commercial establishments that
were separate from mining company control is examined, noting particularly at
this point the economic niche filled by the women who operated and worked in
boardinghouses and the implications their economic contributions had on the
society at large.

Also here is a section devoted to the co-operative poika talo (”bachelors’
house”) developed by the Firms in the Great Lakes region. Ethnicity was a dom-
inant feature of the largely-immigrant population served by the boardinghouses,

and relevant discussions of prejudice, segregation, and unique ethnic

9

contribution appear at appropriate junctures throughout the study.

After examining the surrounding social issues of the boardinghouse, the
next section moves into the physical structures themselves to examine them as
material culture, part of a cultural landscape, and shows how and of what they
were built, what facilities and comforts they included, what ideologies they pro-
moted, and how issues of privacy and status seem to have been accommodated
by their design. Time, place, available technology, and personal choice each
affected individual houses and what they offered. Time and circumstance also
played significantly in the fate of these buildings once they no longer served
boarders. How and to what degree they still function on the cultural landscape
is noted in an epilogue.

Before that epilogue, however, the focus moves to the people in the board-
inghouses. Resident manager families and the men who boarded give personal
evidence as to what their boardinghouse lives meant to them. Daily functions of
the household, from chores and recipes to entertainment, special occasions, and
occasional tragedy and violence are related to the boarding household. Relation-
ships, activities, and reminiscences suggest the degree that various residents
understood their living place as ”house" or ”home.”

This study of the boardinghouse on the Michigan mining frontier propos-
es to expand the literature on this form of housing so endemic to American soci—
ety from colonial days to the Depression and at the same time to use it as a lens
through which to examine from an untried angle an American industrial frontier
that rivaled the fabled California gold fields. Before proceeding with the actual
consideration of the boardinghouses, however, it is necessary to lay some theo-

retical groundwork and to provide a bit of historical context.

CHAPTER 1
THEORETICAL BASES

Although several studies center on development of the mining frontier of
northern Michigan, and a few mention boarding or boardinghouses there, none
focuses precisely on the considerations of this study. Therefore, a theoretical
synthesis had to be made to guide it. The first order of business was to come to
an understanding of ”frontier” generally and industrial frontiers (mining) specif-
ically, and then to define the western half of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in that
regard. Frontier studies provide that base. Material culture studies, particularly
relating to dwellings and vernacular architecture as cultural barometer and

venue, supply additional guidance.

ancepts of Frontier

It is just possible that more people have attempted to define ”frontier”
than were needed to develop one. Certainly the defining has taken more time.

American frontier studies began more than a century ago with the ”fron-
tier thesis” of Frederick Jackson Turner, a highly impressionistic address deliv-
ered in July, 1893, to the American Historical Association in which Jackson rhap-
sodized the frontier experience as the source and stimulus for American national
character. For Turner, the frontier was place (”the meeting point between sav-
agery and civilization”), but more importantly a process with successive ”stages
of frontier advance” launched by excess or restive population passing through

the ”gate of escape” into vast tracts of free land.

10

11

The idea of frontier is not uniquely American, however, nor is the colo-
nization experience. Thus, although it was Turner’s purpose to attribute the
”American character” and its democratic institutions to the frontier experience of
the American West, subsequent geographers, economists, historians, and social
scientists have sought a less parochial definition, considering the notion of fron-
tiers in other parts of the world and from varying perspectives.

Comparative frontier studies have identified and examined frontiers from
North, South, and Latin Americas to Australia, Japan, and Russia, producing
numerous models of frontier development and definitions of frontier as line or
boundary, region, region between lines, habitat, and process (Casagrande,
Thompson, and Young 1964, Wells 1973, Savage and Thompson 1979, Margolis
1977, Katzman 1975, Steffen 1980, Lewis 1980, 1984, McGovern 1985, Hardesty
1980, 1985, 1988).

Discussing frontiers as part of global systems began with Walter Prescott
Webb’s The Great Frontier (1952), arguing that fifteenth-century explorers touched
off a four-century frontier phenomenon by expanding European influence into
the western hemisphere and beyond. Of several geographic perspectives, one
differentiates between settlement and political frontiers (Prescott 1965), another
between inclusive and exclusive frontiers relative to the aboriginal inhabitants
(Mikesell 1960 in Savage and Thompson 1979). A significant economic argument
develops a core / semi—periphery/ periphery model of world economic empires,
capitalism being the mechanism for frontier development through resource
exploitation (Wallerstein 1974).

Ultimately, increasing emphasis focused on ecological models of frontier
development, both as habitat—the environment and resources—and as biologi-
cal analogy—frontier colonies as ”cultural species” (Hardesty 1980, 1985).

A useful and influential early comparative study (Casagrande,

12

Thompson, and Young 1964) emphasizes an adaptive, processual notion of colo-
nization linked to a biological metaphor. Important to this View of the frontier is
the ”Colonization Gradient.” This dendritic system considers economic activity,
man-land density, and relative positioning to the metropolitan area and trans-
portation linkages to establish a hierarchy of colonial settlement types. It is the
spatial arrangement of this ”distinctive settlement pattern” that defines the fron-
tier.

The gradient concept grows from the fluid nature of frontier develop-
ment, where change is rapid but sporadic, and boundaries (social and economic
as well as political) can change abruptly and unevenly. Such ”fits and starts” of
growth and change resemble the biological concept known as punctuated equi-
librium, which argues that organisms remain unchanged for relatively long peri-
ods, then display sudden evolutionary change and hold that configuration for a
considerable period before the next significant modification (Gould 1981).

Elements of the gradient are the entrepot, the major urban link within the
metropolitan area to the colonial area; the frontier town, central distribution point
and major social, economic, and political center within the colonial area as well
as link between the entrepot and the rest of the colonial area; the nucleated settle-
ment, social center for residents perhaps with school and church but few stores
and simple political structure; the semi-nucleated settlement, ”characterized more
by its lack of integration and community facilities than by their presence”; and
dispersed settlement, widely scattered individual homes. Even without a defined
system of stages, the processual model is still clear.

It is not deterministic, however, for although any less-complex settlement,
in response to surrounding conditions, might develop into the next complex

stage, there is no necessity for it to do so: in fact, just as an organism no longer

13

able to function or adapt dies out, a settlement no longer serving a purpose
could become a ghost town.

Further expanding the processual concept of frontier colonialism, D. W.
Meinig (1986: 65-76) considers systematic geographic and social changes on both
sides of the Atlantic during the first 150 years of European colonization in
America, noting the uneven though two-way flow of people, goods and informa-
tion over the sequence of colonial development.

The sequence begins with exploration of the frontier territory, moves to
extractive activity including outposts for collection, extends political control, and
then sends settlers to establish a ”self-perpetuating nucleus” of European impe-
rialism. Like Webb (1952), Meinig (1986) ends where Turner refuses to begin, i,e.,
in showing America’s first colonies as frontier territory relative to Europe.
Reminiscent of Casagrande, Thompson, and Young (1964), he demonstrates a
process leading to initial colonization, making it clear that colonies do not pop
up like mushrooms and only then develop. Thus taken as a global phenomenon,
colonization spins the dendritic system of the Gradient into a web not only inter-
linking frontier communities with their specific parent nations, but linking the

colonially-affected parent nations and their colonies into a world system.

Conditiene Affecting a Frontier

In the eight decades following Turner’s thesis, notions of frontiers devel-
oped considerable complexity. Key variables associated with frontier differentia-
tion had come to include transportation, technology, population, environment,
colonial ”product,” economics, political action, and social relations.

Transportation seems to be an almost universal consideration to frontier
or colonial studies, but it cannot be considered in isolation. Certainly people

and/ or goods must be transported to and from the site of colonization, so the

14

location has to be accessible. The necessity of transportation and its extent is,
however, relative to the nature of the frontier as well. If, for example, the prima-
ry aim is simply to move settlers and their belongings from an entrepot to a fron-
tier town or beyond, a simple road or trail for walking or perhaps handcarts
might suffice. If the colonial product is not particularly perishable and is easy to
transport, then that same road or trail might do for bringing the product to mar-
ket.

If it should be perishable (50 speed is imperative) or if it is awkward or
heavy, or if to engage in the colonial enterprise much heavy equipment has to be
transported to the hinterlands in addition to bringing out a heavy or awkward
product (such as with mining), then the cost (in time, people, materials, effort) of
the necessary transportation system might actually close a region to frontier
development until such time as the value of the product justifies the expenditure
of the transport system, or technological changes make transport easier and / or
cheaper.

Technology impacts in additional ways besides through transportation. It
can, in effect, compensate for any number of shortcomings in the other variables.
For instance, the Cornish pump stimulated development of numerous deep shaft
mining operations throughout the world otherwise inaccessible due to water
accumulation. Poor soil or climactic conditions may be overcome by fertilizers
or hybridization that produces plants that will mature in a shorter growing sea-
son. The costs of such technology relative to the income from the product must
also be considered, however, to determine if frontier expansion under these con-
ditions will satisfy the colonists’ aims.

Population issues are equally as varied. The number, age, gender, skills,
and willingness or freedom of people to develop a frontier, in the proper mix,

can potentially compensate for numerous unfavorable conditions, but in the

15

improper mix may not be able to capitalize on an otherwise favorable situation.
For instance, many willing but unskilled hands, lacking knowledgeable leader-
ship, might not be able to make use of available technology necessary to their
survival.

Governmental and social policies are also important variables behind the
types of frontier endeavors, both in launching colonization and sometimes in
impeding it. Policies regarding emigration or immigration are but one of numer-

ous possible examples.

Induetrial Frentiers

As frontier studies matured, additional approaches developed. Exploring
them would eventually lead to theory specifically designed to understand min-
ing frontiers, including those in Michigan.

Responding to the emphasis on change in numerous frontier studies,
Jerome Steffen (1980) took another look at the Turner thesis and its respondents,
further considering linkages but not spatial links per se. The number, type,
duration, and effect of those links are the keys to his frontier classification. He
argues for two basic types of frontiers: the insular, in which the frontier culture
lacks significant linkages to the parent culture and hence is isolated from it, caus-
ing it to produce fundamental changes in its structure from the parent; and the
cosmopolitan, where linkages are sufficient to maintain the parent culture in the
frontier, although producing such modal changes as become necessary in the
particular circumstance. Even where physical linkages are weak, if the frontier
exposure is short-lived and memory maintains linkage, Steffen argues for the
cosmopolitan rather than insular category. Moreover, he opens up the spatial

context of the American frontier to include the continental US, and argues with

16

Prescott (1965), Meinig (1986), and others that America was ”an insular frontier
of Europe” (1980: xiii).

He then examines Tumer’s four frontier types (fur trading, ranching, min-
ing, and farming) against his own scheme and concludes that only the eastern
agricultural frontier was truly insular, i.e., produced the fundamental changes so
heartily expounded by Turner. Trading, ranching, and mining were short-lived
enterprises tied so closely to national and international factors that they could
not become insular and, therefore, they produced only modal changes compared
to trading, ranching, and mining elsewhere.

Subsequent scholars have used Steffen’s insular and cosmopolitan cate-
gories for the basis of more detailed examinations within each category. Kenneth
Lewis (1984), for example, synthesizes arguments from several earlier writers to
construct an insular frontier model. Drawing on Meinig (1986), Lewis shows
how a permanent agricultural colony is established that works to develop stabili-
ty and self-identity.

Lewis, however, also draws upon Wallerstein (1974) and Casagrande,
Thompson, and Young (1964), arguing that pattern of development, insular or
cosmopolitan, will be determined by the dendritic transportation system linking
settlements, entrepot, and permanent state and will also respond to the ”physical
and cultural landscape” and available technology. Employing Wallerstein’s eco-
nomic concepts, Lewis maintains that expansion occurs in response to demand
for the frontier’s products, and eventually site placements may shift to more
even distribution as competition for resources between settlements increases.

The implications for extractive cosmopolitan (industrial) frontiers, where
resources may be quickly depleted and population shifts often dramatic, include
transitory settlements and high dependence on management, investment capital,

and technology from the core. Lewis links population disbursement to activities

17

and describes three basic categories of settlement type: 1) camps, sites dedicated
to extracting and processing the resource(s) at the economic heart of the frontier
enterprise; 2) entrepots, major re-distribution sites bridging periphery to core;
and 3) occasional intermediate supply sites.

Further refining the industrial frontier concept, Donald Hardesty (1980,
1985, 1988) focuses on the mining frontier of the American West. His conclu-
sions regarding the nature of the mining frontier, like those of Steffen (1980) and
Lewis (1984), also apply to the mining region of Michigan. In his conception of
mining development, punctuated equilibrium is particularly appropriate, since
in this type of frontier, change is sudden and sporadic but standardization is cru-
cial and there is little room or tolerance for variation or diversity under the pres-
sure of high-stakes extractive ventures. Thus one new technique or flash of
inspiration—if successful—could spawn a new ”cultural species” almost
overnight (Hardesty 1980).

At first glance, this argument might seem to contradict Steffen’s basic
notion of the cosmopolitan frontier. The issue, however, is the nature of the
change and its source. An innovation or invention that improves or increases the
frontier product (and consequently its profitability) would be implemented
rapidly and universally throughout the entire region. This change, however,
arises externally and the change itself would be only superficial or modal and
directed to the frontier’s economic context. It would represent part of what
Hardesty (1985: 225) calls ”imported environments.” Such a change would not
tend to homogenize the industrial frontier society.

This point is important when considering the social and cultural behavior
of the diverse populations on the Michigan mining frontier, particularly in rela-

tion to the immigrant ethnics and housing. According to Hardesty, instead of

18

producing an homogenized Americanism (Turner 1893), industrial frontier soci-

ety heightened cultural diversity.

[A]s frontiers are colonized and fill up, the competition for . . . lim-
ited resources . . . intensifies. And with intensified competition, the condi-
tions are optimal for the proliferation of ethnic groups and other distinct
cultural traditions. Ethnic boundaries are solidified, not broken down,

and cultural patterns become more heterogeneous, not the reverse.
(Hardesty 1980: 73)

Hardesty demonstrates this point with an example of nineteenth-century
Chinese immigrant laborers in eastern California. As sojourners, workers who
anticipated returning to their homeland, they had little motivation to adopt

Western ways. Examination of their behavior reveals that

traditional values and lifestyles were retained as much as possible; no
attempt was made to learn the foreign language; . . . geographically local-
ized racial / cultural settlements were formed to duplicate traditional ways
and to minimize social interaction with Westerners as much as possible;
and strong ethnocentric sentiments about the superiority of the homeland
were expressed. (Hardesty 1985: 222)

It seems the men’s major concession to Western material culture was using tools
supplied by employers and necessary household goods where no home varieties
were available: in other words, only where absolutely necessary.

Additionally, Hardesty (1980: 70-71) identifies the household as the criti-
cal focus for understanding the industrial frontier. Viewed as process, the house-
hold is a collection of individuals adapting to rules and strategies. As social enti-
ty it is the ”colonizing unit," an identifiable component of even the most dis-
persed periphery; physically, ”a visible assemblage of persons sharing a common
life space in a specified manner.” As material culture, it is structure reflecting
ideology and social process.

Frontier theory provides valuable concepts on which to base this board-

inghouse project. Among Steffen’s (1980) arguments defining the cosmopolitan

frontier, he emphasizes the similarity of mining frontiers ”regardless of time and

19
place,” thus linking by implication the Michigan mining region to the American
West (and Hardesty’s discussions), the Appalachian region, and others.
Additionally, this argument links the two major Michigan mining industries,
copper and iron.

Lewis (1984) is useful in two respects to studies of Michigan industrial
frontiers (see, e.g., Langhorne 1988). First, he Offers a spatial pattern of frontier
settlement simplified from the Colonization Gradient but incorporating its inher-
ent hierarchy. Each of his three settlement types are potential sites for boarding-
houses. Second, Lewis’ focus on the capitalistic dynamic for frontier develop-
ment emphasizes the central role corporate policy should be expected to have
played on the Michigan mining frontier, right down to the level of housing.

Hardesty (1980, 1985, 1988) provides a valuable theoretical link between
behavior, households, and the mechanisms of change on mining frontiers. His
notions of ethnic solidarity on the household level dovetail with arguments
regarding workers’ homes found in material culture studies and social history
(see, for example, Cohen 1982). His ideas also suggest a basis for a subtle differ-
ence between boardinghouses in the company context and within the private

sector.

Material Culture Studies
As an historical archaeologist, it is natural for Hardesty to view man-
made Objects as significant to understanding human behavior, hence his refer-
ence to household process evident in material culture. Although the scope of
this boardinghouse project is not essentially archaeological, its arguments are
underpinned by material culture studies. For roughly the past hundred years
but more methodically since the 19605, scholars from numerous disciplines—pri-

marily social history, folklore, architectural history, women’s studies, historical

20

and cultural geography, history of technology, and historical archaeology—have
expanded their notion of ”document” or ”evidence” to include the material
objects Of everyday life (Lubar and Kingery 1993, Schlereth 1985, Prown 1982,
Carson 1978, Steams 1983).

Approaches to these materials differ and have changed over time.
Antiquarians collect examples of a specific item and order them according to
various sequences. Choice examples of an item have been analyzed for style and
material from the perspective of the art historian (Prown 1982). While some
researchers have sought the maker behind the object (Prown 1982, Deetz 1977),
others have widened their view.

Social historians in particular have been drawn to material culture studies
and the result has been mutually beneficial. Social history ”involves two broad
subject areas conventional history has largely ignored, . . . ordinary people,
rather than the elite, . . . [and] ordinary activities, institutions, and modes of
thought” (Stearns 1983: 4-5). Most objects of everyday existence are found in the
context of ordinary people. Thus material culture (things) constitute data for
social history.

In addition, scholars of material culture and of social history share a simi-
lar goal, to understand human behavior better. Both are more concerned with
process than event. Moreover, both social history and material culture studies
are grounded cross-culturally and in their collaboration they tend to expand
research horizons for the other (Schlereth 1985, Stearns 1983, Lubar and Kingery
1993).

Significantly but not surprisingly, the dual notion of the household
expressed by historical archaeologist Hardesty is echoed in material culture

scholarship. ”Dwelling is both process and artefact. It is the process of living at

a location and it is the physical expression of doing 50” (Oliver 1987: 7). Material

21

culture studies and allied social history abound with literature on dwellings,
specific rooms, individual forms of furnishings and utensils, domestic mechani-
cal systems, exterior accoutrements and landscape, plus formerly house-based
rites of passage (birth, marriage, death) and domestic activities such as house-
work and taking in boarders. House forms figure prominently in studies of ver-
nacular architecture (see Schlereth 1985 for a representative bibliography). The
materials available suggest lines for examination of the Michigan boardinghous-
es or provide valuable insights that may be applied to the Michigan findings.

Studies useful for this project include Gwendolyn Wright (1981), Mark
Peel (1986), Joan M. Jensen (1980), and Richard Horwitz (1973) since they specifi-
cally address the boardinghouse in cultural context. Morris Knowles (1920) and
Leifur Magnusson (1920) provide specific information about American industrial
housing against which to compare the Michigan findings. Additional sources
(Hall 1969, Rapoport 1969, Altman and Chemers 1980, Oliver 1987, Landon 1989,
Sanders 1990, and Lawrence 1990) demonstrate how the dwelling operates as an
architectural response to social ideas such as privacy and status. Karen
Halttunen (1989) links a physical shift in domestic social space to a change in
cultural mindset, while Lizabeth A. Cohen (1982) explores social identity reflect-
ed in furnishings of workers’ and middle class homes.

Among the ethnic structural influences evident in the Michigan mining
region is the Finnish sauna (Lockwood 1977). The kitchen and food, a rich area
of cultural investigation, prove particularly important to understanding life in
the boardinghouse. Marjorie Kreidberg (1975) provides material for comparison
to the Michigan data. Moreover, individual buildings contribute to and derive
significance from the cultural landscape (Peirce Lewis 1993; Alanen 1979, 1982).

Thus a great many interpretative materials support a cultural investiga—

tion of the boardinghouses. One additional necessity, however, is a theoretical

22

model to direct analysis of the primary boardinghouse data. E. McClung
Fleming (1982) supplies the most workable model for this part of the study
because 1) it can be used with an actual boardinghouse or with documentary
evidence such as photos or floorplans, and 2) it pushes the data to the widest
consideration of cultural context, thereby taking full advantage Of cross-disci-
plinary contributions and approaches.

Fleming’s model for artifact study applies five classifications to the prop-
erties of the artifact (history, material, construction, design, and function) and
performs four operations (identification, evaluation, cultural analysis, and inter-
pretation) on each of the properties. The five properties concern more than just

the size and shape or age of the artifact. For example:

History includes where and when it was made, by whom and for whom
and why, and successive changes in ownership, condition, and function.
. . . Function embraces both the uses (intended functions) and the roles
(unintended functions) of the object in its culture. (Fleming 1982: 166)

The evaluation operation can and often should extend beyond a subjec-

tive appraisal of craftsmanship. Cultural and spatial qualities are also impor-

tant.

Evaluation can result in applying . . . such adjectives as similar, unique,
early example. . . . Evaluation might compare the given artifact with . . .
similar ones made by other craftsmen in the same subculture. An artifact
made in one region might be compared with a similar one made in

another region. (168)

Cultural analysis ”embraces the largest potential of artifact study. ”
According to Fleming, ”function involves both the concrete and the abstract
aspects of the artifacts,” both importance and meaning. Further, he points out
that occasionally such analysis ”will indicate the ways in which the artifact
became an agent of major change within its culture” (169). Additional consider-
ations under this operation include value (intrinsic and perceived) and identifi-

cation with specific groups, areas, or processes.

23

The essence of Fleming’s cultural analysis lies in the notion of intersec-
tions between the artifact and other historical condition (real intersections) and
between the artifact and ideas and attitudes in its culture of origin (virtual inter-
sections). Virtual intersections are conjectures of the researcher and thus not
provable, but offer the possibility of identifying cultural explanation nonetheless.
Discovering or deriving these intersections relies on exploring what Fleming
terms ”product analysis (the ways in which a culture leaves its mark on a partic-
ular artifact) and content analysis (the ways a particular artifact reflects its cul-
ture)” (171).

In Fleming’s scheme, interpretation considers the meaning or value of the
artifact to the researcher’s culture, i.e., assigns it a specific type of significance.
One such interpretation for the boardinghouses is, as Hardesty suggests, a ”colo-
nizing unit” of the mining frontier. Hardesty (1980, 1985, 1988) and Fleming
(1982) therefore provide justification and methodology for examining both the

physical and the social boardinghouse in northern Michigan’s mining region.

Simmer);

The intrinsic problem in historical studies is that the particularistic nature
of the discipline allows each event to be viewed as inwardly spiralling, subjected
to greater and greater magnification and thus higher resolution of internal detail,
possibly at the expense of the wider picture. Focus on the boardinghouses
heightens the potential for a narrow view, Fleming’s model notwithstanding.
However, since cosmopolitan frontiers depend more than any other upon the
influences of external politics and social factors such as technology, cosmopolitan
frontier theory forces specific detail into a broader and more complex context.

In combination, these theoretical bases have been both predictive and

explanatory. The cosmopolitan frontier model (Hardesty 1980, 1985, 1988;

24

Steffen 1980; Lewis 1984) identifies key conditions that should have prevailed in
northern Michigan during the growth of the mining industry, and their presence
thus verifies the nature of the Michigan frontier and provides a basis for under-
standing its historical and social development.

Because the territory was raw wilderness when the mining era began and
because mining was the reason for settlement of these remote and undeveloped
areas even well into the twentieth century, cosmopolitan frontier theory argues
that the mining companies would have had to become the primary organiza-
tional force behind settlement. They would have to supply the physical plant of
their operations, including housing and basic community support for the labor
force. Meanwhile, by virtue of being a cosmopolitan frontier and therefore tied
to outside conditions, the mining venture would be vulnerable to market fluctu-
ations, unsuitable or insufficient labor, inadequate transportation and technolo-
gy, and insufficient capital investment as well as insufficient or inaccessible
resources.

Mining efforts that could not compensate for these unfavorable conditions
would be expected to fail. Thus economy and efficiency were critical in the com-
panies’ operations: it was imperative that they achieve the most efficacy from
each expenditure, whether of money, time, or other resource. Since housing the
labor force was physically mandatory, at least initially, the companies would be
expected to do so with economy and efficiency in mind.

Needing to maintain a certain amount of fluidity in the labor force to
respond to unfavorable conditions while simultaneously building a stable and
loyal core of workers, Lewis’ (1984) emphasis on company control suggests the
companies could be expected to use whatever resources at their command to

manipulate the labor force to their best advantage. Housing, as a necessity

25

already supplied and under company control, would reasonably become a
manipulative tool both physically and ideologically.

Eventually there were also dwellings (”colonizing units”) and settlements
under private control. Both company and private settlements would be expected
to conform to the dendritic pattern of frontier spatial development and the gra-
dient of settlement types. Theoretically, the private and company communities
could exist separately, compete against one another, and/ or develop a symbiosis
from the level of the boardinghouse.

While the companies would be expected to view their boardinghouses
(and boarding in general) in terms of bottom-line company profit, residents and
others in the community would be expected to have other perceptions of the
meaning and significance of these structures and the institution of boarding. In
the narrow View, private boardinghouses would be the economic concern of the
community and the operating family rather than of the mining corporations, but
much private enterprise would necessarily be dependent upon the mining-based
economy, and the mining companies could have interest in the continued viabili-
ty Of private boarding. A preponderance Of immigrant population in the mining
regions, particularly men without families, would not only affect housing needs
but would cause issues relating to ethnicity and surrogate family to take on great
importance.

Deeper still, Fleming (1982) and others concerned with the built environ-
ment argue that cultural notions of what a house represents, how its spaces
should be used, and how ”house” relates to ”home” determine the ultimate
meaning of the dwelling and its relation to those who dwell within it. The rela-

tion between the corporate view and the people’s View of the boardinghouse
Should reveal both the physical and conceptual roles fulfilled by the boarding-

houses and the institution of boarding on the Michigan mining frontier.

26

Demonstrating the evolution of that mining frontier follows, beginning with a

brief overview of its highly significant geography.

CHAPTER 2

MICHIGAN’S WESTERN UPPER PENINSULA
AS MINING FRONTIER

Geographical Orientatien

Michigan’s two peninsulas lie in the heart of the Great Lakes region in
America’s midwest. Of the five Great Lakes, the largest fresh-water bodies in the
world, four define the peninsulas’ form. The Lower Peninsula, the ”mitten,”
projects northward for nearly three hundred miles from its common border with
Ohio and Indiana. It is bounded by Lakes Michigan, Huron, and Erie. Small
Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River link Lake Huron with Erie. The Upper
Peninsula juts three hundred miles eastward from Wisconsin, separated from
Canada by Lake Superior, the northernmost of the Great Lakes. Lakes Michigan

and Huron define the peninsula’s southern shore (Figure 1).

 

\-

 

 

   

 

Figure 1. The Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River.
27

28

The narrow passage (about five miles) between the peninsulas through
which the waters of Lake Michigan flow into Huron on their long way to the St.
Lawrence and the Atlantic is known as the Straits of Mackinac. From prehistoric
times this strait has been a significant spot for east-west and north-south trade
and communication. Another significant waterway is the St. Mary’s River, flow-
ing from Lake Superior to Lake Huron and separating the northeastern tip of the
UP. from Canada. At this crossing-point is the oldest European-American settle-
ment in Michigan, Sault Ste. Marie (commonly called the Soo). French explorers
and missionaries established a trading post and mission there in 1668, having
pushed their way westward from Montreal via the Ottawa River. They were not
yet fully aware of the vast waterway before them.

Although the Great Lakes have proved a boon to the region in many ways
over the centuries, their contribution to transportation is arguably their most
valuable. Inter-lake travel links Duluth, Chicago, Marquette, the Soo, Escanaba,
Detroit, Toledo, Buffalo, and Montreal. Rivers push the connections far inland,
and the St. Lawrence River extends them into the Atlantic and hence around the
globe. In the absence of roads or railroads through Michigan’s wilderness interi-
or, the Great Lakes waterway was invaluable for the early explorers and miners
of upper Michigan.

It was not free of impediments, however. Two major physical barriers
prevented unimpeded shipping between the western end of Lake Superior (pri-
mary mining region) and the lower lakes and the St. Lawrence. The most imme-
diate to the Michigan mining region was the rapids at the St. Mary’s River. Lake
Huron is twenty-two feet lower than Lake Superior. The other geological barrier
was Niagara Falls, where Lake Erie spills more than three hundred feet into Lake
Ontario (Hudgins 1953).

Climate also plays havoc with Lakes access. The Great Lakes freeze over

29

each year, suspending shipping between November and spring, often as late as
May. Although the thick ice provides foot or sled access across the Straits of
Mackinac, or to Grand Island or Mackinac Island from the mainland, it more
generally has deepened the isolation of the UP. and its inhabitants for half of
each year. Moreover, white squalls, shifting sandbars, the legendary gales of
November, and other sudden surprises make Lakes travel potentially treacher-
ous, even today.

The land is equally challenging. Much Of the eastern UP. is relatively flat,
chiefly limestone and sandstone shelves—vestiges of ancient seas—covered by
thin layers of poor soil and by large areas of swamp (Burroughs 1964). When
Europeans discovered the region, it was cloaked by the dense pine and hard-
wood ”forest primeval” immortalized by Longfellow.

The western half of the peninsula is more rugged, much of its northern
shore high crags and sheer, weathered cliffs. Inland, the land tells of a tortuous
geologic history. Extreme undulations are the result of glacial deposits and the
same gouging that produced the Great Lakes. Volcanic activity concentrated
igneous and metamorphic trap rock in the west, and later upheavals thrust much
of the region high above the Lakes. Eons of erosion then exposed some of the
mineral deposits. In the far west, an escarpment rises to form the Porcupine
Mountains, so inaccessible their virgin pine and hemlock forests escaped the
voracious nineteenth-century lumbermen (Santer 1977, Martin 1964, Hudgins
1953, Kelley 1964).

Jutting from the northwestern corner of the UP. into Lake Superior is yet
another peninsula, the Keweenaw. An average of about twenty-five miles wide
and eighty-five miles long from Ontonagon to Copper Harbor, this finger of land
was split along its length, a fault line thrusting upwards at about a forty-degree

incline. Near the tip of the Keweenaw rises Brockway Mountain, part of the

30

same escarpment that forms the Porcupine Mountains. A modern road,
Brockway Mountain Drive, lies over a thousand feet above Lake Superior and is
the highest road between the Alleghenies and the Rockies. The Huron
Mountains, Michigan’s highest elevation, are to the east across Keweenaw Bay.
At the bottom of a chasm that cuts across the Keweenaw Peninsula is the Portage
River and Portage Lake, effectively making the top portion of the Keweenaw
into an island.

One more remnant of the volcanic activity that formed the Keweenaw is
Isle Royale, lying more than fifty miles northwest of the Keweenaw near the
north shore of Lake Superior (Martin 1964, Santer 1977).

Numerous rivers feed Superior from this region, many of them dropping
from great heights forming falls and rapids. The western U.P. was also covered
with dense pine and hardwood forests except where huge knobs, peaks, and
slabs of rock outcropping are found. It is difficult to fathom the immensity of
these forests. Just the pine holdings of a single lumber company in Ontonagon
County totalled one hundred thousand acres, estimated to contain six hundred
million board feet of timber—enough to fill a train over nine hundred miles long!
(Ewen Centennial 1989: 30).

The southern boundary of the western half of the UP. abuts Wisconsin.
The Great Lakes shoreline, which varies from sand and stone beaches to rugged
cliffs of limestone and red sandstone, is formed by Green Bay and Big Bay de
Noc, northwestern extensions of Lake Michigan.

All the severity of the Lakes climate is also felt on land. Winters are long,
cold, and snowy. Copper Harbor, near the tip of the Keweenaw, ”is further north
than Quebec” (Dersch 1977:293). Annual snowfall can exceed three hundred
inches in some areas. Summer temperatures are mild; the growing season short.

Bear and deer, still prevalent, were among the larger wildlife hunted by early

31

settlers who also noted the chilling effect of nightly serenades by nearby howling
wolves. Moreover, ravenous mosquitoes and blackflies make an otherwise idyl-
lic summer day totally miserable.

The perception of Michigan’s western U.P. has changed radically with
time in concert with the increasing national nostalgia for wilderness (Nash 1967).
What now is viewed as valuable recreation land, unspoiled nature, and breath-
taking scenery was seen by early arrivals as formidable, dangerous, even hostile
territory. One of many ironies of the history of the mining efforts in Michigan is
that the easiest mineral areas to reach and therefore the first exploited were those
closest to the south Superior shore, yet this region was the most isolated from
population centers, supplies, and markets, and the most difficult to inhabit. The
mineral lands of Michigan’s western U.P. were eventually developed, but not
without several false starts that point up the tenuous balance that must be main-

tained by a successful cosmopolitan frontier.

Mineral Resources

As with most stories of development, natural resources provide the impe—
tus. Long before automobiles, Michigan’s ”big three” were fur, timber, and min-
erals. The minerals came first. Between 3.5 billion and 220 million years ago,
volcanic and other geologic activity laid down massive deposits of iron and
nearly pure native copper in what would eventually become the western half of
Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Native copper, a rare form found nowhere else to
the extent it is in Michigan, is copper in its metallic form, not chemically com-
bined with other materials. The copper concentrated in a strip running from the
Porcupine Mountains on the southwest (Ontonagon County) up through the
spine of the Keweenaw Peninsula (Houghton and Keweenaw Counties) and on

Isle Royale.

32

 

Risylzle / W “m

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[mm lake Superior
tie-due.
Ontonagon "who"
Murpette
.k' ' “75235 W W "Firetizielaz-ti
g ‘ Iron MW"!
Della
Wisconsin
e
o Fayette
Copper 0 °'\
am I 8
9 '°" Menominee e ‘b

 

 

 

Figure 2. Mineral Areas of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Three separate iron ranges formed. The Marquette Range occupies the
west central portion of what is now Marquette County. The Menominee Range
spans the Michigan-Wisconsin border and lies in three Michigan counties, run-
ning from Amasa and Iron River in Iron County, through southern Dickinson
County, and into northern Menominee County. The Gogebic Range, which also
spans the Wisconsin-Michigan line, occupies the western part of Gogebic
County, particularly in the IronwoodBessemer-Wakefield area.

Important supply and processing sites were established in Baraga, Alger,
and Delta COunties, so these regions, too, are included within the mining sphere
of activity. Smaller deposits of gold, silver, lead, zinc, nickel, cobalt, uranium,
and platinum ores were also in the igneous and metamorphic rock of the area,
but it was the copper and iron that played the largest role in developing the
region (Santer 1977, Swineford 1876, Fountain 1992, Hudgins 1953).

The first mining of Michigan copper was carried out by the early aborigi-
nal peoples of the region about 3000-1000 B.C.E. They located large outcrop-

pings of native copper both on the mainland and on Isle Royale and extracted it

33

with stone tools, leaving behind hundreds of pits marking some of the choicest
veins. Michigan copper thence moved into a pan-continental trade network,
supplying the material for weapons and ceremonial objects (Halsey 1983: 32-41,

Fitting 1970, Benedict 1952: 20-27, Clarke 1975a: 8).

European Cglonization

The French were the first Europeans to penetrate the upper Great Lakes.
Disappointed in their search for the fabled Northwest Passage, they ”made do”
by exploiting the already-developed fur trade, diverting the pelts supplied by
the Ottawa, Chippewa, and others to the entrepot at Montreal and thence to
France and European fashion markets in exchange for European goods (Dunbar
1965, Jamison 1948, Cleland 1992, N ute 1974, White 1991b). Few settlements
were established: instead, missions, military forts, and trading posts comprised
the majority of the French outposts.

Although numerous Jesuit missionaries and other visitors to the
Keweenaw had recorded the presence of copper from 1636, the French demon-
strated little initial interest in pursuing it, especially after excited claims of find-
ing ”gold” and ”diamonds” in their North American holdings had proved to be
a crushing disappointment: samples of the supposed mineral wealth examined
in France were discovered to be nothing more than pyrite (”fool’s gold”) and
quartz (Dunbar 1965, Jamison 1948, Cleland 1992, Krause 1992).

Minimal attempts to capitalize on the scattering of surface copper merely
pointed up the enterprise’s futility until lodes from which these scatterings had
broken off were discovered. Moreover, ”these attempts were to be compromised
by great difficulties of transportation, repeated Indian hostilities, and, ultimately,
a lack of enough demand for the metal to make the efforts profitable” (Krause

1992: 32). The French finally gave up their hope of matching Spain’s mineral

34

wealth from their New World holdings. The British did little more.

In 1763 as the result of another of their innumerable wars, the French lost
control of the Great Lakes territory to the British after more than a century of
occupation. The British held legal claim to the area for only two decades, until
the end of the American Revolution. However, the appeal of the strategic sites at
Detroit and at Mackinac to protect the fur trade through Montreal was so great
that British occupation of Michigan Territory ended only after defeat in the War
of1812.

During its legal control of the upper Great Lakes region, much of Britain’s
attention was occupied by its disgruntled subjects. Pontiac’s War in 1763 that
captured all but three of the British forts west of the Alleghenies was an out-
growth of long-standing Indian dissatisfaction with British treatment. British
troubles were further exacerbated by negative reaction from both French-
Canadian and English-speaking colonists to the Proclamation of 1763 and the
Quebec Act of 1774. These plus unpopular attempts to raise revenue from the
coastal colonies kept British attention diverted from Lake Superior copper except
briefly in 1771 (Bald 1954: Chapters 6 8r 7).

A group of British businessmen and mineralogists led by Alexander
Henry incorporated in 1770 to mine silver and copper along the shores of Lake
Superior. Henry, an intrepid trader who had survived the bloody attack at Ft.
Michilirnackinac in 1763 meant to drive the British from native lands, had been
led by native guides fourteen miles up the Ontonagon River to large outcrops of
pure copper. Here were masses of copper from several pounds to tons in size:
the largest was a huge boulder gleaming in the river, polished by long years of

III

wave action. Henry estimated it at no less than five tons’” (J ohanson 1993: 6).
This Ontonagon Boulder inspired Henry and his would-be miners to seek

the ”mother lode” from which it had come, but as would be true for many

35

subsequent speculators, they lacked sufficient manpower and equipment and
the necessary technical knowledge to succeed. Although no richer for their
endeavor, they would become wiser. The venture, financed in part by King
George III and the Duke of Gloucester, was aborted.

It did inspire a succession of cartographers, however, to designate the
Ontonagon region, much like a pirate chart with ”X-marks-the spot,” as the loca-
tion for ”virgin copper” (Dunbar 1965, Martin 1986, Krause 1992, Johanson
1993). Thus the western half of the Upper Peninsula remained largely
untouched except for fur-trapping, but that isolation was soon to end under

American control.

American Territory

It is an often-told story. Initially the Upper Peninsula was an undifferenti-
ated part of the Northwest Territory and logically or at least geographically, per-
haps it should have ended up part of Wisconsin, but politics conspired against
geography. Following the War of 1812, the American federal government
encouraged settlement of the West by ordering land surveys. Surveyors came to
Michigan, but encountered swamp in the southern regions of Oakland County
and assumed the worst about the whole state. Surveyor Edward Tiffin’s report
pronounced Michigan Territory one unconquerable swamp and soon thereafter
the error became accepted truth.

Consequently, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois drew settlers in higher numbers
and, therefore, became states earlier. When by 1836, thanks to the Erie Canal
(opened 1825) and dauntless Michigan settlers’ glowing reports, the lower
peninsula had drawn enough population for statehood, a squabble over a strip
of land claimed by both Michigan and Ohio resulted in delays and political

wrangling. Ohio, with more political clout as a state, won the Toledo Strip and

36

in recompense Michigan received the Upper Peninsula. It appeared to be a fool’s

trade until in 1840 the copper was publicly rediscovered (Dunbar 1965).

Opening the Cepper Mining Frontier

Hasty negotiations followed, since at the time the state could not legally
exploit this area: it was still under Native American control. In what now
appears a virtual re-play of events a decade earlier in Georgia when gold was
discovered on Cherokee lands (Steffen 1980), Lake Superior and Mississippi
bands of Chippewa ceded their native lands from Marquette to Duluth to the
federal government through the Treaty of LaPointe (1842) and Opened the way to
the copper boom and more.

In 1840, state geologist Douglass Houghton’s report to the Michigan legis-
lature drew state and ultimately national attention to the copper deposits. By
1843, the public focused even more excitedly on the Michigan copper region

when the Federal government moved the Ontonagon boulder to the Smithsonian

 

   
  
 

lake Superior

   

Tree otLaPointe
Treaty ession Lends
1842

  

 

 

 

Figure 3. Lands ceded by Treaty of LaPointe, 1842.

37

Institution. Result: the speculators’ copper rush of 1843-44 (Dunbar 1965).

Serious mining operations began in 1845 with outcrops on the northwest-
ern Keweenaw and produced 26,880 pounds that year. Development of the
opposite end of the copper belt, at Ontonagon, began almost simultaneously, fol-
lowed ultimately by exploitation of the middle and most productive region, near
Portage Lake (Houghton-Hancock). Production rapidly increased to a high in
1916 of nearly 270 million pounds and an all-time production to 1968 of
10,815,687,423 pounds and more than $1.5 billion in value (Hudgins 1953; Santer
1977; Gates 1951; Krause 1992; Thurner 1994: 301).

The cost, however, was also high. As the Alexander Henry episode had
demonstrated, the area was too remote and mining too expensive and arduous
to have become an active pursuit under colonization focused on other endeavors
(Michigan 1893; Swineford 1876). Mining the Michigan resources also required
far more technical expertise than first envisioned. Discoveries and innovations
of the Industrial Revolution that proved essential to serious mining had been
unanticipated by Henry’s men seventy-five years before.

At first, the copper fields were opened to prospectors who acquired a
lease from the government with a twenty-thousand-dollar surety bond on a
share-the-profit basis. The scene anticipated the swarms who would descend on
the gold fields of the far West by the end of the decade. With picks and shovels
and high hopes, but naivete matching that of Henry’s men, many found nothing
but economic ruin. Claim jumping and fraud at the land registry offices were
prevalent. Eventually land was sold outright.

Then the speculators moved in, inflating the land prices a thousand-fold
or more. Copper (and iron) mining requires heavy and expensive equipment, an
extensive investment in a physical plant in proximity to the mineral, and lots of

cheap labor. Painfully these facts became apparent and Eastern investors

38

(”foreign investors” in relation to the state and region) fueled the mining opera-
tions in Michigan (Jamison 1948, Martin 1986, Michigan 1893, Gates 1951,
Krause 1992).

Even with ”big money” behind many of the Operations, stockholders were
frequently disappointed. Rich veins could suddenly pinch out before start-up
costs had been recouped; disasters (fires, cave-in’s, floods) always loomed; labor
shortages, inadequate transportation, declining prices and markets, and poor
management jeopardized even the most productive site.

Cheap labor, however, quickly became abundant. News spread about the
opportunity for riches in northern Michigan’s howling wilderness and along
with the prospectors and the speculators and the Eastern investors came immi-
grants looking to make their fortune. Coincidental with the opening of the
Michigan copper mines, lead mines in Wisconsin began operation. These drew
Cornish miners experienced in deep mining for tin and copper whose home
resources were depleting. Many of these Cornishmen either migrated to
Michigan from Wisconsin or directly from their home country in response to a
call for a ”Cousin Jack” where more hands were needed. They were particularly
valuable to the fledgling Michigan operations since they had extensive experi-
ence in both mining techniques and the technology of mining equipment (Gates
1951, Fisher 1945, Johanson 1993, Thurner 1994).

Spurred particularly by the potato famine of 1846-50, Irish also poured
into the Keweenaw. Though they lacked technical expertise in mining and there-
fore commanded lower wages, they were strong and willing workers. Ethnic
hatred raged between the Irish and Cornish and numerous brawls and blood-
shed resulted (Swineford 1876, Martin 1986, Jamison 1948, Thurner 1994,
Lankton and Hyde 1981).

Early in the nineteenth century Michigan had sponsored an aggressive

39

recruitment program for German settlers to its rich lower-peninsula farmlands.
Opportunities in the mining regions quickly joined the list of inducements to
German settlement (Thumer 1994, Alanen 1991a, 1991b, Rubenstein and
Ziewacz 1981).

Canadians also comprised a significant portion of the work force from the
earliest stages of industry development (Alanen 1991a, Thurner 1994, Cummings
1991, Sell 1990, Rubenstein and Ziewacz 1981).

Among the other dominant ethnic groups associated with copper mining
were the Italians, who began arriving in the 18505. They, like the Irish, were
hired as unskilled labor in the mines, generally as trammers, men with strong
backs and arms with great physical endurance who loaded the ore into cars.
Italian immigration increased dramatically later in the century (Magnaghi 1987).

By the turn of the century Finns comprised yet another large ethnic com-
ponent of the copper mining communities. Drawn primarily from fundamental-
ist Lutheran peasantry, the Finns dedicated themselves to family, community,
and hard work. Many of the initial Finns in Michigan were sojourners, earning a
stake so they could buy farmlands in the ”breadbasket” states. Chain migration,
as with the other ethnic groups, ultimately induced more to come and to stay in
Michigan (Gedicks 1977, Hoglund 1974, Thumer 1994). Eventually, scores of
nationalities were represented across the mining districts, reflecting every corner
of the globe.

Meanwhile, the copper mining operation was evolving from many small
competing firms into an industry dominated by a few large and powerful com-
panies who could muster the huge capital investment and withstand the long
period between set-up and profit. Initial copper mining operations began in
1845, but new finds and re-development of abandoned sites continued into the

19605, extending the process of frontier development in the region for well over a

40

century. By 1920 and the beginning of the decline of the industry as a whole,
three giant companies predominated: Calumet and Hecla (C&H) on the upper
Keweenaw, Quincy at Hancock, and South Range in Ontonagon and southern
Houghton Counties.

Many real costs were only indirectly connected to the actual mining oper-
ation, but necessary all the same. Lumbering operations provided timbers for
shoring mines and material for plank and corduroy roads. Logs, sawn lumber,
and wooden shingles became company buildings, both at the mines and to
house the labor force. Even more wood was necessary for heat and to fuel
steam-driven mine machinery (Jamison 1969, Harlow 1849-59).

Cost and inconvenience to transport in-coming supplies and the out-
going ore to processing sites in Chicago, Detroit, or elsewhere through the St.
Mary’s rapids spurred construction of the locks there in 1855. Eventual railroad
links eased the seasonal limitation on shipping—the Copper Country was virtu-
ally isolated between November and May when the Great Lakes froze over and
shipping suspended. Getting the product to market was vital and over time as
much as 80 percent of Michigan copper production reached the world market
(Martin 1986, Gates 1951, Krause 1992, Benedict 1952).

Among the human costs of mining were health, happiness, safety, and
even life. Technology advanced with the demands of the industry, allowing for
deeper penetration of the veins of COpper, but mining was risky, even deadly.
”Between 1855 and 1975 at least 2,000 men lost their lives while at work in
Keweenaw copper mines.” During the peak years of operation, 1885-1920, 1055
averaged about forty lives per year of operation. ”From 1905 to 1915, some 50 to
60 deaths occurred in Houghton County alone” (Lankton 1983: 34). Advanced
technology that threatened both job security and personal safety was at the heart

of the most severe labor unrest in Michigan’s mining region, the Copper Strike of

41

1913-14. On the other hand, meeting worker’s physical needs by providing ade-
quate and inexpensive housing became a primary function of the mining compa-

nies.

Iron Mining

The history of iron mining in Michigan mirrors that of copper in many
respects. Local Native Americans were aware of and used iron-bearing sub-
stances millennia before contact with Europeans. Hard rock forms were fash-
ioned into jewelry, body armor, weapons, and tools; soft red ocher was used cer-
emonially as body paint for both the living and dead. Certain hunter-gatherer
groups made such extensive use of the substance in burial ritual that they have
been called the ”Red Ocher People” (Halsey 1983, 1994).

American surveyor William Burt discovered the huge concentrations of
iron almost simultaneously with Houghton’s report on the copper. Surveying
the north central Upper Peninsula in September, 1844, Burt and his crew noticed
gyrations of the magnetic compass needle and sought its cause. Burt’s report of
a mountain of iron (part of the Marquette Range) near Teal Lake (Negaunee)
opened the second component of the mining industry in the Upper Peninsula.
Continuing his survey work with the solar compass he had invented, Burt later
located additional iron deposits, including portions of the Western Menominee
Range (Swineford 1876).

Iron mining, both open pit and deep shaft, promoted and responded to
improved mining technology as did the copper industry, and both industries felt
the impact of shifting product demand and availability. The wide range of finan-
cial centers responsible for developing the iron reserves is merely suggested by a
partial list of the region’s iron companies. Among those named for the homes of

the investors: Jackson (Michigan), Cleveland, Buckeye (Ohio), Clinton (New

42

York). Behind such early iron companies as the Pioneer, Deer Lake, Bancroft,
and Michigan were financiers in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Detroit, and
Chicago, respectively (LaFayette 1977).

Major corporations ultimately came to dominate the industry: Cleveland-
Cliffs Iron (CCI) on the Marquette and eastern Menominee Ranges; Pickands,
Mather on the Marquette and Gogebic Ranges; and the Oglebay, Norton, the
M. A. Hanna, and the Oliver Mining Companies on the Gogebic and Menominee
(Hatcher 1950).

Immigrants swelled the labor force: Canadians, Germans, Italians, Irish,
and Swedes comprised the largest percentage of the workers, with many of the
Cornish preferring deep mining to surface iron mining on the basis that they
”weren’t no bloody ditch diggers.” Iron companies, like the copper, had to build
and equip elaborate mine and processing sites and to house and otherwise pro-
vide for the needs of the workers, adding to the drain on investment.

