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6 days ago | 
ourmidland.com | Lori Qualls
When lumberjack George Penney brought his bride, Millie, to their pioneer home in Averill in 1905, logging activities were fading in the area known as Red Keg. The Penneys would dedicate their lives to clearing and improving the land and raising a family of seven children. Fifty years after their arrival at the house, located just off Stark Road near the old Bensch School, the property had become a landmark in Lincoln Township.
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1 week ago | 
ourmidland.com | Lori Qualls
Lester Burr was known as "Mr. Bus Man" by the two generations of Beaverton young people he delivered daily to school. "Bus drivers more than anyone else often see youngsters at their very worst," he told the Daily News in an article published in early October 1954.
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2 weeks ago | 
ourmidland.com | Lori Qualls
Clara McCrary said she’d rather be remembered as the granddaughter of pioneers rather than lay claim to philanthropy. Her friends, however, thought differently and gladly told of how she shared freely — whether sprigs of herbs, roots of plants or bits of shrubbery. McCrary often would generously transplant some of her beauties to adorn new houses of builders as well as church and cemetery grounds and the gardens of acquaintances.
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4 weeks ago | 
ourmidland.com | Lori Qualls
Averill was the largest village in Lincoln Township, separated from Homer Township by the Tittabawasee River. Averill was located in the southern part of the township on the Flint & Pere Marquette Railroad. It was Harrison Averill who gave to the railroad company the right of way through that section on the Tittawbawassse River, according to the 1884 Portrait and Biographical Album of Midland County.
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1 month ago | 
ourmidland.com | Lori Qualls
Midland City's first school was constructed in 1857 at Ashman and Ellsworth streets. It was reached from Main Street by a corduroy road – a plank road made of logs laid across a wet or muddy area. Miss Flanders taught the first school and she had an enrollment of 11 students. In a short time, the school enrollment increased and more room was needed. An addition to the original building was added in about 1862.
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1 month ago | 
ourmidland.com | Lori Qualls
The first schoolhouse in Midland County was built with logs in 1850 in the area that would become Midland Township six years later. It was located on a farm belonging to Herbert Sias which, in a 1914 atlas was in Midland Township, west of Midland City and near the Chippewa river. Teacher was Henry C. Ashmun, according to William Vance, who supplied the information for an article on education in Midland County in the 1897 book County of Midland official register and history.
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1 month ago | 
ourmidland.com | Lori Qualls
Three or four times a week during his active years, people could find McGowen playing the fiddle, sometimes at festivals, sometimes at weddings, sometimes at dances. "Many's the time I rode horseback or walked six miles or more in knee-deep snow with my fiddle encased in a pillow slip," he told the Daily News in 1954.
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2 months ago | 
ourmidland.com | Lori Qualls
Once known as the showplace on the Tittabawasee River, a house built at the bend of the river at the south edge of Edenville Township was still occupied in 1954 by two brothers — Charles and Leslie Verity — whose family arrived in 1878 in the area. Article continues below this adThe two-story house to which was added a long L-shaped root cellar and storage rooms was situated in the middle of more than 5,000 feet of shore-line property held by the family since they arrived when Charles was 11.
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2 months ago | 
ourmidland.com | Lori Qualls
It was back in the mid 1970s that Gus Dombroske, a volunteer firefighter for Mills Township, started making address signs for mailboxes to help his department find the people needing help. Dombroske recalled in a 1991 Daily News article that it sometimes was difficult finding houses in the middle of the night or on a dark country road. He recalled a call from a woman during the night saying her husband was having a heart attack.
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2 months ago | 
ourmidland.com | Lori Qualls
Nicholas Depue and his wife were the first settlers in west half of Midland County. They bought land and built a log cabin in the first part of April 1856, according to the Portrait and Biographical Album of Midland County published in 1884. "Originally its floor was made of puncheons, and there was not a sawed board in the whole structure," according to the historical record.