Transportation posed obstacles for iron mining and for the same reasons
as for copper. Access to mine sites was difficult at best and roads and railroads
required time, labor, and money to construct. The first iron enterprise, on the
Marquette Range in the late 18405, failed largely due to lack of efficient means of
transport from the forge near N egaunee to the port at Marquette, a distance of no
more than twelve miles.

Nearly four decades separate the discovery of iron on the Menominee and
Gogebic Ranges and its exploitation, principally due to the remoteness of the
areas: development of these two ranges depended upon rail accessibility.
Anticipated development of the Menominee Range early in the 18705 was stalled
until the end of the decade when the railroad industry had recovered from the
Panic of 1873; similarly, the Gogebic Range, also discovered during the 18405,

did not begin development until the 18805 when rail transport became available

43

(Ingalls 1871, Cummings 1991, Dulan 1978, Sell 1990, Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Co,
et. al. 1964).

Although the Great Lakes offered a natural path of transportation to
smelting operations in Cleveland and Pittsburgh, the falls at the Soo were an
expensive impediment that could not be overcome too soon and entrepots on
Green Bay were of small value before rail access. Ultimately, by rail and by ship,
Michigan iron entered the world market, connecting Michigan’s periphery to
Wall Street, the international industrial complex, and the vicissitudes of global
politics and economics (Hudgins 1953, Reimann 1951, Santer 1977, Martin 1986,
Stakel 1994).

m

The third means of resource development in early Michigan centered on
its timber. Much of Michigan was forested when it was settled in the 18005 and
millions of board feet of pine and hardwoods were sacrificed to clear land for
farming because it was just too expensive in time and energy to do anything but
cut and burn off the forests (Barillas 1989). Nevertheless, what remained became
a lucrative harvest.

Michigan’s lumbering industry per se is outside the scope of this investi-
gation. The mining companies, however, engaged in timbering and encouraged
others to supply their needs in the mines (a popular saying is that ”the best of
Michigan’s forests are underground”), for auxiliary buildings, and to feed the
many beehive ovens that produced tons of charcoal, fuel for the smelting fur-
naces. Those Operations were subject to many of the same problems and condi-
tions as the central mining operations, including the need to recruit, maintain,

and house a labor force (Gates 1951, Worth 1978, LaFayette 1977, Mueller 1993).

44

Therefore, the boardinghouse data below include a few examples from this

component of the mining industry.

Michigan’e Mining Frentier

Exploitation of Michigan’s ore deposits has twice resulted in the area
becoming an extractive frontier, first for the aboriginal peoples and then for the
industrializing nineteenth-century Americans. In each case, the critical require-
ments of technology, transportation, labor, and perceived value came together in
sufficient degree for successful mining, though the contrasts in sophistication
and scale are obvious. There is no way of knowing how many Indian laborers
toiled in the extraction pits on Isle Royale and the Keweenaw, nor are there
records of every nineteenth-century prospector or mine laborer who drifted
through seeking the copper, iron, silver or gold of Michigan; what is certain is
that whether using hot rocks and hand hammers, or picks, black powder, and
mechanical drills, mining Michigan was a labor-intensive proposition.

As already noted, during the modern phase of mining the field was ini-
tially thrown open to individual prospectors and speculators. Explorers and sur-
veyors also roamed the region. The Michigan-Wisconsin boundary was not
physically established until 1847, a decade after Michigan had achieved state-
hood (with a significant bonus to Wisconsin’s favor because of surveyor error)
(Sell 1990). Surveying and land registration continued for many years as new
regions of wilderness were penetrated. Once the short-lived surge of individual
hopefuls gave way to the organized mining concerns, there was what has often
been called a ”flood of immigration” to the region. The need for laborers was
clear and the opportunities to provide goods and services drew thousands more.

Housing the throngs became critical.

45

Shifting Demegraphice

Federal census records produced each decade record the population
growth at these specific points in time and seem to support the image of a
”flood” of humanity filling the mining region. The boom-bust cycles of extrac-
tive frontiers suggest this conclusion may be too simplistic, however, and the
cosmopolitan frontier model predicts fluctuations of population type and distri-
bution between these decade markers due to a variety of causes, some not even

directly linked to mining. Such was the case.

Table 1. Population of Michigan’s western Upper Peninsula, 1850-1930. (Source of data:
Hawley 1949: 19)

 

Census Year Population
1850 1,233
1860 16,623
1870 35,962
1880 56,506
1890 102,194
1900 164,654
1910 215,791
1920 218,916
1930 204,608

 

The census data are deceiving in that much population fluctuation did
occur between these time markers. Several national situations caused significant
shifts in the region’s population, particularly among the male work force, and
thus influenced housing needs in Michigan’s mining regions.

The Civil War was one such influence. A federal tariff on Spanish copper
in 1863 and war-time inflation allowed Michigan copper prices to reach 55¢ per
pound in 1864 (nearly tripling from 19.1¢ in 1861) at the same time the war was

creating a greater demand for the metal—and hence for miners. Meeting

46

enlistment quotas, however, severely cut into the mining labor force already in
place, resulting in an intense labor shortage. Enlistment bounties up to one
thousand dollars per man further decimated the labor ranks (Thumer 1994,
Alanen 1991a, Murdoch 1943, Lankton and Hyde 1982).

In desperation, the mining companies paid New Englanders to substitute
for Michigan soldiers. They also paid passage for hundreds of Canadian and
Scandinavian would-be miners, but military recruiters aboard ship induced
about thirty of these men to enlist in the war effort before they had even set foot
on American soil; others simply refused to work in the mines and to repay the
company for their fares, so these men, too, were lost to the mining labor force.
Meanwhile, high copper prices stimulated further exploration and opening of
new shafts, drawing yet more workers from the producing mines (Robinson
1938, Mason Introduction 1991, Lankton and Hyde 1982).

The post-war decades exhibited wide economic fluctuation in response to
multiple conflicting factors. The war-inflated price of copper deflated dramati-
cally, causing a major slump in the industry and becoming part of the national
Panic of 1873. The Panic meant less demand for iron and also temporarily
stalled railroad expansion, limiting iron mine development in the Gogebic and
Menominee Ranges. In response to unemployment and an uncertain job out-
look, some Marquette Range miners launched an unsuccessful strike (Magnaghi
1982: 59-63).

On the other hand, the early antebellum period produced numerous tech-
nological developments that improved mining. Application of the Bessemer
and the Hewitt processes to produce steel and the introduction of electricity for
power and light stimulated the demand for iron and copper respectively
(Current, Williams, and Freidel 1975: 450-52). The Michigan mining industry
soon recovered from the post-war slump and then expanded, absorbing the

increasing immigration through the decade of the 18805.

47

The Panic of 1893 cut a broad swath through the economic structure of the
country. In only six months, more than eight thousand companies folded, banks
closed, railroads failed, and international trade dried up. Twenty percent (over a
million) of the nation’s workers were without jobs (Current, Williams, and
Freidel 1975: 531) resulting in widespread relocations and extensive return
migration. Michigan’s iron mining region was particularly hard hit: just at the
time national and international demand for iron disappeared and Michigan’s
iron stockpiles sat unsold, Minnesota’s Mesabi iron range opened, increasing
iron supplies. Iron prices, already 70 percent lower than a decade earlier,
declined further. Layoffs, wage cuts, and mine closings followed (Hatcher 1950).

Michigan social historian Terry S. Reynolds (1994: 28) reports that ”on the
Gogebic Range, mining employed 10,000 in 1892 but only 800 in 1896. On the
Marquette Range . . . employment in iron mines dropped from over 17,000 in
1892 to 3,500 one year later.” On the Menominee Range, The Range-Tribune of
August 3, 1893, reported that except for two supervisors, ”the entire working
force at the Hamilton-Ludington mines [near Iron Mountain] was discharged
last Tuesday evening. The mines will now be permitted to fill with water.”

Even the mighty Chapin Mine, which had fought for months to stay in
operation by way of wage reductions and layoffs of the single men in its employ,
shut down on August 12 for ”sixty days.” When the Chapin did resume (nine
months later) and began assembling a minimal work force, The Range-Tribune
noted that ”quite a number of the oldest and most valued employees have left
the country . . .” (Cummings 1991: 112-17).

The situation prevailed across the mining region. Earlier news accounts
had reported the departure of hundreds of Italians for Naples from the Iron
Mountain region alone (Cummings 1991: 113). Numbers of Gogebic Range min-

ers also sought economic stability elsewhere, including the American West and

48
Mexico (Sell 1990). The population of Marquette County increased only 4 per-
cent during the decade of the 18905 and immigrant population declined (-15 per-
cent), a sharp contrast to earlier decades and highly suggestive of a major out-

migration in response to the economic catastrophe.

 

 

 

 

 

Marquette Population (1850-1910)
50000
40000 ~
soooo -
.6
e
a
,3 20000 ~
10000 -
o _
1340 1860 1880 1900 1920
Census Years

 

 

 

Figure 4. Population of Marquette County, 1850-1910. (Data from Alanen 1991a)

During the 18705, for example, Marquette County’s total population
increased by 44 percent (immigrant population by nearly 56 percent). In the next
ten years the county population exceeded 39,500, a 56 percent increase over the
1880 figure. The decade 1900-1910, following the major depression, again
showed increase of both overall and immigrant population (13.3 percent and 2.6
percent respectively) (US. Census figures in Alanen 1991a).

Actually, it was not just the national Panics that sent miners elsewhere.
Between about 1880 and 1930 an estimated four million European immigrants to

America, including a portion of those who came to Michigan’s mining region,

49

returned home to stay (Wyman 1993: 6). The lure of better opportunity else-
where in North America also kept many miners and others on the move
throughout the second half of the nineteenth century and beyond. Gold, silver,
and copper in the West and Southwest, gold in the Yukon—they all contributed
to the shifting population. Wanderlust also compelled numerous individuals to
relocate frequently. Many personal odysseys included or ended in the American
or Canadian West, so sagas of the region contain records of sojourners who came
from or passed through Michigan. Moreover, the most mobile of the men were
not necessarily single, as the Michigan mining companies assumed. Elliott West
(1987: 184) cites the reaction of one Colorado miner’s wife, representative of
those who ultimately reared their children alone, when her husband announced

yet another relocation:

”Emest, you can move on if you have to, but I’ve dragged two boys and a
houseful of furniture just as far as I’m going to. First it was Ohio, then
Michigan, then the Peninsula, then Minnesota, Michigan again, then
Denver, Weaver, and Creede, and right here I’m going to stay. ”

Also, during World War I and into the 19205, the national shift from rural
areas to industrial cities became a serious loss factor to Michigan’s mining indus-
try. In the U.P. the auto industry, and particularly Henry Ford, became the focus
of competition for the labor pool. Ford’s Upper Peninsula properties included
the Imperial and Blueberry Mines on the Marquette Range; extensive timbering
facilities in L’Anse, Pequaming, and Munising; and manufacturing at Kingsford
and Big Bay (DeLongchamp 1983). The Daily Tribune-Gazette of August 2, 1920,
reported in part that ”A large number who desire to work at the [Iron Mountain
auto] factory are former Iron Mountain residents. The copper country is [also]
well represented in the list of applicants” (Cummings 1991: 257).

Ford’s enterprises were a mixed blessing, as that announcement suggests.

Expanded economic base and even return migration to the iron regions was

50

offset by a severe population drain on the Copper Country. Thousands funneled
from the Keweenaw into Ford employment, particularly ”below” at Flint,
Pontiac, and Detroit. Houghton County’s population decreased by 40 percent
(88,000 to 56,000) between 1910 and 1930. The labor shortage in the copper
region became so pressing that the Federal government, which had instituted
immigration restrictions in 1921, made an exception on behalf of the major cop-
per companies allowing them to import workers from Mexico, Canada,
Cornwall, and Germany—a not altogether successful measure (Lankton 1991:
246)

Local and regional situations also affected population and consequent
housing. For example, a deadly typhoid fever epidemic swept through
Ironwood during the summer of 1893, already a catastrophic year (Sell 1990).
Iron Mountain lost hundreds to bouts with diphtheria, typhoid fever, and scarlet
fever in that same period (Dulan 1978).

Mines, stamping mills, and furnaces started and stopped operations for
various reasons and often with little or no notice. New owners, strong markets,
changed technology, discovery of resources, timely and effective repairs opened
or re-vitalized operations. Conversely, floods, fires, cave-ins, explosions, deple-
tion of resources, inadequate technology, and loss of market could mean shut-
down for a week, a year, or permanently. Populations in mining regions were
continually in flux, usually the workers dancing to nature’s or the companies’
tune, but occasionally the workers became the pipers. Certainly this was true for
Michigan’s mineral region.

Strikes of varying scale had occurred periodically for years throughout
the mining region, but the Copper Strike of 1913-14 was arguably the most trau-
matic. Wages and work hours were issues, but concern focused on the perceived

threat to jobs and safety from the new one-man-drill. Antagonisms escalated as

51

the Western Federation of Miners and other radical factions clashed, exploiting
the situation for their own aims. Hired thugs, imported security men, and even
the National Guard added to the violence and bloodshed (Thumer 1984,
Committee 1913, Records 1914, Lankton and Hyde 1982).

Over fourteen thousand mining employees were affected. In the early
weeks of the fracas, the companies lost about twenty-five hundred of their labor
force to out-migration, many of these their most experienced and dependable
employees. Concentrations of Hungarians, Poles, Italians, Lithuanians, Cornish,
and Finns were among those gone, many permanently. Even those who stayed
contributed to population shifts. When violence became too intense in one area,
men who wanted to work fled to nearby communities, swamping boardinghous—
es there (Thumer 1984: 117).

The out-migration continued past the strike years, creating extreme labor
shortages. Although the companies instituted the more productive one-man-
drill, during the strike and for several years after they struggled to regain pro-
duction levels and to rebuild a stable work force by importing laborers.
Turnover rates escalated: Larry Lankton and Charles Hyde (1982: 130) report
that ”Quincy hired 2,525 new workers in 1917 but enlarged its labor force by
only 90 men.” Loss to the auto plants was by this time augmented by the draft
and enlistment for World War I (Lankton and Hyde 1982, Thumer 1994, Jamison
1967)

Although countless other population shifts, great and small, occurred
through the century-plus of mining activity, it should be clear from the examples
above that from its inception the mining industry in Michigan was highly erratic,
subject to mad swings between boom and bust and numerous fluctuations
between. A5 Steffen’s (1980) and Hardesty’s (1985) models argue and the exam-

ples above illustrate, this was a cosmopolitan, industrial frontier closely tied to

52

its national and international markets and outside funding, highly dependent
upon technology, transportation, and labor.

Moreover, unlike the agrarian pioneers who claimed or bought a parcel of
land and built a cabin or sod house upon it to establish their own private
domain, mining industry workers entered a corporate structure of not only man-
agers and company policies, but also of a physical plant that simultaneously
needed to be permanent yet transitory, substantial but ephemeral. Thus, devel-
opments such as Ford’s five-dollar-a-day wage or the Civil War influenced
whether or not a carpenter would be ordered to construct another boarding-
house on Quincy Hill.

Housing represented a physical need of the workers and therefore a nec-
essary component of the physical plant established by the mining companies,
but it also constituted a corporate tool, a means by which the company could
manipulate its work force. How all this played out, particularly in regard to the
boardinghouses, will be elaborated in subsequent chapters. However, one addi-

tional bit of analysis of the populations served by that housing is needed first.

Analysis ef Pepulation Growth Rates

So far this section has addressed quantity of population and numbers of
workers. Besides questions of how mam/.7, other considerations of the population
are also intrinsic to the issue of housing, specifically who? and who, when? What
was the distribution of the population by ethnic identity, gender, marital/ family
situation, and age at critical points in regional development?

Initially, the mining regions were wilderness tracts with a scattering of
trappers, traders, fishermen, and the like. That situation changed with the Open-
ing of the mining region, but not as ”overnight” as common belief suggests.

Months, even years, often elapsed between initial discovery of ore bodies and

53

their full-scale exploitation. Building and mining sites needed to be identified,
ore samples taken and evaluated, investors secured and corporations formed,
supplies purchased and transported, and appropriately skilled personnel added
to the team before site construction could even begin. Moreover, when all those
criteria could be met, lack of effective transportation links such as railroads
could stall development for decades. Ultimately, however, land clearing, build-
ing, and small-scale operations followed. Therefore, in the earliest stage of a
region’s development, population was small and grew slowly.

Among the first serious explorations on the Keweenaw was that of the
Eagle Harbor Mining Company, begun in 1845. That summer Superintendent
Thomas Sprague and a handful of miners sank five pits along one vein and
extracted eight thousand pounds of copper ore. Twelve men worked with
Sprague in 1846 (Monette 1977). By November, five families, including seven
children under age twelve, were residents. Total population was thirty-three,
among them eight miners and additional mining employees. During the follow-
ing summer they produced thirty-eight tons of ore from one pit, including five
tons of native copper (Clarke 1975b).

By 1850 the entire population of Houghton County (which included what
later was set off as Keweenaw County) amounted to only 708 individuals: ”515
white males, 1 black male, and 192 females” (Thumer 1994: 63). Four years later
the population had quadrupled, evidence of the copper boom taking hold.

Marquette was the center of the first iron production. During the five
years following Burt’s discovery Of the ”mountain of iron” near Teal Lake, two
iron mining companies organized, a sawmill was set up to produce lumber and
timbers for mine structures, the necessary charcoal-making operation had been
established, ore was extracted and processed at two forges (one at nearby Carp

River), and the bloom iron was laboriously hauled by oxen and horses through

54

the woods to the Lake Superior shore to be shipped from the newly-founded
port of Marquette. Yet the Federal Census of 1850 records only 136 people in the
entire county (in Alanen 1991a). At least 110 of these people were men
employed by the mining companies (LaFayette 1990: 4, 5).

Populations began to inch upward over the next few years (see figure 4)
until in 1860 Marquette County contained 2,821 people. The boom followed:
14,235 residents in 1870 (Census data in Alanen 1991a). Such expansion contin-

ued until, as noted previously, the economically disastrous decade of the 18905.

Gender Distribution

The gender distribution of these people, however, is as significant as their
numbers. Of the handful of females in Marquette in 1850 were Olive Harlow,
her young daughter Ellen, and her mother Martha Bacon. They comprised the
family of Amos Harlow, head of the Marquette Iron Mining Company, one of
two pioneer companies in the area (Lill 1992, Harlow 1849). Mining was a man’s
world, so females and the family unit were rare in the early settlements. An
early surveyor and mine manager on the Keweenaw, John H. Forster, mused,
”’The sight of a bit of calico in those days was more thrilling than the flashing of
banners’” (Thumer 1994: 49). Often only the families of company management
accompanied the men into the wilderness. The general work force was male,
largely transient, and unencumbered by family.

Over time, the male: female ratios approached parity, but very slowly. For
example, Alanen (1991a) has calculated that in Marquette County in 1870 the
ratio was 100: 68 and a decade later it had risen slightly to 100: 72. These figures
are misleading, however, for gauging the male work force or the approximate
numbers of families, since they include an increasing number of children whose

nearly equal gender ratio off-sets the significantly wider disparity in adult ratio.

55

Factoring out those under seventeen, the adult gender ratio is nearer 100: 60 for
1880. Clearly, even though the female (and family) component of the population

rose over time, men remained predominant in the mining regions.

Age Distribution
This was also a young population. Of the 708 people in Houghton/
Keweenaw County in 1850, 441 (over 62 percent) were between twenty and forty
and an additional 150 were children up to age fifteen. One Welsh girl, sixteen

II!

when she arrived in 1866, would later remark, there were no grey heads in
Calumet for the first few years’” (Thumer 1994: 63, 94). Lankton (1991: 111)
reports that of the nineteen hundred copper mining fatalities from the beginning
of the industry in the 18405 to its end in the 19605, ”the average age of death was
34, and the single most frequent age of death was just 21. Men aged 18 to 29
accounted for 41 percent of all deaths.”

Iron regions showed the same trends. Data in the 1888-89 Annual Report of
the Inspector of Mines reveal that the average age of men killed in Gogebic
County mines during the twelve months beginning September 1, 1888, was only
twenty-nine. Most frequent age at death was twenty-one. Fewer than one-third

of the fatalities were married, but all those who left widows also had children

(Sell 1990).

Marital Status
Significantly, large numbers of the mining companies’ workers were ”sin-
gle” men, both unmarried and those married men traveling in advance of their
families. Dickinson County, settled in the 18705, shows a similar growth pattern
to Marquette (above). The 1880 population was 5105, concentrated in two town-
ships where the mines were operating. By 1894, with seven townships and two

cities, the county contained 14,700 residents. Although the development of cities

56

suggests a widening family base in the population, unmarried males outnum-
bered unmarried females nearly 3:2. Married men also exceeded married
women (2,826 to 2,599). Only in widowhood did the female numbers rise above
the male (188 and 122 respectively).

In this same census data the gender disparity becomes noticeable above
age fifteen and peaks in the 30-35 age group, where the gender ratio is nearly 2:1.
What this means is that in this one county alone (and at a time when the Panic of
1893 continued to be felt), there still were nearly twenty-five hundred single
male adults, each requiring housing, but unlikely to provide it for himself.
These men were served by the boarding system.

The numbers of single, transient male workers surged and subsided,
responding to both ”push” and ”pull factors” inducing them to migrate to the
mining region, to relocate within it, or to leave it for better opportunity. For

instance, when the copper mining companies recruited large emergency crews

 

Dickinson County Population (1894)

 

0-1 iIIIIIIIIIIIIII
1_s |IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-III
5_10 lIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-IIIIIIIIll
IO-IS IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIll
IS'ZO IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
20-25 rIIIIIII-IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

2 5-30 IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
I Males
[I] Females

30_35 IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Age Range

35_40 lIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

4o_45 IIIIIIIIIIII

45-50 IIIIIIIII
50'60 ill-IIIII
60'70 I...-
70-80 "

80-90

I r

I
O 200

 

 

T

I V I V I U ' U
400 600 800 1000 1200

 

 

 

Figure 5. Dickinson County population by gender and age, 1894. (Data from Cummings 1990)

57

such as during the Civil War and again in the 19105 and 205, they preferred to
pay passage for workers, not families. Single men were accepted as highly
mobile in an industry dependent upon flexibility. Calumet and Hecla president
James MacNaughton called them ”’rolling stones’” (Thumer 1994: 207). Housing
them, however, especially when significant numbers arrived simultaneously, cre-
ated pressure on the companies and communities. Boardinghouses became a
solution (Mann 1913, Lankton and Hyde 1982).

Boarding became the solution for numerous others as well, as the rapid
expansion of the frontier communities put any form of housing at a premium.
Families doubled up, people lived in whatever space or type of shelter they
could find (reportedly even in railroad boxcars) waiting for the housing supply

to catch up with demand. Three (or more) to a bed was not uncommon.

Ethnicity

Ethnicity of the work force also played an important role in housing and
overall settlement patterns. The traditional differentiation between ”old immi-
grants” (those groups represented in the early stages of national settlement,
largely northern and western Europeans and Canadians), and ”new immigrants”
(primarily central and eastern Europeans and Asians who dominated emigres
from the 18905 onward) reveal distinct patterns of ethnic settlement in
Michigan’s mining region.

In all regions, American-born and the Cornish dominated in the early
stages of development. As noted above, the Cornish had the technical and prac-
tical knowledge required in the mines, so they became the backbone of the
industry in the field, particularly as foremen and field engineers but also as
laborers. Germans, Canadians, Irish, and Italians comprised the rest of the early
immigrant mix. The 1850 census of Marquette County, for example, shows only

thirty-two foreign-born residents and four of the five major ethnic groups (no

58

Italians yet) (Alanen 1991a). Similarly, the early copper regions were dominated
by the Cornish, followed by English and French Canadians (Mason 1991,
Thumer 1994, Lankton and Hyde 1982).

By 1860, range of the population mix widened, but it was still dominated
by people from Britain, Canada, Ireland, and Germany. Regional differentiation
becomes obvious by 1870. Direct importation of Swedes and Norwegians into
the Copper Country during the Civil War ironically introduced relatively few
Scandinavians to that region, nor did those groups ever have large representa-
tion there. Late in the decade, however, significant numbers of Swedes,
Norwegians, and Danes settled in Marquette County (Alanen 1991a).

The Finnish immigration to the mining region, especially to the Copper
Country, began as a trickle in the 18705 and had become a virtual flood by 1900
(nearly 14,000 in the Upper Peninsula, 7,241 in Houghton County alone)
(Thumer 1994: 141).

The late 18705 and 18805 saw the first developments on the Gogebic and
Menominee Ranges, coincidental with the beginning of the ”new immigration”
movement. Whereas the northern regions of the peninsula acquired their ethnic
mix gradually, these southern and western regions opened to settlement at the
very time that the waves of central and eastern Europeans began hitting the
American shores. Heavier surges of Italians were joined by Greeks, Lithuanians,
Slavs, Poles, Russians, and more.

According to the 1891-92 Annual Report of the Inspector of Mines, Gogebic
County employed 4,654 men in its eighteen producing mines after less than a
decade of development. Fatal mine accidents in that twelve-month period
claimed men of at least ten nationalities: American (2), English (3), Irish (1),
Cornish (1), Swede (5), Finn (6), Bohemian (1), Italian (3), Austrian (1), Pole (2),
no data (1) (Sell 1990).

59

Dickinson County’s 1894 state census lists residents from twenty-one spe-
cific countries including China, Australia, and the West Indies plus two ambigu-
ous categories: ”Europe” and ”Other and unknown countries.” Italians (870)
were outnumbered only by Swedes (2,036) and English (1,176). Austria (667),
Germany (442), and Russia (386) were also heavily represented (Cummings
1991: 295).

By 1910, Finns were the dominant ethnic group in Marquette County and
on the Keweenaw, and Italians had become the fifth-largest group in Marquette
(Alanen 1991a). Frantic recruitment efforts by the copper companies during the
strike of 1913-14 tapped the ”new immigrant” labor pool. ”More than thirty
nationalities were represented among the men hired by Calumet and Hecla,
some from ethnic groups never before counted in the Keweenaw mix: Russians,
Armenians, Rumanians, Slovenians, . . .” (Thumer 1994: 207). Most of these
”new immigrant” groups initially were represented by unskilled laborers, single
men who became boarders.

During these decades of population growth from intense immigration,
ethnic separation also became evident from the household to the regional level.
It was reflected in occupation and social condition and emphasized by cultural
differences, particularly language, as Hardesty (1985) predicts. Therefore, who?
and who, when? need also to be considered in connection with who, when, and
where?

All of these factors—numbers, gender, age, marital condition, ethnicity—
as well as outside factors such as demand and price of the product and job
opportunities in and outside the industry had their effect on labor and its conse-
quent housing. Boarding became a prevalent, and often the only available, hous-
ing option for residents in the mining district. It was, to use Hardesty’s term, an

”imported environment” with long roots in American society.

CHAPTER 3

BOARDINGHOUSES AS A FOCUS OF INVESTIGATION/
THE BOARDINGHOUSE AS AN INSTITUTION

From earliest colonial days to the first decades of the twentieth century,
boardinghouses were an integral part of American society. They ranged from
the simplest forms of shelter (tents, cabins, simple frame houses) for a few peo-
ple, to huge brick or frame structures housing hundreds. Literally they were bed
and board establishments. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) acknowledges
use of the word ”boardinghouse” from the 16th century as a lodging place where
the boarder receives meals as one of the family for a price. The ”board” in
boardinghouse derives from the precursor to the dining table, a wide board on
trestles. Thus ”board” eventually came to mean access to the dining board, or
meals provided (Hawke 1988).

Boarding was institutionalized into American culture along with count-
less other European influences. Withold Rubczynski (1986) traces the practice
back to medieval Europe. While some European boardinghouses were quite
comfortable, even posh, others were known for the rudeness of the accommoda-
tions, the landlords / ladies and the boarders. Immigrant tales often include ship-
board horrors, but John Kennedy (1964:5) makes the point that for many the pri-
vation began before ever boarding ships: while waiting for passage from
European ports, colonists and later immigrants endured cheap, crowded accom-
modation ”near the quays, sleeping on straw in small, dark rooms, sometimes as

many as forty in a room twelve by fifteen feet.”

60

61

Boardinghouses served every stratum of the population from the ill and
indigent to the wealthiest and most genteel. Not coincidentally, the heyday of
the American boardinghouse (1820-1920) is also the period of greatest immigra-
tion into the developing United States. What emerged as fashionable housing in
Boston, New Orleans, and San Francisco soon extended into frontier company
towns. Every locale from coastal urban centers, to small towns, to isolated min-
ing locations included boarding establishments. According to Brett Howard
(1982:25), over the course of that hundred years, close to 70 percent Of the
American population directly experienced boardinghouse life.

An omnipresent feature of both the physical and the cultural American
landscape, many boardinghouses catered to specific clientele. Besides serving
the wealthy or socially prominent, select boardinghouses offered seasonal
accommodation in resort areas or operated in conjunction with health spas.
Others housed employees in specific occupations such as teaching, millinery, or
entertainment. As the nation developed industrially and exploited its natural
resources, boardinghouses became havens for displaced labor, both the local
rural folk and the millions of immigrants, drawn to mills and mines far from
their original homes. Thus, while boardinghouses were a common housing
Option in America’s older and more settled cities and towns, they also became an
ubiquitous link in the development of America’s frontiers.

Additionally, the boardinghouse was more than just a structure. It was a
prevalent social institution, center of complex economic, social, and cultural
dynamics. Because it was so endemic to American life, the boardinghouse
refracted as a cultural lens through which American society projected its values
and stereotypes and through which we can now look back.

This study takes just such a look. The national boardinghouse era coin-

cides with and is intimately tied to the development of northern Michigan’s

62

mining industry. Although that fact is marginally acknowledged in numerous
examinations of the growth of the region and its industry (e. g., Lankton and
Hyde 1982, Alanen 1991b, 1979, Reynolds 1994), scholarship has not yet centered
attention on the mining region boardinghouses, thereby leaving many avenues
of social and cultural investigation unexplored. What follows begins that explo-
ration.

Beardingheuse Life in Popular Literature
and Popular Histogy

American popular culture demonstrates the level of familiarity the board-
inghouse experience held in general society. Popular literature of the past centu-
ry-and-a-half, frequently distributed to mass readership as short stories and seri-
alized novels in newspapers and magazines, abounds with examples of (primari-
ly urban) boardinghouse life.

Novelists and short story writers draw on the boardinghouse in various
ways. Some exploit the boardinghouse as a venue to juxtapose a motley variety
of (occasionally) improbable characters. Examples include William Trevor’s 1965
novel The Boardinghouse and earlier short story collections by Helen Green and A.
E. Phillpotts. Green presents fifty-six stories under the collective title At the
Actor’s Boardinghouse, and Other Stories (1906) followed by the somewhat less
ambitious sequel Maison de Shine: More Stories of the Actor’s Boardinghouse (1908).
Phillpotts assembles twenty-three stories, each devoted to a particular boarder,
under the umbrella title Lodgers in London (1928).

Other writers incorporate the boardinghouse into the story to signal occu-
pation, to reinforce class distinction, to heighten ethnicity, or to blend it so con-
vincingly into the background that it is almost overlooked—a testament to its
ubiquity. For American writers Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman (”The Hall

Bedroom”) and Michigan talespinner Cully Gage (”The Haunted Whorehouse”),

63

for instance, boardinghouses can even be the settings for good ghost stories.

Many examples of American regional literature use the boardinghouse.
The American Western as genre traditionally capitalizes on the wide open range
and the rough-and-tumble saloon for its settings, but frequently—at least in the
background—also includes some version of the ”Widder Brown’s
Boardin’house” where calico curtains and homemade pie represent the tamer
culture of the far-away East embodied by the ”Widder Brown” herself. (For a
discussion of the female image in the West, see White 1991a.)

Midwestern boardinghouses are among the settings and background in
numerous late nineteenth- and turn-Of-the-century works as both population
and literary foci shifted away from the East Coast and toward the Mississippi.
Works of George Ade (1961), such as his witty fable ”The Regular Kind of a Place
and the Usual Way It Turned Out” with its wry moral ”nothing ever happens in
a boardinghouse,” Laura Ingles Wilder’s Little House books, and Mark Twain’s
nostalgic comparisons of midwestern boardinghouse life against his travel expe-
riences illustrate the trend.

Around the turn of the century another genre of fiction, the immigrant
novel (and short story), began to appear and find wide readership. Authors
such as Abraham Cahan and Anzia Yezierska tell story after story of poor immi-
grants crammed into the Jewish ghetto of New York and their struggles to sur-
vive. These New York tenements were not boardinghouses, but the boarder as
well as the boardinghouse was, as Wright (1981:125) so precisely notes, ”a fact of
family life.” Yezierska explores the implications of taking in boarders in The
Bread Givers (1975): a poor family of Russian Jews must decide between designat-
ing a bedroom of their cramped flat for study of the Torah or renting it out for
economic survival.

Besides boarding, tenement living and lodging also were facts of life for

64

many urbanites by the turn of the century and the significant differences in the
various forms of accommodation did not go unnoticed. A subtle but effective
choice made by popular writer O. Henry (William Sidney Porter) places his
alienated and isolated New Yorkers in lodging houses rather than boardinghous-
es, heightening their isolation by cutting his characters off from the opportunities
for social interchange inherent at the boardinghouse ”board.” These stories
appeared in his weekly humorous paper Rolling Stones and his collected works,
notably The Four Million (1906).

Residents of some of the boardinghouses produced their own literature:
The Lowell Offering, an independent magazine of the 18405 that proclaimed itself

III

”a repository of original articles, written by ’factory girls, includes stories,
poems, character sketches and more—frequently inspired by the authors’ lives in
the cotton mill boardinghouses of Lowell, Massachusetts (Eisler 1977). Around
the turn of the century, residents of the Firm boardinghouses of the Pacific
Northwest turned out a short-lived but prodigious flood of poems, plays, and
novels celebrating their Americanization in and through the boardinghouse.
”Every good play, good novel and good poem started in a boardinghouse and
ended at the altar” (Mattila 1972: 5).

Two generations later and in another geographical area is John Cheever’s
story ”Washington Boardinghouse” (Way Some People Live 1943). Folklorist
Richard M. Dorson (1952) gathered traditional tales told in the Upper Peninsula
of Michigan from boardinghouse residents there. C. G. Knoblock turned his
many years of experiences working in the mining region into the popular vol-
ume Above Below: Tales and Folklore of the Fabulous Upper Peninsula of Michigan
(1951). ”Hattie’s Boardinghouse” is the tale of an obstreperous boardinghouse

keeper, the local curmudgeon, and their good-natured battles. Michigan novelist

Joan Lindau explores the rich relationship between a midwestern girl coming of

65

age and her wise neighbor in Mrs. Cooper ’5 Boardinghouse (1980). More recent
still is Toni Cade’s ”Madame Bai and the Taking of Stone Mountain” (Homeplaces
1992), a boardinghouse story set in the modern American South.

Nor is it just American boardinghouses that figure in popular entertain-
ment for Americans. One of the most recognized literary boardinghouse
addresses is 221B Baker Street, London, home to not only a clever detective and
his physician-assistant / biographer, but also the solicitous and redoubtable
housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson (see Pritchard 1951 for character critique). Trevor and
Phillpotts also house their characters in London boardinghouses, while Charles
Dickens scatters his victims to boardinghouses across the British industrial land-
scape. Katherine Mansfield employs European boardinghouses as settings for
several of her works: ”Pension Séguin” (1924) in France and a collection titled In
a German Pension (1926). In Dubliners (1926), James Joyce presents a boarder
maneuvered into marriage to the landlady’s daughter.

American popular history, including legend and lore of the famous and
notorious, has also been linked to boardinghouses. Wallis Simpson’s ”Aunt
Bessie” was proprietress of a fashionable boardinghouse in Baltimore. Boston
culinary queen Fannie Farmer developed her expertise in the kitchen of the
Farmer family’s boardinghouse (Howard 1982), and her recipe book became an
American standard. Annually tens of thousands of visitors from around the
world visit the Sarah Jordan boardinghouse, now at Greenfield Village in
Dearbom, Michigan. This modest structure housed Thomas Edison’s research
staff at Menlo Park, New Jersey.

Among the notorious associated with boardinghouses is Mary Surratt,
executed as a conspirator in Lincoln’s assassination, the plot allegedly contrived
in her establishment. James Earl Ray reportedly lived in several boardinghouses

in Birmingham, Memphis, and Toronto while he planned the assassination of

66

Martin Luther King, Jr., which he then carried out from the Memphis boarding-
house where he was residing on April 5, 1968.

Besides swelling local police and court records, managers and residents of
boardinghouses of ill-repute have been known to engender scandalous tales—
and even occasional folk heroes. For example, in a twist on the usual miners-in-
the-bawdy-house story, in 1880, the men of Fayette, Michigan, became local
heroes when they stormed a nearby saloon / brothel and freed a young woman

involuntarily drafted into the trade (LaFayette 1977: 45).

B ardin h use in the mic
The comic pages of American newspapers provide yet more evidence of
the ubiquitous boardinghouse in American life and some of the stereotypes it
spawned. Cartoonist Gene Ahem created Our Boardinghouse in September, 1921,
and three months later introduced the character that would become the mainstay
of the strip, the harumphing braggart, Major Hoople. Hoople and his wife
Martha, the formidable landlady of the boardinghouse (”her ’no’ . . . was, as she

I”
!

put it, ’as final as a cobra’s bite ) (Goulart 1990) maintained the house and pro-
vided the central plot themes involving a string of assorted bachelor tenants
(Ahem 1921-36). The comic was longer-lasting than the lifestyle it portrayed:
boardinghouses were already in decline in the 205; the comic was last published
in 1981.

A similar boardinghouse-based comic was Room and Board, created in 1928
by Sal Bostwick but drawn by Ahem after Bostwick’s death. Fizzbeak Inn, man-
aged by the portly Mrs. Fizzbeak and inhabited by young fellows with humor-
ous courtship woes, was the original setting. Ahem’s format involved another

diverse band Of boarders at Odds with the landlady and her windbag husband,

in this case a Judge Puffle. Though not as successful as Our Boardinghouse, Room

67

and Board ran to 1953 (Goulart1990). Both undoubtedly touched the memories
as well as the funnybones of many Americans who had themselves lived for
some time in a boardinghouse.

Yet a third popular comic from the 205 is Moon Mullins, whose boorish
central character ”moved permanently into a boardinghouse run by a scrawny,
vain spinster named Emmy Schmaltz, and from then on that became the base of

Operations of the strip” (Goulart 1990).

Scholarly Boardingheuse Studies

Interest in boardinghouses and boardinghouse life transcends the level of
popular culture, however. Scholarly examinations of boardinghouses as physical
or cultural elements of their environment have included examples in England,
Canada, and Australia as well as America. Development and influence of the
American boardinghouse came under scrutiny primarily at the turn of the centu-
ry, when the institution was in decline and social reform on the rise, and again in
recent decades under the spur of social and labor history and gender and family
studies. Scholarship ranges widely across the disciplines including industrial
history, urban planning and cultural geography, historical and industrial archae-
ology, material culture, family history and sociology, history of science and tech-
nology, immigrant studies, economics, labor history, art and architectural history,
diet and health, and women’s studies. A comprehensive bibliography of materi-
als directly and collaterally related to boardinghouses would constitute a volume
much larger than the one at hand. A sampling of works directly relevant to this
boardinghouse project, however, indicates in part the range and direction of this
scholarship.

A number of works consider boardinghouses within the larger context Of

company housing. Morris Knowles’ Industrial Housing (1920) derives from

68

World War I era federal demographic studies and housing guidelines. A com-
plementary study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (Magnusson 1920) describes
communities and facilities and tabulates numbers of housing units and types in
the various urban and remote industrial regions in post-war America. In consid-
ering the linkage between workplace and employee housing as a community-
building dynamic, James Vance (1966) traces the formation of mill towns in
England and New England.

The Waltham system and the Lowell boardinghouses have generated con-
siderable attention. Examples of studies which link the architectural and cultur-
al dimensions include Horwitz’s (1973) consideration of residents’ perceptions of
”house” versus ”home” and the prodigious Interdisciplinary Investigations of the
Boot Mills, Lowell, Massachusetts (Beaudry and Mrozowski, eds.) undertaken by
the National Park Service. Of particular interest are volume 1, Life at the Boarding
Houses: A Preliminary Report (1987) and volume 3, The Boardinghouse System as a
Way of Life (1989).

Additional studies that place the boardinghouse into the context of com-
pany housing include James B. Allen’s The Company Town in the American West
(1983) and Randall Rohe’s 1985 study ”Lumber Company Towns in Wisconsin.”
Both illustrate the regional approach, whereas James S. Garner (1992) takes a
global view of both company towns and boardinghouses with an investigation
that includes the Americas (South and North), Europe and Australia. His con-
sideration of company housing in the US. includes the Western mining regions
and the whole of New England, not just Lowell.

The ”mill girls” have generated considerable interest, but so too have
women associated with boardinghouses in other capacities. Leonore Davidoff
(1979) and Joan Jensen (1980) discuss the economics of landladies operating

boardinghouses in England and America, respectively. Margaret Byington’s

69

1908 case-study of Homestead, Pennsylvania, includes important data on board-
inghouse family economics. Urban female boarders also provide the focus of
studies, some government-sponsored with an eye to reform such as Mary S.
Ferguson (1898) and Girls Housing Council of San Francisco (1927). In contrast,
Lisa M. Fine (1986) takes an historical look at early twentieth-century women
residents in one of Chicago’s pOpular Eleanor Association residences.

Family dynamics in a boarding household have also received attention.
Geoffrey Guest (1989) details ”Boarding of the Dependent Poor in Colonial
America.” Stuart M. Blumin (1975) looks at families with boarders in upper
New York. An often-cited article in family studies as well as boardinghouse
research is ”Urbanization and the Malleable Household: An Examination of
Boarding and Lodging in American Families” (Hareven and Model] 1973).
Related are considerations of ethnic as well as family dynamics, such as Walter
Matilla’s 1972 study of collective housing among the Firms and A. Ross
McCormack’s look at Canadian boardinghouse acculturation networks (1984).

The few discussions devoted to Michigan boardinghouses derive largely
from personal experience in a specific house or locale in the copper (Nicholls
1968), lumber (Bourke 1982), or iron regions (Knuth 1992). Preliminary reports
of archaeological work at an iron smelting site include data on boarding facilities
there (Martin 1993, 1994). One very useful but narrowly-focused study is Sarah
McNear’s (1978) ”Quincy Mining Company: Housing and Community Services,
c. 1860-1931,” produced as part of a larger project of the Historic American
Engineering Record (HAER).

During the reform mania of the turn of the century, housing other than
the idealized nuclear single-family/ single dwelling arrangement came under
close scrutiny and criticism. Urban boardinghouses, associated in the public

mind with overcrowding, immigrants, and decaying morality, acquired a

7O

disreputable status mitigated only slightly by the even less desirable alternatives
of lodging and rooming houses, residential hotels, and other and sundry forms
of ”cheap furnished rooms.” Single-city examinations of boardinghouse func-
tion and decline include Franklin K. Fretz (1912) on Philadelphia and Fred R.
Johnson (1910) on Minneapolis. The most comprehensive is The Lodging House
Problem in Boston (Wolfe 1906), yet another contemporary study of the urban situ-
ation now documented from a wider and more current perspective in Paul
Erling Groth’s 1983 dissertation ”Forbidden Housing: The Evolution and
Exclusion of Hotels, Boarding Houses, Rooming Houses, and Lodging Houses in
American Cities, 1880-1930.”

Other important recent explorations into the evolution of the urban
boardinghouse as social adaptation include Peel (1986) for America and Richard
Harris (1992) for Canada, particularly Toronto. Richard Pillsbury (1990) turns his
attention to the ”board,” tracing the evolution of the American restaurant from
the kitchens and dining rooms of boardinghouses. Avoiding both indictment
and apology, Wright (1981) focuses on housing, including the boardinghouse, as
reflection and instrument of American ideology, and Howard (1982) demon-
strates through statistics and example the extent of ”The Boardinghouse Reach.”

From just this short listing it should be clear that boardinghouses served
multiple and varied functions, that these and the social reaction toward them
changed with time, and that the boardinghouses themselves were of various
types. Thus the term ”boardinghouse” is slippery, meaning something in one
time and place, something quite different in another. To further complicate the
issue, various and distinct housing terminology such as ”lodging house,”

II II'

tavern, Inn,” and ”hotel” has been used inter-

]! II II II

”boardinghouse, tenement,
changeably often enough in community directories, news accounts, source

indices, and even by proprietors to demand very careful attention by the

71

researcher. Both the buildings and the social institution included in this study
conform to the OED definition of boardinghouse, based upon all available evi-
dence. Nevertheless, all the variety of examples available suggest the necessity
of organizing them to facilitate study. One way to categorize boardinghouses is
by their function and the nature of their residents. Doing so also produces a

loose chronology of types.

Celenial Beardingheuses as ”Dumping gireunds”
for the Aged, Ill, and Unwanted

Besides accommodating friends and extended family, American colonial
households regularly boarded the infirm and destitute. According to Guest
( 1989), rather than an example of Christian charity, the practice was reluctantly
undertaken by host families and only with considerable financial inducement
from the public coffers.

Community expectations of the time dictated that aged, ill, and disabled
slaves or live-in employees were the social and economic responsibility of their
masters / employers. Likewise, families were expected to maintain their own
poor and elderly relations. Those proportionately few who needed care and eco-
nomic relief but had no family became the responsibility of the community at
large. Until the numbers of such people justified establishing public institutions,
they received help in one of two ways. If they remained in their own homes, the
county court ordered home relief ranging from remittance of taxes to meager
pensions; those who needed physical care as well were boarded at community
expense, generally in middle class or wealthy homes.

Guest makes three significant observations about this system relevant to
the study at hand. First, the boarding arrangement was usually not voluntarily
undertaken by the householder, but court ordered. When circumstances

demanded immediate relief for an individual between court sessions, private

72

arrangements could be made but were predicated on the householder’s expecta-
tion that the court would formalize the arrangement and make payment.

Second, ”despite the fact that the needs of the county pensioners, many of
whom were also incapacitated, were not significantly different from the needs of
the paupers who were boarded, householders who kept paupers received sub-
stantially greater allowances.” This greater allowance was necessary to induce
householders to take on the onerous demands of this boarding arrangement.
Court records used by Guest suggest some of the boarded paupers were mental-
ly unstable, even dangerous. Their physical conditions ranged from loss of sight,
hearing, and speech to total incontinence and included ”rotting flesh” (suggest-
ing anything from bedsores to gangrene) and illnesses sometimes transmitted
(even fatally) to members of the host family. It seems no amount of payment
was enough for some householders who ejected their boarders after a few
months: numerous paupers were relocated four or five times before they suc-
cumbed, and stays of a year in one place were rare.

Third, the numbers of potential boarders were very small (perhaps only
two or three individuals per community) and that small population was the rea-
son for the dispersed boarding arrangement rather than a community-financed
central care facility.

Thus, in the colonial case, boarding the unrelated dependent poor was a
court-administered extension of family or employer responsibility toward the
indigent and infirm. Its perceived necessity was linked to small numbers of can-
didates for boarding. Host families, already economically stable, clearly did not
seek what they considered a distasteful social obligation for the payment and, in
fact, often ejected a boarder and then refused to ever take another. Rising popu-
lation density naturally led to increased numbers of community dependents, the
accommodation of which in poor houses and the like ended the demand for this

form of boardinghouse.

73

Homes fer the Llrban Genteel

Middle class urban populations of the early nineteenth century expanded
both in numbers and social expectations. High social status and genteel living
became the goals of many urbanites. Ironically against the earlier colonial situa-
tion, these later boardinghouses provided a means for many of the aspiring to
live the ”good life.”

Boardinghouses already existed in American cities to house workers.
Wright (1981:37) notes, however, that ”by the 18305, boardinghouse life had
become rather prevalent among well-to-do young men and women in American
cities.” Young married couples, especially, enjoyed boarding in posh surround-
ings without the costs and responsibilities of setting up their own households,
hiring servants, etc.

Unmarried gentlemen also found the fashionable urban boardinghouse an
attractive housing alternative. For the young dandy, it offered independence
from his parents but not from family services in a pleasant social context.
Retired gentlemen, bachelors, or widowers appreciated the family comforts and
companionship of the boardinghouse without the domestic demands. For prop-
er unmarried women living away from the family, the boardinghouse offered a
respectable and home-like alternative. It would be this particular quality of the
genteel urban boardinghouse, its ability to offer the pleasant side of domesticity
without the demands of householding, that fed the reformers’ cries against this

form of housing (Wolfe 1906, Wright 1981, Groth 1983).

chupatienal Z Seasenal Havens

While boardinghouses offered an attractive alternative form of home to
the well-to-do urbanites, they served many more residents of the lower and mid-

dle classes as havens, as homes-away-from home. For instance, health-conscious

74

folk flocked to spas and resorts and tuberculosis patients were frequently trun-
dled off to pest houses, taking up temporary but often long-term residence in
boardinghouses dedicated to their accommodation. In other instances, the lure
of jobs in far-off locations or occupations that demanded periodic relocation
brought people more and more to seek out boardinghouses as home-like havens.

As the well-documented Waltham ”experiment” of the 18305-405 demon-
strated, boardinghouses and American labor were to become symbiotic. Certain
situations and conditions made it advantageous or even necessary that compa-
nies house their workers. In other situations, workers had a choice of accommo-
dations, but boarding provided distinct advantages, particularly to individuals
relocating for a specific occupation or couples whose occupation kept them on
the move (stage performers, for instance).

Economy and efficiency were obvious inducements to boarding. Sharing
a house eliminated the need for expensive duplication of household goods, and
the household chores shifted to the housekeeper. Companionship, as opposed to
the anonymity of hotel residence, was another apparent plus. Shared experi-
ences on the job provided a bond between residents. In 1805, for example, the
New York City directory designated 10 percent (twenty-six) of its boarding
establishments as specifically ”sailor” boardinghouses (Pillsbury 1990: 20).

Moreover, if all the boarders worked for the same employer, or at least in
the same occupation, they would likely have a common and consistent schedule,
facilitating the regular mealtimes and other chore schedules necessary for effi-
cient boardinghouse management. Hence, numerous boardinghouses became
occupation-specific; those operated by employers were necessarily so.

Many also were gender-specific. Often the traditional link between occu-
pation and gender made the determination. Facilities for teachers or clerical

workers, who could be either gender, generally took in either men or women,

75

but not both. Boardinghouses designated for milliners housed women. Other
houses accommodated only shop or mill girls. Boardinghouses designated for
women generally also served public morals. House managers at Lowell, for
instance, were expected to be as conscientious toward restricting the activities
and acquaintances of their residents as they were toward minding the kitchen
and the laundry (Wright 1981, Eisler 1977, Beaudry and Mrozowski 1987, 1989).
Nearly a century later, the Eleanor Clubs of Chicago functioned as half-way
houses to integrate single young women living away from their families safely
and respectably into the less-restrictive (and therefore more potentially danger-
ous) urban white-collar business world (Fine 1986).

Male-only boardinghouses also occurred in various occupational contexts.
Small-scale design or manufacturing operations frequently centered around a
tradesman and his apprentices, whom he housed. Edison’s research team at the
Jordan boardinghouse comprised an all-male enclave. Centers of mining and
heavy manufacturing, dominated by large male work forces, spawned dense
concentrations of male-only boardinghouses.

Industrialization and concomitant immigration and urbanization during
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries created tremendous shortfalls in
housing, further necessitating boarding. In the century between 1820 and 1920,
the national population increased more than 1000 percent, exceeding 105 million.
Thirty-three million were immigrants (Howard 1982). Numerous studies indi-
cate that during the explosive growth period 1850 to 1930, between 15 and 20
percent of private homes in the central and northeastern U.S. accommodated
boarders (Alanen 1991b, Howard 1982, Hareven and Modell 1973, Blumin 1975),
while company boardinghouses sprang up from coast to coast to house workers
in mills and mines, furnaces and factories, giving new significance to the phrase

”boardinghouse reach.”

76

Most of these workers were men alone, either unmarried or working far
from their families—exactly the type of labor force that developed Michigan’s
copper and iron industries. For example, Ishpeming’s 1870 census shows 755
boarders, 20 percent of the population, distributed within ninety-four houses.
These boarders plus the 450 family members in those homes comprised nearly
one-third (32 percent) of Ishpeming’s residents (Alanen 1991a). Thus, the devel-
opment of Michigan’s mining industry coincides with and is intimately tied to
the national boardinghouse era.

Quite unlike the colonial situation, boarding was a popular living
arrangement during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries for members of
all social classes. Boarders sought or accepted the arrangement as a generally
positive—or at least necessary—housing alternative, one that they chose for the
advantages boarding gave them personally or which they accepted within the
context of another choice they had made, usually relating to employment. Also
in contrast to the colonial situation, most householders who took in boarders did

so by choice and for profit.

Ecenomie Types ef Boardinghouees

The economic basis of boardinghouse operation also serves as a means of

categorizing them. There are three basic economic types of boardinghouse with

Table 2. Economic types of boardinghouses.

 

 

Boardinghouse Type Operator Number of Boarders Profit to
Company Independent manager 20-300 Manager
Private Commercial Owner / manager 5-50 Owner
Privately-owned House Owner householder 1-20 Householder

Company Rental House Rental householder 1-20 Householder

 

 

 

77

a composite fourth: each flourished on the Michigan mining frontier. Basic types
were the company boardinghouse, the private home, and the private commercial
enterprise. The fourth form occurred when a householder, him- or herself a ten-

ant in a company-owned house, took in boarders.

Cempany Aceommodation

Company boardinghouses were financed and built by a company for its
employees. In the Lowell, Massachusetts, area early in the nineteenth century,
company boardinghouses were built by the textile mill companies for the hun-
dreds of relocated farm girls who comprised the mill work force in the industrial
towns. Over the next century numerous other companies also built worker
housing, generally necessitated because private housing was not available in the
locale of the workplace. Magnusson (1920) notes the particular necessity of com-
pany-supplied housing for industries tied to remote and isolated sources of raw
materials and/ or where the temporary nature of the community discouraged
others from building.

Almost invariably, company boardinghouses were intended for
unmarried workers or those living on their own. Some enterprises, such as min-
ing coal, iron, copper, or gold, drew hundreds of single workers into remote
areas. Company boardinghouses supplied their housing needs.

The company hired a manager-housekeeper for the facility and customari-
ly subsidized its operation. Boarding charges were typically deducted from the
workers’ wages and distributed to the boarding-house manager who was
responsible for buying supplies, cooking, cleaning, keeping up with domestic
chores such as gardening and tending livestock, keeping the records, and enforc-

ing the rules of the house. Managers commonly came to the job as a way of

78

assuring room and board for themselves, rather than for substantial disposable

income.

Bearding in Single-Family Hemes

Individual householders also took in boarders, primarily to augment fam—
ily income. Many women, particularly widows, took advantage of the opportu-
nity to capitalize on their domestic skills—hence the ”Widder Brown” stereo-
type. Yet spinsters and married women of all ages opened their homes to people
for a price. Moreover, some private boardinghouse proprietors laid the table for
extra diners—folks who slept elsewhere but who took a specified meal or more
daily at a convenient boardinghouse (Bond 1987, Groth 1983, Pillsbury 1990,
Wakefield 1917-32).

A composite of company housing and the private home boardinghouse
occurred when workers residing in company-built family housing (single houses
or duplexes rented monthly from the company) were highly motivated or even
mandated by company policy to take in other workers as boarders. Household-
ers were therefore simultaneously tenants and landlords. In this situation the
decisions of whether to accommodate boarders and who they would be were
assumed by the company, but the economic advantages were shared between
company and employee-householder. The company was spared the financial
commitment of constructing yet more housing; the householder kept the board
payments. In essence, these family homes amounted to secondary company

boardinghouses.

Private Commereial Boardinghouses

The third economic type of boardinghouse was the commercial enterprise,
a boardinghouse owned and operated privately for a profit, as opposed to an

extension of an industry’s overhead or a source of householder’s extra income.

79

Such endeavors generally differed from the private home boardinghouse in the
proportion of household income expected from the operation and the formality
of the business aspect. Private home boardinghouses took in as few as one
boarder and the income, no matter how necessary, seems generally to have been
treated as supplementary income to make ends meet or to build a family nest-
egg for future investment. Commercial boardinghouses were a dedicated busi-
ness, providing the family livelihood.

That a commercial boarding establishment might be part of a saloon
under the same management and advertised only as saloon, or that in individual
cases the boarders in a private home might supply the sole economic resources
of the householders, only serves to blur the distinction between these two board-
inghouse types in the private sector. This point has proved troublesome for
other researchers as well (Davidoff 1979).

Each of these economic boardinghouse types was significantly represent-

ed on the Michigan mining frontier and is discussed below.

Issues Addressed by Boardinghouse Studies

Although the studies of Michigan mining area boardinghouses are few
and narrowly focused, issues and ideas pertinent to other boardinghouse studies
suggest approaches or points of comparison for this Michigan study.

Studies of the urban boardinghouse, both those for the genteel resident
and for the worker, suggest class and occupation as important themes. The
”lodging-house problem” draws attention 1) to the changing function of the
boardinghouse in urban societies, particularly as house populations became
increasingly comprised of immigrants; 2) to American housing evolution in gen-
eral; and 3) to attitudes reflected by both the physical and the social institution

of the boardinghouse.

80

The company boardinghouse suggests explorations into paternalism and
invites inter-regional and inter-industry comparisons. Comparisons between
urban and frontier boardinghouses and the role of the boardinghouse in the
frontier settlement follow from the fact that many company boardinghouses and
indeed entire company towns were the ”product of industrial isolation”
(Magnusson 1920: 19). Further, the heavy concentration of immigrant labor in
boardinghouses points to their potential as foci of American acculturation or, as
cosmopolitan frontier theory suggests, ethnic havens.

American boardinghouses exhibit a wide and complex variety of sizes,
architectural styles, natures of residents, and locales, as well as deriving from
three different economic patterns. This variety, plus the fact that any or even all
of these factors could change in a single boardinghouse or in a group of them,
suggests a wide range of adaptability for both the physical and the social institu-
tion relative to surrounding conditions.

Issues with a more personal perspective focus on the residents of the
boardinghouses, their roles in the household and community, and their percep-
tions of their own situation. One central consideration is how the disparate resi-
dents of a boardinghouse developed their roles, made somewhat indistinct
because managers were sometimes tenants themselves, or because boarders
could go literally overnight from being a boarder to being a manager. A con-
comitant consideration, raised by Horwitz (1973) in his study of Lowell, is the
perceptual fit between the built environment of the boardinghouse and the resi-
dents’ notions of ”home.”

A myriad of issues concern the family relationship in the boardinghouse,
from questions of privacy to questionable influences on children. Furthermore,

the definition of boardinghouse suggests fluid notions of ”family” (”boarder . . .

81

as one of the family . . .”), despite the fundamental business nature of the associ-
ation.

That business relationship, also emphasized by the OED definition
(”. . . for a price”), particularly invites investigation because of the extensive
scope of boardinghouse enterprise and of the high proportion of women earners
involved (a group of earners often overlooked in economic studies).

Finally, as in any study that seeks the details of everyday life, there is the
opportunity to encounter the ”why” as well as the ”what” of human behavior in

the most intimate of contexts, the household.

Boarding on the Michigan Mining Frontier

Without doubt, boarding became intrinsic to the Michigan mining fron-
tier, where each of the economic types flourished. Thousands of separate board-
inghouses offered bed and board and social connection to their residents,
whether one, hundreds, or some number in between. Since the mining compa-
nies were the instigating force behind settlement of the mineral ranges, it is nec-
essary to begin this study with the role of companies as community builders to
understand how and to what effect the boardinghouse, and housing in general,

was used by the companies in and for their corporate development.

CHAPTER 4

THE MINING COMPANIES AS COMMUNITY BUILDERS/
CONTROLLERS

Prior to the industrial revolution, home and workplace were one and the
same, or nearly so. Looms occupied living space, and kilns, cooperages, and
anvils often lay but a few paces from the family hearth. Industrialization effec-
tively divorced the home from the recognized workplace, giving rise to the prob-
lem of joining adequate labor forces with the factory or other industrial center.
When possible, factory siting took advantage of labor availability, but resource-
dependency for power and / or raw materials frequently required industries to
situate far from adequate labor supplies. The early English response to the prob-
lem of staffing textile mills was to employ whole families and to erect cottages
for them near the workplace, creating what geographers term an ”economic
landscape” (Vance 1966).

By the beginning of the nineteenth century and the trend toward a seg-
mented work force, company management preferred boardinghouses for groups
of individual workers. After all, it reasoned, why should the company construct
and maintain housing for whole families when several members of the house-
hold were non-employees—or worse yet, someone else’s employees? This phi-
losophy, plus the physical necessity to locate New England’s early textile mills
near sources of waterpower, led to importing a work force of spinsters from
throughout the region and housing them in boarding facilities near the mills.

Workrooms in the upper story of the brick boarding blocks at Lowell re-married

82

83

worker housing to workplace (Knowles 1920, Vance 1966, Garner 1992.)
Company-supplied housing, in particular cases even company-created
communities, became common through the nineteenth century as an effective
means to attract adequate numbers of laborers to remote industrial centers
(Magnusson 1920, Allen 1983). Boardinghouses proved particularly efficient for
housing numerous employees and therefore they proliferated. On the other
hand, workers with families were believed to be a more loyal and stable labor
force, thus providing a strong argument for companies to also build family
homes for recruited workers. What was generally a convenience in urban cen-

ters, however, became truly necessary in unsettled regions.

Mining Company Settlements in Michigan

Specific form(s) of boarding Operation existed in or predominated relative
to settlement type. Basically, four types of settlement arose on the Michigan
mining ranges. Three of these, the location, the company town, and the model
town, all stood on company land and were controlled by company policies.
Boarding occurred in multiple venues subject to varying degrees of company
control. The fourth settlement type, the townsite, grew from private enterprise
on privately-owned, not company-owned land. In this private sector, boarding
was free of company jurisdiction, though not completely beyond its influence.

Spatially, these settlements were distributed according to the gradient out—
lined by Lewis (1984). Locations by necessity were linked to entrepots—some-
times directly, sometimes through intermediate supply sites. They were the
most peripheral outposts in the system. Towns and even a few cities, by virtue
of their commercial districts, served as those intermediate supply sites.
Entrepots were those few communities that linked the frontier with national and
international markets. Placement determined an entrepot more than settlement

size. Because the Great Lakes were the key to transporting both in-coming

84

supplies (and labor) and out-going products, entrepots developed along the

Lake Superior south shore and along Green Bay.

Table 3. Frontier settlement types

 

 

Settlement Characteristics Gradient Example
Type Function
Location Company-owned Residential / mineral Austin
Company-controlled processing camp

Little or no commercial

Company town Company-owned Intermediate supply South Range
Company-controlled
Limited commercial

Model town Professionally designed Intermediate supply Gwinn
and planned
Company-controlled
Limited commercial

Townsite Private enterprise Intermediate supply Iron Mountain
Private ownership Entrepot Marquette

 

 

 

Thus with the exception of the few coastal entrepots such as Marquette,
Eagle Harbor, Escanaba, and Ontonagon, Thurner’s (1994: 64) succinct observa-
tion on the Copper Country is equally true for the Great Lakes iron regions:
”Mines, not harbors, determined location of settlements and towns.” Between
the 18405 and early 19005 as each successive strike stimulated new mining activi-
ty, the pattern repeated: explorers’ camp gave way to organized mining settle-
ment in a remote and usually isolated tract of rugged wilderness. By necessity,
mining companies created the first settlements in these regions. Initially, the
community-building was primarily physical and needs-based, firmly grounded
in the practice of boarding. After a time, however, companies recognized

numerous management goals linked to their settlements quite apart from merely

85

supplying the basics of food and shelter to their employees. These new compa-

ny policies also affected boarding.

Mine Site Accommodations

Accommodations in the exploration camps were crude and rudimentary,
but consistent with expectations for the situation. Temporary shelter or camping
in the open was the general rule: Sprague and his small team on the Keweenaw
(above) shared two hastily-built bark-covered cabins in 1845 (St. John 1976;
Monette 1977); Chapter VII of the Geological Survey of Michigan for the Upper
Peninsula 1869-1873, Volume I, Part 1, lists camping supplies and explains in
detail tent designs and woodcraft practices necessary for prospectors
(Cummings 1991). Milwaukee Iron Company chemist Nelson Hulst was hired in
about 1870 to determine whether the first ore discoveries on the eastern
Menominee Range would merit development and justify bringing a railroad into
the region. The evaluation required two years’ study, during which he had to
haul all supplies and equipment sixty miles from Menominee through deep
forests into the interior wilderness (Dulan 1978: 3).

Once a property demonstrated mineable ore, the company moved quickly
to establish its physical plant, including housing for the workers. The extreme
isolation of the region especially in winter when the Great Lakes froze, plus the
remoteness of the individual mine sites, demanded that the companies provide
every necessity for the mine operations and their employees. A tally of supplies
that had to be shipped in to see those at the Quincy Mine through the winter of

1865-66 illustrates the enormity of the task:

twenty-four hundred barrels of flour, two hundred of pork, three hundred
and fifty of beef, fifty of herring, and five hundred barrels of smoking
tobacco. . . . Ten thousand pounds of lard and of dried apples twelve
thousand, butter forty-eight thousand, sugar sixty-five thousand, tea
forty-five hundred, coffee six thousand, rice twenty-five hundred, and

86

twelve thousand pounds of soap. [Also] ten thousand kegs of [blasting]
powder, three thousand feet of fuse, sixty thousand pounds of tallow, and
eight hundred pounds of candles for miners to wear [on their] helmets
underground. [Additional supplies included] 120 axes, seventy-five tons
of coal, and blacking, bluing, needles, Clothespins, baking powder, con
densed milk, and snuff. [Green vegetables and potatoes were raised
locally; hay and grain were already in storage] (Thumer 1994: 74-75)

Corporate-sponsored settlements arose throughout the region.
Nevertheless, the desolation brought one pioneer to express the thoughts of
untold others when he said, ”Goodbye God, I’m going to the Iron Range” (from
Eastman in Alanen 1982: 101).

At the physical heart of a mine site stood the shaft house, hoist house, ore
processing facilities, company offices, equipment and materials storage, black-
smith and carpenter buildings, barns and tool sheds, and at least one large
boardinghouse. One or two homes were usually provided for mine captains or
supervisors and their families. In most cases these homes and the company
boardinghouses were not only the singular housing resource for the first workers
at a mine, but the only housing for anyone for miles. A general store and medi-
cal facility—dispensary or hospital—were recognized as additional necessities,
and a change house or ”dry” also became a standard feature.

Stamp mills, smelters, and lumber mills show much the same pattern: a
tight cluster of industrial structures, auxiliary buildings such as carpenter and
blacksmith shops, supervisors’ quarters, and a boardinghouse or two (Lankton
and Hyde 1982, LaFayette 1977, Sanbom Fire Insurance Maps, Victoria Site
Plan).

Many examples of these early company settlements could be found on the
Keweenaw. Beginning his missionary assignment to the Keweenaw in the early
18405, Rev. John H. Pitizel recorded his observations of the mining settlements he

served. Of the newly-built Cliff Mine Location, Pitizel (1990: 214:15) stressed the

87

rudimentary manner in which initial settlement needs were met while foreseeing

the pattern of later settlement development:

Some of the dwellings are tolerably comfortable, but not built with regard
to convenience, or external neatness or order. Necessity has been the rule,
and was a good one to begin with. But the Company has opened on a
rich treasure, and will probably be disposed to bestow more taste on their
future improvements.

In its initial year (1855-56) the Eagle River Mining Company extracted sil-
ver and copper ore at its mine site and also erected three boardinghouses, three
other dwellings, a stable, a blacksmith shop, two bridges, and had begun con-
struction of a dam meant to power a proposed eight-head stamp mill. The land
cleared for the mining and building operation, about eight acres, had been put
under cultivation and produced ”oats, hay, potatoes, turnips, and [other] vegeta-
bles” (Monette 1978b: 72-76).

Mindful of the costs (both actual and potential) of their isolation, effective
mining ventures worked to increase a settlement’s self-sufficiency and stability.
With Great Lakes shipping suspended each winter, starvation was an annual
threat. More than one community ran out of supplies before the first boats of
spring arrived or because a supply ship was wrecked (Worth 1956, Murdoch
1943: 59-67, Monette 1976: 36).

The situation at Eagle Harbor would have been even more desperate dur-
ing the winter of 1860 if the townsfolk had not been able to secure emergency
rations. In November the warehouse storing all the supplies for the town and
local mining operations caught fire and then exploded when a store of black
powder ignited. The shipping season was ending and no local settlement could
spare supplies. Only through the desperate efforts of the warehouse proprietor
did the people survive. He trekked all the way to Detroit to find a ship and sup-

plies, and at that, part of the emergency shipment was lost overboard as the

88

rescue ship encountered a fierce November storm on Lake Superior (Monette
1977: 30-31).

Therefore, the agricultural resources at Eagle River were far from unique.
In 1860, for example, the Minesota Mining Company ”raised 13,484 bushels of
potatoes, 2,150 bushels of turnips, 100 bushels of oats, and 150 tons of hay” to
supplement imported supplies at its Ontonagon County operation (Bebeau
1947), and most mining households (including boardinghouses) well into the
twentieth century kept a cow and a few chickens and grew a kitchen garden.

Housing also demanded a great deal of attention from the mining compa-
nies. As mining agent for the Great Western Mining Company, Thomas W.

Buzzo reported to the Pittsburgh investors:

We are getting our homes in shape for the better accommodation of our
men. We find in order to keep good men that it is necessary to provide
comfortable accommodations for them. — This we are doing as fast as we
can without going into a great expense, or providing anything that is
unnecessary, . . . We have a comfortable log house just built that will
accommodate say 15 men with ease. Another of the same kind will be
ready in two weeks. A third dwelling will be necessary. . . . They will
enable us to work a very respectable force. . . . (Buzzo to Cooper, 18 May,
1863)

Boardinghouses had numerous advantages in the initial stage of mine
development. Although larger than a single-family home, building one was far
less expensive in labor and materials than constructing small individual cabins
to accommodate the same number of men.

With so much to be accomplished in the early months of mine operation,
and with a relatively small work force to accomplish it all, boardinghouse living
also represented significant and vital labor-saving. Housing a dozen or more
men under a single roof meant that time-consuming domestic chores could be

assumed by a minimal number of individuals, therefore allotting more

89

man-hours to potentially profit-making endeavors. As Christine Delphy (1984:
97) has noted, ”a ’normal’ day’s work is that of a person who does not have to do
his own domestic work.”

If necessary, one of the male laborers would cook and manage the board-
inghouse, but companies quickly sought to make other arrangements. Husband-
and-wife teams, wives of miners, or women alone managed the houses through
an arrangement with the company. In an earlier report, Buzzo had assured
those Pittsburgh investors: ”A house has been fitted up sufficient to accommo-
date ten to twelve men, and a man with his family has moved into it for the pur-
pose of boarding the hands” (Buzzo to Cooper, 23 April, 1863).

Moreover, although family men might be preferable as a stable work force
at a mine with long-range prospects, at even a promising mine a core of single
laborers represented considerable flexibility to the company’s overhead. Once
the initial investment for the boardinghouse and its furnishings had been
incurred, Operating expenses could easily adjust to the demand. During slack
times, a reduced number of residents meant less taken in for room and board,
but also fewer meals and less laundry. Boom periods enticed hoards of men to
come to the mines for work, and during such times double-shifting, both in the
mines and in the boardinghouse beds, became the typical response.

Necessity dictated not only that boardinghouses be built as part of the ini-
tial mine complex, but that they and the other necessary housing be placed close
to the work site. Michigan’s mines were invariably established in inhospitable
terrain, high craggy or deeply forested places. Roads, if they existed at all, were
Often little more than twin ruts created by the wagons, loaded with in-coming
supplies or out-going ore, that jounced their way periodically between the mine
complex and a larger and distant settlement. Foot travel was the most practical

way to get about at the work site, even in a region where three hundred inches of

90

snow annually (and skis and snowshoes) were not uncommon.

Moreover, the surface distance between home and mine head was only
part of the distance to the actual workplace. In the early decades of mining with-
out mechanical lift systems, ladders linked the mine with the surface. For exam-
ple, at the Quincy Copper Mine in the decade prior to 1866, before a miner’s
paid workday began he had as much as an hour’s descent, rung by rung, into
the depths to reach his workplace. Then, after ten hours in the mine, another
hour of climbing to reach the surface (Lankton and Hyde 1982: 22). As far as he
was concerned, the closer his dinner and bed were from that point, the better.

Housing the men close to the operations suited the company as well.
Frequent emergencies at the mines and processing sites included floods, fire, and
cave-ins. At such times all available hands needed to be readily available to
assist. Among other reasons cited by companies for building employee housing
close to the mines was that close proximity of the men facilitated timely
communication between the company and the workers (Magnusson 1920: 19,
21).

Therefore, a company boardinghouse built in the early stages of the devel-
opment of a mine or stamping mill operation usually stood within a few hun-
dred feet of the main industrial buildings. Placement of the initial boarding-
house in relation to the few single-family homes constructed for supervisory per-
sonnel, the doctor, or other high-ranking individuals varied with the individual
site and in some instances even changed over time, as cave-ins and continuing
mine development made building relocations occasionally necessary. On the
other hand, the companies generally reinforced economic status, ethnic separa-

tion, and other social markers through the built environment they created.

91

Company Settlements—the ”Locations”

Boardinghouses were not the sole housing provided by the companies,
nor were they the only boarding facilities under company control on the mining
ranges. Contrary to practice in other industrial regions in the nation, Great
Lakes mining companies constructed very few company towns. Instead, to
attract and hold those desirable workers with families, companies built clusters
of single-family and duplex houses, forming hundreds of small residential dis-
tricts within a mile radius of mine, mill, or smelter operations. These most basic
of mining settlements became known regionally as ”locations.”

Originally the term was applied to the whole of the mining company’s
land holdings but soon narrowed to designate all surface structures. In its last
refinement, ”location” came to mean the small group of residences built on com-
pany land—and hence under company control—close to the mine (Alanen 1982:
95-6).

Some mines had only one location, usually bearing the name of the mine.
Dozens of these settlements perpetuate the memory of long-defunct mines,
among them: Mansfield, Trimountain, Princeton, Ahmeek, and Austin. Other
mines built multiple locations to house their expanding work force. Regional
architectural geographer Arnold Alanen reports (1991b: 9) that near Negaunee
where iron mining began, another cluster of locations would give rise to

Ishpeming.

Cleveland Location (named for its sponsoring company) was formed in
1849: eventually there would be First and Second Cleveland Locations.
During the 18505, Cleveland was joined by four other locations—Superior,
Barnum, Lake Angeline, and New York. Some accounts report that in
1860, the five locations were collectively identified as Lake Superior
Location.

A 1920 map of the Quincy Copper Mine complex at the top of Quincy hill,

overlooking Hancock, shows ten distinct locations with colorful and suggestive

92

names (Backstreet, Franklin, Frenchtown, Hardscrabble, Limerick, Lower
Pewabic, Mesnard, Newtown, Pewabic, and Sing-Sing), plus other platted resi-
dential properties, all well within a mile radius of mine operations.

Alanen (1979, 1982) has identified three types of locations. Unplatted
locations (called ”squatter locations” in Minnesota) such as Princeton Location
on the Marquette Range were characterized by a motley collection of vernacular
structures haphazardly distributed over the landscape, roads between them gen-
erally not more than mere trails around the cut-over stumps.

Company locations, the predominant type, exhibited rigid and
monotonous uniformity in orthogonally arranged streets lined by precisely-
spaced houses of uniform size and design. Austin Location serves as a classic
model: its forty duplex houses, all painted red and surrounded by white picket
fences, lined the grid of streets. The mine superintendent’s house, painted green
for distinction, sat on the hill overlooking the settlement. Three boardinghouses,
one each for Finns, Italians, and South Slavs, comprised the rest of the dwellings.
The only other structure was a school (Alanen 1991b:17).

The model locations, of which there were very few across the entire three-
state Great Lakes mining region, were usually designed by landscape architects
rather than mining engineers, and consequently incorporated more variety of
housing design, street placement, and landscape as well as electric lighting,
water, and sewers. Cleveland-Cliffs Iron built one such location at North Lake
on the Marquette Range in 1909 (Reynolds 1994, Alanen 1991b).

Despite variations in size, layout, and aesthetic qualities, locations shared
certain important characteristics. Foremost is the fact that they existed on com-
pany land for the ultimate benefit of the company. Usually, locations lacked a
commercial district. The general store at the mine site (operated either by the

company or privately) sufficed unless and until a town grew up nearby to offer a

93

wider range of goods. Locations also included few if any community institu-
tions. An elementary school was the most likely of any such feature, but only
occasionally a church, social club, or temperance hall. Locations served as com-
pany-controlled residential centers for workers at the mine, mill, or furnace, not
as towns.

Together, a mine site and its location(s) formed the most prevalent type of
settlement in the Great Lakes mining region. Lewis (1984) would understand it
as a frontier camp, an industrial site dedicated to extraction and processing plus
its satellite residential enclaves. Although the numbers of family residences in a
location significantly outnumbered the function-specific company boarding-
houses, the entire settlement was a venue for boarding. Both the residents and
the company policies accepted that as a given: often residents were urged to take
in boarders (Magnaghi 1987: 47), and in certain instances company management
specifically dictated to employees renting company houses that taking in board-
ers was a condition of continued employment (Johanson 1993: 36, Peryam 1966:
102)

One resident of Fayette observed: ”All the village kept boarding house,
and gave meals at all hours” (Langille 1870: 58-59). Census records and personal
reminiscences Of location life verify this was generally true throughout the
region. The boarding work force disbursed across the settlement. Thus board-
ers, their landlords/ ladies, the institution of boarding and the location facilities
where it occurred all became deeply entwined in corporate policies.

As frontier models suggest, locations and their populations were in con-
stant flux. Several copper mine operations had played out and their locations
deteriorated into ghost towns by the Civil War (Jamison 1948, Jamison 1965). In
that same period a number of iron mines and forges had gone by the wayside

(LaFayette 1977). However, many new mines were yet to be developed and

94

several operated for decades through the nineteenth century and into the twenti-
eth. Work forces rose and fell with the boom-bust cycles of the industry, tending
over time to expand in certain locales and thus to require additional housing.

Meanwhile, the disadvantages of having the work force distributed over
an increasingly large radius from the mine or mill were overcome by changing
tecl'mology. Motorized man-engines (moving stairways introduced in the mid-
18605) and then man-cars (sled-like affairs with ten benches for thirty men—
18905) moved workers into and out of the mines without extreme expenditure of
their own energy. Surface transportation eventually included street cars and
automobiles. Communication improved as companies began installing surface
and underground telephone systems in the late 18705.

As conditions and company policy dictated, locations were expanded or
new ones built. Each family house became a potential boardinghouse, so compa-
nies did not always erect a new boarding-house to accommodate an increasing
single male population. At times, however, additional company boardinghouses
were constructed, older ones were expanded, or location school houses or dis-
pensaries, replaced by newer facilities, were converted to boardinghouse use. At
one time near Calumet an old stamping mill had been renovated to house miners
of so many European nationalities, it became known as ”Noah’s Ark” (Drier
1967:24)

The development of Baltic Location at the Baltic Copper Mine in
Houghton County, detailed in company annual reports, illustrates the two-fold
expansion of company housing through boardinghouses and family dwellings.
In December, 1897, the Baltic Mining Company took possession of the property
and over the next thirteen months developed its core of mining and housing
structures. This initial building program included a two-story log boarding-

house and a smaller frame rooming house for single employees, fourteen

95

single-family log homes for married employees, and one log house and five
frame houses for company officials and their families. The following year the
company put up eight more frame homes for employees and another two-story
boardinghouse.

In 1900 four double-family log homes and a school went up. Twelve
frame employee houses followed in 1901; six additional boardinghouses, four-
teen single-family homes and twenty-four double houses in 1902. Ten new
dwellings were built in 1904 and two that had burned were replaced.

During 1905 ten more double houses were built and a year later, ten dou-
ble houses and six single ones for rent to employees and one house specifically
for the company’s chief clerk. Two more houses, one for the mine doctor and
one for the engineer, were constructed in 1908. As part of this construction and
expansion, a location called Brooklyn emerged but was effectively subsumed
under the identity of the Baltic Location (Monette 1996: 4-15). Another, ”Little
Italy,” housed Italian stone masons imported to build stone supporting pillars
and reinforcing walls in the mine once local timber supplies were exhausted
(Clarke 1989: 9-10).

Through this home-building program a company not only established the
physical residential component of its industrial site, but determined how many
units and of what sort would be built, where, and for whom. This control over
housing became crucial to the paternalistic policies of the Michigan mining com-

panies.

Patemalism—First Phase. te 1890

Some degree of paternalism was inevitable in the early stages of mining
development in Michigan, since the companies had to provide literally every

necessity for their dependent work force. How long this period of dependency

96

lasted in any given place varied according to surrounding conditions, but behind
each example of a physical necessity being met, company priorities quietly but
decisively shaped the frontier. Into the 18805 (when the Gogebic Iron Range——
the last—was opening up), development rested squarely on needs-based pater-
nalism tailored to company priorities. Community-building, and especially
housing, shows the most visible evidence of these policies.

The choice to accommodate both single men and men with families is one
of those early priorities, and for the reasons already cited: flexibility allowed to
the company by the single men; stability provided by the family men. Housing
both demographic groups was not the extent of company housing policy, howev-
er. The numbers and types of dwellings and the people allowed to occupy them
also promoted corporate manipulation of the work force population, both on an
individual and a group basis. More valuable employees, judged so either
because of their individual skills or their ethnic or political affiliation, received
preferential treatment in housing.

Early housing at the Pewabic copper mine illustrates this company
manipulation. In 1855 the rich Pewabic lode was discovered. To house the labor
force, 108 single men, the company built and outfitted six boardinghouses over
the next three years. The men ”had no choice of living in individual houses,
because the company had not built any. ” By 1859 when the employees num-
bered 211, the company expanded two of the boardinghouses and built an addi-
tional five. These, however, were the last such accommodations for general
workers.

At this point the company began erecting family homes, probably because
the work force now included those more desirable employees—married men. In
subsequent development at the mine site, Pewabic management incorporated

”five ’lodging rooms’ for managers in the mine’s new office building, and

97

erected a frame dwelling ’of the better class’ . . . ’for the accommodation of engi-
neers.” Thus by 1862, the occupational and marital status of employees at the
Pewabic Mine was clearly and physically reflected by their housing. Moreover,
the company began to phase out the boardinghouses, converting them into mul-
tiple-family units. By 1866, the company boardinghouses were ”notably absent”
(Lankton 1991: 149-50).

Company housing types and their spatial arrangement on the landscape
reinforced social and cultural separations in other ways. Corporate response to
the periodic influxes of immigrant labor included building and designating sin-
gle-ethnic boardinghouses and locations. For example, Republic-area locations
included Swede Town Hill (later Swede Town Location), Finn Town, and French

Town. A Negaunee location was known as Finn Alley (Alanen 1991b: 8, 15).

 

filth}! " n 13“ ’qr'n) you.“
hut is. at“. - in“;

   
     

+

 

Figure 6. Italian Boardinghouse, Mass Avenue, Mass. (Courtesy Michigan Technological
University Archives and Copper Country Historical Collections, and Elma
Lukkarila)

98

Throughout the Copper Country the numerous locations named ”Swedetown,”
Quincy’s ”Limerick,” ”Little Italy” near Baltic, and ”Irish Hollow” near
Rockland further illustrate the practice.

On both iron and copper ranges the numerous locally-designated Finn,
Irish, Italian, or Croatian boardinghouses (figure 6) further testify to the region-
wide practice of ethnic separation that was also part of the national trend. In
1854, for instance, the Massachusetts mill town of Salmon Falls noted ”’the diffi-
culty of keeping Irish and Americans together . . . [and urged that] every care

III

must be taken to keep them in separate boardinghouses. A large boarding-
house ”’some distance from the others’” would be assigned to the Irish mill
workers (Garner 1992: 131).

The practical expediency of mass construction coupled with ethnic dis-
crimination contributed to separate housing enclaves in Michigan’s mining
region. For example, instead of enlarging an established location of Cornish
workers, a new location and possibly a separate boardinghouse would likely be
built to house an in-coming group of Irish, Finns, or Italians. Long-standing
rivalries between Cornishmen and the Irish argued the wisdom of keeping them
in separate neighborhoods. ”The Cornishmen hated the Irishman,” notes
Thumer (1974: 27). ”Their feuds were endless.” As for the Firms and Italians,
language, religion, and other cultural differences would tend to separate them
anyway from the Cornish and each other and concomitantly to draw each group
together as a social bulwark in their new land.

Lines of rivalry or solidarity were more complex than language or major
religious distinction (Jew, Catholic, or Protestant), however. For example, Italian
inter-regional rivalries from the Old Country carried over into Michigan
(Magnaghi 1987). Slovenians expressed superiority over Croatians, but Catholic

Croatians felt more affinity toward the Catholic Slovenians than toward Eastern

99

Orthodox Serbs with whom they shared a language. Alanen (1989: 178) con-
tends that ”religion played the key role” in defining and unifying an ethnic
group and cites one clergyman’s confirmation: ”in Iron Range locations inhabit-
ed by South Slavs, ’the old line of Constantine went down the middle of a loca-
tion road, and sometimes I suspected the line went right through the middle of a
boarding house table.’”

Both the Copper Country and the iron ranges abounded with examples of
church congregations that formed or later splintered along very specific
ethnic/ religious lines. Lake Linden, for example, had two Catholic churches, the
German and Irish Holy Rosary and French-speaking St. Joseph’s. Near Eagle
Harbor the English, French, Germans, ”Italians, Poles, Croatians, Slovenians, and
Austrians . . . each had their own parishes and priests.” In Calumet, four sepa-
rate Lutheran churches served the Germans, Swedes, Norwegians, and Finns
(Lankton 1991: 178-79).

Al Gedicks (1977) suggests the copper companies fostered just such divi-
siveness as a means of social and economic control over the workers: lacking
language and social bridges, the labor force would not organize against manage-
ment. Hardesty’s (1985) example of the Chinese laborers argues that the cos-
mopolitan frontier the immigrants encountered in northern Michigan would not
motivate them to ”homogenize,” and therefore continued ethnic separation was
a natural consequence of their environment except where Americanization was
necessary to their survival. What seems certain is that these ethnically-defined
locations and boardinghouses created small islands of security in a bond of
familiarity, no matter what the larger motivation for their design (McNear 1978:
520).

Emphasis on location-building over town-building also reflected early

company moral priorities. Locations were significant both in what they did and

100

did not include. Instead of legislating morality and social values, the companies
sought to literally build communities grounded in virtue and devoid of vice.
They donated building sites and otherwise fostered churches and synagogues.
They built schools since they considered education a positive social attribute, but
as Alanen (1982: 104) notes, ”nothing in a location was more forbidden . . . than a
saloon or tavern.” The fact that locations lacked a business district automatical-
ly precluded saloons. The strength of corporate resolve in the matter is suggest-
ed by the following item from The Menominee Ranger for July 5, 1879 (in

Cummings 1991: 36), reporting on the developments at the Vulcan Mine:

VULCAN—It is a wonder with a great many why the Menominee Mining
Company does’nt [sic] lay out a town site here. There would be lots of
money in the move for the company. The only reason for not doing so

is . . . that the company is determined to prevent the sale of intoxicating
liquors on the location.

Dispensing them without charge was also prohibited. To celebrate the
birth of his son, a Mr. Harrington of Deer Lake Location arranged to smuggle a
keg of beer from Ishpeming to his home in a flour barrel. The company detective
discovered the ruse, however, and diverted the shipment from Harrington’s
door (Clancey 1926: 255). Although the companies could not eliminate alcohol
and its disruptive influences from the entire region, they determined to at least
ban it from company property. The result was two-fold: the additional social
functions served by saloons had to shift to other venues, including boarding-
houses, on company property, and saloons lined the streets at the locations’

boundaries and in nearby towns.

Paternalism—Second Phase. after 1s9o
Meanwhile, in the final decade of the nineteenth century paternalistic

practices changed to reflect the national trend toward ”benevolent paternalism.’

Michigan social historian Terry S. Reynolds (1994) identifies the several factors

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that influenced the significant shift in paternalistic practices in the mining
region: due to the Panic of 1893, unemployment was high, wages dropped, and
small companies were absorbed into the huge corporations that could financially
weather the storm. Adding further financial strain, the Michigan iron industry
had been ”forced underground as surface deposits were exhausted. This
required increased levels of technology and increased capital at a time when
securing such capital was difficult” (28). Out-migration led to labor shortages
once production resumed, giving workers considerable leverage. On the
Gogebic and Marquette Ranges (1894 and 1895 respectively), bloody strikes—an
alarming and escalating trend across the nation—signalled worker dissatisfac-
tion, particularly with the new corporate structures they perceived as distant and
unsympathetic to labor’s needs.

Corporate needs, however, hinged upon production, and hence on once
again establishing and then maintaining a stable work force. The failure of both
the iron and copper industries in this regard has already been discussed.
Nevertheless, industry attempts to attract and hold loyal workers in sufficient
supply, coupled with a determination to prevent unionization from taking hold,
led it to wholeheartedly embrace the ”new paternalism.”

One facet of the new program encouraged community development
through social participation. Companies donated land for churches and syna-
gogues as never before. They built libraries, community centers, and recreation-
al facilities. Along with all the residential construction at Baltic Mine, for exam-
ple, in 1904 the company built and equipped a bowling alley for the residents.
Also, as though imbued with the spirit of Prof. Harold Hill, companies spon-
sored silver or brass bands in community after community: shiny instruments
were handed to miners resplendent in regal uniforms with equally shiny buttons

and braid.

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The new paternalistic program also emphasized health and safety, with
particular emphasis on the family. Hospitals and medical coverage were
expanded. Companies instituted visiting nurse programs to teach home
hygiene, nutrition, and child care. Women were encouraged to use doctors and
hospital facilities rather than local midwives for childbirth. Company-built bath
houses with tubs, showers, and swimming pools offered special ”ladies’ nights”
and children’s hours to promote personal cleanliness and exercise. At the C & H
facilities, women and children paid nothing; men paid only 2.50: (Bernhardt 1975,
C&H Annual Report 1911, Dersch 1977: 311). CCI even ”established a rest home
for the overworked wives of company employees” (Reynolds 1994: 30). Fire pro-
tection, garbage collection, new water systems, and electric service to homes
appeared throughout the region.

Amidst all this largess, however, the companies did not abandon their
emphasis on morality and social control. With an absence of local saloons, loca-
tion-living reinforced the notion that when a man left work, his proper
destination was home . Company-sponsored neighborhood improvement pro-
grams made home an even more attraCtive destination. Throughout the mining
region, companies enclosed yards with fences and promoted gardening competi-
tions, not only for the horticultural beauty introduced into otherwise drab loca-
tions, but also because a man puttering in his garden was not wasting time seek-
ing out and habituating a saloon. Such gardening activity occupied both house-
holders and boarders.

Company towns, which ”differed from locations in that they were usually
larger and allowed commercial enterprise” (Alanen 1994: 33-34), were rare on the
Michigan mining ranges, but not altogether absent. In these settlements, corpo-
rate social control became even more overt. At Palmer, on the Marquette Range,

company policy allowed only a single, heavily-regulated saloon; elsewhere on

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the Marquette Range, CCI operated a movie house in the 19205 ”50 that ’proper
supervision could be maintained over the character of the films which might be
exhibited in the town’” (Reynolds 1994: 31). On the Keweenaw, the Mohawk
and Wolverine mining companies built and controlled Gay, a mill town twelve
miles south of the mines. It has been called ”the classic example of a company
town” (Frimodig 1990: 7).

Housing, however, remained the most visible and dynamic facet of the
new paternalistic program. Technological improvements such as interior plumb-
ing and electricity, and exterior variety in design, color, and landscape increased.
In 1907, CCI even built Michigan’s only company model town, Gwinn, on the
Marquette Range, according to the design of famed Boston landscape architect
Warren H. Manning. Notable for their absence in the town plan were designated
boardinghouses; that absence indicative of the changing national concept toward
both company housing and residential accommodation in general. Gwinn cer-

tainly did not lack boarders, however, a fact significant to the next chapter.

Decline of the Company Boardinghouse

Numerous factors contributed to the decline of the company boarding-
house after the turn of the century. Nationally, Progressives and other social
reformers promoted the nuclear family as the cornerstone of society and the fam-
ily home as the bastion of morality, civility, and democracy (Wolfe 1906, Wright
1980, 1981). The notion validated the services for wives and children of the mine
workers that companies were instituting through their own self-interest. It also
argued for single-family home designs and increasing domestic technological
benefits (Wright 1980)—further dovetailing with the corporate measures
designed to promote loyalty among its married employees.

Reformers’ visions also melded in part with the mining companies’ own

priorities regarding its single workers. The Pewabic example in the 18605

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(above) is a case in point. Nationally, boardinghouses had become unfavorably
associated with urban immigrant enclaves, particularly the ”new immigrants”
from Eastern Europe (Wolfe 1906). Michigan governors expressed concern over
the ”yellow peril,” Mormons, Irish, and other ”undesirables” as justification for
dismantling the state Immigration Bureau (Warner and Underhill 1974: 62-66).
The nuclear family ideal lessened the social value of a mining community’s
”rolling stones” (those single male workers—generally immigrants—likely to be
particularly transient), and the family home ideal lessened the social value of
their company boardinghouse residence.

Furthermore, companies were inclined to cut overhead wherever possible
and to avoid unnecessary encumbrances. Services such as company stores ini-
tially provided through necessity were usually transferred to private control as
quickly as possible, in part to simplify company responsibilities, in part to avoid
the exploitive-company-store-image generated in Appalachian coal-mining
towns. Restrictive policies did not pay: when the Penn Mining Company near
Norway reprimanded a man and threatened his job for by-passing the company
store and ordering through the Sears Roebuck catalog, the man changed employ-
ers (Bernhardt 1981: 416).

Just as methodically but perhaps with a lessened sense of urgency, compa-
nies shifted boarding increasingly toward the private sector. They also shifted
the boardinghouses. Unnecessary buildings were relocated onto other company
properties or they were sold to private owners for reuse or to be torn down for
their salvage potential. Boardinghouses were among those company buildings
disposed of in these ways. (See Epilogue for details of specific house disposi-
tion.)

Thus by the turn of the century, national social values reinforced the com-

panies’ Own preference for a work force of family men housed in single-family

105

units. Necessity, however, compromised the ideal: at the very time that compa-
nies were most inclined to emphasize family housing to attract the employees
they most wanted and to rely on the private sector for peripheral boarding facili-
ties, they were forced back into the needs-based mode of providing company
boardinghouses for influxes of single male laborers.

Development of new mines in the early years of the twentieth century
accounted for numerous new company boardinghouses. On the Marquette
Range, the American Mine began operations in 1906. The adjacent location
included ”ten company houses and a boardinghouse.” Princeton Location had
begun in 1871 with twelve houses and a single boardinghouse, but further mine
development over the years led to extensive expansion early in the century. By
1914 Princeton had at least four large boardinghouses, one with three stories, the
others with two (Sanbom maps, Cleveland-Cliffs Iron CO. 1931). Despite this
expansion, additional locations and boardinghouses were needed in the area.
Austin Location was established in 1906-07 with its three large boardinghouses
and soon after, Cyr Location with another company boardinghouse (Alanen
1991b: 13, 16-17).

South of Wakefield on the Gogebic Range, an ore discovery in 1912
became the Wakefield Open Pit Mine, complete with a three-building complex of
boarding facilities. Four years later yet another new open pit mine, the
Plymouth, began operations in the same region (Johnson 1993, Sell 1990). In the
Mineral Hills district (north of Iron River on the western Menominee Range),
several new mines were opened between 1906 and 1916. The locations for three
of the mines—the Spies, the Homer, and the Forbes—each included a company
boardinghouse (Mineral Hills 1968).

The range-wide copper strike of 1913-14 and the war-time demand for

copper also prompted a renewed surge of company boardinghouse building.

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Contrary to one tally that denied the existence of any company boardinghouses
at the time of the strike (Committee 1913), Quincy Mining Company records
show that one John C. Mann ran four boardinghouses (Pewabic, and Quincy N o.
6 Shaft, No. 7, and No. 8) for strike breakers (”scabs”) imported by that company
(Mann 1913).

After the strike, company efforts to rebuild the labor force centered on
importing many foreign men and consequently necessitated building new
boarding accommodations for them and expanding and refurbishing others.
This frenzy of building, which also included numerous family homes, was car-
ried out at Quincy under the direction of Mine Superintendent Charles Lawton.
Lawton’s scheme emphasized the presumed link between family housing and ”a
steadier crew,” simultaneously agreeing only reluctantly to expand boarding
facilities:

”I, however, am inclined to advise against [such enlargement]; that is to
leave so many men congregated in one place would need deputy sheriffs
in control all the time, twenty-four hours a day, and will add to the
expense of maintaining the boarding house, as there are apt to be more
quarrels and gambling occurring among such a large body of men
together; and yet as a temporary institution it may be best.” (McNear
1978: 528)

In April, 1917, when Lawton expressed these thoughts to William Todd,
then Quincy President, a new company boardinghouse accommodating forty to
fifty men had already been constructed and over the next few months three other
structures were modified to boardinghouse use (figure 40) In 1918 Quincy was
operating four boardinghouses providing for two hundred men. Two years later,
however, with the war-inflated copper demand at an end and severe labor short-
age in the region, these houses had all been closed (McNear 1978: 528).

Housing expansion also became necessary early in the century at the

Victoria Mine in Ontonagon County (figure 7). This mine had not been closed

107
down by the labor action of 1913 and by 1916 its labor force was burgeoning. In
response, the main company boardinghouse located at the mine head was
expanded to house nearly one hundred men (VCM Files—Hooper correspon-

dence).

 

Figure 7. Top, Victoria Mining Company Boardinghouse; center, next to Supervisor’s home; and
foreground, company store. (Courtesy Pat Thorgren, Society for Restoration of
Old Victoria)

Thus company boardinghouses continued to serve their purpose well into
the twentieth century, despite company preference to be rid of them. The com-
panies knew that housing for their work force, although no longer the absolute
necessity in physical terms that it had been when a new mine was opened in an
isolated region, remained an integral part of their paternalistic package and a
very real basis by which they competed for employees. Quincy President
William R. Todd expressed what was probably the philosophy of every mining
company in Michigan:

"While we do not want to get into the boarding house business, it is neces-
sary for us to see that the boarding house is properly run and the men

108

have proper food and attention. . . . We cannot afford to have men leaving
on account of boarding house conditions if it is possible to retain them.”
(McNear 1978: 527)

Mining companies became significant community-builders throughout
the Michigan mining district and in that capacity they made full use of their
opportunity. They not only created a built environment, but imposed company
and often national notions of ethics and social morality upon those communities.
Particularly through company housing and the institution of boarding, mining
companies attempted to manipulate their work force. Whether a positive or a
negative means to social control and stability, the fact remains that companies
promoted ethnic separation through boardinghouses and location housing,
reiforcing economic, social, and occupational segregation.

Moreover, by the turn of the century the companies realized the potential
Opportunity to skew their work force toward married men by phasing out
boardinghouses and augmenting family housing—consistent with both their
paternalistic self-interest and American housing trends. A national guide on
industrial housing that appeared right after World War I specifically noted the

advantage of company towns

”built to order” [that would permit] a conscious control over the selection
of the classes of employees. . . . Industrial managers and foremen know
only too well that the percentage of married to single men carried on the
payroll is often affected by the casual availability of rooms or houses in
the neighborhood. The correct percentage can be maintained by provid
ing the right proportion of houses and rooms. (Knowles 1920: 15)

A certain percentage of single men, those ”rolling stones,” could also be
useful, however, because of their greater expendability. The ideal solution
would be to shift the single men into private boarding accommodations and
what amounted to secondary company boardinghouses, those company-owned
family homes rented by mining employees who also took in boarders. Such a

solution was theoretically possible because boarding was so widespread

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throughout the mining districts—a factor the companies counted on to shift their
burden. The renewed demand for needs-based boardinghouses during the first
two decades of this century merely postponed realization of the goal. Few com-
pany boardinghouses lasted through the 19205.

Mining locations and the few company towns comprised significant set-
tlements throughout the western Upper Peninsula of Michigan. After the first
flush of mining activity drew attention to the region, and as transportation sys-
tems began to open up successive areas to settlement and trade, a second extrac-
tive industry—lumbering and wood products manufacturing separate from lum-
bering for the mines—produced yet another whole set of company mill towns.
Cut-over regions developed as farm communities, and cities grew through
entrepreneurial expansion. Thus the private sector of the region formed in con-
cert with mining development. This growth produced both an additional need
for boarding accommodation and a venue to supply it.

So developed across the Michigan mining region the specific types of
boardinghouses identified in an earlier chapter: 1) company boardinghouses, 2)
commercial boardinghouses, and 3) family homes that included boarders.
Company boarding and private enterprise became entwined. The excess of min-
ing employees not accommodated by mine housing spilled over into the private
sector. Householders renting a company house in a location took in boarders for
company convenience but their own profit. Managers of company boarding-
houses operated as independent contractors whose income depended upon the
efficiency of their house management, not a salary from the company. The eco-
nomics and modes of operation of the Michigan mining boardinghouses serve
both to categorize them as above, but also to examine their relative roles within

the developing society.

CHAPTER 5

BOARDINGHOUSE OPERATION, COMPANIES,
AND THE PRIVATE SECTOR

Managing a boardinghouse required numerous skills and tremendous
stamina, as it could become nearly a twenty-four-hour—a—day responsibility.
Some managers demonstrated more ability than others for careful budgeting and
accurate record-keeping, maintaining necessary schedules, hiring and supervis-
ing staff, producing meals in appropriate quantity and quality, seeing to laundry,
gardening, cleaning, and numerous other chores, while promoting conviviality
and harmony within the household. Managers either operated their own estab-
lishments or, as in company boardinghouses, hired on to manage a house owned
by others. Apparently some of these freelance managers built considerable repu-
tations, generating competitive offers for positions. In any case, communities
seem to have taken note of those who operated the boardinghouses and locally
even company boardinghouses were often known by the name of the manager

rather than by the company or location name.

Managipg Cempany Beardingheuses

The mining companies took a keen interest in assigning the operation of
their boardinghouses to competent people. As Quincy’s President Todd had
noted (above), conditions in a company boardinghouse clearly influenced the

work force and therefore it behooved the companies to monitor their houses, but

110

111

they contracted out the day-to-day operation. Mining company boardinghouses
were not run by the companies, but through them. Arrangements were made with
a local man, perhaps with hotel experience, or with wives or widows of local
miners with reputations as good cooks and expert household managers; occa-
sionally a miner and his family would be employed, he to do heavy chores after
his shift in the mine, his wife and children to cook, clean, and manage most
everything else; in other cases professional managers were brought in from out-
side the community.

A series of letters in the Victoria Copper Mining Company files between
Mining Captain George Hooper and Mrs. Evalyn Cook illustrates the company
standards and the benefits offered to a perspective manager. In 1917 the compa—
ny had expanded its main boardinghouse (figure 7) to ”easily accommodate
eighty or ninety men” and Hooper solicited a new manager for the facility, as the
current one had given notice. Evalyn COok, a thirty-year-old widow with two
children from Paris, Michigan (just north of Big Rapids), applied for the position.
She cited ten years’ experience, cooking in several places before she married and
then three years at a Paris hotel.

According to Hooper, the house she was to run was furnished and includ-
ed thirty-two rooms for boarders, a number of them with double bunks accom-
modating four men per room. The dining room sat 100-125. Among the facili-
ties of the house were ”two ranges in the kitchen, one six lid and one ten lid
stove.” There was a root cellar and a separate basement area with ”toilets and
washing rooms” for the men. The manager’s private apartment had six rooms.

Besides supplying the physical plant of the boardinghouse, the company
also provided steam heat, and hot water ”independent of the stoves” was piped
in and supplied by the company. There was no electricity, however; the house

used oil lamps.

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Managing a boardinghouse involved the domestic chores—cooking,
gardening, canning, cleaning, laundry for the house and manager’s family—and
also financial management. The financial arrangement described by Hooper is
typical: the boardinghouse manager set the board fee; the company office collect-
ed the men’s board and passed it on to the manager. Rates varied, but had to
remain competitive: about one dollar per day was the usual fee at that time.
Victoria management had announced a rise in board to ”twenty-eight dollars per
month beginning October 15, 1917.”

By contrast, in the early days of mining, rates were about three dollars per
week, or twelve dollars monthly. War-inflated prices and wages during the Civil
War sent monthly board in the Copper Country to eighteen dollars, monthly
earnings beyond board from sixty to ninety (Buzzo to Cooper, 4 June, 1864).

Cook’s expenses would include her kitchen fuel, lamp oil, all the food and
other basic supplies for the house, plus her rent—which was one dollar per
month per boarder—plus, of course, personal necessities for herself and her fam-
ily. Thus with the house at capacity, Evalyn Cook could expect to feed three
meals per day to ninety boarders, her family, and occasional managerial person-
nel. From the men’s board of $2700 per month, she would owe ninety dollars
rent for her apartment plus all the costs of running the house. Supplies were
readily available: Hooper notes that ”the company has a store and can furnish
you with all the necessities that you want [but] you are [at] liberty to buy from
whom you please.” If her food was tasty and ample, and if she managed frugal-
ly keeping meals well under thirty cents per serving and other house costs at a
minimum, she could clear a small profit to cover personal expenses for her fami-
ly and perhaps even build a bit of a nest egg. If she skimped on the meals or was
careless in her management, however, she could lose both her job and her home.

With monthly wages in the double digits and commodity prices in

113

fractions of cents, literally every penny counted. As one manager was about to
leave and another assume responsibility for a house, the company management
prepared an inventory of the entire house contents. An inventory of furnishings
such as beds, mattresses, chairs, washstands, etc. served two purposes. The list
would be compared to those items in the house when the out-going manager
had assumed control of the house and he or she would presumably be responsi-
ble for any unaccounted discrepancies. It was also the inventory of items passed
into the charge of the new manager (VBH inventory June 1, 1915).

Disposable items such as food and cleaning supplies purchased by the
manager but left with the house had to be accounted for, the assets they repre-
sented transferred to the departing manager, and liability for the goods imposed
upon the new manager. An inventory of the Victoria boarding-house larder
when it was transferred to Wilfred Roy in July, 1918, included over four hundred
pounds of meat, cases of canned milk and vegetables, dried fruits, large quanti-
ties of baking ingredients, boxes of cookies and crackers, two types of tea, seven-
ty-five pounds of coffee, eighty-five pounds of soap, forty rolls of toilet paper,
two brooms, and more than a dozen oil lamps and chimneys. The lot was val-
ued at $454.70, a considerable beginning stock for Roy and significant assets for
the departing manager to redeem. Although the inventories do not specify, the
company probably reimbursed the out-going manager for those supplies and
exacted re-payment from the new manager in his first month or two of opera-
tion. Here again, management operated through company agency.

Apparently companies regarded boardinghouses as necessary overhead
and did not seek profit from their operation, but from the financial arrangements
described by Hooper to Cook, the company did attempt at least to cover costs.
The building and furnishings represented a considerable outlay. The company,

ordinarily responsible for general maintenance of its physical plant, had just

114

expanded this particular boardinghouse, presumably spending more than would
have been necessary for maintenance and thus increasing its investment.

Charging the boardinghouse manager one dollar per boarder for monthly
rent seems to have allowed the company substantial margin to apply against its
investment. At this time throughout the mining region, company-built family
houses rented for one dollar or less per room per month. Thus, if the six-room
accommodation offered to Cook had been a family house, she could have paid
six dollars per month for it, not ninety dollars. Without the provision of steam
heat and piped-in hot water as in the boardinghouse, Cook would need to pur-
chase fuel for home heating (possibly nine or ten months of the year) and addi-
tional kitchen fuel to heat hot water for cooking, bathing, and laundry. At some
locations piped in water and sewer services were available at this time, generally
for one dollar per month. With a generous allowance for the extra fuel and even
adding in a charge for water, Cook’s hypothetical monthly housing cost could be
roughly eighty dollars less renting a company family house than operating the
company boardinghouse. That eighty dollars represents an offset of overhead
for the company. To Cook it would represent the cost of doing business, her
investment in an opportunity to support herself and her family, similar to a fran-
chise arrangement today.

That her business provided a home for herself and her family is also
important to note. A woman alone, especially with dependent children, could
be hard-pressed to make enough to buy a house. The hypothetical example
above was for cost comparison only. Unless she was the widow of a miner
already established in a company house, she would be unlikely to have access to
such inexpensive housing.

Even if she were a widow in a company house, and no matter how lenient

company policy might be theoretically, that arrangement might not likely

115

continue for long if the demand for such housing was high. In such a situation,
the company itself might make every effort to move her from a company family
rental to a company boardinghouse where she could earn her living. That way,
she could stay near the community where she had been living, the company
would not appear heartless in removing her from the house which it would then
re-assign to a valuable worker and his family, and she could earn her support in
a socially acceptable manner that further benefitted the company. If the situation
argued that the better course was to allow the widow to stay in the company-
owned family home at reduced rent, deriving her income from boarders, that too
was sometimes done. It was not uncommon, however, for widows and their
families to be turned out after a brief grace period (Pisoni 1973, Johanson 1993,
Lankton 1991). (J ohanson also notes that not only housing, but women were
scarce at Victoria, so widows often remarried before their grace period expired.)
Shifting the operation of their boardinghouses to independent contractors
lessened the mining companies’ burden of housing their men. It was a burden
they admittedly had had to accept where ”the mine is the only reason why com-
munity life has developed in the particular locality; . . . [where otherwise] there

are no houses available or likely to be provided” (Magnusson 1920: 21).

Boarding in Family Homes, Locatiens or Cempany Towns

As noted above, many of the mining region dwellings were built on com-
pany land. Most of these were built by the companies, though in some cases
companies rented house lots to individuals who constructed their own homes on
these parcels. Therefore a few homes within a location might be owned rather
than rented from the company, though the company still owned the land under
them. In any case, if the dwelling was on company land, the residents were sub-

ject to company rules and expectations.

116

Boarding was obviously one of those expectations. Lankton and Hyde
(1982), for example, emphasize that Quincy housing units, both family homes
and company boardinghouses, periodically accommodated only a portion of the
total Quincy work force. Often this situation prevailed across the mining region:
workers exceeded company housing units. Additional housing and spill-over
boarding facilities were required. One venue for additional boarding was within
the homes in locations and company towns. Company acceptance of and even
reliance on boarding in individual homes becomes evident through company
policies requiring their housing tenants to board additional mine employees
(Johanson 1993: 37, Peryam 1966: 102) and the absence of any restriction against
the practice of boarding in homes when other restrictions were extensive and
blatant, e.g. at Gwinn, CCI’s model town. There, where designated company
and commercial boardinghouses were specifically excluded from the model
town, the majority of homes in the 1910 census nevertheless included boarders.

Householders in company rental houses who took in boarders bridged
company and private sector. Not unlike managers of company boardinghouses,
they rented their dwelling from the company and turned their labor both toward
the company enterprise and also toward accommodating the boarders, but of
course the entire focus differed. Unlike the big boardinghouse, the individual
house was still primarily the home of the mining employee and his family;
boarding was its secondary purpose. Having access to a company home
amounted to a considerable cost advantage for the miner’s family. One miner’s

wife expressed the appreciation many felt for their situation:

”They paid small wages but they also provided you with a house, very
cheap rent—for instance, our house had four rooms down and four rooms
up, and was five dollars a month rent. There was a big garden

around it already fenced. We paid a dollar for the lights, a dollar for

the water, and a dollar for the doctor. Eight dollars a month was all it

cost for all of them.” (in Reynolds 1994: 32)

117

Whether his boarders were there by company mandate or his own choice,
the householder could demonstrate company loyalty by lessening the housing
shortage and supplement his income at the same time. His low housing costs
thanks to company paternalism produced an extra margin of profit, though not
necessarily cash in hand. As in the case of the company boardinghouse, corpo-
rate management acted as agent between its laborers and their landlords.

Johanson (1993: 37) reports that at the Victoria Mine,

the families who were assigned boarders were not paid in cash for this
service, but simply had their accounts at the company store credited with
the board [sixteen dollars per month] that was deducted from the
boarder’s paycheck before the paycheck was issued. . . .

Despite the enticement of extra income, however, boarding others at the
company’s behest had its disadvantages. Company decisions could be contrary
to the householder’s wishes. He might feel lumbered with intruders in his
household; individual boarders placed there by the company might be offensive;
there might be inadequate room for desired friends or relatives to board if com-
pany quotas had to be met first. On the other hand, the company could bar
someone it considered a troublemaker from company property, including his
boarding accommodation. Allowing such a person back into his residence could
jeopardize the householder’s claim to his house as well as his employment.
Thus for those who were both renters and landlords/ ladies in company-owned
housing, their position was potentially profitable and yet precarious. Their par-
ticipation in the institution of boarding enabled them to sell a service as did
those in the private sector, but not without further entanglement in company

policies.

Beardingheuse Qperatien in the Private Seetor

The development of townsites across the mining ranges arose through

entrepreneurial activity stimulated by mining development. Some of these

118

townsites were originally platted by the mining companies and individual lots
sold off to private owners; others grew on privately-owned and platted land
from the beginning. Generally, these towns sought to supply the commercial
enterprises lacking in the locations. Due to the widespread ban on alcohol in the
locations and some company towns, saloons were often the first enterprise in
these private business centers, remaining a prominent part of the economy until
Prohibition. One wag commented that in the port town of Eagle River in the
18505, ”drinking seemed to be ’the principal business transacted’” (Thumer 1994:
68) and just up the peninsula Wyoming was known locally as Hell Town for the
boisterous Saturdays in the two saloons and the barbershop (Clarke 1975c: 16,
Monette 1987: 96).

The businesses in these communities, however, came to offer a full range
of goods and services including grocers, Clothiers, confectioners, bakers, bankers,
blacksmiths and wagon makers (later auto sales and gasoline stations), milliners,
schools, religious houses, warehouses, brewers, railroad depots, insurance
agents, shipping agents, communications agents (telegraph, telephone), newspa-
pers, and boardinghouses.

The private-sector boardinghouses were of two economic types, the com-
mercial house and the private residence. As already noted, the differentiation
between these two types had more to do with the proportion of family income
derived from boarding than with the architectural features of the establishment,
since in some family homes boarders produced the entire support of the resident
family and these residences are more accurately classified as commercial estab-
lishments. The uncertainty of family income and of the proportion derived from
boarding in specific cases, plus the fact that supplemental boarding income
could became a family’s sole support from time to time, makes the differentia-

tion even more difficult. Thus there will be some unavoidable cross-over

119

between the family-based commercial houses and home-based boarding in the

discussions below.

Commercial Boardingheuses

Commercial boardinghouses could be found in virtually any townsite in
the Michigan mining region. The opening of a new mine frequently stimulated
private enterprise nearby and towns arose quickly. So did boardinghouses. In
the Copper Country, for example, in 1855 the north side of Portage Lake was
nothing but forest, but mining Operations on Quincy Hill enticed pioneer
entrepreneurs. A few men began clearing the land that would become Hancock.
While all was still ”nothing but timber,” a Mr. Udich, a man of foresight,
”knocked together a shack for a boardinghouse” (Thurner 1994: 99).

Expanding mining ventures and Hancock’s presence on the north side of
Portage Lake spawned Houghton on the south. Mining had been carried out
there since 1853 by fewer than one hundred men. A small location included five
boardinghouses, several homes, a company office, a blacksmith shop and a
stamp mill (Clarke 1990: 8). Expansion soon occurred. Incorporated on
November 1, 1861, with a population of 854, Houghton recorded over two thou-
sand residents a year later. Despite three large hotels and numerous small
boarding-houses, a contemporary observer noted: ”’Every house is crammed
with humanity’” (Thumer 1994: 76-78).

On the Menominee Iron Range, town-building was already underway as
the first mine shafts were being sunk. A reporter for The Mining Journal wrote on
November 3, 1877: ”Arriving at Powers . . . I found everything in a flourishing
condition. The place is laid out for a town, but the only buildings there as yet are
a post-office and several boardinghouses. The boardinghouses are all full to

overflowing.” Elsewhere on the Menominee Range the situation was the same.

120

Besides the Menominee Mining Company boardinghouse at the Chapin
Location, it seems there were three commercial boardinghouses in the incipient
Iron Mountain City within weeks of the mine’s opening (1879). Many more
would follow (Dulan 1978).

As these and other independent townsites developed and some ultimate-
ly incorporated as cities, commercial boardinghouses continued to provide
accommodation and income to the populace. These commercial boardinghous-
es operated in several forms. Some, situated in the central business district and
generally occupying substantial quarters, were relatively indistinguishable phys-
ically from the hotels next to which they sat; others were the upper or back por-
tion of commercial buildings such as stores or restaurants; still others were pri-
vate homes, some having been modified to accommodate the maximum number
of paying residents. In each case, the resident family derived its living from this
dedicated business enterprise in a building that housed both its business endeav-
or and its living quarters.

In individual cases, a hotel or a saloon could also provide for commercial
boarding. Although a travelers’ hotel was not a boardinghouse per se, a number
of hotels designated specific rooms or floors as residential accommodation,
thereby adding boarding to the services they offered. Some saloons offered
boarding as a secondary business. Such businesses might or might not formally
advertise the boarding aspect of the business, but a sign in the window or word
of mouth alerted townsmen of the rooms’ availability.

The Lake Linden Hotel, for example, had a few back rooms for lumber-
men who came to town on a spree each payday and better rooms in front for
fourteen regular Calumet and Hecla boarders. A number of the better rooms
were also available for travelers, which often included politicians, C&H physi-

cians, and the like (Brunet 1993). Thomas Smart purchased the two-story Lake

121

View House in Hancock in 1872. He maintained it as a boardinghouse until 1881
when he added a third story and transformed it into ”the leading hotel at the
time” (Maki 19848). The Falk Hotel in Menominee ”operated as boardinghouse,
’speakeasy,’ and restaurant” (Bayee 1963).

The 1886-87 Marquette City and County Directory catalogs boarding estab-
lishments in the City of Marquette under various headings and without particu-
lar consistency. In the business section under ”Boardinghouses” there are fifteen
listings, four adding a further designation, ”boardinghouse and saloon.” A fifth
entry reads ”sample rooms and boardinghouse.” In another instance, the board-
ing facility and the saloon carry different business names but at the same
address, and listings include cross reference. Each of these six also appear
among the twenty-five saloons listed under that heading.

Two additional such businesses, the Alpena House ”saloon and boarding”
and A. Rose ”saloon and boardinghouse” had no listing in the business section;
they appear in the residential listings under the proprietors’ names. John
Selander’s facility is listed in the business directory under ”Saloons” without
additional designation, but his residential listing says ”sample room and board-
inghouse.”

Listings under ”Hotels” plus display ads identify fourteen hotels in the
city. Twelve of these hotels were boarding town residents. One of them, the.
Travelers’ Home, is cross-referenced as a boardinghouse in the residential listing
of Charles Warner, proprietor.

Two more commercial boardinghouses had been established above restau-
rants, further capitalizing on the ”board” aspect of the business by serving food
to street traffic as well as to boarders.

In the directory residential listings, an additional nine addresses include

the notation ”boardinghouse.” The status of these establishments is ambiguous.

122

A couple of them, specifically the Goodenburg House and the LaLonde
Boardinghouse, suggest small commercial businesses, both by their names and
the number of boarders at each. The rest may also have been small but fully
commercial establishments or merely private homes that took in a few boarders
and wanted to advertise that fact. Three were identified as being operated by
widows.

The many examples of commercial boardinghouses attest to their preva-
lence and variety. Individual examples also illustrate a few of the adaptations
frequently found in association with commercial boarding.

George Premo built a one-story hotel in Amasa, opening it in May, 1900.
Demand for boarding accommodation for the growing number of miners led to
expansion in 1905. Premo purchased a large hotel building in nearby Sidnaw,
dismantled it, and used the materials to add a substantial second story, including
a balcony all round, to his building. George’s wife ran the kitchen, and together
they operated this hotel/boardinghouse until 1920 (Peryam 1966, Premo 1902,
1906, Premo 1993).

In 1884 the William Cordes family of Menominee bought the Bay View
House from a Jack McCarthy, who had run it as a saloon with sleeping rooms in
the upper two floors. The new owners changed both the building and the focus
of its operation. They took up residence, kept the barroom but expanded the
structure (see figure 30) and operated it as a family-run commercial boarding-
house for the single men working at the Sheridan Circle furnace (Knuth 1992,
1993)

Origin of the Calliari Hotel in Palatka lies in one of the hundreds of mine
tragedies and shows how a change in family circumstance can alter the scope of
its boarding enterprise. One day in 1904 a mine superintendent ”showing off”

caused the death of a miner. The widow and her seven children were at first

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assured they could stay in the company location house where her boarders
would provide income for the large family, but soon after they were forced from
company housing. Two lean years followed until the company made a settle-
ment on the widow, Maria Calliari. With her windfall she built a three-story
hotel, opera house, and bakery in the nearby town. The hotel was principally a
miners’ boardinghouse where two hundred occupied thirty-five rooms on rota-
tion, night-shift workers rolling into the beds just vacated by day-shift men
(Pisoni 1973, Bernhardt 1975: 72).

Candido Pisoni had worked the mines near Iron River, but he hated and
feared mining. He preferred business. He and his wife Anna (Maria Calliari’s
daughter) ran a saloon for three years, then in 1913 bought a hotel near Forbes
Location from a Mike Mahoney Mahaney. The couple operated two businesses
from the building and divided the chores between them: Anna opened a board-
inghouse for thirty-five boarders, both miners and lumbermen; Candido ran a
logging enterprise during the winter and in the summer he farmed, produced
hay for his teams of horses, prepared the large household garden, and laid in the
next winter ’5 supply of wood for the boardinghouse. Until Prohibition the fami-
ly also continued operation of the barroom that was part of the old hotel (Pisoni
1973, Mineral Hills 1968).

Just as a saloon in conjunction with a boarding facility could take various
position from incidental to predominant, the commercial boardinghouse kitchen
could remain exclusive for the boarders or it could serve additional customers
and even assume a separate economic identity. Two Marquette examples already
mentioned were the boardinghouses over the Boston and the Eureka
Restaurants. In the same year (1887) Anton Theby operated the City Restaurant
and Boardinghouse in Wakefield on the Gogebic Range. The establishment’s

popularity was noted in a newspaper item at the time, as was the proprietor’s

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obliging service: ”’He keeps a first class place, sets a good table and makes it
pleasant for all, and if you are in need of fresh vegetables you can always find
them at Anton’s’” (Cox 1983: 40).

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, an interesting
mix of commercial houses dotted the Michigan mining landscape. Some, like the
company houses, catered to single-gender and single-occupation residents, but
with a wider variety. A scattering of houses show specialization in railroad
workers, stone masons, milliners, and dressmakers. Certain cases involved a
master / mistress of the trade housing his or her apprentices. More prevalent
were boardinghouses for teachers. Thurner (1994: 170) notes that ”one Mine
Street boardinghouse at Calumet contained so many teachers that wags labeled
it The Hennery.”

One type of commercial boarding house that particularly capitalized on
the single-gender/single-occupation form was the ”house of ill repute.”
Examples ”sprouted like mushrooms.” Arrests and threats of action by mine
agents seem to have done little to deter the activity. In Hancock, John Cabus was
so bold (and honest) as to list his occupation for the 1880 federal census as
”’Keeper of a House of Ill-Fame’” (Lankton and Hyde 1982: 89). At Wakefield
the marshal] regularly raided the notorious Sunday Lake Hotel with no apparent
permanent impact (Cox 1983: 34). It took the indignation of the men of Fayette
plus a bit of arson to rid the nearby town of one such house and to free the girls
virtually imprisoned there (LaFayette 1977: 45).

Legitimate commercial houses served a far more disparate clientele than
regularly found in the company houses. For example, in 1886 at the W. J. Shaw
Boarding house in Marquette, occupations of the nine boarders were clerk, cus-
toms agent, engineer, fisherman, laborer, machinist, missionary, oil inspector,

and stone mason. At the Christy House that same year, besides a photographer,

 

125

watchmaker, laundryman, the night manager of the Western Union office, and
an employee of Iron Bay Manufacturing (all males), there was a Mrs. H. H.
Doone, in the employ of I. Neuberger, a major clothier in town (Marquette City
and County Directory 1886-87). One of the more colorful residents at the Red
Jacket (Calumet) boardinghouse above Keckonen’s Hardware was a Mme.

Buddha, self-proclaimed ”clairvoyant and trance medium.”

 

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DLAIIIVDYANT AIID TRANCE MEDIUM.
CLAIRVOYANT AND TRANCE MEDIUM

Located over Kodtomn‘e Hm

438 North Fifth St, Red Jacket

YOUR PAST
PRESENT AND FUTURE
' OUTLINED

No Questions Asked. Guaranteed Satisfaction
PHOTOGRAPHS
Photographs of your friends read scientifically
You are cordially invited

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Figure 8. Mme. Buddha’s newspaper advertisement. (Courtesy Keweenaw Press)

The Ce-eperative Poika Talo

With expanding needs for housing and only the natural limits of the mar-
ketplace and the industry of its entrepreneurs to drive their endeavors, no single
ethnic group cornered the market on commercial boardinghouses, nor was any
group specifically shut out. However, when one ethnic group came to America
and encountered the boardinghouse for the first time, it applied its economic
philosophy and created a distinct form of commercial boardinghouse in the

Great Lakes mining area.

126

Boardinghouses did not exist as an institution in Finland. When the first
Finns emigrated to America in the 18605 and made their way to the forests and
mines of the Upper Great Lakes, they discovered what they referred to as a poika
talo, variously translated as ”youth home,” ”boys’ house,” or ”bachelors’
house”—an apt description of the single-male enclaves becoming increasingly
evident in successive waves of mining booms. The same impulses that enticed
other ethnic countrymen to board together led to many Finn boardinghouses.
Late in the nineteenth century, many of these had developed along very distinct
economic lines: they were boarding co-operatives.

Throughout the region the Finns became known for their co-Operative
business ventures. Distinct from the production stock companies put together
by Eastern financiers that were the driving force behind the mining develop-
ment, Finnish co-operatives brought together Finns of the lower social and eco-
nomic levels to finance and benefit directly from every-day businesses, particu-
larly housing and groceries. The idea behind these consumer co-operatives was
simple: a group of people formally organized and bought wholesale, personally
benefitting from the savings and then dividing profit made by selling to out-
siders.

Investment was based on buying shares of the business. Those who
owned shares also owed a commitment of time and / or labor to the enterprise.
Officers of the co-operative answered not only to members/ shareholders, but to
a regional organization that monitored and assisted all the local co-op ventures.
The strong cultural heritage of the Finns to work and live collectively plus their
Socialistic political leanings made co-operative boardinghouses a particularly
appealing business venture and living arrangement in the Michigan mining
region.

Where heavy concentrations of Finns developed, poika talot did too. If the

127

enclave was on private property in the Great Lakes area, a poika talo was likely
operated as a co-operative. In a departure from the usual trend to call a board-
inghouse after the proprietor or the head of its kitchen, the Finn co-op boarding-
houses were often given inspirational names drawn from Finnish epic literature
or expressing a noble ideal. One of scores of examples from Minnesota’s mining
region was Jukola, founded at Virginia in 1909 and named for seven heroic
brothers in a popular Finnish novel. Heavy demand prompted an expansion of
kitchen, dining room and sleeping facilities and the addition of a ladies’ parlor in

1912.

During its busiest period Jukola used to serve 450 persons daily in its din
ing room and was known for its excellent food. Drinking and cardplay
ing were strictly forbidden on the premises. During 1915—17,Jukola also
operated its own grocery store in basement quarters in the building. . . .
(Wasastjerna 1957: 434)

Examples in Michigan were more modest, but operated along the same
lines. A number of men would pool their resources, purchase a suitable build-
ing, and take in additional boarders on a shares basis. Each resident shared not
only in any profits, but also in the chores and other responsibilities. Alanen
(1991a) reports four co-operative houses in Marquette County, one each in
Ishpeming, Marquette, Negaunee, and North Lake Location.

The records of one such co-operative boardinghouse in Wakefield,
Gogebic County, in the early part of this century details the business activities
and domestic decisions made by the owners, including hiring a succession of
cooks and other domestic helpers over the years, choosing wallpaper patterns
for various rooms, and buying out members who had decided to return to
Finland (Wakefield Poika Talo Record Book 1917-32).

The boardinghouse was known as Aspirant (”Endeavor”). In the summer

of 1917 a seven-man committee was charged with finding a property and

128

subsequently reported on four houses available. The one purchased included
second-floor furnishings. A constitution was drawn up to formalize the co-oper-
ative arrangement and the men began preparations for opening the facility. A
”house mother” and two maids were hired, two cows purchased, a ”house
father” was chosen from the men to oversee operations for a three-month term,
his assistant was appointed, and two men were assigned ”cow care” at four dol-
lars per month. The co-operative was formally named The Wakefield House
Company and $10,000 in shares at 4 percent interest were sold to raise additional

operating capital. Only Finns could be shareholders.

 

 

 

 

Figure 9. Wakefield Poika Talo. (Courtesy Bruce Cox, Wakefield Historical Society)

Last entry of the record, dated January 17, 1932, shows the Endeavor still
in operation, though it had not paid interest for several years and the board had
discussed the possibility of disbanding. Through the fourteen years detailed in

the company records, the internal dynamics of the cooperative household

129

become evident, as do the adaptations the household made to changing social
conditions around it.

One notable feature of this boardinghouse operation was its rate struc-
ture. Room and board were charged separately, allowing some residents to room
only, and members of the community to buy meals sporadically or regularly.
The initial rates were $3.50 to $4.00 monthly for rooms, $6.50 per week for meals.
Individually, meals were priced at thirty cents (breakfast) and forty cents (lunch
and supper, each).

Rates changed over time to meet cost of living, and money-saving plans
sometimes worked, but were often abandoned when they became too much
trouble. The boarders raised strong objection to watering down the milk. Not
only did the diluting stop, but additional supplies of rich buttermilk were
bought. Purchases were made at both the public store and the Finnish co-op,
depending upon the better bargain. Raising pigs seems to have been successful;
leasing a field and growing their own potatoes was a short-lived venture. The
milk cows did not last long either; leasing pasturage for them was costly and
shareholders had to be convinced to keep the barn clean.

Other changes—sometimes abrupt—involved hired personnel and man-
agement. Within three months of organization, the board of directors had fired
the cook/ ”house mother” for ”coarse language.” At one point in 1921 the pre-
siding ”house mother” announced to the board that she could run the entire
operation herself: no ”house father” was necessary. The board decided to main-
tain the status quo. She left. Was she an ardent feminist? Did the board fire her
for insubordination? Did she leave for a better offer? The ”house father” was re-
elected, so apparently no one found fault with his conduct. Two years later the
entire female staff left simultaneously. Unfortunately, the records do not indicate

details of either situation.

130

The Endeavor’s record shows that over time, disciplinary measures
became more severe as flagrant rule breaking escalated. An early problem was
”prevailing disorder” in the kitchen, not attributed to the kitchen staff but to
some of the men apparently indulging in midnight snacks and the like. The
records refer periodically to ”arguments and disturbances, ” men not behaving
themselves in the dining areas, and broken rules in general. At first, notices and
reminders of rules were posted in the dining room. The board gave reprimands.
Later the ”house father” became disciplinarian and ”harsh measures” were
advocated by the board. In the later years, collecting room and board charges
was a problem. Numerous accounts were in arrears.

Another set of changes were adaptive responses to the evolving society.
After only a year in business (1918), the dining room was attracting so many
non-residents that it was serving twice the number of people the dining room
could hold. Consequently, the board decided to expand that part of the house.
The boardinghouse dining room was not run like the meal-on-demand restau-
rants; rather, it would serve a single seating for each meal, family-style, i.e., the
entire quantity of food was placed on the tables at once and all seated would
make their grab for what each considered his or her share. Not knowing how
many would show up for any given meal led to much uncertainty both in the
kitchen and at table. For this reason the Endeavor’s board instituted a policy
that neighborhood ”regulars” had to either commit to being regulars by buying a
week’s meal ticket, or they would not be served: they could not just ”drop in”
and purchase meals at random.

While many of the boardinghouses in the surrounding area were in loca-
tions, where most if not all the boarders would be mine employees on the same
shifts, and the boardinghouses were proximate to the mines, the ”Endeavor”

served a fledgling urban neighborhood where people with various employment

131

and schedules had both the freedom and sometimes the necessity to frequent dif-
ferent establishments for lodging and meals. It was this variety of work sched-
ules, the inconvenience or impossibility of returning home for a meal during the
work day, plus the growing social autonomy for young adults in the early twen-
tieth century that Pillsbury (1990: 31) and Wolfe (1913: 38-51) credit with the
functional decline of boarding-houses nationally and the increased popularity of
rooming houses and restaurants.

No doubt a result of more plentiful employment opportunities in town,
an increased presence of women at the dining tables of the Endeavor led in 1925
to a schedule of reduced meal charges for them. Popularity of the automobile
also influenced the facilities. By the beginning of 1924 the Endeavor had a
garage, for which the board instituted a charge of three dollars per month per
car.

Probably most significant of the adaptations made by the commercial
Finn boardinghouses was the co-operative format itself. It was a ”cultural
species,” unique to the Great Lakes Finnish communities. It did not transplant
well to the Pacific Northwest where concentrations of Firms developed around
the fishing and lumbering industries of Washington and Oregon. In Minnesota
and Michigan, the co-operative poika talo was appealing primarily when juxta-
posed to the company-dominated and paternalistic society of the mining
regions.

The Finns of Washington and Oregon were not as politically radical as
those in the Great Lakes region, however. In fact, argues Walter Mattila (1972: 6),
the popular literature produced in these west coast Finntowns ”show[s] that
most boardinghouse Finns were enthusiastic Rotarians [Main Street
Americans)” These Finn boardinghouses were central to the Finnish popula-
tions they served, becoming social hubs in the community with a strong family

atmosphere (unlike the Endeavor) and offering numerous supportive services

132

beyond bed and board. Their success on the West Coast, argues Mattila (23),

arises from their rejection of the Great Lakes model:

At one time in pioneer Finntowns when Socialism and Co-operativism
courted each other, spirited efforts were made to replace ”capitalistic”
boardinghouses by those owned and operated by the boarders, them
selves. Except for a few lingering ones, they didn’t last long because no
woman would work as hard for them as for her own business. . . . [and
the true value of the house was] the good will from the landlady’s hard
work and long hours.

Considering the turnover in domestic staff at the Endeavor, Mattila may
have a point about a woman working best in her own kitchen. Examining the
operation of homes as boardinghouses provides some opportunity to explore

that idea further.

Bearding in Family Hemes

Boarding in family homes generally involved the fewest boarders per
household, but was the most widespread occurrence of the practice. For every
one of the Evalyn Cooks or Maria Calliaris who derived her sole support from
managing a large, function-specific boarding facility, there were scores of women
who took a few boarders into their homes to augment the family income (Chiesa
1993). This form of boarding flourished both in private homes and in the ”cook-
ie-cutter neighbor-hoods” of the locations.

The Marquette City and County Directory for 1886-87 again supplies useful
information. The residential listings show boarders at 195 separate addresses
throughout the city and in the adjoining Rolling Mill Furnace Location. Of these,
thirty-four may be specifically identified as commercial establishments. Two
additional addresses, with nine and twenty-three boarders respectively, seem
also to have been operated as commercial houses. The remaining 159 addresses,
or nearly 82 percent of the total boarding venues occupied that year, appear to

have been private homes.

133

Often the numbers of boarders in any household were relatively small,
one to five, although ten or more did occur. The prevalence of residential board-
ing also varied spatially. Across the country as well as in Michigan, areas of
most dynamic immigration and industrial growth exhibited a heavier concentra-
tion of home-boarding than did the more settled areas, where the influx of single
men was less and those who had come earlier had begun to establish their own
homes or to move on to other areas (Jensen 1980: 19). For example, historian
Russell Magnaghi (1987: 47-8) has noted that among the more settled Italian pop-
ulation in Red Jacket (Calumet) in 1900, the percentage of homes with boarders
was roughly half that in Italian homes in the expanding iron communities in Iron
and Gogebic Counties.

Magnaghi has also calculated that in 1900, 65 percent of the Italian fami-
lies in Negaunee took in boarders, the number per household averaging 6.7. In
Myer Township, Menominee County that same year, every Italian household but
one had boarders, and every one of those boarders was an Italian (1987: 47, 28).

Generally, the boarders were of the same ethnic background as their host
family, and in numerous cases, related or at least from the same home communi-
ty. The 1880 census of Ishpeming includes numerous examples. For instance,
the Swedish household of Andrew and Minnie Sunblat included their three-
month-old son and five male boarders. In the home of Antoine Novalle, a
French-Canadian, lived his wife Harriet, their four daughters, ages five, three,
two, and one month, Antoine’s brother, nine additional male boarders, and an
eighteen-year-old female servant.

Gwinn, CCI’s model town on the Marquette Range, had neither company
nor commercial boardinghouses in its master plan. Its homes, however, held
boarders. According to the 1910 Federal Census, forty-nine residences included

at least one boarder. In nearly three-quarters of these homes, the ethnicity of the

 

134

boarder(s) matched that of the host(s). Where they differed (thirteen homes), it
was minimally: Finns and Norwegians with Swedes and Americans, Danes with
English.

In seven of the forty-nine, the occupation of the female head of household
is recorded as ”boardinghouse keeper. ” Two cases are women alone: one, a
forty-two-year-old widow with two children (thirteen and eighteen) was board-
ing eight men in her home on Jasper Street. Possibly these boarders provided
her entire income, though it is impossible to say with certainty.

In the other case, a forty-one-year-old Finnish widow with three children
(five, twelve and sixteen years old) had one boarder. It is unlikely that the
income from this one boarder supported her and her children.

In the five remaining households specified as boardinghouses, the male
heads of household pursued occupations from carpenter to brakeman, so board-
ing provided a second income. Which partner generated what proportion of the
household income is not as clear. That most households depended upon at least
two incomes, however, is evident from the boardinghouse data.

In Gwinn, twenty of the boarding households, about 40 percent, housed a
single boarder. An Italian family housed the highest number of boarders in town
(ten), while two Finnish families included seven and nine boarders into their
respective households. In the largest of the boarding households, however, fami-
ly still outnumbered the boarders. A French-Canadian merger brought together
his kids and her kids (eleven of them between five and thirty years old) with six
boarders, including the one-month-old daughter of one young boarder, for a

total household population of nineteen.

Eeengmigs Qf Bearding in Family Homes

The primary motive for boarding outsiders in one’s home was almost

always economic. An extra room or even a loft could bring in a bit of extra

 

135

income, though some houses were specifically modified to accommodate addi-
tional boarders. When expansion was not feasible, people simply ”doubled up”
or the family took the lesser portion of the house. Sheets or blankets hung in a
room shared by host family and boarders provided some degree of privacy.
Double-shifting at the mines meant two sets of boarders could use one set of
beds. On occasion, boarders shared a bed with a member of the host family, or
family children were relegated to the floor so boarders could occupy their beds
(Symon 1985, Boggio 1982)).

Mary Zager’s husband Mat had worked for C&H for about eighteen
months when he was killed in a rockfall. Just two months before, they had
bought a house on company land. Mary received monthly assistance from the
county and free fuel from the company, but it was not enough to make ends
meet, so she and her sons, a two-year-old and a newborn, moved into the two
upstairs rooms of the house and for the next eight years she rented out the three
rooms downstairs (Lankton 1991: 192-93).

Couples earmarked boarding income for extra family expenses or as sav-
ings for a farm or business. Boarding income also eased the inevitable slack
times in a boom-bust industry. In the Hermansville home Of Angelo and Mary
Arduin and their nine children, income from fifteen to eighteen boarders paid
the food and housing expenses for the Arduin family, allowing them to eventual-
ly purchase a farm (Whitens and Campbell 1983).

In the case of one couple who parlayed their boardinghouse money into a
family business, the enterprise came initially as a bit of a shock to the wife.
Teresa Lucas and her three small sons stayed behind in Croatia when her hus-
band Matt went off to the copper mines of Michigan. By 1883, however, she and
the children joined him on the Keweenaw. Her intention was that the family
would remain for a year or so, and then return to Croatia with the fruits of

Matt’s labor. Matt had other ideas.

136

When Teresa arrived in her new home, a small log cabin Matt had leased
near the Osceola Mine, she found twelve Slovenian miners whom Matt had
obligingly pre-registered as boarders. Once Teresa understood the profit poten-
tial, she rolled up her sleeves and began managing a household of seventeen.
Within two years she had saved six hundred dollars. With that, the family
bought its own log cabin in Raymbaultown and Matt went to work for C&H.
Teresa added two rooms and took in additional boarders.

In 1890, seven years after coming to Michigan, Teresa had put aside
enough to buy the family a fine, large home in the center of Calumet. Not con-
tent to rest from her eighteen-hour days (and the births of eight more sons),
”Teresa saw a means of getting Matt on the surface for good. Tearing out all the
downstairs partitions of their home, they wrestled a 25-foot bar through the
doorway and, in the fall of 1891, the Lucas saloon opened for business.” It
catered to Croatian and Slovenian mining families: children were allowed; gam-
bling and drunkenness were not (Frimodig 1990: 75-7).

Although dramatic, Teresa Lucas’ story is not unique. Even a professional
woman found time and energy for boarders. Anna Maria (Mary) Evensen for-
mally trained in both Swedish massage and midwifery and was certified in each
when she immigrated from Norway to Michigan in 1885. In Newberry she
encountered Axel Fellman, an old flame who was then employed by the railroad.
They married and Mary took boarders into their home. Axel was later trans-
ferred to Marquette. They bought a large Victorian home there which soon filled
with their four children and more of Mary’s Swedish boarders. College educa-
tions and professional careers for the children were family priorities made possi-
ble through Mary’s earnings.

Meanwhile, Mary had also established a busy and respected medical

practice. Although she saw patients in their own homes, at times a back room in

137

her home accommodated a couple of extra, temporary boarders in its capacity as
a lying-in facility. In her later years as a widow, the children grown and gone,
Mary was no ”empty nester.” To the age of eighty, when she was killed by a car
as she crossed the street, she continued both her medical practice and her board-

inghouse (Evensen).

 

 

 

Figure 10. Fellman home, '1th near Ohio, Marquette, c. 1910. (Courtesy Ovidia Evensen)

Sometimes What began as a casual boarding arrangement eventually
developed into a full commercial boarding enterprise. Maria Calliari is but one
of the women who followed this economic path. Often it was widowhood that
drove women to opening their home to boarders or to expanding the scale of
their operations. The potential desperation of widowhood and the ease of mind

boarders could provide are simultaneously summed up by Sadie Gilbert’s (1987:

138

76) memory of nineteenth-century family pioneers on the Menominee Range:

My Grandmother Terrill had a boardinghouse for single miners.

. . . My Grandfather Terrill suffered a heart attack while working in the
mine and was brought home to die in his own bed. More than ever, my
grandmother needed to operate her boarding-house.

As more women came into the developing mining areas, inevitably a
number of them became widows who needed support for themselves and often
for children. Single women, too, required a means of support. Capitalizing on
their domestic skills taking in boarders allowed them to work within their homes
(particularly attractive to women with young children or where society frowned
on women working in public) and to maintain their household independently.

Private-home boarding, therefore, was not necessarily an end in itself, nor
an inconsequential source of ”pin money. ” No matter the number of boarders or
the proportion of family income generated by boarders, providing the boarding

service was serious business—women’s business.

Beardingheuses and the Wemen’s Demestie Eeenemy
At any point during the period 1840 to 1920 more than one-third of the

national population was living in a boardinghouse, and well over half the popu-
lation boarded at some point in their lives. Michigan statistics are consistent
with these national figures, and thus the women operating these boardinghouses
comprise a significant demographic group engaged in a crucial social and eco-
nomic enterprise.

It is important to note here that although most studies of boardinghouse
life and operation assume a female boardinghouse keeper, on the northern
Michigan mining frontier, boardinghouse operation involved numerous men.
Families, or at least husband-wife teams, frequently ran the big company houses.

In many cases, the men also worked for the mining company, so much of the

139

actual housework and supervision fell to the women, but nevertheless the man,
as head of household, was ultimately responsible to the company for the opera-
tion of the house. Occasionally, however, the man took complete charge of man-
aging the house, even to doing much or all of the cooking.

Boarding in private households also involved some men, again as head of
household, though it seems in this category there were far fewer instances of
male participation. When a husband or father was part of the household, he was
likely to leave the home operation entirely in his wife or daughter’s hands while
he pursued his own occupation, thus producing two totally separate incomes
from two distinct earners. Women’s income derived from home-based activities
has historically posed problems of measurement and interpretation, often being
ignored. Men’s income has been recognized regardless of source; rarely has
women’s if it was generated in the home.

The importance of this national domestic economy in general, and of
those women who kept boarders in particular, has only recently been realized.
For decades, economic studies have focused on wage labor, perceived as virtual-
ly divorced from the home as a consequence of the Industrial Revolution. A con-
comitant perception defined domestic labor, housework, as ”non-productive,”
that is, aimed at satisfying home consumption but not producing anything for
the larger marketplace (Mackintosh 1979). Consequently, the American family’s
economic picture became distorted, deceptively portraying the male head of
household, working outside the house, as the family’s sole support and obscur-
ing the image of women as economic partners in the home-workplace.

Among the correctives to these ideas, Leonore Davidoff (1979) points to
the boardinghouse as a basic contradiction to the notion of work separated from
home; instead it merges the two, expanding household labor into the realm of

service for an outside market.

140

Exploring household production for market, Joan Jensen (1980) cites vari-
ous home-based textile-producing ventures by rural, nineteenth- and early twen-
tieth-century women and the lucrative boardinghouse operations of urban
women of the same period.

Several of Jensen’s points support this study. The widespread occurrence
of boardinghouses and the economic importance of boarding income are clear.
So, too, is the dependence of many families on at least two incomes. Preliminary
studies from working-class towns in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New
York suggest that only about half the households relied solely on the husband’s
earnings. A government study of Johnstown, Pennsylvania just after the turn of
the century determined that ”fewer than a third of all immigrant households
drew their entire income from the husband’s earnings” (Daniels 1990: 236).

Of the additional sources of income, contributions from the wife’s domes-
tic earnings figured most predominantly. Michigan sources repeat this pattern:
census data and community directories show boarding to be the rule rather than
the exception.

Among the studies Jensen cites is an examination of 4,559 working-class
households in New York in 1904 by the US. Bureau of Labor. In this study,
”women provided 32 to 35 percent of the gross family income. . . . [I]ncome from
boarders was 37 percent of the husband’s income in native-bom and 43 percent
of the husband’s income in foreign-born households,” reflecting both the propor-
tionally greater numbers of boarders in foreign-born households and the gener-
ally lower wages of foreign- versus native-bom men in many industries (factors
Knowles [1920] also emphasizes—see below). Jensen further notes that ”even in
native-born families, [boarding income] could pay for the house rent, clothing,
and part of the fuel while the husband’s income could cover the largest expendi-

ture, that of food, and other incidental expenses” (19-20).

141

Unfortunately, there are no comparable studies of household income for
the Michigan mining regions that would allow a point by point comparison.
However, figures from the Mat and Teresa Lucas household (above) do provide
enough information to calculate a general budget and to make at least a single-
case comparison to Jensen’s conclusions.

When Teresa arrived in 1883, Mat’s daily wage was $1.25. Working a six-
day week for a full year (unusual, since temporary shut-downs were common),
Mat’s annual income would be $390. Teresa’s dozen boarders were each paying
three dollars per month for room and board (a remarkably low figure, even for
the time—possibly a weekly rate misremembered), bringing in $432 and exceed-
ing her husband’s income by about 10 percent. At the end of two years at these
figures, Teresa had saved six hundred dollars. Assuming that was done at a
steady rate, of the annual $432, three hundred was saved. Thus the figures say
the Lucas family maintained a household of seventeen on a combined expendi-
ture of $522 annually, understanding that personal items for the boarders would
be purchased by them, not the Lucases.

In a housing census of 1913, the Osceola Mine owned seventy-nine log
houses, the majority of which rented for four dollars per month. The most
expensive (ten rooms) rented for six dollars (Committee 1913: 15). Assuming the
Lucas family was renting one of the cheaper cabins (a ten-room home would not
have been available to a general laborer), and that the costs were not substantial-
ly different in 1883 from what they were thirty years later, the Lucas family spent
forty-eight dollars for housing in each of the two years they rented the Osceola
house. Taking the rent and the savings from Teresa’s boarding income leaves
eighty-four dollars annually for clothing (for the five in the Lucas family at that
time) and fuel—more than enough, allowing for hand-me-downs and home knit-

ting and considering shoes could be had for under two dollars a pair, shirts for

142

half that (even less if made at home), and the mining companies supplied
employees’ homes with scrap wood and coal at nominal charges.

According to the budgetary breakdown in Jensen, that leaves Mat’s
income of $390 to cover food costs for seventeen people for a year, or roughly
one dollar per day, allowing a few dollars for incidentals. While stretching a sin-
gle dollar to feed seventeen people three meals may seem impossible, it actually
could be done given the frontier context of the Lucas family.

One clear distinction made by Jensen’s argument and the data from which
she draws is an agrarian rural society where households met subsistence needs
and produced extra for the marketplace, versus an urban setting for boarding-
houses where home production of the family foods was not feasible.

On the Michigan mining frontier, however, the latter was not the case.
Whether in a location in the 18605 or in a town such as Wakefield in the 19205,
large gardens and livestock were the norm for dwellings of whatever type, and
mining companies made additional pasturage and agricultural plots available
for nominal fees. The Batista Perona family of Calumet, for example, maintained
ten or twelve cows on a farm four miles outside of town (Bono 1982) and used
the yard of the family home on Laurium Street (Figure 11) as what Stewart-
Abernathy (1986) describes as a small urban farmstead. Often in such cases,
fences were considered more important to controlling the cows than to
beautifying the landscape, though it was not unusual for animals to mosey
about, unrestrained.

At the Mohawk Location boardinghouse, the farmstead was even more
elaborate, including pigs, cows, and chickens as well as prodigious amounts of
produce. The matron of the house, abandoned with five dependent children,
relied upon home-production to make ends meet and received help from her

twenty-two boarders with the livestock and in the garden (Boggio 1982).

143

 

 

 

. a

Figure 11. Batista Perona house, Laurium Street, Calumet. (Marquette County Historical Society)

Moreover, large tracts of natural terrain lay between or adjacent to settle-
ments. Women and children spent entire days picking wild berries for canning;
families sometimes turned berrying into an over-night camping excursion
(Mansfield 1973, Bernhardt 1981: 121). Wild game and fish supplemented home
larders for no more expense than a bullet or a bit of fish bait. Families or com-
munity co-operatives regularly made sausage, butter, and cheese at home from
home-produced raw materials (Magnaghi 1987, Dozzi 1982, Boggio 1982).
Purchasing in bulk also cut food costs. With very careful management, exploit-
ing the agricultural subsistence patterns she had practiced on the home farm in
Croatia, Teresa Lucas could have fed her household spending only about one
dollar per day.

One crucial difference between the strictly urban context for boarding-
house operation cited by Jensen and the frontier context is thus pointed up by

this example. Another difference lies in the other employment options available

144

for women besides servicing boarders. Domestic service and work in the cloth-
ing industry, especially as dressmakers or milliners, were options in both urban
areas and on the mining frontier, though limited by the number of women with
sufficient disposable income to afford these luxuries. (The Mme. Buddahs found
or created their own employment niches.)

However, one major employment source for nineteenth- and early twen-
tieth-century women in urban settings generally unavailable to the Michigan
frontier women was factories. Few factories existed in the mining region for
much of the boardinghouse era, and even where there were jobs for women—
such as in the short-lived overall factory near Calumet, Lavorini’s Macaroni
Factory in Hancock, bakeries, or the bean cannery in Hermansville—there were
far too few to provide an economic base for the numbers of women needing sup-
port. In addition, cultural restrictions against women working outside the home
also closed options for many women (Magnaghi 1987: 47—8, Giorgetti 1983,
Davidoff 1979: 85, Centanino 1983).

The dominant venues of employment in the western Michigan U.P., min-
ing and lumbering, were male domains as clearly as boarding-houses were
female, though minimal cross-over did occur in the big company boardinghous-
es, and saloon proprietors were generally male.

On the other hand, of 4,365 C&H employees in 1913, only twenty-eight
were female. They were assigned to the hospital, library, and the women’s bath-
house (Lankton 1991: 191). Therefore, although Jensen contends urban women
often chose boardinghouse keeping over factory work because it was more lucra-
tive (20), the women on Michigan’s mining frontier took in boarders because
there was a high demand for the service, the women had few other employment
options, and boarding was a respectable, domestic occupation.

Significantly, the Michigan mining frontier data disputes another of

145

Jensen’s conclusions, i.e., that ”the goal of women’s household production
remained to make ends meet rather than to consciously make profits.” Further,
she contends that ”household production was a stage between subsistence and
wage labor that did not lead to entrepreneurship. . . . Thus . . . [household pro-
duction] was not transitional to capitalism for individual women” where con-
trolling the means Of production is her capitalistic criterion (21).

Based upon the urban data Jensen examined, her conclusion may be valid,
but certame Teresa Lucas’ achievements counter the general argument. Clearly
it was her boardinghouse income that bought the family’s Raymbaultown home
which she then used to earn the money that bought the Calumet house and set
the family up in the saloon business. Teresa Lucas was certainly a capitalist. But
was she unique, either in financing the family’s home purchase from boarding-
house profits, or in owning the means of her domestic production? Additional
data say no.

In 1908, Margaret F. Byington undertook a study of the homes and fami-
lies in the Pennsylvania mill town of Homestead. She found boarding to be
means of economic survival for the English-speaking widows and that among
the Slavic laborers, boarding ”is a deliberate business venture on the part of the
family to increase the inadequate income from the man’s earnings” (1910: 144).
Making ends meet was not the sole objective of these immigrant women, howev-
er, as Byington also points out that ”much of the burden of buying the home falls
on the housewife. She must make the needed economies if the extra money is to
be forthcoming. . .” (60).

Richard Harris (1992: 350) cites four major studies of housing among
immigrant populations in Chicago that show boarding income as the means to
home ownership. He further notes that in a 1990 ”study of Vandergrift,

Pennsylvania, Anne Mosher has found that this strategy was common to

146

native-bom workers as well.” She suggests that up to the Depression, ”all kinds
of workers” relied on boarding income ”to realize their dream of home owner-
ship”—a trend Harris recognizes among the middle-class of Toronto up to the
19505.

Numerous Michigan boardinghouse keepers besides Teresa Lucas also
owned their homes and/ or produced more than secondary incomes from their
boarding enterprises. The Marquette City and County Directory 1886-87 identifies
eighteen widows operating boarding establishments, at least three of which were
commercial houses. Only four of the eighteen (and none with the known com-
mercial houses) had only a single boarder, and one of these four was also a prac-
ticing midwife. Boarders, therefore, likely provided most if not all the household
income for over three-fourths of the known boardinghouse widows in Marquette
that year.

The longevity of some of these boarding enterprises documented in
Marquette city and county directories covering the period 1886 through 1929
indicates the success of their operation. For at least the two decades prior to her
death in 1906, the widow Mary Shea served boarders in her home at 140
Champion. The James L. Cuddahee/Cuddahy household included boarders at
several addresses. James, a local carpenter, his wife Sarah, and boarders are list-
ed at 110 N. 5th in 1891. Three years later the Cuddahees had shifted to 156 W.
Superior where they remained until about 1898, after which they are shown at
122 W. Washington. Widowed in 1906, Sarah managed the Washington Street
boardinghouse by herself until shortly before her death in 1908.

Meanwhile, two of the boarding properties once operated by the
Cuddahees were taken over by others. In 1886 the W. J. Shaw Boardinghouse
operated on Washington Street. By 1901, the widow Anna Shaw had relocated to

110 N. 5th where she accommodated boarders for two more decades. In 1920,

147

she advertised ”fumished rooms” rather than boarding accommodations. Her
advancing age, perhaps, or the public’s developing preference for rooming over
boarding may account for the change in her business. She continued at the same
address through 1925.

By 1899 the Fleming sisters, Kate and Nora, had taken over the former
Cuddahee home at 156 W. Superior and continued its operation as a boarding-
house. They relocated to a Washington Street address sometime before 1905 and
Kate maintained the boarding facility without evidence of Nora from 1908
through at least 1917. In 1920, Kate Fleming was still keeping a boardinghouse,
though by that point she had moved to 134 W. Ridge. The 1925 and 1929 city
directories show her still at that address.

Annie Gilling, a widow, operated a boardinghouse at 150 W. Ohio by 1905
and at 119 E. Park from 1908 to 1920, when she ”removed to Detroit.” George
Grieninger’s German Hotel accommodated boarders from at least 1886. Mary,
George’s widow, assumed command of the hotel prior to 1905, remaining propri-
etress to her death in 1919.

Elsewhere on the iron ranges, a Mrs. P. B. Lorber advertised for sale her
commercial boardinghouse, the Miner’s Home, at the Pink Location near
Wakefield (Cox 1983: 36). At Rockland, Anna Wiesen owned her own boarding-
house and supported herself, her granddaughter, and her invalid husband with
her earnings (Fortin 1994).

These few, but representative examples demonstrate that beyond aug-
menting household income from other sources, several of northern Michigan’s
boardinghouse matrons did indeed own and profitably operate their boarding

establishments.

148

Beardinghouse merhead—Staffing

More than the wage labor of miners, boardinghouse operation entailed
numerous expenses for overhead. Some of that overhead has already been
acknowledged: house rent, food, laundry, fuel. Private homes or privately-
owned establishments also had to bear the cost of furnishing, heating, and
repairs assumed by the mining companies for their facilities.

One additional cost for both private or company managers, however, was
staff. Large houses for scores or hundreds of men demanded extra staff, and
even in family homes with a handful of boarders, servants became a common
addition to the household. Thus the boardinghouse keepers both contributed to
the national economy through their domestic earnings and buying power, and
also comprised a significant employer group as well. Therefore, boarding-hous-
es were not only a center of domestic service production; they were also the
venue for wage income.

Not all boardinghouses included hired staff, of course. In many instances
they were simply not needed. In other instances, family members helped out,
sometimes even to the point of eliminating the need for hired staff altogether.
For example, a Mrs. Reippenen had seven daughters to help her run the
Wakefield Iron Company boardinghouse while her husband worked in the mine
(Johnson 1993). Ida Schmidt’s husband and four children lent assistance at the
Delta Chemical and Iron boardinghouse (figure 27) (Mather 1994).

Census records indicate that live-in servants, usually young females, fre-
quently met the need for extra domestic help. In the household of Antoine
Novalle, mentioned above, his wife Harriet clearly needed extra help, with an
infant and three other young children plus eleven men requiring food and laun-
dry. Typically such live-in help received room and board as part of their com-

pensation.

149

Additional hands were not always conveniently available, however, par-
ticularly in frontier communities. One perspective boardinghouse keeper for the
Victoria Copper Mining Company wrote: ”I am very sorry to tell you that in
regard to the scarsity [sic] of help we are unable to find them in sufficient num-
ber to permit us to take over your boardinghouse” (VCM Files, Hooper corre-
spondence). The board of the Endeavor also had periodic difficulty finding can-
didates for the ”house mother” or her helpers (Wakefield).

In her communications with the Victoria in 1918, Evalyn Cook anticipated
how short-handed she might be in the new endeavor and suggested that she
”can get help that is responsible to take with [her]” including her father who
could do handy-man chores and another ”widow lady” from Paris that would
share the expenses and the work load.

Such collaboration was not unusual: Selma Wiljanen augmented her fami-
ly income with boarders until the death of her husband, at which time she
became uncomfortable having unmarried men in her home. For a while she
tried to support herself and her three daughters through domestic work, but
finally went into partnership with another woman running a boardinghouse
(Larson 1988-94).

The Gabourie sisters of Princeton ran the boardinghouse for the
Stegmiller Mine for years, and later operated a boardinghouse for teachers in the
model community of Gwinn (Gabourie File). Of course, the ultimate of collabo-
rations, husband-wife teams, managed numerous boardinghouses. But even
such collaborations of management did not rule out hiring additional staff,
expanding the influence of boardinghouse managers.

Some of the boardinghouses included male staff members. Male African-
Americans in Houghton County in the 18605 found employment as cooks in the

boardinghouses (Thumer 1994; 140). During the 19205 the day cook, head night

150

cook, and the bull cook (midnight shift) of a Sagola boardinghouse complex
were men; women filled the other staff positions (Ertel 1986: 77). Martin Rogan,
a pioneer settler of Crystal Falls, was a cook for miners before he built his own
boardinghouse (Miller 1981: 47). If local women were available, however, they
usually had no difficulty finding boardinghouse employment. With few oppor-
tunities for female employment available, domestic service in a boardinghouse
was an attractive proposition, despite the excruciating demands of the job and
the pitifully low pay.

A survey of boardinghouse workers in Minnesota in 1918 revealed that

the women

averaged almost seventy-five hours of work per week; some even worked
in excess of one hundred hours. All of the female boardinghouse
employees listed in the survey worked seven days a week and received,
on the average, a weekly wage of $7.55, or 10 cents an hour. (Alanen 1989:

177)

 
   

i ‘3" I
, .M“ N

 

Figure 12. Staff at the Stephenson boardinghouse, Wells. (Courtesy Delta County Historical
Society)

151

Weekly pay was less than half that in Michigan houses when room and
board was supplied. At the I. Stephenson Boardinghouse near Escanaba, the
staff’s workdays began at five o’clock in the morning and lasted about seventeen
hours, seven days a week. Pay was three dollars per week plus room and board
(Bourke 1982).

Work activities for boardinghouse staff included cooking, cleaning, wash-
ing and ironing laundry, waiting on tables, dishwashing, making beds, and emp-
tying slops pails, plus other necessary activities such as hauling water, garden-
ing, milking cows, feeding chickens, canning or butter-making, filling and tend-
ing lamps, sewing and mending.

There were a number of consequences from this practice of hiring young
ladies as boardinghouse staff. First, additional women in the community were
brought into the wage labor market and empowered in whatever opportunities
their particular situation might allow. Second, they experienced on-the-job train-
ing, using what domestic training they had acquired at home plus the experience
in the boardinghouse to develop a marketable skill such as Evalyn Cook, Selma
Wiljanen, and others had been able to do. Third, what was often a brief period
between employment and marriage stimulated tum-over, opening up positions
to new candidates on a reasonably regular basis.

Local girls did not always fill these positions, even if they were available.
The chain migration pattern on the Great Lakes mining frontier usually began
with the single male as the first link. Another pattern, however, began with the
boardinghouse matron as the first link. Certain matrons capitalized on their
positions as potential employers to encourage and even finance the immigration
of female friends and relatives, and then to employ them and look out for them
after their arrival. Teresa Lucas, for example, brought over eighty such women

(Frimodig 1990: 75). If the sister or cousin or niece should meet a nice fellow—in

152

the boardinghouse or not—and settle into her own home, so much the better.

Because of the availability of these women, men who had come over to
the mines to earn their stake as sojourners, stayed and became Americans
instead. Then, like the Antoine Novalles, they boarded their fellow countrymen,
brothers and sisters who immigrated after them. Others, intending to stay,
found brides at the boardinghouse and then set up housekeeping, taking in a
couple of boarders themselves.

As the Michigan mining area developed, companies phased out the
single-men boardinghouses and placed their resources and corporate philosophy
behind establishing single-family homes and planned communities, promoting
what they believed would become a self-fulfilling prophecy: happy, healthy, and
loyal employees. After World War I, tightened immigration policies and better
economic opportunities elsewhere caused a decline in population in the region.
Decreased numbers of private boardinghouses accommodated the dwindling
numbers of single workers.

Ironically, the best of the boardinghouse managers contributed to the
declining need for their services while simultaneously increasing their competi-
tion. Their domestic earnings helped stimulate local economies. They provided
training and created employment for both local women and foreign women
whom they encouraged to immigrate. Those women, in turn, became wage
earners, further stimulating the economy, and then married the mining workers,
helping for a while to stabilize the male work force, and taking in boarders, per-

petuating the cycle.

CHAPTER 6

THE BOARDINGHOUSE AS MATERIAL CULTURE

Physical details of the boardinghouses varied considerably and individual
structures were subject to alteration over time; thus no specific layout or eleva-
tion is ”typical.” Compounding the task of describing and analyzing the physi-
cal boardinghouses is a lack of detailed physical evidence. A few houses remain
in varying states of decay or modification, or merely as overgrown footings or
cellar holes, and even these scanty remains are inconsistently documented.
Archaeological findings are limited.

Documentary evidence, often only a single exterior photograph or a ”foot-
print” on a fire insurance map, generally hints more than reveals. There are few
floorplans or blueprints. Personal recollections tend to focus on minutiae or to
ignore the physical details for the social experience. In some cases all that
remains is a name someone remembers once hearing from a family member, or a
vague reference in a diary or letter. Taken together, however, the evidence sug-
gests that some consistency did arise in general forms if not necessarily in partic-
ular detail.

While certainly practical considerations relating to function, cost, avail-
ability of materials, and technological levels impacted on design and construc-
tion, as Hall (1969), Wright (1981), Altman and Chemers (1980), Oliver (1987),
Sanders (1990), Lawrence (1990) and others suggest, the house is also an architec-
tural response to social ideas such as privacy and status. Moreover, boarding-

houses as material culture exist within a geographic and social context. A5
153

154

Fleming’s model (1982) argues, examination of the physical boardinghouse
needs to address each of these considerations. While the uneven nature of the
evidence, one house versus another, precludes a full Fleming analysis for each
boardinghouse, the data available defines a range of materials, dimensions, and
architectural features; gives a sampling of interior arrangement and furnishing;
and shows the placement of the boardinghouses in relation to the other struc-
tures of the communities. After noting these physical facts it is possible to draw
conclusions regarding their meaning in economic, technological and social con-

text.

Building the Beardinghouse—Materials

It seems that boarding accommodations in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula
have been constructed of most every material available in the area, from animal
hide and tree bark to canvas, logs, timber and brick. The first recorded board-
inghouse in the Marquette area, for instance, was known to early missionaries
and miners as the Bawgam House. It was the large cedar bark Wigwam of
Charlie Kabawgam, a local Chippewa, who raised the sail canvas doorway cov-
ering to admit numerous boarders in the early 18405 before Marquette was
founded (Franklin 1977).

An early traveler to Copper Harbor recorded his arrival May 26, 1845, and

his relief at finding a boardinghouse there:

Copper Harbor and torrents of cold spring rain today. Found refuge at
the Astor, a pine log boardinghouse one and a half stories tall. Has a
dining room and kitchen and long table made by two boards laid upon
horses. Each guest has a space on the main floor to spread his mat and
buffalo robe. A sumptuous dinner of smoked ham, butter, fresh bread
and potatoes served. (And in whose hills . . . 1994: 7)

Recollections of early Sault Ste. Marie, a city outside the mining area

specifically but affected by its growth nonetheless, note that rapid expansion of

155

the community was accommodated by a tent city in 1887 that included numer-
ous boardinghouses as well as family homes and stores (I remember when—
1923218, Osborn [1888]). Such temporary and ephemeral housing has left virtual-

ly no physical evidence.

Log Struetures

Where mining activities were the impetus to opening a wilderness area,
company boardinghouses were among the first structures at a site. Housing
labor presented an immediate necessity; gaining access to the land presented an
immediate problem. Both were Often addressed initially through clear-cutting
the site of the mining operation: logs became immediately available for timber-
ing the mine, for simple structures, and possibly for corduroy roads until better
could be constructed. In some cases, then, the Michigan mining frontier replicat-
ed the familiar pattern among agricultural pioneers: a rudimentary log cabin
eventually replaced by a more spacious, frame dwelling.

In this regard, the level of boardinghouse structural sophistication hinged
more specifically on availability of milling and on company policies than on the
date of construction. For example, the Harlow complex at Marquette (figure 13)
predates the Dolan House (figure 14) by nearly twenty years and already reflects
a generation of structural evolution. The Harlows, the founding family of the
Marquette Iron Mining Company, established their initial crude home in 1849 in
an abandoned fisherman’s shack, replacing it with the boardinghouse and hospi-
tal complex shown here (constructed with lumber from their own mill) over the
next few years (Harlow 1849-59, Harlow 1972).

On the other hand, the Gogebic Iron Range was not developed until the
18805. The boardinghouse accommodation at Bessemer is shown only months

after operations began at the Colby Mine in 1884 (Sell 1990). As rudimentary as

 

 

Figure 13. Harlow boardinghouse and hospital addition, Marquette, c. 1863. (Marquette County
Historical Society)

 

 

Figure 14. The Dolan House, Colby Mine, Bessemer, May, 1885. (Marquette County Historical
Society)

157

Wanker/Mine Site \/‘°°°/

to Rockland e"

    
    
   

   
 

 
  

Old Victoria 0
Log Location 0

     

Saw Mill
Location

   

Ex erlmental
ining Pit
9 ——

1100

In this area in 1772,

an English company made
the first copper mine

in Mlchigan.

Legend

A Finn
Boardinghouse

B Big Company
Boardinghouse
D Dwellings

Figure 15. Plan of Victoria Mine, locations, and surrounding area. (Courtesy Pat Thorgren,
Society for Restoration of Old Victoria)

 

158

this structure appears, others were less satisfactory. In the first surge of building
at the Menominee Range’s Chapin and Vulcan mines in 1879-80, the men’s
boardinghouses were large log structures, so crude in appearance that the wife
of the superintendent of the Menominee Mining Company confused a boarding-
house with a chicken coop! (Dulan 1973: 37).

Log construction was not necessarily a precursor to frame building, how-
ever. Many boardinghouses were originally stick-framed and sided with wood.
Nor were company-built log homes automatically replaced by stick-framed
structures, even when milled lumber was available and employed for other mine
buildings including housing. A 1913 inventory of dwellings owned by the cop-
per companies in the strike district shows 278 log homes of from three to ten
rooms, and 3061 frame dwellings of two to twelve rooms, the majority in both
groups being five rooms (Committee 1913).

Moreover, log construction techniques varied. Besides the traditional
round logs notched and crossed at the corners, many log structures were laid up
of dovetailed squared logs, chinked, and then the interior walls were plastered.
Exterior walls were sometimes sided with clapboards. The finished effect resem-
bled a frame structure, but with exceptionally thick walls (McNear 1978: 518).

Many of the log homes have disappeared, but evidence from two mining
locations gives some notion of how these cabins were built, and company and
census records attest to the fact that even the smallest and crudest of such cabins

housed boarding workers along with the resident families.

Cabins at Victgria. After a false start in the 18505, the Victoria copper
mine began operations anew at the turn of the century and established a location
near the mine to house its workers (figure 15). Single men were accommodated

in the large company boardinghouse at the mine head (figure 7) and in several

159

 

 

Figure 16. Log homes at Victoria Mine, c. 1910. (Courtesy Pat Thorgren, Society for Restoration
of Old Victoria)

others in the general area, while family men used company houses including
cabins built in the ”lower location,” i.e., a cluster of housing down the hill from
the mine complex along the road to the nearest town, Rockland, four miles away
(”two miles down, two miles up”) (J ohanson 1993).

Photos of these cabins from about 1910 (figure 16) and other documentary
evidence have assisted in their on-going restoration.

One of those restored cabins is used here to illustrate the rest, there being
only slight variance between them. The lower story, approximately twenty-six
feet by sixteen feet and divided into three rooms, is substantially built of clay-
chinked squared logs. The cooking, eating, and sitting areas comprise about half
the main floor. The two bedrooms can hold little more than a double bed each
(figure 18). Running the width of the cabin is a single-story attached board-and—
batten summer kitchen likely also used for laundry, canning, and storage, partic-
ularly of fire wood. A small pantry or ”buttery” is tucked under the narrow
stairway. There are no sinks or toilets, but a natural spring and privies were

nearby.

160

 

Figure 17. Interior of one restored log home, Old Victoria; a. cook stove, b. upstairs beds

(Photos by Ron Stofer)

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Figure 18. Floorplan of restored log home, Old Victoria. (By author)

161

Upstairs are two separate rooms each large enough for three double beds,
plus a single bed tucked under the eave at the head of the stairs (Figure 17b).
Pegs in the wall of the narrow landing next to the stairway held clothing. Other
personal items could be stored on the narrow ledge formed by the knee-wall.
No matter a family’s size, taking in boarders at the company’s behest was a con-
dition of employment at Victoria. As many as sixteen people occupied these

homes of little more than eight hundred square feet (Johanson 1993: 37).

Cabins at Fayette. Evidence of workers’ cabins has also come to light at
Fayette, site of a smelting operation of the Jackson Iron Company during the
18705 and 805. None still stand, but a single photo (figure 19) and archaeological
work by Dr. Patrick Martin of Michigan Technological University provide some
information about these dwellings.

Remnants of foundations indicate that they were fourteen feet by twenty-
eight feet, or just under four hundred square feet. They were built of pine logs
chinked with lime and plastered inside. Apparently there were few if any interi-

or division walls. Lack of evidence of a hearth suggests that the chimney was

 

 

 

Figure 19. Workers’ cabins at Fayette. (Courtesy Michigan Historical Museum)

162

suspended. The photo shows these cabins as single story, perhaps with a loft,
but one, designated as ”House I,” may have been built as a duplex. At the site
designated as ”House H,” Martin discovered a shallow three-foot by four-foot
double-walled root cellar insulated with charcoal (manufactured at Fayette for
the smelting operation). The cache-hole was presumably reached via trap door
through the floor (Martin 1993, 1994).

Federal census records for 1880 show that boarders were a standard fea-
ture in these workers’ households: families of four to six made provision for at
least one or two boarders—a fact that stretches a contention used by Hardesty
(1988) in estimating population in Western mining towns, i.e., that no more than

six people will occupy a home of 350 square feet.

Fram onstru ti n
Frame construction ultimately became the style of choice once milling
operations made lumber accessible, and the boardinghouses illustrate the

flexibility of size and configuration that construction method allowed.

 

 

 

Figure 20. Spies Location boardinghouse for CCI managers , c. 1916. (Courtesy Cliffs
Mining Services Company)

163

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 21. Carothers boardinghouse at their lumber mill, Yalmer. (Marquette County
Historical Society)

Company beardingheuses. Company boardinghouses ranged from very
modest structures such as the Spies boardinghouse in figure 20, built by

Cleveland-Cliffs for managerial staff, to the imposing three-story accommoda-
tion at Victoria after additions made about 1916 (figure 7) and the I. Stephenson
complex at Wells in Delta County (figure 34 ) that accommodated three hundred
(Bourke 1982: 11). Many included full third floors of bedrooms or a few dormer
rooms in the attic. Common features included verandas and shed-roofed annex-
es (figure 21) which served as vestibules, kitchens, extra sleeping rooms, or
enclosed storage.

House populations ranged from a dozen or so to several hundred.
Extremely large company boardinghouses meant to accommodate 250-300 men
or more became boarding complexes, entailing several multi-story sleeping
wings, a dining wing, and huge kitchen. For example, the company house at
Sagola began as a two-story structure similar to the Bonnie Location house (fig-
ure 22), accommodating more than a hundred men on two shifts. When demand

increased, the house was expanded by building a duplicate of the original

164
parallel to it and connecting the two wings across the far ends with an even larg-
er two-story structure containing a huge common dining facility and centralized

operating plant (Ertel 1986: 76-7).

 

 

Figure 22. Bonnie Location boardinghouse, 1886. (State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Neg.
WHi[x3]41129)

Footprints of the boardinghouses also varied considerably, the alphabet
being heavily represented by I-plans, L-plans, and U-plans. The Cleveland Cliffs
Iron Company house at the Barnum Location on the west side of Ishpeming was
a ten-bedroom T-plan (figures 23, 43).

Other configurations included the four-square and the double-wing (fig-
ure 24). In some locations, companies converted former schools or hospitals into
boardinghouses when newer public facilities were built (Lankton and Hyde
1982), producing still more variety of plan.

A common boardinghouse configuration was a long, narrow, clapboard-
sided two-story frame building with gable roof. This I-plan design, or variations

on the theme, was built for decades at many locations besides Bonnie (figures
25—27). Some boardinghouses, such as the I. Stephenson and the Sagola

described above, were comprised of such units in multiples.

165

 

 

 

 

Figure 23. Barnum House, Herman Elson family and boarders. (Courtesy Eleanor, Cecelia and
Marietta Conte)

 

 

Figure 24. Double-wing company boardinghouse at Fayette. (Courtesy Michigan Historical
Museum)

166

Downstairs would be a parlor or card/ smoking room for the boarders, a
large dining room, the kitchen, and at one end, a private apartment for the
boardinghouse manager. Upstairs was generally divided into several small
rooms, each large enough for a double bed or double bunk and possibly a small
dresser or washstand and basin, although as in the Victoria cabins, a shelf and a
nail on the back of the door were frequently the only accommodation for each
boarder’s wardrobe and personal belongings. Their situations suggest little

more was needed.

 

 

 

 

Figure 25. Ewen boardinghouse, 1954. Built c. 1888. (Marquette County Historical Society)

One of these basic boardinghouses would house approximately twenty to
thirty men, but with double bunks and sleeping in rotation, i.e., each morning
men on the night shift taking over the beds the men on the day shift had just left,

the population could swell to sixty or more.

Cemmergial sgles. Besides the company boardinghouses, commercial
establishments also provided for boarders. Architecturally they were a varied

lot, from cabin and frame house forms to hotel proportions and the commercial

167

 

 

 

Figure 26. Gabourie boardinghouse, Princeton Location c. 1904. (Marquette County Historical
Society)

 

 

Figure 27. Delta Chemical and Iron Company boardinghouse, c. 1930. (Courtesy Lillian
Mather)

168
store-fronts in figures 28 and 29 below. In these latter establishments the saloon
and kitchen and sometimes proprietor’s quarters comprised the street level, with

rooms available to boarders upstairs.

 

 

 

 

Figure 28. Madison House, Marquette. (Marquette County Historical Society)

An example of a commercial boardinghouse more strongly focused on
boarders than on the saloon part of the business was the Bay View (figure 30). In
1884 when the William Cordes family purchased the three-story building, it had

a saloon on the first floor and sleeping rooms above. Family alterations

169

 

 

 

 

Figure 29. Franklin House at 115 W. Superior, Marquette, c. 1899. (Marquette County
Historical Society)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 30. Sketch of the Bay View. (By Alice Knuth)

170

produced a telescope configuration: they added a two-story structure behind the
original building to accommodate a large dining room on the first floor and fam-

ily quarters above and a single-story kitchen wing behind that (Knuth 1993).

Family heme desigps. A general feature of location workers’ housing,
often the venue for boarding, was monotony. Typically these homes were one-
or two-story, wood-sided structures. Although a minimal variety in design
might appear from one location to another or possibly from one block to another,
each block of houses exhibited the identical facade and floorplan with consistent

setback and side yard dimensions. Saltboxes, T-plans, L-plans, and telescope

 

 

 

 

Figure 31. One of two double duplexes, Dober Location. (Photo by Ron Stofer)

houses predominated, all devoid of external ornamentation, although some
variation in elevations appeared thanks to Sears Roebuck and other catalogues
offering kit houses. Most were single-family dwellings, but duplexes saved on

construction costs and were built as well (figure 31).

171

   
    
     

KITCHEN

UVING ROOM.

 

 

FIRST FLOOR.

Miners ' fleas: /7o7.
flan & Elevatron:

C'aZumeé <9: f/echz .2722")? 00.

 

SECOND FLOOR.

Figure 32. Adapted from Calumet & Hecla House plan #1907. (Michigan Technological
University Archives and Copper Country Historical Collections)

172

Houses were also painted a uniform color, usually white, grey, or iron red,
but neighborhoods weathered to a uniform grey no matter what their original
colors when up to fifteen years elapsed between paint applications. Front porch-
es and rear shed extensions were common. Foundations varied.

Calumet and Hecla Company records contain numerous plans and eleva-
tions for company buildings of all types. The plan (figure 32 ) for a five-room
saltbox C&H miner’s house in 1907 is a rectangle, twenty-six by twenty-eight
feet and calls for the house to be supported by eight-inch cedar posts resting on
stones. First floor consists of dining room, living room, and kitchen with pantry.
A trap door through the kitchen floor presumably leads to a storage area, and a
small room adjacent to the kitchen is designated ”shed.” The fixed sink and
water pump are additional features of the kitchen. A single closet is placed
under the stairs to the upper floor.

Upstairs is divided into two bedrooms and a full-width storage area
under the eaves. Main rooms have eight-foot ceilings. There is a central chim-
ney in a corner of the kitchen, but no fireplace and no apparent central heating.
There is also no provision for a bathroom. Each downstairs room has two win-
dows; the bedrooms have one each. Small uncovered landings and pine steps
provide egress from the house through the dining room and the shed.

Company management lived in more elaborate and personalized homes,
evident both from extant examples and through examination of house plans in
mining company files. Middle management did accommodate boarders occa-
sionally, but generally only those in their same level of employment. Therefore,
a home suitable for a doctor, engineer, or mine captain is also of interest as a
venue for boarding.

Lankton (1991: 153) describes a generic C&H captains’s ten-room house

173

plan as rectangular, twenty-five by forty-eight feet on a masonry foundation

over a concreted basement.

The house carried a roofed veranda across the front, and a single-story
storage area with a shed roof off the kitchen in the back. The first floor
divided into a vestibule, parlor, sitting room, dining room, and kitchen
with pantry. The second floor contained five bedrooms and a bath with
toilet and tub. Although equipped with plumbing, no central heating or
electrical services were indicated. . . . The ceilings were 8’6” in the clear on
the first floor, and 8’ on the second.

Private hemes. Privately-owned homes also accommodated boarders.
Designs of these homes ran the full gamut of local vernacular styles, from the

Victorian town home of the Fellmans (figure 10) to the modest L-plan of the

 

 

 

 

Figure 33. Hanson boardinghouse, Iron River. (Iron County Historical and Museum Society)

Hanson home near Iron River (figure 33 ). In numerous instances homes were
altered structurally to accommodate boarders—another floor or wing was
added, or an additional entrance, or the kitchen was enlarged to handle the
increased demand. Bathrooms or at least toilets also might be added—if not

otherwise, then by expanding the backyard facility to a two- or three-holer.

r

 

174

Family accounts tell of resourceful widows who modified their homes to take in

sufficient boarders to support themselves and their families.

Boardingheuse Faeilities

Facilities of the boardinghouses, like the houses themselves, varied wide-
ly. In the first place, amenities differed dramatically relative to time and technol-
ogy, locale, economics, type of boarding-house, company policies, and personal
preferences. An examination of several boardinghouses from the same decade,
or even the same year, would demonstrate their physical differences. Few if any
would be likely to include all the latest from technology or the Sears catalogue: a
boardinghouse in the late 19205 might feature a radio in the parlor contrasted
with an ancient wood-burning stove with massive water reservoir in the kitchen.
Even in the same place and at the same time, boarders would encounter variety
in their accommodations.

Looking at the changes in just the technology of lighting during the peri-
od 1840-1930—from candles, kerosene and gas to electricity—should suggest the
degree of technical variance. Both general technical change and its application to
mining influenced conditions at the boardinghouses on company property.
Within the private sector, community desires were more pronounced than com-
pany priorities.

Earliest mining was carried out by candlelight; eventually each miner’s
helmet was equipped with a small carbide lamp. Finally, around the turn of the
century the mines began to be electrified, though not all adopted the new tech-
nology immediately, nor necessarily for lighting. Electric mechanical systems
were employed before general lighting. For example, Quincy lighted its surface
buildings in the 18905 and installed motorized tram cars to bring ore to the sur-

face in 1901, but ”never made much use of such lighting underground” (Lankton

175

and Hyde 1982: 62). Gogebic iron mines adopted electric trams in 1895; under-
ground miners relied on their carbide lamps until about 1930 (Sell 1990).

Lighting in the homes paralleled this uneven evolution. Ironwood incor-
porated as a city in 1889 and that same year installed electric lights and an elec-
tric streetcar system (Sell 1990). Electrification of company properties was not
necessarily as progressive. As part of an extensive renovation of its large compa-
ny boardinghouse at Trimountain in 1906, Trimountain Mining installed electric
lighting (Monette 1991: 40). In 1910, Freda, Winona, and King Philip Locations
were electrically-lit, while numerous surrounding communities were not. In
Iron Mountain, homes had a single electric drop cord for a bulb in each room,
and the company controlled the current. Lights came on early enough so resi-
dents could dress and make breakfast. At sunrise the current was cut off until
dusk, going off again at nine o’clock at night (Dulan 1978: 114).

By 1913 many location dwellings along the Keweenaw had electric lights
at discount prices (Guilbault 1994, Monette 1993: 122-23, Committee 1913). With
huge generators the mining companies produced their own electricity for the
mine and mill operations and had sufficient extra power to light their locations
and occasionally surrounding communities as well. Stakel (1994: 67) reports, for
instance, that CCI used Edison generators before 1920 to operate electric pumps
in the Republic-area mines and ”we were also furnishing Republic Township
with all the electric energy the township needed.”

At Victoria, however, George Hooper’s 1918 letters to Evalyn Cook clearly
indicate the lack of electric lighting. This was not because the company balked
at adopting new technology, but because Victoria enjoyed extraordinarily cheap
power from compressed air and steam (J ohanson 1993). Mining companies
needed strong motivation to make expensive changes. Victoria, therefore, was

not the only location at the time, nor its boardinghouse the only such dwelling,

 

176

still relying on oil and kerosene. Charming, for example, did without electricity
until about 1925 (Stevens 1977: 15).

Prior to electrification, the mines depended on steam power. The board-
inghouses—at least the large company houses close to the mine head—and other
company facilities reaped the benefit. Both the Copper Range Hospital and its
nurses’ quarters building, built by Trimountain Mining in 1906, were heated by
steam supplied by the company (Monette 1991: 33-4). The Champion company
boardinghouse at Freda was heated by steam and had piped-in water (Guilbault
1994). At Victoria the large company boardinghouse had piped-in steam heat
and hot water provided by the company (VCM Files, Hooper correspondence).
However, heating in the workers’ cabins came more conventionally from central-
ly-located heating stoves and residual heat from the cook stove.

Boardinghouses frequently included special physical components in their
design. One interesting architectural feature of the Gabourie house in Princeton
(figure 26) is the addition of classical detail (columns and pedirnents on the
porch), no doubt reflective of the concentration of area Italians in Princeton. In
some instances the special feature of a boardinghouse was linked to the national-
ity of the residents and was as important to the boardinghouse as to a private
home of someone of the same ethnic identity.

For example, saunas were a common feature of a Finn boardinghouse.
Traditionally built of squared logs with dove-tailed comers, saunas stood as one-
room outbuildings close to the residence. If they could also be positioned near a
lake or stream, so much the better; bathers could then use the body of water for
the requisite cooling-off portions of the sauna ritual. Saunas were so prevalent a
part of the material culture of the Finns that current cultural geographers use
them ”as an index to Finnish-American settlement zones” (Lockwood 1987: 308).

When individual saunas were not feasible, community versions appeared, such

177

as the one on Sutherland Street, around the corner from the barbershop and
across from the pool room in Monticello (Bednar).

Cellars for wine storage were particularly important to Italian houses and
where they were lacking, storage and access arrangements were made close by
(Spelgatti 1993).

Location boardinghouse complexes could even include on-site facilities
such as a barber shop more conventionally found as a separate component in a
town. The I. Stephenson boardinghouse complex at Wells, near Escanaba,
resembled a small village under one roof. Sanbom Fire Insurance maps for 1929
show the footprint of the building: four large two-story wings set at right angles
to one another nearly forming a squared ”O.” In figure 34 it appears deceptively
small. What seems a separate commercial building to the right was actually one
of the four wings of the boardinghouse, containing the barbershop, pool room,
reading room, and wash room downstairs and separate quarters and dining

room for the company office staff above. Space between the barbershop wing

 

 

 

 

Figure 34. I. Stephenson Company boardinghouse complex, 1902. (Courtesy Delta County
Historical Society)

 

.TMM.’ “Q0” 1N 5051;3ng Myst.

 

Figure 35. Boardinghouse dining room, possibly the Stephenson. (Courtesy Delta County
Historical Society)

and the wing on the left gave access to the large, rectangular inner court that
allowed light and fresh air to courtyard-side rooms. Numerous outbuildings
completed the complex. This boardinghouse provided the men with not only
room and board, but recreation and personal services besides.

Although most towns included at least one hotel to accommodate visiting
dignitaries, traveling theatrical performers, peddlers, Eastern businessmen and
the like, select travelers were also provided for in designated location boarding-
houses. In the correspondence from George Hooper to Evalyn Cook it is quite
clear that she would be expected to provide special accommodations to visiting
company officials, including a separate table at meals. The company would,
however, cover these additional costs. Quincy records indicate the same sort of
arrangement at its locations (Mann 1913).

Special accommodations were instituted by other than mining company
policy, however. At the Wiesen House in Rockland, where the mine office staff
boarded, the house matron Anna Wiesen designated a two-room suite on the
first floor of the fifteen-room house (figure 36) for the Roman Catholic bishop
who visited annually (Fortin 1994).

The three-story company boardinghouse at Freda run by the Durocher

179

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 36. Wiesen boardinghouse in Rockland, c. 1900. (Courtesy Mary Anderson, Mary Jeffs
Reagan Museum)

family in the 19205 (figure 37 ) served two distinct populations of boarders:
female teachers and single male millworkers. Although the house had not been
designed to separate boarding populations, the Durochers improvised. The first
floor plan was comprised of two private bedrooms for the manager, kitchen, din-
ing room, and the smoking / sitting room typical of these facilities. The second
and third floors were bedrooms. The teachers were assigned rooms on the sec-
ond floor, where the children of the family had their quarters as well. One of the
second-floor rooms was converted to a sitting room / parlor for the teachers, giv-
ing them a congregating space away from the men who used the gathering room
on the first floor. The men’s bedrooms were all on the third floor. Male boarders
used the (left) front entrance; family and boarding teachers used the other (right)

on the side. Ground-level doorway gave basement access (Guilbault 1994).

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 37. Champion company boardinghouse at Freda. (Courtesy Frieda Guilbault)

Yet another unusual physical design element of miners' boardinghouses
was the relative absence of, literally, ”bathrooms” (saunas excepted). There were
toilet facilities, of course, and they ranged from outside privies of various sizes
to modern latrines, depending upon budget and prevailing technology. Never-
theless, specific bathing facilities for the mining boarders were often absent from
the large company houses where it might seem they were most needed.
However, companies provided bathing facilities separate from the houses.

At or very near to the mine entrance was a change-house or ”dry,” essen-
tially a locker and wash room for the men. Thus only the house owner or manag-
er and family would require bathing facilities in the house. When home condi-
tions demanded that bath water had to be heated on the stove and carried to a
portable tub set up in the kitchen once a week or so, it seems that the company-
provided dry was not so much a company kindness as a practical necessity.

Moreover, as already noted, as part of their paternalism programs some
companies built bath houses with showers and swimming pools. The C & H
community library included a bath house in the basement. These were public

facilities, open to the men, women, and children of the community, not just to

181

families of mining company employees (O’Neill and Opal 1982, C& H Annual
Report 1911). Thus the lack of bathing facilities in the boardinghouse, whether
company, commercial, or family, would seem not to have been a distinct hard-
ship in those early years.

Boardinghouse wash room facilities were not entirely absent, however.
As acknowledged above, the Stephenson house at Wells had a large wash room
near the barber shop. The Wiesen house included a large room next to the
kitchen equipped with pump, basin, soap, and stacks of towels, and reportedly it
was the first destination of the men as they returned from work (Fortin 1994).
Furthermore, as hot water from the tap became more readily available in homes
generally, shower facilities for boarders (often included in basements) and full

bathrooms became increasingly part of house design.

Universal Elements ef the Beardingheuse

Despite the variables and variations between specific houses, they each
had to fulfill the functions specified in the OED definition: A place to sleep, to
eat, and to socialize as in a family. Thus, three structural elements of a boarding-
house were universal: bedrooms, a kitchen, and a parlor or front gathering
room. Scattered details of these rooms and their furnishings in specific houses
come largely from rare photos or reminiscences of the boarders or managers’
family members. The spartan re-creation of the cabins at Victoria has been veri-
fied for accuracy by past residents.

The Gabourie boardinghouse in Princeton had numerous iron beds
arranged close together dormitory-style (visible through the windows, figure
38). A long-time resident recalls 175 double beds at the big Princeton boarding-
house (Dozzi 1982). Besides the small bedroom of the bed-ridden Mr. Wiesen,

182

the second floor of the Wiesen boardinghouse featured one large dormitory

room with seven or eight single beds, and four other bedrooms with double

 

e

 

‘1‘!

Figure 38. Close-up of Gabourie boardinghouse. (Marquette County Historical Society)

beds, bedside lamps, and washstands with bowl and pitcher. Chamber pots
resided under the beds (Fortin 1994).

At the company house at Freda in the 19205, the resident family had its
own furnishings for the private rooms, but the company supplied furnishings for
the boarders. Their bedrooms contained beds, dressers, rocking chairs, scattered
rugs on hardwood floors, and a shelf with hooks under to hang clothing
(Guilbault 1994).

Reminiscences of the boardinghouse kitchens center on the foods and
activities there rather than the furnishings, though from the description of the
processes carried out it is possible to infer some details of particular kitchens.
Kreidberg ’5 Food on the Frontier (1975) detailing kitchens of Minnesota’s Mesabi
Iron Range of the same period as this Michigan study provides a valuable cross-

check of information.

183

Wood stoves with reservoirs to heat water for dishwashing were fairly
typical, even into the 19005. Hooper’s note that the kitchen in the Victoria board-
inghouse included hot water ”independent of the stoves” was significant: it
meant savings of both labor and cost. No one would need to haul cold water to
the stove reservoirs nor bail the heated water out, and there was no need to pur-
chase fuel to heat wash water. The two stoves he describes with a total of sixteen
lids (comparable to burners today) suggest a Calumet woman’s description of
her younger years:

She worked in a boardinghouse where she tended a cookstove, whose
huge iron, brass, and copper kettles, filled with beans, potatoes, pork, rice,
and cornmeal mush, sat ”forever stewing, night and day” on twelve lids,
providing food for up to sixty men. (Thumer 1994: 94)

Many homes had root cellars or basements to accommodate food stores—
barrels, jars, crates, and cans (though a small cache hole such as under the cabin
at Fayette, or a loft sufficed in some instances). Neither cold storage nor water
was necessarily provided for, however, in the design of these Michigan kitchens.
Ice boxes became available in America in the 18405, but only three are recorded
in the kitchen data of this study (two in the 19205) and only one mechanical
refrigerator (a Kelvinator), during the Depression (Windsor 1980, Mather 1994,
Caspary 1994).

Until water was at least available from a hand pump in the house, there
were few fixed sinks. Here again, company priorities, local trends, and eco-
nomics seem to have played a more significant role than date or extant technolo-
gy in what features developed where. The Victoria log houses built about 1899
(figure 16), for instance, had neither a kitchen sink (wet or dry) nor root cellar
nor ice house. In contrast, the plan for the saltbox miner’s home (figure 32 )
includes fixed sink, pump, and trap door to under-house storage. The plan for

one of the new company houses at Quincy (figure 40) a decade later, however,

184

shows a sink in the kitchen and indoor toilets elsewhere in the house, suggesting
that this kitchen had piped-in water. Company boardinghouses at Freda and
Delta Chemical Location had running water and inside plumbing in the 19205;
other houses in the area, even company location housing, did not (Guilbault
1994, Mather 1994).

Pantries, from closet to room-sized, were also standard features of nine-
teenth- and early twentieth-century kitchens in all but the most rudimentary
designs. Sometimes a work area, and possibly the location of the sink (if there
was one), the pantry (or buttery as they were also called) also served for storage
of dishes, pots and pans, and food stuffs such as baked goods that would not go
to the cellar (Kreidberg 1975). Special furniture such as pie safes augmented
storage, and tables provided both work surfaces and eating space. Every kitchen
documented in this study through physical examination, floorplans, or verbal
description included a pantry, even the Victoria log homes with their tiny under-
stairs space.

Less is known with certainty about the furnishings of the parlors, dining
rooms, or barrooms of the Michigan mining boardinghouses than about the
kitchens. Interior photographs of the boardinghouse seem virtually non-exis-
tent, a fact bemoaned by researchers at Lowell, as well (Beaudry and Mrozowski
1987, 1989). Therefore, this interior photo of a Michigan boardinghouse and its
residents (figure 39) is significant not only in what it shows, but in the fact that it
exists at all.

Although showing just a part of the dining room, figure 39 provides a
glimpse of the decorating and furnishings that sought to make a house, a
home—or at least those furnishing which a mining company believed appropri-
ate for a working-class home. For the few objects shown, this photo offers the
opportunity to consider the meanings and significance behind the physical sur-

roundings of the boarders.

185

 

Figure 39. Boarders, resident family, and staff at Painesdale, 1912. (Courtesy Copper Range
Development and Houghton County Historical Society)

Lace curtains, the wall clock, pictures on the wall, and the richly-pat-
terned floor covering are all unnecessary to the function of bare shelter, and
therefore suggest attempts to make the room not just functional but comfortable,
to include elements that one would find in the local family homes. The clock
also functioned to regulate the operation of the household, to synchronize the
domestic activities with the mine schedule.

One of the wall pictures, in fact the one most prominent in the photo,
appears to be a poster of a steamship. Quite possibly it is an advertisement for
one of the steamship lines connecting the immigrant miners with family and
friends. Without being able to examine it and its physical context, there is no
way to analyze fully that poster. Was one of its functions, perhaps, to mask

something on the wall? Certainly it functions as decoration, diversion for the

186

eye. Its full meaning, however, probably included nostalgia, yearning for loved
ones long distant, and even motivation to face another day on the job knowing
the money earned would soon put those loved ones on that ship or one like it
bound for America.

That floor covering that reverses pattern from one side of the room to the
other (probably reversible carpeting) and is entirely absent under the dining
table (absent by design to make cleaning easier, or cut away after wearing out?)
suggests combined practicality and frugality, so necessary in the frontier society
with its economic uncertainties. Yet it was also an important middle-class
American symbol of the home. One observer of the Copper Country around the
turn of the century noted that the furnishings of the miners’ homes included
three significant items: lace curtains, pianos (or organs), and carpets, ”often [of]
Brussels or other costly fabrics” (Monette 1992: 9). In the mining regions, the
prosperity of a household was often judged by its floorcoverings (Scrapbook mem-
ories 1994: 248).

Lace curtains were definitely class markers, particularly significant
because they could be seen by anyone in a community including those who
would never have the occasion to see (or be impressed by) the floorcovering.
Thus Katherine Grier’s (1988) model of the household as a stage, with publicly
viewed areas and private ”backstage” regions, extends beyond the front door
and windows to the street.

Thumer (1994: 152) tells of the wife of an English mining captain who was
shunned by her neighbors because her lace curtains were considered a sign of
uppityness, clear justification for their snobbishness toward her. Apparently
local attitudes were a bit much to bear for the woman, who returned to England
for some months to visit family. On her return, she discovered versions of her

despised lace curtains in many of her neighbors’ windows.

187

Without more specifics, the full import of the incident cannot be deter-
mined, but it suggests the significance attached to material culture displayed by
some and not by all. If the other women were also English, it seems economic
differentiation could be the key meaning behind the curtains. If they were wives
Of Italian or Irish trammers, perhaps, or others of definitely lower social as well
as occupational rank, then lace curtains could be understood as a symbol of
social rank and therefore a focus of resentment toward ”Cousin Jacks” so often
showed preferential treatment over the general laborers by the mining compa-
nies.

Other details of furnishings in the photo such as the oil lamps on the man-
tle and cupboard (upper right) and the bare-bulb electrical ceiling fixture (upper
left) demonstrate the level of technology employed and offer a small point of
comparison to other and earlier boardinghouse furnishings. At the Central Mine
boardinghouse built in 1861, light was provided in the men’s sitting room by
”two bracket kerosene lamps, with glaring reflectors” (Monette 1995a: 8).

Many who remember the dining rooms or parlors of boardinghouses,
whether company houses or private homes, mention pianos or organs. Both
were popular instruments during the Victorian era, becoming both a focus of
sociability and a measure of middle-class status. Additionally, parlor organs fig-
ured among the wide variety of religious furnishings popularized by the
Christian domestic ideal of the nineteenth century: moral surroundings would
shape the residents’ character accordingly (Cott 1977, Halttunen 1989).

Another memory is of the isinglass window of the big parlor stove in
grandma Wiesen’s boardinghouse, and how the fire glowed hot and red through
it (Fortin 1994). A variety of stoves produced heat in the boarding-houses where
steam was not provided by mine or mill. In some cases, memories of stoves

also call up the logistics of dodging a sibling’s elbow or knee while scrambling

188

into clothes near the warmth, or of ”toasting one’s bottom” if too close (Dulan
1978:178)

Cold rooms in un-insulated boardinghouses were also memorable for
some. In one account, the lathing strips of the walls were clearly outlined by
stripes of frost on the plaster during frigid winters (Scrapbook memories 1994: 11).
Around the turn of the century a surveyor found shelter near Princeton, but
complained: ”I stayed in the old boardinghouse at the mine and I thought I
would freeze. I had on all of my clothes, but I was in the third story with no
fire” (Young: 30).

Knuth (1993) recalls the decorative backbar in the barroom of the Bay
View. Several informants mention card tables and chairs in their parlor area,
often triggering discussions of social events. Benches, rocking chairs, and pur-
loined kitchen chairs also furnished the boarders’ sitting/ smoking rooms.

Much else becomes speculation. Looking at the raw newness of the
Bonnie Location boardinghouse (figure 22) or its later state of abandonment and
decay (figure 57), it is difficult to imagine it featuring a heavily-draped and over-
stuffed Victorian parlor with an organ, horsehair settees, and fringed table
scarves, though it may indeed have acquired them. Some of the private board-
inghouses in the region undoubtedly had parlors with the French- or Turkish-
inspired designs popular between the 18505 and the 19305 (Grier 1988).

An alternative furnishing style possibly used by the companies would
have been far more utilitarian than the overstuffed sofas, and more ideologically
in keeping with company priorities by 1900. Arts and crafts designs, also known
as mission style—plain, straight, stained oak pieces without upholstery or elabo-
rate omamentation—grew in popularity after the turn of the century.
Inexpensive and durable, mission style pieces had ideological attraction as well.

One producer declared their message: ”not only wholesome, but [it revives] the

189

accomplishment of the colonial craftsman, ’an educated and thinking being’ who
loved his work without demanding a wage or labor union membership” (Cohen
1982:294)

The paternalistic package of social welfare promoted by the mining com-
panies after the 18905 included attention to cleanliness and home design.
According to Cohen (1982), this is one example of how American middle-class
standards were also being promoted by direct industrial intervention across the
country, through classes and home visits from reformers recommending iron
beds with mattresses, painted not papered walls, built-in storage or shelves, and
other easy-to-clean furnishings such as mission-style pieces.

From existing data, the company houses and some of the private ones
incorporated these simple furnishing styles, but whether in a conscious effort to
promote the new middle-class standards to working-class individuals, or simply
because the products were utilitarian, is difficult to discern. One middle-class
value that mining companies clearly sought to communicate through worker

housing was privacy for the resident family.

Integpreting Interior Space—Public.
Private and Semi-private

Another approach to boardinghouse interiors is an examination of the
spatial arrangement, the issue of public versus private space and what consti-
tutes each. Concomitant is the need to define who is entitled or limited to these
specific spaces. As Halttunen (1989), Hall (1969), Altman and Chemers (1980)
and others have established, an important element in the role of householder is
control of the domestic space and various people’s access to it. Rapoport (1969:
80), for example, refers to the ”sanctity of the threshold,” noting that ”devices for
defining threshold vary” and may occur at different locations within the total

domestic space.

190

In a boardinghouse where strangers were brought together to carry out
the normal rhythms of domestic life, numerous reasons for controlling access to
space became particularly crucial. Sometimes access would be dictated by cus-
tom or even law, such as the ability of the landlady to maintain sexual privacy.
Controlling access could relate to practicality, such as keeping the kitchen, the
hub of a household that fed dozens or even hundreds of people on three or four
demanding schedules per day, free of excess traffic. Safety of the residents could
depend upon being able to exclude certain individuals, and certainly the eco-
nomics of the boardinghouse would limit access to services to those who had
paid for them.

Status of the manager’s family or other boarders might entitle them to
special spaces. The relative weight of practicality versus notions of individual
dignity—and company policy where applicable—could influence how (and if)
the boarders’ accommodations were subdivided. To some degree, then, the
physical layout of a boardinghouse should suggest something of the relation-

ships between the residents, staff, and others, and the values of the community.

 

 

 

 

Figure 40. One of three new Quincy boardinghouses, 1917. (Courtesy Michigan Technological
University Archives and Copper Country Historical Collections, and Nils
Eilertsen. HAER Mi-2-251)

191

      

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Figure 41. Adapted from Floorplan of Franklin Boardinghouse, 1917. (HAER Mi-2-250)

192

Arehitectural Divisiens in Cempany
and Cemmereial Heuses

In 1917-18 the Quincy Mining Company built the boardinghouse in
Figures 40 and 41 as part of its ”last residential building boom” discussed above.
Maps and company records suggest it was created by remodeling the old school
at Franklin Mine. Though its extra wings provide additional bedrooms, the
main part of the house includes all the basic components to be found in the sim-
pler designs such as at Bonnie or Ewen locations.

Its floorplan clearly shows a vestibule entry into a large (924 square feet)
front room or parlor. Control of the entire house would fall to the house manag-
er and therefore the manager’s personal domain should be the most ”private”
(though since this is a company house the company would have ultimate control
of the property). This entry space is certainly the most public.

Since it is a residence, law and custom would act to restrain indiscrimi-
nate public access which the house manager would be expected to reinforce.
However, a certain amount of off-the-street public traffic would occur as new
”customers” (potential boarders) would come in to arrange for accommodation.
On special occasions other members of the public, as invited guests, might also
have access to this large room. Largely, though, it would be the gathering area
for the boarders on off-hours, facilitating the card games, storytelling, and other
leisure activities reported to have occupied them.

Interaction between boarders and manager in this area would probably be
minimal and initiated by the manager. Thus the street entrance of the boarding-
house leads to a semi-public space, the nature of which falls somewhere between
the living room of a private home (Altman and Chemers 1980) and the front area
of a commercial shop.

The dining room includes three, thirty-four-foot long plank tables with

193

enough floor space to allow for foot traffic and chairs or benches. If the diners
were allowed only two feet of table space per person, this dining room could
accommodate 102 diners at each seating; at three feet, sixty-eight diners. Two
doors connect the dining room with the rest of the house. One leads to the front
room / parlor; the other to the kitchen. The door between parlor and dining
room serves to further control access to this area, suggesting it as a domain for
the boarders and/ or the resident family. In ”shot gun” type houses where one
room lies directly behind another such as at the Bonnie, the dining room sits
between the front room and the kitchen. Thus the pattern of access would be the
same.

In the dining room, boarders, manager, and house staff come together.
Staff, necessary to an operation this size, represent yet another component of
”public” or ”private” within the domain of the house. They could be members
of the ”private” contingent: daughters or other resident members of the house-
holder’s family. If hired from the local community or resident boarders them-
selves, their status would be more ambiguous. The dining room, then, also rep-
resents a certain ambiguity: with limited access but from two directions, it sug-
gests an area more restricted and thus more private than the parlor, yet another
area where boarders and other outsiders as well as manager would meet.

The first floor bedroom wing and the upstairs shift the notion of private
space more toward the boarders; cleaning staff and manager retain access, but
presumably not arbitrarily. Boarder privacy is also not complete as these are all
shared rooms (even the latrine with three stools), yet they are cells of relative pri-
vacy with limited access through single doors off hallways that are themselves
separated from the more public congregating rooms.

Exactly how many boarders could be sharing any particular room is sug-

gested by the bed designations. For instance, the six 9’ x 9’-6” bedrooms in the

194

first floor wing all show double bunks, potentially sleeping four men per room.
However, if the men worked double shifts, up to eight men could claim one of
these rooms. While four slept, the other four would be at work. This house,
nominally designed for one hundred men, could accommodate twice as many
through double shifting.

That it accommodated that many is highly doubtful. Company records
indicate four houses at this time were created to house a total of two hundred
men, fifty of whom were in a structure put up in 1916. Obviously the company
did not intend the men to double-shift. Moreover, considering the company’s
concern that trouble would arise from having too many men congregated in one
dwelling, and since numerous boardinghouses used double beds but assigned
only one man to each, it seems more likely that this house accommodated closer
to fifty men.

Only four of the rooms on the second floor, all at the back, had closets.
Otherwise there is little space for personal belongings; probably boarders had
few things, both of economic necessity and for practicality. Under that assump-
tion, the closets appear anomalous. Introducing considerations of status and
gender, however, render them more logical.

High ranking mining company officials and investors occasionally visited
the locations and were given preferential accommodation in the company board-
inghouses. These rooms, at the back and upstairs, might have been the quietest
and therefore considered the best location in the house. The closets would be
included in these rooms to heighten their preferred status—and that of the occu-
pants. Correspondence between Charles Lawton and W. R. Todd in 1917 specifi-

III

cally refers to closets in house designs, linking them to a little better class of

III

dwelling’”and the satisfaction of our Cornish mining captains’” (McNear 1987:

531).

195

A second possibility is that they were available for live-in staff.
Boardinghouse staff was almost exclusively female. The closets might have been
a concession to femininity in a house designed primarily for men. The problem
with this explanation is that it places female servants’ rooms in close proximity
to the men’s rooms, not an attractive situation for community or company stan-
dards. There is, nevertheless, a strong suggestion that the closets relate to status.

Two types of areas remain, the operating facilities and the manager’s
quarters. Placement and access to the woodshed, ice room, and cellar make
them available to anyone—family, staff, tradesmen, or boarders who helped with
chores. Helpers could bring in wood or carry down the root vegetables without
intruding into the busy kitchen or infringing on the manager’s private domain.

The back center of the first floor is obviously the manager’s quarters.
They are set off by the stairwell and pantry, which combine as an effective noise
buffer and physical barrier to penetration of the quarters from the street or the
boarders’ areas. The only ways in are through the parlor / dining room door and
then the dining room/ kitchen door, or through the vestibule entrance between
the wood shed and the ice room. Even then the door is protected from the casual
passerby, being set into an unobtrusive comer. Clearly the physical dimension
determines and reinforces a definite division between this area, the private or
most restricted area of the house, and the rest.

The back vestibule opens into a thirteen-foot by fourteen-foot room that
possibly functioned as a parlor or sitting room. Through the door to the left is
the large kitchen, of necessity both a part of the facilities plant for the commer-
cial establishment and the food center for the manager’s family. In fact, the sit-
ting room is probably necessitated by the double role of the kitchen, since in its
commercial capacity it would not function well as family gathering spot. Still
further protected from intrusion are three bedrooms (two with small closets) and

a separate full bathroom.

196

The private quarters comprise more than 960 square feet, or slightly less
than 20 percent of the total area of the house. Assuming a family of five for the
manager, that is roughly two hundred square feet per capita of designated living
space, or approximately five times the proportion of living area per boarder,
based on residency of one hundred boarders.

These proportions varied considerably house to house and over time as
boarding populations rose and fell. Still, this example shows an architecturally
defined hierarchy of private space (HPS) relative to manager, boarders, and pub-
lic that begins with a semi-public parlor and moves to a semi-private dining
room and access to the boarders’ rooms. A kitchen and other plant facilities
interpose between these areas and the separate and personal domain of the man-
ager

Another example of this separate domain was in the Victoria boarding-
house. Says Hooper of the manager’s apartment, ”the private part of the house
has five rooms and a private parlor” [italics mine] (VCM Files, Hooper corre-
spondence). Without floorplans of this building it is not possible to demonstrate
that it conformed to the HPS, but clearly there was architectural separation
between manager and boarders.

A description of the Champion boardinghouse at Freda definitely demon-
strates the HPS. The front entry for the male boarders brought them into their
congregating area. A stairway from the front room led to the third floor men’s
quarters. Behind that was the dining room, and then the kitchen.

The side entrance (figure 37) for the family was also used by the teachers.
This opened to a small hallway that connected to the kitchen and the private
manager’s rooms beyond, and to stairs that went to the second floor and the
additional family quarters (plus the rooms assigned to the teachers) (Guilbault
1994)

197

   
  

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MuJeJVaJ/

Figure 42. Adapted from C&H Mining House Plan No. 31. (Courtesy Michigan Technological
University Archives and Copper Country Historical Collections)

198

C&H Mining Company house plan No. 31 (1899) (figure 42) has exterior
configuration similar to the Freda house (figure 37) except that it is two stories
rather than three. The HPS is clearly established by the two separate entries: just
as at Freda, the entry on the narrow end of the building is for boarders. In the
case of House No. 31, the entrance opens to a stairwell to the second floor as well
as to the central hall of the first floor. This hall is flanked by bedrooms and two
sitting rooms and leads directly to the dining room, which runs the full width of
the house. Behind the dining room are the utility areas (kitchen, pantry, etc.)

The second, side entrance opens into the kitchen with direct access to a set
of back stairs to the second floor. These stairs lead to the manager’s domain, two
large bedrooms with closets and a full bath. Beyond, flanking a central hallway,
are eight additional bedrooms with closets. The only toilet and bath facilities in
the house are within the realm of the manager, although there is a wash basin in
the downstairs hall. As in the houses at Franklin Mine and Freda, this house
also features a second, individual entrance obviously designed to ”reinforce
nuclear family privacy” (Cohen 1982: 296).

Several features of the plan stand out immediately. First, the separate
entrances define the two domains of the dwelling before one even enters. Also,
the manager’s quarters are about five feet narrower on each side than the rest of
the house, further defining it visually.

On the interior, specific regions of the house denoted for each population,
boarders and manager family, are spatially defined, but done so in different
ways on each floor. Upstairs, the bedrooms and bath for the manager and the
back stairs occupy the narrow back extension. The central hallway connects to
this area and there is no architectural cue marking the division. However, the
bathroom door lies just past the division and would be an unmistakable sign of

when one had gone ”too far” down the hall into the manager’s territory.

199

As in the other examples, the first floor division is the dining room, and
again it is an ambiguous space neither public nor private where all members of
the household, plus occasional outsiders would meet and interact.

This architectural separation of boarders from manager conformed to the
specified standards for industrial housing—both in company and private
homes—that appeared during the World War I period as part of the general
social reform movement (Knowles 1920).

But what was formalized in the early twentieth century had been in prac-
tice long before on the Michigan frontier. As noted above, the I-plan common in
the nineteenth century and typified by the Bonnie Location boardinghouse was
laid out much like the main wing at Franklin, except that the dining room lay

directly between parlor and kitchen.

    
 

Owner Apartment

   

Kitchen

Men's Smoking
Room

    

Figure 43. Schematic of Barnum House first floor, c. 1918. (By author)

200

Other variations of company house plans existed as well. The Barnum
House, also built before the turn of the century, included both private apartment
for the manager and the HPS. Entry to this inverted T-form (figure 43) opened
from the large porch into the huge parlor / smoking room comprising the right
half of the T cross-bar. To the left, comprising the other half of the cross-bar was
the dining room. The center of the first floor contained the kitchen (behind the
dining room), stairs to the upper floor of bedrooms, and a facilities area includ-
ing a washroom for the boarders off the parlor. At the back of the first floor
(base of the T) were the manager’s quarters.

Nor was this arrangement limited to company boardinghouses. The
Cordes family’s modifications to the Bay View in Menominee, for example, illus-
trate the same general patterns in their ”telescope house” (figure 30). The first
level separates and orders parlor, dining room, and kitchen / facilities as in the
other houses. Family quarters were constructed in the middle extension over the
dining room, with private access. Each component of the house further defines
the space: the three-story front unit for the boarder; two-story middle unit divid-
ed vertically for family above, boarders and staff below; and the single-story
kitchen, family and staff area, in the rear.

In yet another example, Anna Wiesen and her granddaughter shared a
private apartment at the Wiesen boardinghouse in Rockland where the bishop’s

reserved suite embellished the HPS one more level.

Arehiteetural Separatien in Private Hemes

It is more difficult to address the issue of architectural divisions for priva-
cy in a single-family home that also happened to accommodate boarders.
Usually sources contain only vague references to additions or modifications

made to houses when boarders were introduced or the number of them

201

expanded, but just exactly what these constructions amounted to is generally left
unclear. In her reminiscences of their pioneer days in Marquette, Mrs. Philo
Everett recalled that in 1850 Olive Harlow strung sheets up between beds on the
second floor of her home to afford a bit of privacy to her boarders, some of
whom sought medical care as well as housing. Peryam (1966) reports the same
spacial divisions in Amasa. Only additional dishes, nothing structural, was the
critical acquisition in another account (Knoblock 1951).

In the case of more permanent house modifications, additional bedrooms
and expanded kitchen or dining space is the most tempting speculation. On the
occasion of taking in boarders, one family in Hermansville make several house
alterations. The small single room upstairs was divided into separate rooms for
the boys and girls of the family. Another large room was added that held two
double beds, space for the four boarders. Downstairs expansion included a large
dining room (Dani 1982). Renters of company housing would have even less
opportunity to make such architectural / spatial alterations, but nevertheless
might need to rearrange or reassign interior space to accommodate boarders.

Whenever possible, private space for the resident family was designated
vertically, i.e., residents on one floor, boarders on another as in the Bay View. At
the Victoria workers’ homes that would probably work fairly well as far as sleep-
ing space. Obviously there would be no private parlor space for the family away
from the congregating area at the front of the house that served as front room
and dining space. In this circumstance where architecture does not define sepa-
ration, household custom would have to if it were desired. (That issue is dis-
cussed in the next chapter.) Where some division did occur, such as between a
formal dining room and a parlor, residents might gather in one, boarders in the
other, again designated by house rules.

By the World War I era the issue of separation between resident family

202

 

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Figure 44. Post-war design for an urban family boardinghouse. (Adapted from Knowles 1920:
328, figure 51).

and boarders in single-family company housing had been addressed by the fed-

eral government and formal designs produced. One urban plan, produced for

the Emergency Fleet Corporation and built in Wyandotte, Michigan, is a small

four-bedroom cottage with hip roof and two side dormers (figure 44). First floor

203

is a basic four-square arrangement, two bedrooms to the right, living room and
kitchen to the left. A small bathroom is tucked behind the central stairway.

Upstairs are two small bedrooms specified for boarders and a bath for
them. Except for the division of kitchen from living room and the modern
touches of indoor plumbing and closets in every bedroom, the plan is quite
similar to the Victoria workers’ homes (figure 18). Evidently in both plans the
upper story is the architectural response to questions of privacy.

Behavioral responses to these architectural / spatial configurations and to
their absence in a one-room cabin inhabited by several people demand attention,
clearly. Before doing so, however, it is necessary to examine the physical board-
inghouse in regard to one more issue, i.e. status, and then to see the boarding-
house in its larger physical/ geographical and social context as a feature of the

cultural landscape.

Boardinghouses as Signal and Venue ef Status

One informant cautioned that getting personal information about board-
inghouse life would be difficult since so many people were reticent about admit-
ting to having lived in one. Fortunately for the project at hand, her prediction
proved false. Although some residual negative connotations about boarding-
houses and boarding remain in urban areas, a result of the social reform move-
ments of post-World War I (see Langlois 1987 for a fascinating example), there
seemed to be no such feeling throughout the Michigan mining region. During
the ”boardinghouse era” on Michigan’s mining frontier, there was no apparent
stigma attached to living in a boardinghouse either as boarder or part of a resi-
dent family, largely because so much of the population was involved, and often
in both roles at different periods of their lives.

On the other hand, the mining organizations and the communities they

204

 

 

 

Figure 45. Fayette Hotel. (Courtesy Michigan Historical Museum)

established exhibit a high level of status consciousness. As Virginia City,
Nevada, and other Western examples also show (Hardesty 1988: 14), mining
companies projected their ideas of social stratification into the architecture of the
communities they built. Boarding facilities represent a significant facet of that
status designation and reinforcement.

A particularly clear case is Fayette, on the Garden Peninsula in Delta
County. Fayette was a company town, population of about five hundred, estab-
lished by the Jackson Iron Mining Company in 1867 as a smelting site with
access to shipping in the lower Great Lakes from its protected ”snail shell” har-
bor on Lake Michigan. Altogether, there were three types of boarding accommo-
dation at Fayette: a dormitory within the hotel, a company boardinghouse, and
single-family residences.

The hotel was built in 1867, expanded and remodeled in 1881. As one of
the first buildings on the site, the hotel (figure 45) included the original boarding

accommodation and continued to serve this function for many years. During the

205

 

 

 

Figure 46. Fayette Hotel with two-story privy and enclosed access. (Courtesy Michigan
Historical Museum)

renovation, a two-story privy was built out back with covered walkways leading
to it from the guest floors (figure 46). At the same time, the original board and
batten siding over wooden frame construction on a brick foundation was cov-
ered with clapboards to match the new north and east wings. Internal improve-
ments included a rudimentary heating system and indoor plumbing for
—literally—a ”bath room,” centrally located and equipped with a single tub, and
possibly for the kitchen.

The men who worked in the smelting furnace lived in the single, open
dormitory room that was the hotel’s third floor, while standard hotel clientele
occupied the twenty more comfortably appointed bedrooms in the lower two
floors (National Heritage Corp. 1974).

The company boardinghouse, already mentioned briefly above (figure
24), measured about eighteen by twenty-one feet in the two-story center section
and had wings about fourteen by fourteen feet (approximately 1150 square feet).
It included a partial cellar presumably for food storage under the middle section
of the house. This structure, built in the period 1870-1875, provided housing for

unmarried supervisory personnel (National Heritage Corp. 1974). Because the

206

structure burned several decades ago before the State Parks Commission (which
now controls the historic townsite) could fully document it, interior details of the
house were lost. Probably it resembled the pattern already demonstrated, i.e.,
front gathering room, kitchen in rear, dining room in one wing, manager’s quar-
ters in the other, with upstairs divided into boarders' rooms (possibly shared).
There were two groups of single-family residences at Fayette. Boarders

stayed in both. One is the cluster of crude cabins discussed above (figure 19).

 

 

Figure 47. Housing for the ”better class” at Fayette. (Courtesy Michigan Historical Museum)

The other, according to a town resident, ”was a line of smallish brown framed-
houses, for the better class of employees [italics mine] ” (Langille 1870: 35).
Figure 47, an early photo taken from the harbor at Fayette, shows this residential
section of the community. Arranged along an arm Of land that encloses the har-
bor, the line of homes was farthest from the dirt and noise of the smelter. Many
of the houses still stand. Largest is the superintendent’s home, (far right) a two-
story of about twenty-five hundred square feet with a wrap-around veranda. As
it was situated, the house overlooked the entire town and was itself a prominent
feature of the landscape. The boardinghouse is second structure from the left.
Other homes are smaller but most were also two-story (saltboxes or T-plan) with

room for numerous bedrooms.

207

Multiple forms of boarder accommodation do not in themselves establish
a link between type of accommodation and boarder status. However, since the
community was built to very pointedly link status of primary residents to the
details of their home, this same architectural hierarchy reasonably applied to the
boarders. House size and building material are obvious indicators of status
between the residences, especially since there can be no argument that crude
cabins were necessary due to an absence of milled lumber, or that log homes
must necessarily have been crudely built.

Other housing details further delineated the differences between grades
of employees. A hierarchy of privies ranged from the private, plastered, and
wallpapered convenience of the superintendent to rough-built single or double
models shared by two or more households.

Porches were another status symbol. The superintendent’s veranda out-
classed even the hotel porch. Among the other frame homes, size and complexi-
ty of the porches denoted the status of the householder, a mere stoop represent-
ing the lowest status level. Photos of the boardinghouse show no porch at all
(only a large flat stone rests outside the back doorway), while the log ”huts were

Ill

built on the very edge of the street (Langille 1870). Residents were meant to
clearly understand the ranking in their village and the relation to the architec-
tural features. Just as in the military, housing reflected rank.

Fayette is rare in providing this clear case-study in the relation between
housing design and community status because circumstance rendered it a virtual
”time capsule” of the 18705 and 805. The smelter was shut down in 1891 and the
‘ town largely abandoned. The subsequent acquisition by the State of Michigan
has provided continuing research, documentation, and restoration of the town-

site.

Other mining locations and towns have not fared as well. Great numbers

208

were abandoned or the homes relocated so that entire locations have virtually
disappeared; others have undergone such drastic physical change that original
status differentiation is not nearly so noticeable.

The James Mine Historic District is, like Fayette, a rare exception. The
Iron County Historical Society has documented this mine site and two
residential neighborhoods in Mineral Hills. Twelve of the houses, small frame
dwellings which ”follow the same simple building pattern” were built in 1908 as
the West James Location. Four years later, seven more elaborate homes were
constructed as the East James Location. Local historian Marcia Bernhardt (1985:

55) notes:

The houses in the two James Locations are of different architectural
designs, which reflect the positions of their intended occupants in the
hierarchy of the mining company. . . . The seven frame houses in the East
James Location, built for mining officials such as the shift boss, the pay
master and the chief mechanic, display a variety of patterns which are
more elaborate to distinguish them from the miners’ residences in West
James Location. These patterns range from the cross-gable-roofed super-
intendent’s house to several structures with Dutch gambrel roofs.

A further measure of separation between these classes of houses and their
occupants should be noted in the designations of West James and East James.
The mine itself became the physical separator. Clearly company policies main-
taining a stratified work force and reinforcing it through architecture were not
unique to Fayette or to its period.

In fact, the differentiation evident at Fayette and throughout the mining
district in the decades after the Civil War had become a national presumption by
World War I. Federal guidelines for industrial housing established a hierarchy of
building types based on their inhabitants. According to Knowles (1920), male
employees were divided into six grades: high, medium, and low wage native
men; and high, medium, and low wage foreign men. The groups were then sub-

divided, married versus single, producing twelve categories.

209

Company housing was designated on a scale A to F, with A-level accom-
modations the best, F-level the worst (or most spartan). Grades A through C
were applied to single-family homes. The majority of married men would be
low-wage category and found in C-level homes.

The greatest number of boarders in single-family homes would be
boarding with them. Grades D through F were assigned to company boarding-
houses. Here, again, the greatest number of boarders would be in the lowest
earning level and therefore in the F-level accommodations. Since foreign men
tended to earn less than native workers and to have more need to board, the
resulting stratification was both economic and ethnic.

Differences between the grades of housing were determined primarily by
degree, i.e., features common to all grades in a category (single-family home or
boardinghouse) were bigger, better, or more prevalent in the better grades.
Bedroom closets, for instance, became a status indicator in the early twentieth
century in the same way that a porch or private privy signalled higher status at
Fayette. Closets were specified for grades A through E, but for grade F board-
inghouses they were specifically deemed unnecessary. This, then, is the basis for
the suggestion above that the upstairs bedrooms with closets at the Franklin
boardinghouse may have been reserved for high-level company personnel. It
also perhaps explains the significance of Frieda Guilbault’s (1994) comment
about the company boardinghouse at Freda. Despite its having running water,
steam heat, and electricity, she remarked: ”I can’t remember ever seeing a closet
in that house.”

The argument that the rooms with closets may have been for serving girls
living and working at the boardinghouse also finds some support in Knowles
(1920). Guidelines for boardinghouses for single females parallel those for men

in most respects. Exceptions include modifications to bathrooms and the

210

inclusion of special rooms including reception parlor, a sewing room, and a
trunk room. The last is specified under the assumption that ”minimum sized
bedrooms will not accommodate all the belongings [of a female boarderJ,” no
matter her economic class. Perhaps the closets at Franklin, as opposed to nails
on the wall for the other boarders, are physical evidence of the same assumption.

None of this speculation, of course, argues that Quincy or any of the other
mining companies built to these formal and idealized government guidelines.
Rather more likely the guidelines formally established by the time of World War
I reflected the generally-held notions of what laborers’ boardinghouses should
provide, based on decades of ad hoc experience in mill towns and mining loca-
tions, Massachusetts to California. That they also reflected and reinforced

notions of status is unquestionable.

Status ef the Bearders

Boarders and boardinghouses became ubiquitous elements in the mining
settlements. Differentiation between workers by ethnicity or occupation was
common and both housing type and locality tended to reinforce those differ-
ences. Boardinghouses were designated by their location name, e. g. the Barnum
House at the Barnum Mine Location; by the name of the current manager, e.g.
the Wiesen boardinghouse in Rockland; by a commercial name, such as the Bay
View; and frequently by the ethnicity of its occupants, as ”The Italian
Boardinghouse” (figure 6) or the ”Finn Boardinghouse” in a community.

This identification of ethnicity with a particular boardinghouse facilitated
newcomers who preferred living with others of their language and background,
but also set up whole households for the pranks and worse periodically
launched from rival ethnic groups.

Occupation, social status, and architecture entwined and became

self-reinforcing of a ranked society of householders, and so too for boarders. Just

211

as certain architectural features were justified for residents of a specific class as
defined by the man’s occupational category and inappropriate for others, board-

ers of a certain rank were properly housed only with others of their same rank.

At the Adventure Mine in 1859, Thomas W. Buzzo reassured his superior
in the East that he did not allow miners to board with him; for it was ”a
wrong policy to mingle too freely with laborers, . . . as it destroys in a
great measure the respect they should bear to their employer and the
command the employer should have over them.” (Thumer 1994: 153)

Thus a further designation of a boardinghouse, particularly company
houses, recognized the occupational rank of its inhabitants, laborers versus high-
er personnel such as engineers. The small boardinghouse at Spies Location in
figure 20 above accommodated managerial staff; the large house in figure 55

below housed laborers.

Additional Uses ef the Beardingheuse Physieal Plant

It was noted above that some large boardinghouses were the result of
building reuse, that their structures had originally been large public facilities
such as schools or hospitals. Additional discussion of boardinghouse reuse
occurs in the Epilogue. An allied consideration, however, is the multiple com-
munity uses of functioning boardinghouses.

Company boardinghouses and some commercial boarding establishments
were often among the largest structures in a location or town. Large buildings
such as the mine industrial plant, churches, barns, and supervisory personnel’s
large homes were either unsuited or otherwise unavailable for certain communi-
ty uses and therefore alternative meeting places had to be found.

The lack of community gathering facilities was particularly acute in the
early stages of location development, but even in the later town settlements
residents felt the need for community gathering space and looked to the board-

inghouses.

212

A number of factors would have made it a popular choice: 1) sections of
the boardinghouse were already considered semi-public domain, 2) many com-
munity members might have lived there at one time, so it represented ties of
familiarity, 3) parlors or dining rooms were likely to include a piano or organ, 4)
there might be a barroom, and the kitchen was equipped to feed a large group,
and 5) besides floor space, there were likely many chairs and / or benches avail-
able.

Thus, the large rooms such as the parlors and dining halls of some of the
boardinghouses lent themselves to special community use. Rooms in boarding-
houses doubled from time to time as schools, infirmaries, and public meeting
halls, and accommodated church services, children’s Christmas plays, dances,
and weddings. A physician’s wife described one boisterous wedding held only
twenty-four hours after the couple met at a ball (Crowell 1976: 17—20).
Boardinghouses also housed political meetings. For example, Teal Lake
Township was formally organized and its officers elected at the Jackson Iron
Company boardinghouse in March, 1858 (Negaunee Centennial Committee
1965). In the locations where saloons were prohibited, boardinghouses became
men’s gathering halls for talk and cardplaying and occasional surreptitious

boozing.

Soeial Meaning Qf the Beardingheuse

The physical boardinghouses served numerous utilitarian purposes, pri-
marily feeding and housing a labor force and secondarily providing a communi-
ty venue for certain social and political occasions. Boardinghouses represent a
significant factor in paternalism: mining companies manipulated labor forces
most directly through housing. The economics of boardinghouses reveal the
financial importance of women’s labor on a frontier usually portrayed as almost

exclusively male.

213

Internal divisions of boardinghouse space and the facilities found there
relative to those generally available suggest, in part, the ideological bases of
boardinghouse design.

N 0 study of boardinghouses would be complete, however, without a con-
sideration of what life was actually like in them. Behavior must be examined
against the company policies and the built environment in an attempt to deter-
mine whether these were merely and literally boardinghouses, or to what degree
and in what ways they were homes as well. That is the consideration of the next

chapter.

CHAPTER 7
THE BOARDINGHOUSE AS HOME AND HOUSEHOLD

The OED stipulates the boarding experience in terms of place, services
available, and situation: a lodging place where the boarder receives meals as one
of the family for a price. Preceding discussion has established origins and physi-
cal nature of the place and addressed the economics of boarding. Examining the
services available and exploring the notion of boarders as family requires a clos-

er look at the people who lived the boardinghouse experience.

Censtituents ef the Bearding Heuseheld

Constituents of any given household varied with time, and naturally
households differed one to the other. The most basic household would consist of
the boardinghouse keeper and the boarder(s). More complex households could
include spouse or business partner of the boardinghouse keeper, their children,
and resident hired help. Occasional day workers added to a household popula-
tion, even if only sporadically. The dynamics of any household depended upon
the roles and functions attached to each category of occupant and how individu-

als lived their role.

Men presided in some boardinghouses, either as head of the host family
or as an individual contractor leasing the boardinghouse operation. The title for
this position was ”boarding boss” (Gemignani 1982, Monette 1995b:16). For
some, the job matched the title. Andrew Bredahl, who managed the company
complex at Wells, logged over one hundred hours per week overseeing the oper-

ations.
214

215

As manager he was in complete charge of every aspect involved in hous-
ing and feeding 300 men seven days a week, week in and week out. [He
was head cook; a night cook prepared the fourth (midnight) meal Of the
day.] He had to oversee the house-keeping of over 150 rooms; he ran a
laundry, a butcher shop, a bakery, a kitchen, a storeroom; he had to be a
disciplinarian and sometimes a counselor for both the boarders and a staff
of more than thirty; [and] he was a bookkeeper responsible to the compa-
ny office for the payroll deductions covering board and room charges.
(Bourke 1982: 11)

Other boarding bosses also devoted their full time and attention to board-
inghouse operation. A letter to George Hooper in 1917 from the Houghton office
of the Denver Rock Drill Manufacturing Company refers to an Ed Gauvin of
Painesdale. The letter writer, Edward Church, says of Gauvin: ”He has a first
class reputation there, both as a man and as a boardinghouse keeper. . . . [H]e
runs a clean house and sets very good meals. Does most of the cooking himself
and has a wife and grown daughter to help him” (VCM Files, Hooper correspon-
dence).

Boarding bosses with other occupations, such as Candido Pisoni with his
lumbering enterprise, generally assisted only with heavy chores or seasonally,
but most probably had the final disciplinary word, no matter how much or how
little they were otherwise involved in the operation of the boardinghouse.

Without more data and an investigation well beyond the scope of this
study, the numbers of boarding bosses and their significance to the national
boardinghouse phenomenon cannot be ascertained. On the Michigan mining
ranges slight mention is made of them, particularly in proportion to references to
female boardinghouse keepers. The disparity becomes more pronounced in
national materials. Studies of Eastern boardinghouses give the impression they
were run exclusively by women. As for the American West, it generated the
image of the ”Widder Brown’s Boardin’house,” which not only specifies a

woman manager but excludes a male head of household.

216

 

0000 THE 0000

'Illlllllllll 1101131:-

410 SIXTH STREET.

Mrs. John Currie, Props

—
lIiieqpainted, renovated and return-
is throughout. Table service the
best. Sixteen comfortable sleeping
rooms. Board by the day, week or
month. Table board a specialty.
21 MEALS, $4.00

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 48. Calumet boardinghouse ad emphasizing the feminine. (Courtesy Keweenaw Press)

Scant details of individual Michigan boarding bosses characterize them as
”friends in need,” efficient, conscientious businessmen, and pleasant hosts.

According to Clarence Monette (1995b: 16),

If one of the boarders got into trouble, the boarding boss was usually sent
for. He paid the fine and took the boarder back home. Then he arranged
with the boarder to pay so much each week or even the entire amount at
the end of the working month. Cases were also known when the board-
ing boss was arrested, the story was the same, only reversed. His board-
ers passed the hat and rushed to his rescue.

Alfred Nicholls’ account (1968: 169) of ”Big Boardinghouse Life” at
Central Mine in the latter half of the nineteenth century details an evening of
pipe smoking and friendly banter in the boarders’ gathering room. Among the
comments is a reference to the past night’s conversation, in which Harry, the
boarding boss, had taken part.

As the evening progresses, Harry makes two appearances. First, he intro-
duces a new boarder, formerly an iron miner, who has transferred to the big
boardinghouse from a local private house ”’because he think [sic] he will be

III

more comfortable here with us. Later, he joins the circle of conversation which
has centered on one of the boarders, absent that evening because he is ”spark-
ing.” As the men express their admiration for this boarder and his young lady,

they decide upon a wedding gift for that eventuality. The boarding boss then

217

shares his secret: the wedding will indeed happen in only a month, and he
pledges the boardinghouse larder for the festivities.

In this example the boarding boss is host not only by introducing and
welcoming a new boarder, but by sharing social time with the group. He knows
each of them by personality and personal habit, not just by name. He has shared
elements of himself with them: during the conversation of the night before he
had told of his home community in Cornwall. He expresses genuine interest in
his boarders and is willing to share his personal resources for the wedding recep-
tion. Whatever degree of fictionalizing or idealizing has crept into N icholls’
account merely emphasizes what were considered positive qualities of boarding
bosses in general. The contrast with the comic strip braggart Maj. Hoople is
equally telling.

One characteristic of boarding bosses seems clear: without apparent
exception, they did not work alone. Even doing much of the cooking himself, Ed
Gauvin was assisted by his wife and daughter. At Central, boarding boss Harry
allows how ”’it do make me and the missus feel pretty good that men got such
nice opinion about our house’” (N icholls 19682169). The succession of ”house
fathers” at the Wakefield poika talo relied on a chain of ”house mothers,” though
rebuffing the suggestion that a house mother could run the operation herself.

Thousands of women could, and did, run boardinghouses, whether or not
there was a boarding boss associated with the enterprise. With spouses fulfilling
the role of boarding boss, some of these women could focus their attention more
closely on one facet of the operation, the kitchen perhaps, or supervising the
female staff. Young children in a household also required their time and atten-
tion. Although Andrew Bredahl nominally headed all operations at Wells,
Frances Bredahl actually had charge of the baking operations and the house-

keeping. She and the staff of twenty-eight young women produced seventy

218

loaves of bread and fifty to sixty pies every other day; washed bedding, towels,
and long white tablecloths; and cleaned more than 150 rooms. She also had two
children, one born the year she and Andrew took charge of the Wells operation
(Bourke 1982).

The degree of responsibility the mistress of the boardinghouse assumed
was dictated by family choice and ultimately by circumstance. Teresa Lucas
managed her boarding household on her own although she had a husband. The
Gabourie sisters, Alta and Maymie, remained spinsters; boardinghouse keeping
was their life-long occupation. Anna Shaw, Selma Wiljanen, and so many others
had full management responsibility thrust upon them by widowhood. Except
for the scale of the operation, their job description matched Andrew Bredahl’s.
Those with young children were simultaneously responsible for their care.

The boardinghouse mistress was also mistress of the house, with all that
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American standards designated to that
role. A woman’s ”spiritual calling” was to make her home a moral refuge from
the outside world. This so-called cult of domesticity of the early 18005 combined
with later industrial ideals to elevate the household and its female head to a new
status (Cott 1977, Wright 1980, Landon 1989, Beecher and Stowe 1869, 1987, Ryan
1981): she was to be a moral paragon and ”professional” housekeeper, a ”domes-
tic engineer,” an efficient yet nurturing angel in an apron. Ethnic presumptions
of their women imposed much the same role, particularly among the Irish and
Italians. Moreover, it seems that women on the Michigan mining ranges, at least
those connected with boardinghouses of whom there is record, frequently
attempted to live the role and often succeeded, to the awe and appreciation of
those around them.

A frequent visitor to the boardinghouse kitchen of Angelina ”Grandma”

219

Terzaghi, a widow with three children living near Negaunee, recalls the many
activities this woman managed simultaneously. On the big stove something
would be cooking, polenta or maybe sausage. In the center of the room sat Mrs.
Terzaghi, mending the woolen underwear of one of her boarders, her foot rock-
ing the churn to make butter. Sitting opposite her were the three teenaged chil-
dren, doing their school work under her watchful eye. Her periodic questions to
them about their lessons encouraged their work and let them know how valu-
able their education was. Meanwhile, in a warm corner of the kitchen sat the
dough box, filled with rising dough that she would bake into fresh loaves before
she retired for the night (Spelgatti 1993).

While conducting a government land survey in 1873, John Longyear
sought accommodation one night at a French-Canadian boardinghouse at the
Champion Mine location. His bed was one of six in the loft of a single-story log
structure. A drunken spree and lively dancing below kept him awake until near
dawn when the last of the merrymakers succumbed to the alcohol and exhaus-
tion and dropped into the remaining loft beds. After a short sleep, Longyear

observed:

Much to my surprise, when I descended in the morning, I found no sign
of the night’s revelry. The neat-looking landlady and her daughter had
the house in order and a good breakfast was served. . . . After breakfast
the landlady left to attend a wedding, and I was astonished to see her
walk out arrayed in a silk dress and a beautiful lace shawl. She looked
like a product of high civilization rather than a ”grub-slinger” for a lot of
booze-guzzling roustabouts. (Paul 1960: 18-19)

Not all were as accomplished, however. Schoolteacher Henry Hobart
taught at the Cliff Mine Location in the early 18605 and boarded with Joseph
Rawlings, Mine Engineer, and his wife. Although Hobart admits in his diary
that Mrs. Rawlings treated him well enough, her cantankerous demeanor created

unending mayhem and rancor in the household. ”It is misery to hear the old

220

lady let off her wrath,” he says repeatedly. She would be boss of the household,
but did not know how. ”The old lady [and one of her sons, reared to be equally
imperious] are just alike, always mad about nothing 8: it is impossible to please
them” (Mason 1991: 277).

The attitude and demeanor of the boardinghouse mistress seem generally
to have set the tone for the house. Only the food that came from her kitchen
appeared to have more impact on boarders and their satisfaction with their
accommodations.

Children were also part of numerous boarding households. For them, as
for their parents and the other adults around them, boarding was a way of life.
The children in a boardinghouse were usually part of the host family, although a
number of families in Alger County locations found it necessary to place their
children with families in Marquette or other communities where they could
attend school (Symon 1985). Whether a permanent or temporary part of the host
family, living in a boardinghouse affected the children’s chore list, perhaps, but
not their obligation to help. Running a boardinghouse was certainly a family
endeavor so all members of the family, even the smallest, contributed something
to the effort.

Numerous individuals recall filling the woodbox as children. One young
girl was assigned a bookkeeping chore. She had to fill out the weekly charge
slips for each boarder and take them to the bank (Caspary 1994). Another
remembers scrubbing the hardwood dining room floor every Saturday (Mather
1994). Boys did barn chores, while their sisters waited on tables (Pisoni 1994).

Isabelle Wiesen came at age seven to live with her grandmother and to
assist in the operation of her boardinghouse. She was made to feel a valuable
addition to the household. Her young legs managed the stairs more easily than

Grandma’s, so she brought foods up from the cellar, and did small chores

221

upstairs including carrying food trays to her bed-ridden grandfather (Fortin
1994)

Little Ruth Reippenen was only five in 1917 when her family left the lum-
ber camp at Dunham for the newly opened iron mine at Wakefield. Her father
went into the mine and her mother ran one of the Wakefield Iron Mining
Company boardinghouses southeast of town. Ruth was the youngest of seven
daughters, but even at her age she was entrusted with responsibility: twice each
day at the appointed hours she would make her rounds of the boardinghouse
clanging a large bell, awakening the boarders for their respective shift at the
mine (Johnson 1993).

A common activity for some children was to carry their fathers’ lunch
pails to them at the mine or smelter. Mary Roti hurried home from school on her
own lunch hour to pick up her father’s hot lunch and carried it to him at the
mine, then sat with him while he ate (Manzoline and Tousignant 1982). Another
daughter who carried lunch to her father on summer days recalled their many
conversations on those occasions: ”I learned a lot from him” (Mather 1994).

Casual labor in and around boardinghouses came from neighborhood
kids and, particularly during the Depression, hoboes who would work for a
meal. Ernest Krause was only ten and newly-immigrated from Germany when
he came with his family to a farm three miles from Ford River in 1887. He found
employment at the Ford River company boardinghouse before and after school
(Brayak 1973: 62-63).

Permanent staff came either as day laborers or were themselves boarders.
Occasionally they were older women, perhaps with children, looking for a home
as well as a job. The ”widow lady” Evalyn Cook mentions who could be her
helper and several of the cooks hired at the Endeavor fall into this category.

Usually, however, staff positions were filled by young women drawn from the

222

local community or who had immigrated under the sponsorship of the boarding-
house operators. For those immigrant women, chain migration figured heavily
in their lives: many were kin to their sponsors or family friends from the same
home villages. Selma Wiljanen had come to America in 1909 from Finland to
work in her cousin Kalle (Charles) Henrickson’s lumbering boardinghouse in
Alger County. Numerous others also began their lives in America as workers in
boardinghouses, and then after marriage took in boarders to finance the immi-
gration of other family members.

Often these young women spoke no English, so their Americanization
began with the assistance of the boardinghouse family. In a contrary situation,
the widow running company boardinghouses at Baltic and then at Painesdale in
the 19205 and 305 spoke only Italian. Her bi-lingual hired girl became ”her right
arm” (Caspary 1994).

American-born young women flocked to boardinghouses for work as
chambermaids, kitchen help, or dining room waitresses. One daughter of the
Arduin family of Hermansville was thirteen when she began working in local
boardinghouses. During the summer two years later, she worked in an estab-
lishment with sixty-two boarders. There she had to do ”all the kitchen chores,
peel a bushel of potatoes, mop the floors and work to eight at night [she walked
to work at 5 A. M.] for a dollar a day” (Whitens and Campbell 1982). Work in
the boardinghouses was hard, but nevertheless attractive for both the wages and
the fringe benefits—the boarders.

The boarders were—to use an old cliche—tall, short, skinny fat men, bald
with lots of hair. Some were married but had left wife and family far behind.
Many were quite young and single. Those who were not American-born repre-
sented more than forty nationalities across the world. Some had come great dis-

tances to the mining region of Michigan in search of a new life; others had been

223

born there, but families too large and resources too slim had sent them out on
their own. They all came to the boardinghouses in search of a home. Croatian

immigrant Steve Brayak tells the story of thousands:

”I worked in Pittsburgh for eight months and then decided to come to the
Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We took a train to Escanaba, arriving here
on November 1, 1913. From the depot, we took a streetcar down
Ludington Street, where I rode to the end of the line. I got off and waited
half an hour until another streetcar came along. It was cold and lonely.
The weather was very cold and snowy. I took the streetcar back to North
Escanaba where I stopped at Skradski’s. In those days everybody went to
Skradski’s because Mirko Skradski could speak English and he helped us.
At Skradski’s I met Jake Saber and he took me to his boarding house.
There were 20 men staying there at that time. I looked for a job but I
didn’t get one until Christmas Eve.

. . . It was a very cold night. It was not the best Christmas Eve I ever
spent, but at least I had [a home and] a job.” (Delta County 1978: 25)

These were the people who made up the boarding households: boarding
bosses, spinsters, wives and widows, children, staff, and the boarders. Their

interactions shaped the boardinghouse experience.

Boarding and the Notion of Family

Boarding is defined in terms of family. The boarder receives bed and
board as one of the family. Determining what this means in practical terms
requires an examination of the records and recollections of those who lived the
experience to establish as closely as possible the relationships they developed
between themselves, and what those relationships meant to them. To what
degree did a boarding household become ”family” and how is that term to be
defined?

One important point to emphasize is that at least some boarding situa-
tions were kin-based. Census records show brothers and brothers-in-law, sisters,
cousins, and nieces of the host family as boarders. Of the 195 Marquette

addresses with boarders in 1886-87, twenty-four show at least one boarder with

224

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 49. Boardinghouse ”family” outside its Wakefield home. (Courtesy Bruce Cox and
Wakefield Historical Society)

the same last name as the host family. A photo in the collection of the Marquette
County Historical Society illustrates the point: it is a typical boardinghouse
photo with all the residents and staff arranged in front of the house. Hand print-
ing across the face identifies it as the ”Kristian Wiik Boarding House.” Names of
the individuals, also printed on the face of the photo, identify seven of the seven-
teen people as Wiiks. Newspaper articles and family accounts also place kin as
boarders. In some instances, then, the boarding household was literally family,
extended family at least.

The overwhelming majority of boardinghouses brought together unrelat-
ed individuals, yet surrogate family relationships seem prevalent, even leading
to fictive kin designations. The women of the boardinghouses, ”depending on
their ages, . . . were mother—sister—bride images to the lonely men” (Wasastjerna
1957 2 321). In contrast to Horwitz’s (1973) findings regarding the Lowell mill

girls, the Michigan boarders commonly described their housing experience as

225

”home” in the psychological sense of belonging, not just residence, and used the
metaphor of the family to discuss household relationships. Olive Harlow’s diary
reference to her household as ”a family of 40 persons” (Harlow 1972) and desig-
nations of ”house mother” and ”house father” at the Endeavor show the same
concept projected from the house management.

Feelings of affinity, not just labels, also grew from these relationships.

Two of Anna Wiesen’s boarders became ”the same as her sons” (Fortin 1994).

The Reippenen family grew very close to many of their boarders, primari-
ly young Finns who had come from Republic to Wakefield when the new mine
opened. They continued contact long after the family quit boardinghouse opera-
tion. None of these boarders was more special, however, than the young Bill
Fletcher about whom Mrs. Reippenen said, ”God gave me seven daughters, and
now a son.” Fletcher had been turned away from all the other boardinghouses
when he tried to find accommodation, but Mrs. Reippenen welcomed him to her
home and her family. Why had Fletcher been turned away elsewhere? He was
black (Johnson 1993).

The surrogate family relationship in boardinghouses has been widely
demonstrated and accepted. From an intensive study of household relationships
in Boston, Mark Peel (1986) concludes, ”Boarding ideally functioned as a surro-
gate for the family, shielding transient individuals from the uprooting forces of
migration” (813). Among British immigrants to Canada, networks of family and
friends proved crucial to the immigrants’ economic and social survival in their
new land. Obligations of the host family, whether or not actual kin, included
providing shelter, ”advice on social and cultural norms, help in finding a job and
assistance in a hundred other ways” (McCormack 1984: 358). In Michigan’s min-
ing districts, that British migratory link became so pronounced and defined, its

complexity could be conveyed by the term ”Cousin Jack.”

226

Each migrating group used the process: Steve Brayak illustrates it in
operation. So does the Tassin family of Ishpeming who took in Italian immi-
grants without charge, finding them jobs and helping to socialize them into the
community. Only some of those they helped through their free boardinghouse
were actual kin (Manzoline and Tousignant 1982).

”Another crucial aspect of boardinghouse life that is related to the image
of the boardinghouse as surrogate family is the extent to which boarders shared
characteristics with their ’surrogate parents’” (Landon 1989: 42). Michigan data
demonstrates the same sorts of correlations between boarders and the boarding-
house hosts in terms of ethnicity, occupation, and status noted in other American
studies (Hareven and Modell 1973, Peel 1986, Landon 1989, Byington 1910).

Studies of boardinghouse economics suggest additional links to the surro-
gate family notion. David Landon argues that the ”apparent social acceptability
of boardinghouse keeping [as an economic endeavor for women] was also based
on the image of the boardinghouse as a surrogate family” (1989: 42). An impor-
tant study of urban boardinghouse families contends that boarding was linked to
the life cycle of the family, young boarders entering a household at the time that
grown children had ”left the nest,” replacing the lost support of the children
with boarder income. Moreover, this replacement fits into a larger pattern of
family adaptation, combining and re-combining nuclear, extended, and surro-
gate family relationships to demonstrate the boarding household’s malleability
(Hareven and Modell 1973).

The strong division of labor along traditional gender lines in nineteenth-
and early twentieth-century Upper Michigan makes Landon’s argument attrac-
tive for the boardinghouses there, but it is equally important to recognize the rel-
ative lack of viable alternatives for women’s employment, the necessity for their

income, and the strong manipulation of housing by the mining companies. In

227

that context, the social acceptability of women taking in boarders could grow
from necessity.

Hareven and Modell’s (1973) model of the aging parents accepting board-
ers as surrogate children also seems to have some support from the Michigan
data. It has been suggested, for example, that Mary Fellman had boarders in her
later years more to ease loneliness than for the income (Evensen). Isabelle
Wiesen boarded with her grandmother rather than living with her parents
because Annie Wiesen had had sons, no daughters. Therefore, a female family
member of the next generation was designated to serve the helper role in
Annie’s domestic enterprise (Fortin 1994). Boardinghouse families without sons

are also known to have taken in young men as surrogates to help with heavy

 

 

 

Figure 50. Oskar Maki family and boarders, Wakefield. (Courtesy Bruce Cox and Wakefield
Historical Society)

228

chores (Bernhardt 1981: 89) and widows exchanged room and board for heavy
chore work from retired miners (Caspary 1994).

However, boarders can also be understood as a means to manipulate the
family life cycle (Hareven and Modell 1973). In this light, newlyweds would
seem to have brought in boarders as surrogate adult children, providing a
stronger economic base for the new household before actual children were even
born. Considering the prevalence of boarders in Michigan homes with young
children, it was apparently worth the economic advantage to continue boarding
these adult ”children" through the next phase of family development. Female
boarders providing domestic help served the role of adult daughters. For both
widows and spinsters, boarders were economic surrogates for husbands, allow-
ing women to postpone marriage (or re-marriage) indefinitely if they chose.

Therefore, the boardinghouse as a surrogate family offered advantages to
both the boarders and to the host family. It also demanded a clear set of limits
on members of the household. These limits varied between households, and

occasionally were at variance with the surrounding community.

Th Nu 1 arFamil inR lati n h B ar r

Some boarders and boardinghouse managers preferred a degree of
detachment. On their own time, boarders could pursue whatever amusements
were available, so they could limit contact with the host family to mealtimes, if
they chose. Generally the men would leave the table and convene in their smok-
ing room to read the newspaper, talk, or play cards. The rest of their day was
usually spent at work.

In a number of houses, the press of work limited the time the host family
could spend with the boarders. Erma Caspary (1994) reports that when the

evening meal was finished and the men left the table, her mother threw the latch

229

on the dining room door. ”She was done with them until she sounded the
buzzer next morning to say breakfast was ready.” The dining room was not only
the physical link between the host family quarters and the gathering room for
the boarders, it was the venue for much of the social interchange between the
boarders and their host(s).

In other houses, members of the host family made themselves more acces-
sible and close relationships sometimes developed. The interchange between
Harry, the boarding boss at Central Mine, and his boarders shows this. So do the
Reippenen family and Annie Wiesen with their respective ”sons.”

The issue of closeness, particularly how close was too close, often arose in
households with children. Ironically, the very quality that Landon argues con-
tributed to the respectability of boarding-houses, the notion of surrogate family,
became a focus of attack for the reformers of the 18803 onward.

Unrelated residents treated as family, particularly when living in a family
home as opposed to the institutional boardinghouses, were perceived as a threat
to the sanctity and morality of the nuclear family. When one Houghton County
mining family announced in 1911 it was relocating to a newly-developing mine
in Iron County a few miles distant from the nearest town and that the wife
would be operating a boardinghouse there while her husband became mine
engineer, the neighbors were aghast. What of the influences on the children?!
they objected (Bernhardt 1981: 389). When the Cordes family purchased and
expanded the Bay View House in Menominee, Pauline Cordes’ sisters prophe-
sied only disaster for the seven Cordes children (raised in ”that atmosphere”
surely the boys would all grow up to be ”drunkards and gamblers,” and the girls
. . . !) (Knuth 1993).

House rules prevailed. In the Durocher household at Freda, the men’s

areas were completely off-limits to the children except for the eldest who cleaned

230

and changed beds, and then only when the men were gone (Guilbault 1994). At
the Bay View, the Cordes children were forbidden to associate with the boarders
or to go into the bar room. They were allowed to play in the dining room
between meals (Knuth 1993). Spatial divisions were also enforced for the
Schmidt children, though some interchange with the boarders occurred in the
more public portions of the house. There was a small candy counter just outside
the dining room. Lillian, the youngest, was allowed to operate it, to her delight,
since the men would often give her a couple of pennies or a nickel from their
change (Mather 1994).

Even with strict supervision, the children seem at times to have forged
links between the boarders and their parents, or at least to have generated a spe-
cial friend for themselves. One of the boarders with the Schmidts, a Mr. Larson,
was a kindly older gentleman who ”looked just like Santa Claus.” When Lillian
was small, she sat on his lap and they talked and played. In later years, Mr.
Larson would watch from the front porch of the boardinghouse for Lillian’s ride
to school and give her a call at just the right moment, so she never had to wait
outside for the streetcar or bus (Mather 1994).

For five-year-old Ruth Reippenen, the houseful of boarders at Wakefield
were doting ”big brothers” or ”uncles.” It was Ruth who made her way
throughout the facility twice per day with her bell, awakening the men for their
work shift. When they sat playing cards in their gathering room, she moved
from table to table, chattering with the men and hopping up on a lap occasional-
ly. Ruth’s coin bank found its way each evening to the cleared dining room
table, and every day she emptied it of a few pennies (Johnson 1993). Her moth-
er’s acceptance of all the young men as family, and particularly Bill Fletcher, set
the tone for this easy relationship between Ruth and the boarders. If the board-

inghouse women were surrogate mothers and sisters for the lonely boarders,

231

children such as Ruth filled at least some of the void of separation from younger
siblings or their own children.

Leo Pisoni’s recollections of growing up in his mother’s boardinghouse
are similar in several ways to Ruth’s. For example, the boarders gave the Pisoni
children cash for holiday gifts and Leo looked upon the boarders as fictive fami-
ly. He learned how to play cards at a young age under their tutorial. Lessons
also extended to tolerance and understanding of differences between people,
especially in the multi-ethnic boardinghouse. Leo, like Ruth Reippenen, learned
about racial identity at home. A team of black laborers hired to develop a new
mine shaft were housed in the Pisoni home. Never before having seen someone
with such dark skin, the five-year-old Leo innocently asked one of the boarders
why he never washed his face. Good-naturedly the boarder explained that ”he
was what he was” (Pisoni 1994).

Lessons went the other direction, too. Mary Manzoline (1994) recalled
being eagerly questioned each day about what new words she had learned in
school, so anxious were the family’s three Italian boarders to develop their
English skills. '

Neighborhood children also developed relationships with boarders.
Esther Prince was about fourteen during the big copper strike. She lived in
Houghton between two boardinghouses, one that housed townsmen, the other
designated for the imported ”scabs.” It was a dangerous time, with violence in
the streets and drive-by shootings into homes. Esther’s mother imposed a num-
ber of restrictions on her daughter’s movements. One activity she did not pre-

vent, however, proved very lucrative for the girl. In later years, Esther recalled:

Incidentally, living by those boardinghouses was kind of conve-
nient for me. The boarders would often get too lazy to go to Quincy to get
their money from the pay office. I was big enough to be trusted so they
would give me all their slips and their names and the permit to get their

232

money and I would come home with a bag of money of over a thousand
dollars every time. When I think of it now, I get the shivers but each of
the fellows would give me a dime or quarter or whatever they felt like
giving me, so it was like a goldmine to me when I was a little girl. (Prince
1975)

Like the biological daughters in the household, resident female domestics
(and to a lesser degree young female day workers) also required the watchful
eye and moral protection of the host family, particularly the ”house mother.” A
discussion below explores the variety of ways, to that end, the mistress of the

house involved herself in the lives of her boarders, both male and female.

Behavioral Reactions to Architectural Separation

One body of house rules specifically addressed the identity of the nuclear
family and lines of privacy. In many boardinghouses architectural divisions
were generally consistent with practice. In the big company houses, meals were
served to the men in the dining room; the host family ate together in their own
quarters. Where there was resident staff—essentially a second set of boarders—
mealtimes could result in double segregation: men in the dining room, family in
the kitchen or their own dining room, and staff in the kitchen after everyone else
was served. On the other hand, in small family homes boarders and family often
ate together, giving rise to the popular exaggeration of Maj. Hoople dominating
the table and staring down anyone taking too large a portion.

The HPS helped define activity areas and private family space. Some
families purposefully used this architectural configuration to emphasize divi-
sion. When the Cordes family transformed the Bay View from a single three-
story structure to a triple-section telescope, they architecturally defined and seg-
regated the four main activity areas (boarder sleeping, family sleeping, dining
room and kitchen) and the two resident groups. A periodically locked door

between dining room and boarders’ parlor, as above, or the locked door between

233

upstairs sleeping quarters of the Schmidt family and their boarders clearly rele-
gated the timing and degree of division, as well as placement of the line, under
the control of the boardinghouse keeper.

The lines of privacy blurred and were occasionally ignored, however, as
behavior confronted the built environment. In the Schmidt house at the Delta
Chemical Location, for example, boarders were free to help themselves to left-
over pie and pastry from the pantry throughout the evening. To do so, they had
to pass through the dining room and the kitchen and past the door to the family
quarters. In this case, the kitchen and pantry, ordinarily off limits to boarders,
became accessible when their presence posed no functional conflict. The door to
the family dining room and parlor moved the line of privacy, but maintained it
(Mather 1994).

In the Durocher boardinghouse at Freda, the boarding teachers ”were just
like family,” sharing with the family the side entrance and the second-floor
accommodations; the family remained more personally and physically aloof
from the male boarders, however, who had a separate entrance and occupied the
third-floor.

More subtle issues of privacy and definition of family are also embedded
within spatial use, however. In some cases, it seems the drive to acquire a family
house was not to live the social ideal of America’s reformers, i.e., the single-fami-
ly home as an island of privacy against the rest of the world, with separate
spaces for each family member. A pre-World War II study of Italians in America
and a recent compilation of immigrant oral histories demonstrate that Italians
understood acquiring a home as an obligation not just to house the nuclear fami-
ly, but to provide for extended family and the paesani (Cohen 1982: 299; Stave,
Sutherland and Salerno 1994: 111).

On the Michigan mining ranges, both the generally higher incidence of

234

Italian households with boarders and direct testimony from descendants of those
early mining families confirm this conclusion. Thus the inclusion of boarders
within the household and the resultant crowding, both social evils in the eyes of
reformers, were ethnically-based social positives reaffirming kinship and friend-
ship obligations.

Moreover, many of the ethnic groups that became heavily represented on
the mining ranges came from similar experiences and had developed similar
social philosophies. Cohen (1982) points to conflicts between American middle-
class ideals and working-class priorities based in Old World cultural baggage.
”Many people from rural backgrounds were used to sharing a bedroom—and
sometimes even a bed—with other family members,” she notes (299). Therefore,
for example, whatever crowding the Lucas family and their boarders had to
endure should not have been particularly repugnant to them.

Nor were crowded boarding accommodations limited to immigrants from
rural Europe. An account by one of fourteen American-born settlers who occu-
pied an early dwelling at Marquette reveals numerous strategies employed by
those forced into tight quarters. Charles Johnson had built a small, four-room
house with a lean-to in 1850 for himself and his wife. Soon the household
expanded dramatically, although the house had not. By 1851, the occupants
included Mrs. Johnson’s niece and two other nuclear families, a total of seven
adults and seven children. Cooking and laundry were done in the lean-to or
outside. The children amused themselves outside during the day, and the men
were gone to jobs.

At night, the residents arranged themselves ”very comfortably and well.”
Each family had a room. The boys slept on the floor. With little furniture
besides beds, a few chairs, a couple of bureaus and a table, there was ample

space. Other comforts were improvised: ”’Our Sideboards were stumps around

235

the house; for sofas we had the moss-covered rocks or the sand heaps . . . while
for bath rooms we had all of Lake Superior’” (Chat 1888: 8,1).

Despite idealists’ encouragement of parlors as a middle-class aspiration, a
number of the Michigan mining families preferred to gather around their kitchen
tables to socialize. Also, Cohen notes, ”workers’ parlors frequently doubled as
sleeping rooms at night” (301). By relegating herself and her children to the two
small upstairs rooms and assigning the rest of her home to boarders, Mary Zager
had indeed made whatever parlor space she had into boarder accommodation.
At the Mohawk boardinghouse the parlor space became the dining room
(Boggio 1982). In the smaller homes with boarders, such as the Victoria cabins,
the dining area was the only socializing space available. After sharing a meal,
resident family members and boarders would sit around the table together play-
ing cards, or singing while someone played a fiddle, possibly drinking home-
made wine. On the Michigan mining ranges, in location and town family hous-
ing which comprised the majority of boarding establishments, the OED defini-

tion of the boardinghouse was most fully realized.

Boardinghouse Life

The variety and inconsistent nature of the Michigan boarding-house data
identifies numerous boardinghouses and those who operated or boarded within
them but tantalizingly few details of their lives. From the scattering of recollec-
tions, many generated from pioneer settlers and their families in response to
anniversary celebrations of the mining communities, a limited sense of boarding-

house life does emerge.

Rules and Relationships

Rules imposed by the boardinghouse keeper, most often attributed to the

mistress of the house, would presumably provide for the smooth operation of

236

the household. Many of those recalled, however, reveal a motherly or moralistic
interest in the boarders and in the hired staff, and a conscious attempt to curb
boisterous behavior that would offend community sensibilities.

The personal interest of the matrons in the lives of their boarders extend-
ed to issues of finances and health. More than one boardinghouse keeper steered
her boarders away from excessive drinking and encouraged then to open a sav-
ings account at the local bank. Sarah McCullough in Cedar River promoted
sobriety among her boarders even to the point of locking them in their rooms to
keep them away from drink; she nevertheless failed to reform ”one nimble
young boarder who . . . used to escape [through] the transom.” Her reform
efforts were not totally in vain, however. ”She was responsible for several sav-
ings accounts which led to marriages, with their steadying influences . . .”
(Worth 1953).

Boardinghouse keepers also established a few iron-clad rules for behavior
in and about the house. Sarah McCullough forbade cardplaying, and burned
any deck of cards she found in the house (Worth 1953). Teresa Lucas prohibited
gambling and rough behavior (Frimodig 1990: 75). One matron in Monticello
insisted that the men use the privy or the thunder mugs. Anyone availing him-
self of a bush or tree in the yard would have to find another home (Peterson,
Bednar, and Maurin 1993). Her concern was far from trivial: newlyweds Selma
and Ted Broadlands in Sagola moved out of their honeymoon cottage because
the men in the boardinghouse next door made a habit of urinating out the sec-
ond floor windows onto their yard (Ertel 1986: 148).

Boardinghouse mistresses also monitored the activities of the young
ladies in their employ. The reputation of the house was at stake, as well as that
of the young women. A boardinghouse mistress who allowed her staff to carry

on indecently stood to lose respectable boarders, responsible staff, and the good

237

will of the mining company and of the community at large. Moreover, for those
women who sponsored immigrating sisters, cousins, and neighbors, maintaining
respectability was important to their good name on both sides of the ocean.
Accidental breaches of decorum did occur, such as when one young chamber-
maid went in to strip a boarder’s bed and make it up fresh, only to discover him
lying there, fast asleep, when she pulled back the bedding (Brunet 1994). The
deep embarrassment of both the boarder and the girl merely reinforced the social

standards so innocently broken.

Home Economics

An earlier chapter addresses in detail the general costs of boardinghouse
operation and methods of payment by the boarders. The decisions made by
some boardinghouse operators indicate their priorities were occasionally, and
purposefully, at odds with the fiscal bottom line or conversely, to maintain their
income they had to be ready to exercise considerable autonomy despite the per-
vasiveness of company policies and influence.

The Tassin household maintained a free boardinghouse for paesani who
needed assistance. Jake Saber took Steve Brayak to his boardinghouse where he
received accommodation while he was still unemployed. Frank Valela was
allowed to work off his room and board by baby sitting for the three children of
his host family and to help his landlady with heavy chores around the house
(Valela 1983). During strikes and other economic bad times, it appears common
that the boarding household, like a family, simply pulled together, adjusting or
suspending fees until the emergency abated.

On occasion, boardinghouse keepers refused boarders on principle, and
therefore refused the income as well. When union organizers sought a foothold

in Delta County, they came to the Delta Chemical and Iron Company

238

boardinghouse operated by the Schmidts. The Schmidts were allowed under
company policy to reject or accept potential boarders as they saw fit. Ida
Schmidt refused rooms to the union organizers, believing it wrong that they
should expect shelter in a facility of the company they were attacking (Mather
1994)

During the periodic hard times of the boom-bust cycles on the mining
frontier, men occasionally came to the kitchen door of the boardinghouses hop-
ing for a meal. ”You don’t have to invite me in, ma’am,” they would say, and
then suggested a chore they might do in exchange for the food they were pre-
pared to gulp on the doorstep. Even with the slim economics in a boarding-
house where some of the boarders might be unemployed, the boardinghouse
keepers were sometimes generous.

The Reippenen household was one (Johnson 1993). Another was the
Schmidts’. Ida invited the men in to clean up and offered them a seat with the
boarders, though some were ashamed and ate only in the kitchen. If they did
not offer to work for their meal, Ida assigned a chore. Nevertheless, she had to
remind the men that she could not continue to feed them (Mather 1994).

Boardinghouse keepers were free to be as generous as they could afford,
but mining companies and local law enforcement moved against those who
would take advantage of them and thereby threatened the individuals and the
institution of boarding. The case of one such fellow, William H. Cruse, was
reported in the Mining Gazette in January, 1863. Employed at the Cliff Mine,
Cruse ”’lit out’” and ”left his board and washing unpaid.” In order to ”make an
example of him,” the law was called and Cruse was arrested near Calumet.
Although he escaped while being transported back to Clifton, his arrest demon-
strates the import placed on supporting the boarding system, at least so long as

it was in the interests of the companies.

239

On other occasions, however, the economic realities brought boarding-
house managers and local mining companies into conflict. Anna Pisoni (1973)
recalled that mining company officials tried to dictate to her in her private estab-

lishment.

It was one Fourth of July, I remember. He said to me, ”Do you have
many Finlanders?” I said maybe a dozen. Well, he said to me, ”Don’t
take to board no more Finns. They’re a kind of bull-headed guy,” he said,
”And it’s very hard to boss them!” I said, ”I gotta make a living, too.” I
didn’t have very much trouble. They behaved.

Romances and Indiscretions

The relative shortage of women throughout the mining region and partic-
ularly at the locations generated considerable interest in romance when the
opportunity presented itself. As surrogate mothers for their boarders, as actual
mothers of resident daughters, and as employers of young female workers, the
boardinghouse mistresses had cause to become involved in the sexual and
romantic activities of those in their houses.

”Grandma” Terzaghi acted as matchmaker for her young Italian boarders.
She knew many families in her native Lombardy who had daughters and when
she figured it was time for one of her reliable fellows to marry, she set the wheels
in motion and shortly a demure young woman would arrive at the Negaunee
train station. If the intended groom seemed unwilling, any number of her other
boarders volunteered to take his place (Spelgatti 1993).

Actually, numerous couples met in boardinghouses, even without the
assistance of the mistress of the house, but that would not necessarily preclude
her giving advice about the match. Many hired girls married boarders they had
met at work and no sooner would they set up housekeeping than they would
take in boarders themselves. Domenica Debernardi was a seamstress living

with her sister in Quinnesec. Hired to do some sewing in the Iron Mountain

240

boardinghouse run by Peter and Tereza Feira, Domenica met Serafino Borla, one
of their boarders working in the Chapin Mine. Romance blossomed and they
married in May, 1899 (Dulan 1978: 153).

In other cases, a daughter of the house found her fellow among the resi-
dent men. Selma Kuivila met John Wiljanen at her cousin’s boardinghouse and
they married within three months (Larson 1988). The William Martens family
operated a boardinghouse in Ford River. Their daughter Petronella (Nellie)
helped manage the house that accommodated 200-250 men. Frederick Weissert
worked as a baker for this large operation. Frederick and Nellie had a June wed-
ding in 1883 (Delta County 1978: 20). Elma Marie Maki of Amasa married
Finnish immigrant Nestor Holm, one of her mother’s boarders; Marino Kenney,
an Italian miner in Amasa, boarded with the LiBardi family, went to war, and
returned in 1919 to claim the LiBardis’ daughter Josephine as his bride (Koski
1992:183,159)

Despite the conscientiously motherly relationship most of the boarding-
house mistresses maintained toward their boarders, it was inevitable that some
would choose a different relationship. An observation in Davidoff’s (1979: 91)
examination of English boarding-house landladies applies to those in Michigan
as well: ”’Three evils . . . most commonly break up marriages: they are selfish-

III

ness, greed and lodgers [boarders]. On the mining ranges, indiscretions
involving mistresses of the boardinghouse led to wry and sometimes tragic
result.

”Star boarders” were those men who were fed and housed without charge
at the discretion of the landlady, generally in exchange for special attentions. A
star boarder ”was a grown up ’teacher’s pet’ at the least and a gigolo at worst”

(Nicholas and Larson 1972:49).

At one South Range boardinghouse a boarder was sarcastically known by

241

the others as the ”boarding boss,” a jibe prompted by what was obviously a spe-
cial relationship between the mistress of the house and this fellow. Sundays
were usually chicken dinner days, but the boarders noticed that the chickens
were peculiar—they never seemed to have any legs! One Monday morning a
boarder decided to play a hunch. He left extra early, ”accidently” taking the
lunchpail of the ”boarding boss.” Sure enough! He found those chicken legs, a
discovery he shared with his fellow boarders (Caspary 1994).

An item in the local paper in May, 1882, revealed that a couple keeping a
boardinghouse near the Wheat Mine (vicinity of N egaunee) had hired a handy-
man named Dave. Apparently Dave was also handy in the romance depart-
ment, as he and the lady of the house decided to elope. They packed their
clothes into his trunk which he then took with him to Marquette. She was to
catch the train from N egaunee and meet her lover. Her husband discovered the
plan, followed her, and brought her home where she remained with a very
scanty wardrobe (Nicholas and Larson 1972246).

One of the most notorious incidents on the Keweenaw and a particularly
gruesome example of its ilk was reported in the Mining Gazette for December 13,
1862. Mr. and Mrs. Harris ran a boardinghouse at the Cliff Mine. One of the
boarders was Richards, the company blacksmith. Harris, who worked under-
ground at the mine on the night shift, discovered his wife and Richards were
pursuing an affair while he was at work. He dismissed Richards from the house,
but Richards persisted in his attentions to Mrs. Harris.

Harris plotted revenge. He pretended to go to work and then waited
under the porch. When he heard Richards with his wife, he came in through a
window, an axe in hand. Fearing his wife and her lover might attack him, Harris
called to the boarders for assistance. The boarders disarmed Harris and kept the

warring parties apart for a short while, until Harris found the opportunity to

242

snatch a loaded double-barreled gun he had hidden and to shoot Richards just
below the heart. A boarder took away the gun as Harris threatened his wife
with the other barrel, whereupon Harris grabbed the axe and split open
Richards’ face, finally killing him.

Stranger still was the story of Elizabeth (Winnen) Northcott and her
”boarder” William Henry Thomas. Elizabeth married a fellow Cornishman
about 1872 and they had three children before he died near Quinnesec in 1881 of
miners’ consumption. As was often the case, the widow took in a boarder for
support. In this case the arrangement lasted until she died in 1927, and then the
community learned that William Thomas had been her second husband, not a
boarder, for the past thirty-seven years (Cummings 1991: 338).

Not all relationships between boarders and their landladies were illicit or
covert, of course. Sisters Lola and Clara Konell were forced into self-support by
their father who could not provide for his eighteen children. They left the
Wisconsin family farm and came to Bates Township in Iron County to operate a
miners’ boardinghouse. Bulgarian Dick Stoychoff was relieved to find a board-
inghouse that catered to non-English speaking miners. He apparently was even
more pleased with one of the landladies, Lola Konell, and they married soon

after he took up residence (Bates Boosters 1985: 172-73).

Food

 

Food was, of course, what distinguished a boardinghouse from a lodging or
rooming house. From colonial times scattered reports of terrible cooking and
disgusting fare in boardinghouses help emphasize just how important food was
to the boardinghouse resident (Pillsbury 1990). Northern Michigan boarders
produced their own observations on the boardinghouse meals.

Henry Hobart complained bitterly about the Cornish diet and the scanty

rations he was served by Mrs. Rawlings: ”There is a great scarcity in the eating

243

line—no meat, stale butter, old molasses & white bread . . . no pies or anything
inviting.” Breakfast was especially disappointing: ”dry bread and water. ” The
butter was so filthy he was revolted by its presence on the table. Hobart, a
native of Vermont, longed for a home-cooked Yankee meal and when away from
home purchased and consumed buckets of fresh oysters and other treats. Better
cooks who served the meals he preferred were available among the seven board-
inghouses at Clifton at that time, but Hobart’s teacher salary and his own frugal-
ity kept him where he was (Mason 1991).

Comments about substandard boardinghouse food entered the folk cul-
ture of the region, producing satirical—and probably apocryphal—stories. One
is told about the boardinghouse at Copper Falls, built in 1854, and kept by James
Rosewarne in 1872 and by Nels Lind in 1901. According to the story,

it seems that a cook decided to play a little game on a grumbling boarder
by serving him a piece of shoe leather instead of beefsteak. ”You’ve
changed your butcher, Mrs.?” inquired the boarder, looking up at the
landlady, after sawing two or three minutes at the leather. ”Same butcher
as usual,” replied the boarding mistress, with a patronizing smile.
”Why?” ”Oh, nothing much,” said the boarder, trying to make an impres-
sion on the leather with his knife and fork, ”only this piece of meat is the
tenderest I have had in this house for many weeks.” (Monette 1978a: 12)

Although the boardinghouses in Michigan’s western Upper Peninsula did
not necessarily rival first class restaurants and despite individual bad experi—
ences, meals generally seem to have been plentiful and hearty so long as sup-
plies were available. According to one well-fed boarder at Fayette: ”If you don’t
get fat, it’s not the fault of the house” (Schoolcraft County Pioneer 23 December,
1882 in Fayette Scrapbook).

Supplies, however, could be troublesome, especially in the first decades of
development when there were many miners, much wilderness, but few farmers
or stores. Isolation during the winter when shipping stopped also created hard-

ship.

244

Fresh beef was a particularly rare treat in the early years. Thus it was
with obvious relish that Olive Harlow recorded in her diary on November 6,
1849: ”Mr. James Hillyard brought the wild cow from Grand Island—now for
roast beef, A la Mode beef, beef soup, beef steak, puddings, mince pies and tal-
low candles.” The feast began the next evening with a ”dinner of roast beef,
boiled onions, corn cake and suet pudding.” Ten days later, Olive recorded that
she and one helper ”cut apples and meat to make 20 mince pies” (Harlow 1972).

The American Boardinghouse was one of several in Marquette in 1850, the
year after the town’s founding. Records of food purchases indicate what the
residents were eating, suggesting that the fare was not particularly ethnic. It also
seemed dependent upon wild and seasonal foods to supplement barrels of
shipped supplies, further evidence of the importance of kitchen gardens and the
mining companies’ crops in cutover land.

According to local historian Ernest Rankin (1967), who had occasion to
examine the American House account book for July, 1850, to August, 1852, daily
entries appeared for potatoes at one dollar per bushel and fish for 25¢ per
pound. Frequently there were large hams and occasionally barrels of pork or
beef in brine. The proprietor traded various goods for fresh venison and bear
meat.

Other starches besides potatoes anchored the diet. Flour by the barrel and
saleratus by the pound probably became mountains of bread and biscuits. Rice
(nine cents per pound) and cheese and crackers at a shilling (12.5¢) per pound
each were abundant.

Bushels of dried apples were likely stewed or baked into pies. Fresh fruit
was virtually unavailable by shipment, though local plants produced berries in
summer. Much of the diet was, of necessity, seasonal.

Large quantities of fresh green beans in August suggest local gardens

245

were harvesting. Entries for alum, crocks, vinegar, sugar, and cucumbers herald-
ed the canning season. Late summer purchases of dried beans (two dollars per
barrel) and corn meal signal preparations for the coming winter.

The ledger also listed certain extravagances which suggest a festive holi-
day season at the boardinghouse: a pound of ginger (twenty-five cents) and
three of cinnamon ($1.87), other spices, a keg of currants ($6.75), buckwheat
flour, raisins, and two cans of oysters ($2.25).

However, not all boarders in Marquette fared as well during the winter of
1850-51. A modest building put up by pioneer Joseph Bignall served as a board-
inghouse for more than a century, and according to a Mining Journal account, the
only food remaining when the first supply boat arrived in the spring of 1851 was
”a small amount of dried beans and flour” (A & P 1963).

Nor were short provisions unique to Marquette. Another Mining Journal
report notes that one year provisions had run out in Cedar River before the
spring boat from Green Bay arrived. The Irish serving girl at the boardinghouse
reportedly said, ”’God be thanked; I won’t have to get up in the morning for
there’s no breakfast to get’” (Worth 1956).

Development of towns and cities, including food entrepreneurs produc-
ing everything from baked goods to macaroni, plus the railroad connection to
the rest of the nation contributed to a larger and more versatile market basket for
U.P. boarders. In fact, the merits of a boardinghouse were judged on its meals—
quality, quantity, and variety —over other factors such as cleanliness or even
cost.

Less favored were those where the menu offered little variety and spon-
taneity. Olive Harlow’s diary entry for August 31, 1849, illustrates this regiment-
ed housewifery: ”Having had baked beans yesterday, therefore this is the day in

regular rotation for ham” [italics mine].

246

At many boardinghouses the fare was basic American stews and roasts or
fish, augmented with potatoes and other root vegetables, freshly baked bread
and rolls, and pie for dessert. Yankee recipes and procedures were prevalent, so
even among immigrant cooks and the illiterate, American (generally East Coast)
foodways passed from kitchen to kitchen. To aid the process, cook books
designed to adapt traditional East Coast dishes to the tastes and foods of the
West were available early in the mining era (Collins 1851).

Breakfast could be ham and eggs, or mountains of pancakes, bacon or
sausage, and pie. The midday meal would be a heavy dinner if the men worked
close by and came home to eat, or substantial sandwiches or the like packed into
an oval, tin container to be eaten at the job site.

Ethnic foods and dishes, however, gained a stronghold in many
American immigrant enclaves, including the cosmopolitan mining frontier of
Michigan. The Cornish pasty has become almost synonymous with the miner’s
packed meal, but many ethnic foods were introduced and perpetuated in the
Michigan mining areas, often through the boardinghouses.

The pasty, however, illustrates a modal change in UP. foodways. An effi-
cient form in which to carry a hearty meal, this large hand-held turnover, the
standard meal for miners and farmers in Cornwall, was adopted by numerous
ethnic kitchens in the Great Lakes mining region and the ingredients and presen-
tation modified according to individual ethnic taste, inducing some groups such
as the Finns and Italians to lay proprietary claim to the dish. In their original
form in Cornwall, pasties were likely to contain any number and variety of
ingredients: ”bacon and egg, beef and potato, lamb and parsley, venison, fish,
apple” all enclosed in a sturdy crust (Lockwood and Lockwood 1987:364).

In Michigan the Cornish version standardized, its fillings of chopped

meat (beef, beef / pork mixture, or venison) placed at one end, potatoes and other

247

root vegetables in the center, and fruit at the other end, affording a balanced
meal including dessert when consumed one end to the other (Root 1976: 309).
Variations eliminate the fruit and intermix the rest of the filling, which often
includes onions, turnips, rutabaga, or carrots. Gravy, catsup, butter, tomato
juice, beer, tea, or buttermilk as mandatory accompaniment are additional later
innovations (Lockwood and Lockwood 1987: 365). Thus the idea or form of the
pasty was widely adopted because it represented an efficient solution to an
industry—related problem, but its specific recipe and ethnic identity were not
swallowed intact.

Additional Cornish foods still popular included scalded cream, saffron
buns, and ’eavy cake. Scandinavian specialties were lirnpa, a rye and molasses
bread, vinabulla (wine buns), Christmas sausage and potato sausage. (An
appendix contains several recipes from these northern Michigan boardinghous-
es.)

Memories of life in an Italian boardinghouse include regional food spe-
cialties such as polenta, ravioli, gnocchi, risotto ala Milanese, sausages, cheeses,
and invariably the homemade wine. Communities would order entire railroad
boxcars of California grapes, distribute the fruit amongst the families, and then
share in the labor of making each household’s supply of wine for the coming
year. So ingrained was wine to the culture that every provision was made by
those in the community to see that each household was supplied.

”Grandma” Terzaghi’s boardinghouse lacked cellar space to accommo-
date the wine barrels necessary for herself and her boarders. The Spelgatti resi-
dence down the street had ample space, however, so the boardinghouse wine
supply was laid down in the Spelgatti cellar and ready access given to each
boarder. As was customary in numerous other Italian boardinghouses, each

man had his own bottle which he kept by his place at the table. As necessity

248

dictated, he would visit the cellar and then pay the house mistress for each fill-
up (Spelgatti 1980, 1993, Boggio 1982).

Many boardinghouse keepers were sensitive to their boarders’ occasional
yearnings for a taste of home, so even where the fare was generally American,
special requests were often honored, given a few days’ lead time. Occasions
such as a boarder’s wedding or birthday might also receive recognition with
something special from the kitchen. There is even record of a boarder with an
ulcer being fed a special diet, necessitating individual meal preparation for him
three times daily (Caspary 1994).

One time, however, when the mistress of the house thought to surprise a
boarder with an ethnic treat, her gesture backfired. A Mrs. Johnson prepared
lutefisk, a traditional Scandinavian Christmas dish but definitely an acquired
taste, for her Norwegian boarder, Mr. Christensen. He, however, had never
acquired that particular taste, so as soon as he realized what was cooking, he
arranged to be needed elsewhere (Christensen 1994).

Equally conscious of the importance of good food in the boardinghouses
were mining company managers. In the face of labor shortages, Quincy policy
extended to the kitchens of its boarding-houses, suggesting that keepers ”’cater
to the individual tastes [of the boarders] as much as possible’” (McNear 1983:
527). At Freda, one of the boarders did not care for something he had been
served, so he complained to company management. Mr. Durocher, as boarding
boss, was immediately notified and told to be sure the boarders were kept happy
by the kitchen (Guilbault 1994).

The later phase of company paternalism included attention to workers’
diet, kitchen practices, hygiene, etc. Nationally, reformers stressed health and
nutrition through diet, though there was as yet no knowledge of vitamins, and

nutrition studies were dangerously inadequate. Standardized cook books began

249

to promote the new ideals, which stressed economy and American (as opposed
to ethnic) fare under the guise of ”science” and industrial efficiency. The title of
one such book, published about 1908, illustrates the trend: Queen of the
Household: The Standard Domestic Science Cook Book: A New and Original System of
Classification, Fifteen Hundred Famous Recipes Suited to Homes, Hotels, Restaurants,
Boarding Houses, Picnics and Entertainments. . . .

One additional dimension of the food reformers’ message met with strong
repudiation from early labor leaders, however. Working among the urban (pri-
marily immigrant) poor of New England but promoting its message to the
national working-class, one reform group led by Edward Atkinson stressed the
importance of eating cheaply, suggesting that to do so would eliminate labor’s
need for wage increases. Arguing that Atkinson was really more interested in
driving down workers’ wages than in raising their standard of living, Eugene
Debs railed against what he charged was Atkinson’s plan to degrade American

III

workingmen, ”’scientifically or otherwise. These ”reforms” failed, according to
Harvey Levenstein (1980: 384), because they neglected to realize the ”psychologi-
cal role of food” among America’s working-class as ”major reward of hard work.
. . .” Ethnicity expressed through food in immigrant enclaves, particularly on the
cosmopolitan frontier where ties to the home country were so strong, provided
another block to reformers’ efforts.

An appraisal of Upper Peninsula kitchens expressed through the moralis-
tic industrial metaphor of the time (1915) appeared in the Keweenaw News. It
illustrates the centrality of the kitchen to the popular conception of the home,
and by extension, the importance of the dining room, mealtime, and the ”domes-

tic engineer” responsible for those meals to the notion of home in a boarding-

house.

250

[The Upper Peninsula kitchen] is the workshop in which thousands of
dollars [sic] worth of material, more or less raw, is made into a manufac-
tured product which goes directly into thousands of mouths and sustains
thousands of human brains and bodies. Upon the quality of this manu-
factured product depends the welfare of society. Good food makes happy
homes, keeps families united, accomplishes wonders in keeping men
from drink and children from breaking down under the stress of modern
education. Upon it hangs the issue of life or death. The kitchen, then,
should need no advocate and no defender. It is the most important room
in the house. (Frimodig 1983: 107)

Meal preparation comprised only part of the kitchen’s function, however.
Picking and canning hundreds of quarts of fresh fruits and vegetables, animal-
tending, butchering, gardening, and even wood chopping and water carrying all
were food-related chores necessary to operating the boardinghouse kitchen and
keeping those boarders content. Additional kitchen activity included laundry
and even Saturday night baths. Therefore kitchen work not only constituted a
major portion of the boardinghouse keeper’s responsibility, it was tied closely to

other aspects of housekeeping.

Housekeeping

Preparing meals and clearing up required many hours of a boardinghouse
manager’s day, which frequently began at 4 A. M. with bread-baking and the
double meal preparation of breakfast and packed lunches. Mary Erickson, a
Swedish kitchen-worker at the K. C. Boardinghouse in Menominee in the early
18805, rose at 3 A. M. daily to ready meals for two hundred men (City of
Menominee 1983: 176). A second shift of workers also meant much more work
for the kitchen staff, who consequently had two batches of lunch pails to fill and
a fourth main meal to serve at midnight.

Chore schedules were necessarily tight, and mealtimes especially
demanded punctuality. Therefore, anything that interfered with the meal sched-

ule was potentially disastrous, even if essentially humorous. One such incident,

251

recalled through the generations of the Cordes family in Menominee, involved
Pauline Cordes and her youngest daughter Ernestine, then three years old.
Pauline relied upon the family and a hired girl to assist her operating the Bay
View House for up to ninety boarders, but on one particular day as Pauline was
preparing the noon meal, the only other person around was Ernestine. Pauline
went to the cellar for supplies and while she was downstairs her small daughter
flipped the latch on the cellar door, trapping her mother.

Pauline was frantic. Not only could the unsupervised child endanger her-
self (she nearly drowned a year later by falling head first into the rain barrel), but
the boarders would soon stampede in for their noon meal. With only a twenty-
minute meal break from the smelter, the men had no time to waste. Trying not to
let her mounting distress show in her voice and frighten the child, Pauline
entreated Ernestine for half an hour to lift the hook on the door before the child
finally complied. Meanwhile, says Pauline’s granddaughter, ”grandma was get-
ting gray about the approaching dinner hour” (Knuth 1993).

Laundry was another labor-intensive chore for the boarding-house staff.
Bed linens were changed perhaps once per week, though standards in this area
were sometimes lax. Even so, washing sheets for a dozen or perhaps scores of
beds was no easy matter. Electricity and mechanical washing machines
appeared infrequently and very late during the boardinghouse era. Even assum—
ing an in-house pump for the water, it still had to be lugged to large copper boil-
ers on the stove or over a fire in the yard, and then the bed clothes scrubbed,
rinsed, wrung, and hung to dry (which might take days depending upon weath-
er conditions).

The same process was, of course, necessary for the personal laundry of
the boardinghouse family, as well as that of the boarders if this service was avail-

able. Worst of all were the ore-caked work clothes of the miners.

252

General cleaning, maintaining lighting fixtures, hauling fuel, building and
maintaining cooking and heating fires, patching bed linens, and numerous other
chores kept the boardinghouse staff busy. For example, June Brunet’s work
schedule at the Lake Linden Hotel and Boardinghouse shows she was chamber-

maid, cook, waitress, dishwasher and scullery maid:

5:00 A. M. Help to get breakfast & pack fourteen lunch
pails for C&H boarders, remembering
individual tastes and catering to them.

7:00 Serve breakfast.

8:00 Clean kitchen &: wash all the dishes.

9:30 Change beds, clean bathroom, etc.

11:00 Help get dinner.

12:00 P. M. Serve dinner.

1:30 Clean tables, clean kitchen & wash all the
dishes.

3:00-4:00 ”Off” [Actually June had to run home then to
prepare a hot supper for her grand—
father, father, and two brothers. Her
mother was dead, so as the only female
of the family, cooking was her
responsibility] Return to work.

4:00 Help to prepare supper.
6:00 Serve supper.
7:30 Clean kitchen, wash dishes & pans, sweep, etc.

9:00 P. M. Finished at her job, she would return home to
do whatever clean-up, mending, and
other chores were required, and then be
up by 4 A. M. next day to do it all again.

She was also a messenger: periodically Western Union Telegraph messages were
phoned to the hotel. She would receive the calls, take down the messages, and
then either pass them on by phone or have to personally deliver them to the
recipient’s home (Brunet 1993).

In some households sawdust was spread on the dining room floor to
absorb dirt and spilled food, then swept away and replaced with fresh every
week. Boarders occasionally helped with chores such as gardening and wood

chopping, voluntarily in many cases. Henry Hobart, however, groused in his

253

diary that despite the presence of two sons in the household, it was he who had
to keep the wood box filled (Mason 1991).

All these many chores were necessary even when things went smoothly.
Domestic disasters of one sort or another, however, could wipe out a day or
more’s labor. Olive Harlow recorded one such disaster in her diary: the stove
collapsed onto the floor ”’covering it with one homogenous mass of flat irons,
veal soup, wheat bread dough, boiled potatoes, pudding and dishwater.”’ Only
Olive’s young daughter found the incident amusing (Lil 1992: 22).

Despite conscientious housekeeping, bedbugs remained a continual prob-
lem. Hobart records having captured a pint of them (Mason 1991). In
Hermansville, a company document of May 9, 1881, notes ”’. . . it will be neces-
sary to plaster the Boarding House to make it possible for men to live there.
That ceiling is just alive with bedbugs and no live man can stand it’” (Worth
1978: 32). June Brunet (1993) reported that the Lake Linden boardinghouse
where she worked was so infested with bedbugs she could ”smell them.”

Overall, boardinghouse managers apparently strove to maintain the pre-
vailing standards of cleanliness. Thus the occasional glaring exception is note-
worthy among its occupants. John Longyear and one of his surveying crew,
needing over-night accommodation at Central Mine Location before taking the

morning stage, reported that they secured a bed at

a boardinghouse occupied by Hollanders, who took us in. This house did
not live up to the old phrase, ”as clean as the Dutch,” for it was probably
the most filthy human habitation I have ever been in. However, we had
no choice, and we slept in a bed which we knew enough not to examine at
all. (Paul 1960: 48)

Servic
Boardinghouses offered a variety of additional services, usually depend-

ing upon the time, talent, and willingness of the boardinghouse keeper. The

254

most usual of these services was personal laundry. Facilities for boarders’ per-
sonal laundry varied considerably. Some men did their own laundry at the dry
or found women who took in laundry at the location or in town. Commercial
laundries eventually arose in many towns, often operated by Chinese laborers.

The worst laundry was the mining clothes, so dirty they stood up without
a man in them, and ”greasy” when wet. Rarely, it seems, were these items
washed at the boardinghouses once professional laundries dotted the mining
district to handle this onerous chore. Numerous boarders had their personal
laundry done on the boardinghouse premises though perhaps with additional
charge. Flossie Dani included laundry service for the twenty dollars per month
she charged her boarders in Hermansville (Dani 1982). Ida Schmidt did her
boarders’ personal laundry at no extra charge unless they were courting. The
fancy white shirts her boarders wore for their young ladies demanded extra care,
for which they had to pay (Mather 1994).

Although companies provided medical services, medical treatment was
another special service available in some private boardinghouses. Several board-
inghouse keepers were practitioners of traditional medicine. They prepared
treatments for coughs and fevers, treated injuries, and some practiced midwifery
throughout the community. A traditional Italian cold remedy was wine with
cinnamon (O’Neill and Opal 1982). ”Grandma” Tassin dispensed her cough
remedy at home and to neighbors (Manzoline and Tousignant 1982). Teresa
Lucas not only cleaned and cooked for her boarders, she tended their ills. She
was skilled in traditional healing methods and set broken bones, made poultices

and tonics (Frimodig 1990: 75).

Troubled households

Just as in a more conventional family, a boarding-house ”family” could be

touched by illness, violence, or other tragedy. Mining companies provided

255

health care for their employees usually through designated dispensaries or hos-
pitals built at their locations. In early Marquette, however, the Harlow home
developed into the company boardinghouse and its hospital. ”Commenced
keeping the boarding-house,” noted Olive in her diary on August 28, 1849. The
top floor of the large addition to the family home (figure 13), on occasion func-
tioning as a meeting hall for school classes and church services, was also the hos-
pital. Olive noted on September 30 that they were so anxious to complete this
facility that ”Mr. Harlow shingled [the roof] by moonlight with the first boards
from our new sawmill” (Harlow 1972).

Contending with health emergencies could require extraordinary mea—
sures, and it was in that capacity that a special boardinghouse, actually a pest
house, came to be built by the Menominee Mining Company near Quinnesec in
the fall of 1880.

Two men in one of the large company boardinghouses had developed
smallpox, requiring both immediate attention to them and quarantine of all
exposed to them. The mine carpenters pooled their efforts and in thirty-six
hours had erected a house for the ill men and their nurse, a fellow miner who
had survived the disease. The boarders who had been exposed were sent to
other quarters some distance away for the duration of the incubation period.
One of them became ill, but he was treated and he and the original two patients
survived (Dulan 1973: 43).

The pest house on Swede Town Hill at Republic was remodeled in 1894 to
handle typhoid fever patients (Mattson and others 1970: 17). In 1900 the old pest
house of Hancock was re-activated to handle five cases of smallpox. The original
patient had been hospitalized, but there infected four others (Monette 1982: 38).
At Hermansville, one part of town was known as Pest House Location, since in

each medical emergency a new house would be constructed, used for the

256

necessary duration, then reassigned as a family residence. A succession of major
illnesses over some time resulted in a cluster of dwellings (Worth 1978: 12).

Mine accidents, typhoid, influenza, tuberculosis, and many other mal-
adies were constant threats to the pioneers on Michigan’s iron frontier, and it
was a rare boardinghouse indeed that did not lose at least one boarder to these
dangers.

Other dangers also lurked in the boardinghouses. The boarders them-
selves posed severe and mortal threat to each other and those around them.
Fights and other violence were common, particularly when alcohol was
involved. Bloody brawls that began with fists and hot words frequently escalat-
ed as knives, lumber, and anything else handy became potentially deadly
weapons. Differences between two men could ultimately involve opposing
mobs of supporters and culminate in massive destruction of property as well as
loss of life. Sometimes the fight was over a woman, or spurred by ethnic differ-
ences or regional jealousies. Sometimes there was even less reason.

Roscoe C. Young, one of the surveyors and civil engineers in the early
mining district, tells in his autobiography of Charlie, an English engineer who,
when drunk (which was long and often), held ”high carnival” with a gun in
hand. At Charlie’s home ”the glass had all been shot out of every mirror, the
locks were all broken off the doors, and there were bullet holes through the ceil-
ing and everywhere.” Charlie’s wife and children and their boarders hid under
a nearby bridge when he was on a tear (43).

Another of many examples of unprovoked violence in boarding—houses
occurred in May, 1907, at an Italian establishment in Ironwood. Four men had
turned in for the night while their restless roommate Luigi Palmeria went down
to the kitchen. There he consumed most of a gallon of whiskey and then

returned to the mens’ bedroom. He woke one man with the demand, ”Sing with

257

me, Tony. ” Tony awoke and sang for a few minutes, but not to Luigi’s satisfac-
tion, so Luigi killed him with a single blast from his double-barrel shotgun (Cox
1993:29)

 

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Figure 51. The lock-up at Rockland. (Photo by Ron Stofer)

Controlling lawbreakers was haphazard at best, especially in the early
years of the mining frontier. Lawmen often had to transport prisoners many
miles to jails or courts via canoe or stagecoach. The newspaper in early L’Anse
noted that ”’a jail, or lock-up, is badly needed here’” (Lambert 1971: 12).
Rockland had a lock-up where the rowdy and violent were restrained (figure 51).
In Ishpeming, the drunk and disorderly were sometimes jailed, but if they came
under the jurisdiction of Herman Elson, a city police officer as well as manager
of the Barnum House for CCI, they were likely to be taken back to the boarding-
house to sleep off their booze (Central 1976: 34).

Community violence also spilled over into boardinghouses, or it began
there and spread. During the Copper Strike of 1913, two Croatian miners walk-

ing back to their boardinghouse in Seeberville cut across a small corner of

258

 

 

 

Figure 52. Putrich Croatian boardinghouse in Seeberville. (Courtesy Michigan Technological
University Archives and Copper Country Historical Collections, and Barry

Pegs)

company land. For this act of trespassing, the local sheriff and a posse tracked
them down, surrounded the house (figure 52), and set up a cross-fire through the
windows. One woman and an infant escaped immediately, but the serving girl
and two more children were pinned down inside for a time. Residents of the
Italian boardinghouse next door could only look on in fear. Ultimately the
women and children all escaped and were safe, but two boarders were killed
and others, including the boarding boss, were wounded (Thumer 1984: 68—79).

Inter-ethnic brawls frequently began in a boardinghouse and later
involved others in the region. Weddings were disrupted, card games escalated
to street brawls, and boarders were waylaid on their way home.

Running a boardinghouse was risky when boarders turned violent. In
1901 in Iron Mountain, a boarder by the name of Jake reported for work one
Friday and received his lay-off notice. He consumed several cans of beer and
then went home where he picked a fight with the Widow Mary, who ran the

boardinghouse. She had the poor sense to choose that moment to demand Jake’s

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board bill. He punched her; she ran to the summer kitchen, and he followed,
grabbing a double-bladed ax along the way. With the ax he struck Mary several
blows on the right side of her head, killing her, and then Jake threatened her son
who had come to his mother’s aid. Jake was sent to lonia, judged criminally
insane (Dulan 1978: 229-30).

No one was ever blamed, however, for a fire that destroyed the Bond and
Clancy boardinghouse at the Colby Mine, Bessemer, on March 23, 1887.
According to historian Larry Peterson, this fire of undetermined origin was the
earliest recorded on the Gogebic Range ”resulting in the greatest loss of human
life.” Only nine of the twenty-one men sleeping in the upstairs escaped the
blaze, which broke out in the middle of the night. The boardinghouse keepers,
Mr. and Mrs. Frank Miller, and the two serving girls escaped from their rooms
downstairs after Mrs. Miller awoke and spread the alarm (Peterson, Bednar and
Maurin 1993).

Fires destroyed numerous boardinghouses. One measure to save lives
was a 1901 ordinance passed in Iron Mountain requiring a rope of one-half-inch
diameter to be placed in every hotel and boarding-house sleeping room ”of suffi-

cient length to reach the ground” (Dulan 1978: 225).

Diversions

Clearly, both the boarders and those who ran the boardinghouses worked
many long hours and the personal and community confrontations associated
with boarding sometimes led to tragedy. Nevertheless, boardinghouse life was
not without more benign diversion.

Card rooms seem to have been a feature of nearly every boardinghouse.
Boardinghouses with parlor organs or pianos became the centers of pleasant

evenings and festive occasions. Boarders played accordions or fiddles for

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occasional dances. Much of the reported conversation among the boarders in
N icholls’ (1968) account of the Cliffs Mine boardinghouse centered on their brass
band. Music was an important part of many boarders’ lives.

Ethnic folk songs could be enjoyed without fancy instruments or an
”occasion.” Work songs, drinking songs, love songs, songs of far-away homes,
of joys and of loss gave expression to individual and group feelings. The final
two verses of a traditional Finnish folk song, The Wandering Boy, popular in the
northern Michigan boardinghouses (Larson 1993) convey some of the bitter-

sweet emotions undoubtedly recognized by immigrants of whatever origin:

A wandering boy saw on the roadside
An opening flower of love;

To gaze upon it, but never to own it

Is promised the wandering boy.

Who would lay away the wanderer
When he falls into the roadside ditch

No roses will bloom nor maidens weep
At the grave of the wandering boy.

Swapping stories was a popular pastime, as was pondering deep philo-
sophical questions. Politics, mine events, personalities, women, and numerous
other topics drew attention, both serious and comical. N ear-tragedies were
remembered with laughter and passed on as ”family tales.” At one point in the
history of Rockland, a Jerry O’Neill ran the boardinghouse in Irish Hollow. One
day during his tenure, a blast from the mine shot a twenty-to-twenty-five-pound
rock into the air. The projectile arched across the dam, sailed toward town, and
crashed through the boardinghouse roof, landing on a bed that had just been
vacated by one of the boarders! (Bebeau 1947, 1990: 10).

With so many of the boardinghouse residents separated from family and
friends, confronting ethnic rivalry, working in dangerous occupations, and con-
tending with other stressful conditions, emotions could fray and dispositions get

ugly, particularly with the men living and working together so intensely.

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Humor eased tensions and vented frustrations (almost) painlessly as it does in
many social contexts, but according to sociologist Ed Knop (1974: 5), it became
especially important to frontier development where in the ”indefinite context of
a community undergoing formation,” humor served to facilitate ”(1) social con-
trol, (2) socialization, (3) release / diversion / catharsis, and . . . provide a cover for
. . . (4) innovative behaviors or exploratory probing.”

For example, a comical observation on the language differences between
the ethnic groups allowed the immigrants to laugh at themselves, to reinforce
stereotypical identity, and also to vent the generally-held resentment toward the

preferentially-treated Cornish:

Big John, bleary-eyed and a bit unsteady, says to his companion, ”Funny
ting . . . I cannot unnderstan. You know, ta Italian come in ta America,
take long time ta talk ta English . . .” he pauses, ” . . . ta Svedes come ta
America, six months he still say ’god dag’” . . . funny ting, I don see vy,
the cousin yaks come over here, tay vas learn ta talk English right avay!”
(Dulan 1978: 141)

Greenhorns were popular targets for frontier humor (Knop 1974), and so
were the pompous, as the incident of the ”boarding boss” lunchpail (above)
attests. However, from the analysis of Thomas Clancey (1926: 253), a student of
the humor among the early Michigan iron foundrymen, ”the principle adopted
by the fun lovers was the greatest laugh for the greatest number, regardless of
the victim.” Edwin Henwood’s recollections of early miners’ shenanigans con-
firm Clancey’s contention that drawing upon situations at hand, they discovered
that ”the practical joke, much fallen into disfavor, was a ready vehicle for the
local wit.”

Numerous plots, eventually enacted on the job or elsewhere within com-
munity view, were sometimes hatched in boardinghouse sitting rooms.
Boarders’ pranks closer to home ranged from the silly to the truly creative and

fellow boarders or even the house staff could be their victims.

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Minnie Johnson of Foster City housed six or seven boarders in the large
upstairs of her home. She had live-in help from one young woman. On one
occasion the boarders conspired against the servant-girl, convincing her that
they had x-ray vision and could see through the walls of her bedroom. To fur-
ther hassle the lady, the pranksters attached one end of a thin string to her bed
covers and ran the string through a tiny hole in the wall. After she had settled
down for the night, they tugged at the string from the adjoining room, causing
her quite a fright (Johnson 1987:130).

Sometimes the source of a good scare, or a good laugh, was quite uninten-
tional. Wintry gusts and the superstitions of some Allouez miners proved their
own undoing. Mondays were always wash days and laundry was hung outside,
no matter how cold the weather. Often it would freeze solid on the line. One
Monday night as a group of miners ended their late shift and trudged toward
home, they were accosted by a dancing wraith, arms flailing, who caught each
up momentarily in her cold embrace before they ran, terrified, for home. The
”ghost,” however, had been nothing more than a long, white, frozen nightgown,
a wind-blown refugee from a neighbor’s clothesline (Monette 1994: 10).

Boardinghouse residents pursued additional forms of diversion, as popu-
larity or availability allowed. Outdoor recreation included walks to town, soft-
ball and baseball games, picnics, hunting and fishing, and helping in the board-
inghouse garden. Italians popularized boccie ball tournaments. Tamarack
Location had a designated field for cricket, popular among the Cornish. The
Cornish also practiced their own form of wrestling, and tournaments drew many
participants and spectators.

Indoor recreation or relaxation took many forms. Bowling alleys were
built in several towns and locations after the turn of the century. Finns, particu-

larly, enjoyed saunas which were available in many communities, especially at

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the Finnish boardinghouses. The ritual of cleansing and relaxing was usually cli-
maxed with a social hour that included conversation, cake, and strong coffee.
Opera houses, movie theatres, community halls, and religious centers also pro-
vided opportunities for socializing—and for the single boarders, venues for
courting.

Neighborhood saloons, with or without boarding facilities, drew consid-
erable trade, though where alcohol was prohibited, boardinghouses became even
more important as social centers for card playing, business transactions, political
venting, and venues of male bonding—traditional social services of the saloon
(Englemann 1977, West 1979).

Education, too, was a popular after-work activity for some miners. For
example, in 1907, the Mohawk school began offering night classes for adults
three nights a week in arithmetic and literacy skills. The classes proved so popu-
lar, men working the evening shift at the mine changed their work schedule so
they could attend school. Additional subjects were taught on demand, faculty at
the school expanded, and the classrooms were electrified for better lighting. Not
long after this night program began, the old school building was replaced by a
newer and larger facility. The old school was then converted into a boarding-
house (Monette 1980: 5,7).

Holiday celebrations varied widely through time across the mining dis-
tricts of northern Michigan. July Fourth appears to have been the most consis-
tently celebrated holiday, with company-sponsored activities, community
parades, and so forth. Enclaves of Italians organized Columbus Day parades
and celebrations; the Irish did the same for St. Patrick’s Day. The English com-
memorated St. George’s Day and the Scots recognized both St. Andrew’s Day
and the birth of poet Robert Burns. French-Canadians kept an old Norman cus-

tom alive in the observance of Mid-summer Day, St. Jean’s Day. Norwegians

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celebrated the independence day of Norway, and the Poles marked the anniver-
sary of Poland’s constitution. Local clubs and social organizations added their
own public festivities to the annual celebratory calendar (Thumer 1974: 32-34).

Christmas was observed with religious services in some places, but in oth-
ers it was ”just another work day.” The Harlows’ first Christmas at Marquette
(1849) was fairly quiet. Olive’s diary records simple gift-giving to two people
who had helped run the boarding-house and a ”baked stuffed trout and plum
pudding” for Christmas Eve supper. The following day, ”four of our men took
the span of black horses and went to the Jackson Location where they fiddled
and danced . . .” (Harlow 1972).

Schoolmaster Henry Hobart shows mixed feelings about the Christmas
celebration at Clifton in 1863. Work and school were suspended for the week
between Christmas and New Year’s. He reports that the church service and the
community tree were pleasing, but he was disgusted that the miners perverted
the traditional caroling into ”singing for beer. ” Alcohol was not banned in his
location for the holiday: so many over-indulged in their drunken spree that they
needed the rest of the week to sober up (Mason 1991: 242-244).

Boardinghouses were occasionally the site of Christmas pageants per-
formed by community children. Very late in the boardinghouse era, there is one
account of a boardinghouse family that celebrated Christmas with its boarders,
involving them in the preparations and special treats, although no gifts were
exchanged between boarders and host family (Mather 1994).

Actually, the exchanges between members of a boarding household were
more complex than mere gifts. The emotions ran the full range, and physical
reactions ranged from tending the ill and giving economic support, to violent
attack. As with any family, there were moments of great joy and of great sad-

ness, all a part of living and sharing life under one roof.

CHAPTER 8
CONCLUSION

The Michigan Mining Frontier

Michigan’s mining region of the Upper Peninsula operated as a cos-
mopolitan frontier according to Steffen’s and Hardesty’s models. Even the
abortive French and British endeavors at copper mining support the cosmopoli-
tan frontier model, since neither group could compensate for transportation and
technological shortcomings. Necessarily dependent upon the natural resources,
development of the region relied on transportation, technology, and adequate
labor forces to exploit those resources. Yet even with these factors in place by the
mid-nineteenth century, national and international conditions affected the metals
markets. Thus the mining frontier was closely tied to outside financiers and pol-
itics, and threatened by ore discoveries elsewhere. Boom and bust cycles stimu-
lated new development while closing down marginal operations.

Settlement types conform to Lewis’ modified gradient. Camp placement
(extraction or processing sites with residences, usually locations) was resource-
dependent: mine sites developing where iron or copper was abundant and acces-
sible; smelting and mill sites growing up near flowing water, limestone, and
charcoal for the processing and near ports or rail centers to ship the product.
Supply sites (more complex locations, company towns, or private townsites) sat
as hubs to numerous surrounding locations. The few entrepots became foci of

the dendritic land and water routes linking the financial and market centers of

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the nation and beyond with the most remote periphery of the mining complex.

Boarding occurred in each settlement type.

Boarding Laborers on the Frontier

Boarding had been an American housing option since colonial clays and
by the nineteenth century it had found favor among all levels of American soci-
ety. Urban examples under private ownership catered to the genteel or served
the working-class, often specific occupational groups. Urban and company town
facilities under corporate control housed hordes of factory, mill, and mine work-
ers.

Frontier examples demonstrate the adaptive features of the institution.
Emphasis fell on utilitarian company-built houses as mining companies were
forced to provide housing at the wilderness mine sites and their allied lumbering
locations. Boarding additional individuals in family homes built by the compa-
nies maintained company control over these workers, but shifted their accom-
modation into structures with a higher socio-economic ”payback” from the com-
pany perspective. Soon managers realized the manipulative power they had
over employees through company-provided housing and company-controlled
land. Boarding became an important tool of company management.

Commercial houses and privately-owned homes that took boarders also
aimed to provide occupational residences rather than the posh surroundings of
the East Coast urban boardinghouses for the genteel. This does not mean that
the commercial houses or even some of the private residences lacked the refine-
ments of Belgian carpets, Victorian furnishings, and modern conveniences of
their time. Nevertheless, the boarding facilities on the Michigan mining frontier
served the working population, a largely single male population.

Depending upon time and circumstance, boarding facilities exhibited a

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wide range of form, style, and fitting-out. One significant circumstance that dic-
tated materials, style, size, placement, and even occupants of particular houses
was company policy and prevailing notions of status. Mining settlements, par-
ticularly locations but towns as well, were socially ranked societies. That rank-
ing was reflected in and reinforced structurally through the built environment.
The pecking order placed native-born over foreign-born, and of the foreign-born,
Cornishmen over the others. Occupations were similarly ranked and often inter-
linked with ethnicity. Size and style of dwelling, materials of construction, color,
refinements such as porches and plastered privies, and sometimes placement in
relation to other mine buildings signalled the relative status of the designated
occupant and his family—and boarders. Among those boarding could be found
individuals from the lowliest ethnic and occupational levels up through the pro-
fessions—company engineers, the doctor, and others, though these latter often
eventually had individual company housing provided for them.

However, boarding does not seem to have been a popular option of the
mining or lumbering elite. Instead, they enjoyed lavish (and usually company-
built) single-family housing that physically and symbolically designated and
reinforced their status and authority. Whereas in Boston a pampered young cou-
ple might enjoy social status from boarding and avoiding the inconveniences of
home maintenance, on the Michigan mining frontier (particularly in the loca-
tions) relatively few people had their own homes. For the laborers, access to a
company rental home signalled occupational status. For many on the frontier,
home ownership was a goal not easily or ever realized. Thus for the company
elite such as the supervisors who could afford to build their own mansion or
were supplied with one at company expense, occupying the ”big house on the
hill” rather than boarding—even in the poshest circumstances—was important

to solidifying company structure and demonstrating company values.

268

Like other regions of the country and elsewhere in the world, boarding
served a specific housing need in a society that required numbers of workers in
close proximity to industrial sites where lack of transportation and other support
services made commuting impossible or impractical and other housing options
were unavailable. It also provided for a largely dispensable labor force when
conditions no longer supported a need for the workers.

The mining companies built, moved, or dismantled their boardinghouses
subject to market and local conditions: boarding laborers and the company
structures in which they resided could be a transient lot. Therefore, boarding in
general but particularly on the mining frontier was a contradictory existence, in
some ways suggestive of the permanence and social closeness of ”home” and
”family,” yet underlain with the reality of impermanence and disconnectedness.

Much as the companies begrudgingly needed the ”rolling stones,” those
transient workers who provided flexibility to the work force, they soon empha-
sized married men with resident families in their housing programs, consciously
eliminating company boarding-houses in all but the most compelling circum-
stances. They could curtail their own boardinghouse program and yet depend
upon the availability of boarding to serve the transient labor through the private
sector, where commercial boardinghouses and boarding space in individual
homes were available. If sufficient space was lacking voluntarily, or if compa-
nies wanted to keep closer control over the boarding employees, managers could
mandate additional boarding space in the company houses rented by their

employees.

The Boarding Experienee

The boarding experience was, however, more than the simple sharing of
bed and board under the same roof with strangers for a price. Nor was it merely

a company convenience. Boarders benefitted from the arrangement in that they

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had inexpensive housing offering many of the services of ”home” without the
responsibilities and domestic chores nor the capital investment. The relatively
low cost of boarding allowed individuals who had migrated to the region to
send remittances to family or to finance their voyages to America.

The economic opportunities associated with operating boardinghouses
were also significant. A strong element in the urban domestic economy national-
ly, boardinghouse operation was a major source of income for women on the
frontier. The Michigan mining frontier provided the opportunity for women to
combine farm and urban domestic economic strategies through their boarding-
houses to support themselves and their families, and as a second income, board-
inghouse earnings at the very least helped sustain mining families through the
”bust” phases of the mining cycles. Additionally, from their boardinghouse
income, some of these women were able to purchase family homes, just as stud-
ies show was done by working-class families in Chicago and Pennsylvania.

Moreover, boardinghouses became a pull factor in female migration to the
mining regions. Operating a boardinghouse or rendering domestic service in
one was perceived as a socially respectable occupation for women even by ethnic
groups that discouraged women working outside the home. Therefore, board-
inghouse mistresses and jobs in their houses figured as key links in female chain
migration. These women’s presence as eventual marriage partners led to further
regional development, including their homes as additional boardinghouses.

Company goals were also satisfied by these factors of frontier boarding.
Women’s boardinghouse earnings mitigated the possible loss of experienced
miners between ”boom” periods and relieved the companies of dependent wid-
ows. While home ownership removed an employee from more direct control by
the company, it potentially strengthened his loyalty to community and company

and potentially fostered middle-class identification. Greater availability of

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women promoted more married employees and an expanding, stable core of the
labor force.

Both company and private sector boardinghouses served as minimal
venues for Americanization of immigrant boarders by bringing them together
with other boarders or the host family who could help them learn English, help
them find a job, assist them through the immigration process, and so forth.
However, either because of company priorities or inclination of boarders them-
selves, many boardinghouses became ethnic havens, separating along ethnic
lines and promoting and preserving that ethnicity. Defining ethnicity involved
more than country of origin: regional, political, and religious affiliation were also
significant. Maintaining strong ties to the home culture is consistent with the
cosmopolitan frontier model, and the surrogate family home for the boarders in
their new land (the ”colonizing unit”) was the reasonable center for expression
of those ties. Language, food, music and literature, religion, celebrations and
games, and even spatial use emphasized those ethnic cultural identities.

As part of the cultural landscape, boardinghouses were the physical
venues for social and cultural exchange. As a dwelling, the boardinghouse
became ”home” for those residents who developed lines of mutual interest and
affection. Boarders and hosts developed surrogate family roles for mutual aid.
Boarders’ interaction, whether face-to-face conversation after dinner or surrepti-
tiously through pranks and practical jokes, allowed them to test reactions and
develop rules for social co-existence. Boardinghouses hosted plays and church
services, school lessons, and political meetings. They were where many
romances began and where some of the subsequent weddings were held. They
were the sites of the most intimate, and at times the most violent and horren-
dous, human actions.

The material culture of the boardinghouses illustrates the conflict between

271

the companies’ promotion of Americanization and the immigrants’ predilection
to maintain home culture. Physically, many of the boardinghouses (especially
those built by companies from engineers’ and architects’ designs) reinforced
American middle-class notions of privacy, nuclear family structure, styles and
values. The residents, however, occasionally re-defined spatial use and persisted
with furnishing styles according to their old-world cultural priorities. They
attached their own meanings to spatial division and furnishings.

Much of the boarding experience for people on the Michigan mining
ranges was similar to the experience of others of similar economic and social
class in other regions of the country and globally in such nations as England and
Canada. However, the Great Lakes mining region did spawn a unique ”cultural
species.” The co-operative boardinghouses among some of the Finns showed
local success in that they were an expression of a value deeply held: collective
work habits combined with Socialist sympathies had intensified, particularly
when pitted against the paternalistic policies of the mining companies.
Elsewhere in the country where labor policies differed and the Finns’ politics
were less radical, the co-operative format failed to take hold.

Part and parcel of this failure is the suggestion that a woman works best
in her own kitchen. Although a number of men operated the boardinghouses on
the Michigan mining ranges, the female figure was an important focus for the
success of the house and the contentment of the boarders. The idealization of the
domestic role through the nineteenth century, plus the generally understood
function of the boardinghouse as a surrogate family, forced the traditional nur-
turing and ”civilizing” roles onto the woman of the boardinghouse. In real life,
when she failed, she lost boarders. In popular culture, she became the serpent-
tongued Mrs. Hoople.

A hired-in ”house mother,” despite the title, seems not to have taken the

272

personal interest in the boarders they would expect from a surrogate mother.
That lack of interest in the boarders, rather than necessarily in the kitchen, may
be the central problem with the co—operative houses. Or, perhaps, the lack of
attachment to the kitchen was interpreted as lack of interest in the men—”moth-
er” never fully realizing her literal role as nourisher of the ”family.”

Whether the boardinghouse mistress or the boarding boss did the cook-
ing, food was of primary importance to boardinghouse life. It sustained the
body, but often also reflected ethnicity, linking household residents through cul-
ture who were not linked through kinship. Specifically ethnic foodways, such as
the Cornish pasty, became part of a culinary cultural exchange, though expressed
as a modal change. In addition, food provided a bridge of interaction between
household members, even in boardinghouses, and between households.
Boarders sometimes assisted with the kitchen garden and helped tend the ani-
mals. Co-operative food preparation, such as wine production, brought together
members of many households, including boardinghouses, in a joint community
effort. On the other hand, Americanization was facilitated through kitchens that
turned out generally American fare.

The Michigan mining frontier that spawned those boarding-houses is
gone. The mining era and the boardinghouse era went into decline simultane-
ously and coincidentally. Yet during those decades of transformation when so
many people from so many places flooded into the area, both the institution and
the physical boardinghouse were there to shelter them from loneliness and
abrupt ”culture shock” as well as from the harsh climate. While not an actual
family, a boarding household exhibited much the same personal involvement
and, in many cases at least, some of the same nurturing-while-pushing-one-out-

of-the-nest process that goes on in any family.

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Summar: y

As predicted by cosmopolitan frontier models, the mining companies of
Michigan’s western U.P. mineral region dominated its development, using com-
pany-built housing on company-controlled land to manipulate the labor force.
This housing was provided in large company boardinghouses and hundreds of
family homes available for nominal rent to employees where additional board-
ing space was available. Privately-owned commercial boardinghouses and
boarding room in privately-owned homes also became available, though not
generally at the mine sites.

Between 1840 and 1920 boarding was a common practice across the coun-
try for people of all economic and social levels. Urban boarding often catered to
the genteel, including couples who wished to avoid the complications of home
ownership and management. On the frontier, boarding was a popular option for
the working class. The mining elite were given or built elegant family homes
denoting their economic and social position in what was a highly ranked society.
In a similar fashion, housing for married employees took preference over compa-
ny boardinghouses, built for single men.

The big company boardinghouses were a part of the necessary start-up
overhead, in most cases eliminated as quickly as possible. In the private sector,
however, and for those renting company houses and taking in boarders, board—
ing income was significant to the frontier economy in two particular ways: 1) it
helped stabilize the male labor force by providing households with economic
bridges between ”booms” in the boom / bust cycles of mining, and 2) it provided
women with significant earning power in a socially acceptable endeavor where
few similar options existed.

Three factors seem to have been most responsible for shaping the board-

ing experience on the Michigan mining frontier: company policy, ethnicity, and

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the boardinghouse mistress. Companies built most of the initial boardinghouses
and communities and determined who could live in them. They played one eth-
nic group—often manifest as one occupational status—against another. The cos-
mopolitan frontier kept close ties to ”home” territory: company personnel to the
urban-based stockholders who shaped policy about regions they had never visit-
ed and did not understand; the workers to other regions of the nation and Old
World communities.

Ethnically-defined boardinghouses and those accommodating numerous
ethnic identities each assisted the residents’ Americanization. Ethnically-specific
houses, however, provided a focus for the inevitable expressions of ethnicity that
would arise on a cosmopolitan frontier, extending the surrogate family function
of the boardinghouse into another dimension and providing a physical and
social bastion against ethnic rivalries in frontier communities.

The boardinghouse mistresses set the rules and the atmosphere for the
boardinghouses. They were the ”mother-wife-sister” figure working within a
number of circles of cultural expectation. An important link in female chain
migration, they brought women to the frontier, employed them, and facilitated
their marriages, thereby expanding and helping develop the region.

The roles served by boardinghouses on the Michigan mining frontier were
several and complex. For the companies, they were disposable tools to build
and manipulate a work force. For boarding-house managers, they were a source
of income and what freedoms and opportunities that income provided. They
were also a place of employment for additional staff, often the first job in
America for numerous immigrant women. The Finnish co-operative boarding-
houses, a form unique to the Great Lakes mining region, allowed a cultural and
political expression through economic enterprise, while also serving the basic

purpose of the boardinghouse.

275

As part of the cultural landscape, boardinghouses accommodated com-
munity social, religious, and political occasions. Architecturally varied in form
and size, many seem to have been consciously designed to reflect (and instill)
American middle-class values, though strong ethnic- and class-based notions of
living patterns sometimes conflicted with the built environment.

To varying degree, boardinghouses on the Michigan mining frontier—like
those elsewhere—housed surrogate families. As such, these boarding house-
holds allowed the residents, especially the immigrants, to explore the unfamiliar
social dynamic of the frontier communities, to form personal bonds, and to give
and receive assistance.

The boardinghouse, often literally the first structure at a mine site, was
indeed the ”colonizing unit” on the mining frontier. Its presence and usually
even its design reflected the ”home country”—American financiers’ cultural and
economic priorities. The residents, representing dozens of ethnic identities,
maintained much of their cultural baggage while adjusting to both the physical
and social conditions of the region. Adaptation became a key to survival, but
only so far as was necessary to get the job done. Companies built and then
phased-out their big boardinghouses as soon as they could shift the responsibili-
ty of boarding onto other’ shoulders, only to renew the cycle in another location
or when other factors forced it. The physical houses came and went, but the

institution of boarding remained so long as it served its felt need.

EPILOGUE

During the 19605, Americans seemed to accept conceptually, if not literal-
ly, ”a gas station on every corner.” A generation later, in the wake of gasoline
shortages and oil embargoes, the proliferation of gas stations had slowed consid-
erably, and many were bulldozed or transformed for other commercial uses or
merely abandoned. Like the old gas stations, boardinghouses of northern
Michigan’s mining region, once so numerous, are no longer a ubiquitous feature
of the built environment. Many are gone entirely, burned or dismantled,
although of those, a number found alternative use before their end. Some, how-
ever, still stand, a few even continuing a useful existence. Although there
were numerous specific variables in the fates of these buildings, three forms of
disposition frequently occurred, either singly or in combination. When the
emphasis was placed on the structure as a collection of building materials, it was
moved or dismantled and reassembled for reuse. If it was perceived primarily as
housing, the boardinghouse was altered to continue to serve that function in a
new social context. Thirdly, there has been some recent recognition of these
structures as tangible evidence of the social institution and the historical frontier
they served, and their reuse reflects that recognition.

Recycling of resources was an important feature decades ago, though
with a more economical than ecological motivation. Both the mining companies
and individuals were part of the recycling that involved the boardinghouses in
the UP. mining districts. Companies converted outdated hospitals, schools, and

industrial buildings into dwellings. For example, the population of Phoenix

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277

Location declined by over 80 percent due to the Panic of 1893, but a decade later
the population and the demand for copper was on the rise. Part of a major refur-
bishing program of the Phoenix Mine buildings included remodeling one old
warehouse into an eighteen-room boardinghouse (Monette 1989: 12).

Companies also transported and transformed buildings to new use. One
example is Boardinghouse No. 1 at Hermansville. Originally, this building was a
shingle mill in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. When in 1878 company owner C. J. L.
Meyer began his hardwood flooring and charcoal-producing enterprise at
Hermansville, he had the building dismantled and moved to Michigan to
assume its new function. It was the first building in Hermansville. Due to its
heavy infestation of bedbugs, the building was ordered to be plastered through-
out. Fire destroyed it in the early morning of February 15, 1915 ([Worth] 1978).

Another story of boardinghouse transformation began in 1915 at Van’s
Harbor on the Garden Peninsula, Delta County. A large three-story boarding-

house that formerly housed employees of the local lumber mill was sold to a

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 53. Boardinghouse N o. 1 at Hermansville, c. 1878. (Courtesy Delta County
Historical Society)

278

store-owner for $175 and dismantled. The owner of the lumber used it to build
the Rex Theatre next to his store in the town of Garden, not far from the aban-
doned Fayette townsite. This theatre served the town for forty years as the site
for high school graduations, school and community plays, medicine shows, and
movies.

In 1961 the building was transformed yet again. The store, the theatre,
and a small building on the other side of the theatre were all taken over by a
lumber supply business (Our Heritage 1982: 65, 154-55), a somewhat ironic con-
clusion for what had initially been a lumber mill boardinghouse.

This example also demonstrates the usual path of transmission of the
mining area boardinghouses, from company ownership to private sector. Over
the years as needs and company priorities fluctuated, dwellings were added or
deleted accordingly. With the decline of the mining industry in Michigan during
the 19205 and 303, the companies divested themselves of hundreds of dwellings
to decrease their overhead. Arrangements varied: buildings were sold to be relo-
cated, to be dismantled, or to remain in place under private ownership (though
the land under them was often not sold until decades later) (Cleveland Cliffs
Iron Co. 1931, Monette 1985: 72, Monette 1980: 32). Thus it is likely that some old
boardinghouses exist in new guises undetected or even unsuspected.

In January, 1923, Henry Baer, a prominent businessman and civic leader of
Hancock, realized that the Copper Country had a resource it could export to the
Iron Mountain region—houses. Expansion of Ford Motor Company in the Iron
Mountain area had drawn workers from the declining copper mines. Baer knew
that the houses these workers had left vacant—houses that undoubtedly had
accommodated boarders at one time—could become an asset to Ford and simul-

taneously cease to be a liability to the mining companies. He arranged with Ford

279

”to move as many houses as possible” where they were most needed (Alexander
1984: 29).

In other cases, the boardinghouse history of a place is well known. For
years the Barnum House, owned by CCI and managed by the Herman Elson
family, had accommodated the Finns working at the Barnum Mine. In 1918,
Elson moved to other quarters where he began a soft-drink bottling business
(Central 1976, Old days 1981). CCI sold the Barnum House to a Mr. Conte as a

private residence for his large family.

 

['2'

WIN Hllmmmimmms

 

Figure 54. Barnum House / Conte residence in 1995. (Photo by author)

Since then, the building has been modified. The open porch shown in
figure 23 has been enclosed (figure 54). The large interior has been subdivided
into a duplex: the former kitchen, manager’s apartment, and a portion of the
upstairs now form a separate apartment. This modification necessitated some
change in the main section of the house: what had been the spacious dining

room for the boarders is now the owners’ living room and the former smoking

280

parlor is a huge kitchen. Little else has changed. The house still sits on its origi-
nal foundation near the western edge of Ishpeming. The Conte family still lives
there—three of the daughters, at least. Two were little girls when their father

bought the property in 1918; the third was born in the house later that year.

 

 

Figure 55. Laborers’ boardinghouse at Spies Location, built 1909. (Photo by Ron Stofer)

The large Spies Boardinghouse built in 1909 by CCI is another example of
a well-preserved boardinghouse that still serves as local housing. For about two
decades the house accommodated boarding miners, but in the 19303 in response
to boarder requests, CCI converted the structure to apartments. In its original
configuration, there were ten bedrooms for boarders upstairs and the standard
HPS features on the main floor. Outbuildings included privies and coal bins. In
1954 the house was sold to a Mrs. Joseph Grant who resides in one apartment
and continues to rent the others (Bernhardt 1985: 64, Bernhardt 1981: 138).

CCI’s Forbes Boardinghouse, a close contemporary of the Spies, was also
converted to apartments. It burned in 1942. A third CCI house in the area, at the
Homer location, was razed in 1925 (Bernhardt 1985: 64, Mineral Hills 1968: 3,4).

 

 

 

 

Figure 56. Victoria Hotel in the 19303. (Michigan Technological University Archives and
Copper Country Historical Collections, and Robert Fast)

The long-lived Barnum and Spies houses seem to be the exception. Even
in reuse, some of the large company houses went into rapid decline. The main
company boardinghouse at Victoria in figure 7 appears physically unchanged in
figure 56 above as the privately-owned Victoria Hotel, but much had changed in
its operation. Activity at the mine ceased in the early 19203; mining families had
abandoned the site by 1923. Five years later the property was sold. The com-
mercial hotel offered accommodations crude by earlier boardinghouse stan-
dards: cornhusk-filled mattresses and pillowcases changed once a season, going
from white to black by summer’s end. The building no longer stands.

Not only company boardinghouses were given new uses. The
Metropolitan House was a two-story I-plan commercial boardinghouse with
saloon built in Felch Township in the 18803. By the 19103 the ground floor had
been converted to a general store, and the second floor divided into apartments
for the store employees. This Metropolitan Store served the community for

many years before it ultimately closed (Blomquist 1978).

282

Anna and Candido Pisoni’s boardinghouse remained a useful feature of
the Mineral Hills area. Anna maintained the boardinghouse operation to 1958,
long after the end of the ”boardinghouse era.” A year later the village purchased
the building and surrounding land as a possible ”back up” for the municipal
buildings suspected to be in danger from caving ground. In 1960, however, the
building was dismantled and its lumber used to construct a ski chalet that also
serves as the Mineral Hills Hall on the village property (Mineral Hills 1968: 4,
Bernhardt 1981: 138.).

Many of the boardinghouses have simply disappeared. Most in this study
are long gone, and in only a few cases is the reason known. The structures at
Princeton were sold off, dismantled or moved (Dozzi 1982, Cleveland Cliffs
1931). At Republic, Boardinghouse Road ends near a large overgrown founda-
tion. No structure. At Fayette the hotel and several of the frame homes still
stand, but the original boardinghouse burned and the cabins that held boarders
are nothing but archaeological sites. The huge boarding complex at Wells was
dismantled by the company (Bourke 1982), as was the Delta Chemical
boardinghouse (Mather 1994). Even the Fellman home at Third and Ohio in
Marquette is gone, the lot reassigned for parking to serve the small businesses
encroaching on the residential areas beyond the main commercial district.

The house at Ewen, built about 1888 and photographed in abandoned dis-
repair in 1954 (figure 25), has long since collapsed.

Also abandoned, the house at the Bonnie Location was still standing in
1994 (shown in figure 57) but much deteriorated from its former condition (fig-
ure 22). A contracting firm using the mine’s dry and some of the surrounding
land for its construction vehicles apparently saw no value in the structure: it
was posted against trespassers and left to slowly decay. The Bonnie was recently

razed.

283

 

 

 

 

Figure 57. Bonnie Location boardinghouse in 1994. (Photo by Ron Stofer)

On the other hand, in a few cases old boardinghouses have been assigned
social value and identified for the public as tangible documents of the past.
Although the workers’ cabins and the boardinghouse are physically gone from
Fayette, interpretive signs and commentary during horse-drawn carriage tours
of the townsite remind visitors of the physical and social place boarding occu—
pied in the community.

As mentioned above, the cabins of the lower location at the Victoria Mine
are being restored by a local historical group, the Society for the Restoration of
Old Victoria. The boarding aspect of the site is being highlighted, here again
reminding visitors of the presence and important of the institution on the mining
frontier.

One of thirteen buildings in the designated Historic Business District in
Amasa is the Blomquist Boardinghouse, built about 1892 (figure 58). The house
served boarders ”through the 19303” (Bernhardt 1985: 41). Since then, various
merchants have used the first floor of the building. Currently, however, it

appears abandoned, with more threat from neglect than promise of preservation.

284

 

Figure 58. Boardinghouse in Amasa’s Historic District. (Photo by author)

 

 

 

Figure 59. Baltic Mine boardinghouse built by Mose Charles. (Courtesy Michigan
Technological University Archives and Copper Country Historical
Collections, and Clara Gourd)

285

Perhaps the most positive reuse of an old mining boardinghouse in both
residential and social terms occurred to the Charles House, also known as the
Baltic Hotel (figure 59). Operators of the Baltic Mine built several boardinghous-
es and numerous single-family houses at their location between 1898 and 1902,
but in 1905 Mose Charles purchased a lot on a scenic hill and built his own
boardinghouse. The facility featured a ”large basement with an indoor toilet, . . .
spacious living area on the first floor,” and at least twelve bedrooms. In 1928
when the Baltic Mine shut down, the company dismantled its location buildings
(Monette 1996: 30). The privately-owned Baltic Hotel, therefore, remains as the
sole survivor of the big boardinghouses in the area.

Over the years, the house changed hands a couple of times, the Kangas
family purchasing it in 1948 and then the Olson-Hunters in 1992. Under Kangas
ownership, the east wing with kitchen downstairs and bedrooms up was
removed and the lumber used to build a garage at another family-member’s
home, linking the Baltic to those other boardinghouses that were dismantled and
rebuilt elsewhere. The Olson-Hunters, on the other hand, are restoring and pre-
serving the house both physically and functionally.

They purchased the property with a five-year plan in mind, to convert the
old boardinghouse into a Bed and Breakfast—what is perhaps the closest mod-
ern parallel to the original boardinghouse concept (Monette 1996: 30-31, Caspary
1994). Soon after they began renovation, however, they had the opportunity to
return the house to its original use, so two years ago the old Mose Charles house
again became a boardinghouse. Just as in the original boardinghouse era, board-
ers have come from various parts of the globe, currently including Germany,
Mexico, and Australia.

Besides making the house their residence and a commercial establish-

ment, the Olson-Hunters are attempting to preserve or restore much of the

286

house’s original details while modernizing plumbing and electrical service.
Among their more ambitious future goals are to rebuild the lost east wing and to
remove the 19503 chrome and tile kitchen that was perpetrated on the former
men’s smoking parlor. With various artifacts of the region and some of the origi-
nal Charles family furnishings they plan to highlight the history of the mining
region by reflecting a different period or theme in each room.

Noting the fate of some of the boardinghouses in this study seemed an
appropriate way to conclude the project. There is no pretense that the informa-
tion in this epilogue demonstrates some profound trend in American architec-
tural history, nor can it be construed as meaningful statistically. There is simply
not enough data on the old boardinghouses to even know how many there were
and where and when they all operated, let alone what happened to each.

Nevertheless, the boardinghouses were intrinsic to the physical, econom-
ic, and social landscape of the northern Michigan mining districts in their time.
Their purposeful physical rejection through company policy (sales and/ or
demolition) was a logical next step once management had rejected the company-
based institution and emphasized married employees and family housing. The
structures’ intrinsic worth as building materials and practical value as homes or
stores brought or kept some of them functioning within the private sector.
Finally, recognition of the historic value of the boardinghouses as a tangible
reminder of the mining frontier is evidence of the same public impulse that has
put books celebrating small town main streets onto the coffee tables of suburban

homes and a facsimile drive-in movie theatre into the Henry Ford Museum.

APPENDIX

APPENDIX

A SAMPLING OF BOARDINGHOUSE RECIPES—
THAT LITTLE ”TASTE OF HOME”

The following recipes come from a number of sources. Each food item is
mentioned in the records or by the descendants of those who operated boarding-
houses in the Michigan mining districts. Wherever possible, the actual recipe
from the boardinghouse has been used. Many of these recipes were handed
down through generations. A few recipes (receipts) were ultimately published
in local cook books compiled by church or community organizations. Others
were located in commercial cook books aimed at boardinghouse operators and
are presented as representative of the dish, not necessarily as the specific recipe
used by a particular Michigan boardinghouse.

Traditional recipes, and even some of the published ones, retain the flavor
of hands-on demonstration and idiosyncratic kitchen facilities through their

imprecise measurements and their lack of standardized baking directions.

287

288

Cinnamon rolls

Take 1 quart flour, 1 tablespoon baking powder, pinch of salt, and 1 / 2 cup sugar.
Mix thoroughly and rub in 1 / 2 cup butter. Wet with enough milk to make
dough like baking powder biscuits. Roll out and sprinkle with sugar and cinna-
mon very thick. Roll dough into a ”log,” cut into strips and bake in hot oven.

Anna Wiesen, Rockland
St. Cecelia Cook Book

’Eavy ’Ogen

1 cup butter 5 cups flour

1 1 / 4 cup white sugar 1 tsp. salt

3 eggs 1 heaping tsp. baking powder
1 cup sour milk 1 tsp. baking soda

1 cup raisins 1 tsp. vanilla

Drop from a teaspoon. Bake at 350° F. for 12 minutes.

Beatrice Harding’s mother, Cornwall
Cooking with Our Ancestors

Cappelletti

To make cappelletti you just combine eggs and four to make pasta so that you
have a stiff dough. You then roll this dough out thin and cut it into small circles.
Take a pinch of meat and place it in the middle of each circle. This meat comes
from chicken or turkey breasts, or beef. It is cooked on the stove and ground up
afterwards. With the meat in the middle of the circles, fold the circles in half and
squeeze sides together so they resemble small hats. Cook in chicken or turkey
broth for about 15-20 minutes.

Joe Toti family, Virgil Location
Cooking with Our Ancestors

Plain Mince Pies

These may be made of almost any cheap pieces of meat, boiled until tender; add
suet or salt pork, chopped very fine; two-thirds as much apple as meat; sugar
and spice to your taste. If mince pies are eaten cold, it is better to use salt pork
than suet. A lemon and a little sirup of sweetmeats, will greatly improve them.
Clove is the most important spice.

Mrs. Bradley’s Housekeeper's Guide. . .
1859

289
Belgian Chicken Booyah

Take apart one large stewing chicken. Put into pot with 1 gallon water. Place on
fire and simmer. Add 3 middling size onions, sliced. Cook until tender. Take

meat from bones. Cut up fine a small bunch of celery. Put in broth along with 6
carrots and 6 potatoes. Cook well. Add cut up chicken and 2 gills peas. Season.

Fayette Historic Townsite

Pork Ribs

Bake the ribs in rosemary and wine. Make a gravy from the meat juices and
wine.

Catherine Torreano O’Neill, Calumet
Catherine Fausone Opal, Calumet

Beefsteak Pie

Take a large beefsteak, fry it slightly in very hot lard, cut it up, and let it cool.
Line your pan with rich pie-crust, put in a layer of beef, salt, pepper, and catsup,
then lay on some potatoes sliced very thin, with some very fine-chopped onions,
a little parsley, then a layer of beef, then, again, potatoes; cover it with crust.

Take the gravy that the steak was fried in, put into it a cup of cream and a lump
of butter, say an ounce, well rubbed in browned flour; let it simmer a minute or
two, then make a hole in the middle of the top crust, and pour in the gravy; if too
thick, add a gill of water.

Bake very slowly, and be very sure not to have it too brown.

Mrs. Collins’ Table Receipts;
Adapted to Western Housewzfery, 1851

Preserved Venison
Layer the deer meat, rosemary leaves and black pepper to fill the crock tightly to
the top. Pour oil over all, making sure there are no air bubbles. Place lid on crock

and heavy stone on lid. Cure.

Felix and Laura Dozzi, Princeton

290
Italian Bean Soup

Use pork hocks, put them in the crock with the beans and a bag of seasonings—
fresh garlic, allspice, cloves, crushed whole black pepper.
Add water, the soup should be watery, not real thick.

Take the crock to the bakery on Saturday so it can bake all night. Eat the soup on
Sunday morning.

Catherine Torreano O’Neill, Calumet
Catherine Fausone Opal, Calumet

Comprovada

Layer grape mash, rutabagas, and turnips into a crock. Cover with a plate and
weight down with a rock. Process like ”kraut.”

Felix and Laura Dozzi, Princeton
Torcetti

1 lb butter

10 cups flour

1 Tbsp sugar

2 yeast cakes

1 lb shortening

1 cup warm milk
1 Tbsp vanilla

4 eggs, beaten

Cut butter and shortening into flour. Combine milk, vanilla, sugar, and yeast.
Add to flour mixture. Beat the eggs and add. Knead lightly. Let rise until dou-
bled. Roll, shape [Break off piece about the size of a walnut, roll between hands
to thickness of a pencil, shape like a horseshoe with both ends together], dip into
sugar, and bake on ungreased cookie sheets 375° for 12-15 minutes. Remove
immediately from sheet.

Erma Caspary, South Range

291

Torte

Basic Dough

1 / 2 c. sugar 2-3 cups flour

1 / 2 tsp vanilla 4 eggs yolks

1 / 2 stick butter 2-1 / 2 tsp. baking powder

1 / 2 cup half-and-half or milk

Mix like any baking powder dough. Line pan with rolled dough. Make peaks
on edge of dough by slashing edge on an angle and rolling dough toward center
of pan, each peak being about the size of a mouthful of cookie. Fill and bake.

Chocolate Filling

1/ 2 lb. rice, cooked [about 3 cups cooked rice] 1 / 4 cup sugar

2 large milk chocolate Hershey bars, 18 02. each 4 egg whites

1 package citron, chopped 2 whole eggs

1 / 2 package orange peel, chopped dash of cinnamon
1 cup pignoli dash of nutmeg

1/ 4 stick of butter, melted

Mix filling and fill pan lined with dough. Bake at 325° for 10 minutes and lower
to 300° for an hour.

Luccese Filling

1 Italian bread 3 eggs

1-1 / 4 cups sugar grated cheese

3 cups cooked rice cinnamon

chopped parsley little bit of salt

1 cup chopped walnuts 1 / 4 - 1 / 2 cup melted oleo

some Swiss chard, finely chopped (about a handful)

Mix. Fill dough-lined pan. Bake 325° for 10 minutes, 300° for 45-60 minutes.
Sprinkle cinnamon and sugar over the top when serving.

Erma Caspary, South Range

292

Coconut pie

3 eggs 1 cup rich milk
1 cup sugar 1 / 2 cup coconut

Let coconut soak a few minutes in milk. Bake with one crust.

Anna Wiesen, Rockland
St. Cecelia Cook Book

Rabarbra Radgrod (rhubarb pudding)
Set sugar on the fire in a pan with cold water and drop in rhubarb. Boil gently
until done. Remove from fire and stir in vanilla. Mix corn starch and water and
add to rhubarb. Set on fire and stir occasionally. Cook for a few minutes. Pour
into a bowl and serve cold with cream.

Fayette Historic Townsite

”Grandma” Tassin’s Cough Syrup

Mix brandy, honey, and lemon juice and administer as needed. Acts as an expec-
torant.

Genevieve (Tassin) Tousignant,
Ishpeming

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