Mossback History

mossback ball
The Clifton House
After a summer filled with trainloads of happy tourists with money to spend, new hotels
constructed along with major additions to old ones, new doctors and lawyers setting up shop with
promises of more to come, breakwater construction, and street improvements all showed signs of
turning this rugged little woods town into a nice little city —and then—winter! Not much happened in Northern Michigan towns in the winter and Petoskey was no exception. Folks planned for the winter months by storing corned, canned and smoked meat. Vegetables were canned or stored in root cellars and the few coins or bills left over from summer were
placed in a sock and hidden in a dresser drawer.
Our winter of 2008-2009 started officially on November 16th with the arrival of the snow
that stayed until it melted sometime in April. There was much complaining about the cold, the
snow and the spring that didn’t seem in any hurry to appear. Yet we have televisions to bring
sports and culture into our homes. We have video games, books, magazines and DVD movies to
keep us entertained. We have four-wheel drive vehicles to make sure we get wherever we want to
go, when we want to be there. The Mossbacks had none of those things - the men, women and children on those farms and
logging camps had each other and possibly a nearby family for company. The children may have
had school and they may have attended church, but other than those few sources of entertainment
there was little to look forward to, except for the Mossback ball.
One evening of pure entertainment must have made their long winter palatable. What a
gift the Rowans and the other ‘town’ families gave to the Mossbacks. 139
The following newspaper account tells the story of the Mossback balls—from the viewpoint of the hotel itself.
OLD TAVERN TALKS ABOUT A MOSSBACK BALL
FARM FOLKS GATHERED AT CLIFTON HOTEL FOR NIGHT OF
DANCING
The “old tavern” was the Clifton’s dining room. “Mossbacks”
were predominately white settlers who squatted in Emmet County and
lived in makeshift shelters waiting for land grants and rights to occupy
the land permanently.
“It seems to me,” said a workman tearing down the old Clifton to
make way for the Fochtman department store’s big addition, “that this
back wing used to be all one room on the second floor. My dad says
when the old tavern was first built there was a big dance hall up here
somewhere.”
“I’ll say there was,” came back from the old tavern. “A mossback
dance in the early days of the Clifton was an event long to be remembered. From early morning until sundown, farmers and their families
would come pouring through my hospitable big front doors. Ox teams,
big, timber woods draft horses and poor old skeleton plow horses would
draw their heavy bobs, farm conveyances and cutters through the rutty,
muddy roads or drifts of snow to bring the folks to the dance.
“As soon as supper was over, babies would be put to bed in the
tiny little bedrooms of the hotel and the grown-ups would prepare to
make a night of it, and ‘have one good time, you bet your boots.’ For
evening dress they wore the plain, homely garments that were common
to workaday people of that day. Once in a while a heavy boot pack
would dodge the toe of a prunella gaiter, or a rough flannel shirt would
brush the shoulder of what had been a pretty wedding gown of silk or
bright merino, brought from the old home in Ohio, Southern Michigan,
Indiana or Illinois, for it was from these localities that the North drew a
large percentage of its first settlers.
“These were a few of the names of the farmer folk we most often
met at the mossback dances or that you might see on my old registers
– Reed, Blanchard, Faunce, Kent, Madlem, Batt, Curtis, Bixby, Niles,
Vansaw, Wooden, Harrington, King, Darrah, Thatcher, Webb, Hamilton,
Keep, Minard, and Kopp, with many others nearby neighbors and from
adjoining counties. Sam Thatcher, who it was said had run away from
home to be a circus clown when a boy, was always shocking his demure
little wife by gathering up some middle aged buxom woman in his long
140
arms and swinging her ‘round and ‘round until everyone was driven
from the floor.
“Mossback dances began at 7 p.m. sharp and always started in
formal fashion with a grand march followed with ‘everybody waltz,’ and
then there’d be a square dance that was called usually by the extra
violinist, on hand to relieve the regular players occasionally. The ‘string
band,’ as dance orchestras were called in those days, was composed
of York and Abbott, violinists, Sam Lampson, expert banjoist, Pardee, a
cornetist, if one happened to be in town, and sometimes an organ accompaniment, often played by Mrs. Rowan.
“Mrs. T.B. Hamilton, in a gown of shaded rose and brown plaid
silk, disdained to lift it from the floor, for that would deprive it of its
graceful display for many yards of fullness and breadth of skirt as she
walked in dignity through the measured steps of the Virginia Reel.
“And did you know Ed Darrah? NO! Well, we did. He was one
of the biggest timber cutting jobbers in the country. When Mr. and Mrs.
Darrah came to a mossback ball, the latter had decided beforehand
that no matter what Sam Thatcher, Dave Webb and Ed ‘got up to,’ she’d
endure it and look on in patience with the smile that never seemed to
leave her face.
“Waltz! My how they did waltz in those days. Paul Whiteman’s
jazz couldn’t tune it up livelier than the Petoskey string band. Those
were the times when a waltz was a WALTZ; not a dream or a dosing
party but a real honest to goodness dance with whirls, dodging in and
out between couples on the crowded floor and no cut-ins, if you please,
but a good 20 minutes or half hour with a fellow’s best girl to be swung
in and out reversed, and whizzed rapidly from one end of the room to
the other once in a while, until with a ‘tired and had enough of it’ feeling
all but one or two of the gayest couples at the ball would have left the
floor.
“’Old Dan Tucker,’ ‘Money Musk,’ ‘Miss McLeod’s Reel,’ ‘The Campbells are Coming’ and ‘The Fisher’s Hornpipe’ were among the favorite
dance tunes of the day. Difficult polkas and reels of grace and beauty
were done with as perfect ease by feet in clumsy boots and heavy shoes
as patent pumps and satin slippers do other dances today. And how
the rafters of the old tavern would ring when they began to sing. It
was real music that came from the throats of those men of the great
141
woods, and women who helped put in and care for the farm crops,
when ‘Get out the way for old Dan Tucker’ and ‘Gin a body kiss a body
comin’ through the rye’ were sung as one voice at a mossback dance.
There were many forms to the old-fashioned square dance. ‘The Lancers,’ ‘The Fireman’s Dance,’ ‘The Basket Cotillion,’ ‘The Virginia Reel’ and
many other variations more or less difficult. By common consent no one
was left at home for want of an invitation to a dance. I’ve seen many
a young farmer or backwoodsman come into the old tavern mossback
ball with two and even three girls, all unselfishly happy and glad to be
together. There were always plenty of ‘lone stars,’ as the men who
brought no girls were called, to help a fellow out with the dances.
“At midnight, supper would be served down in the dining room,
with two dishes of hot soup for everyone if they wanted it, piles of good
bread heaped on big plates, and plenty of butter, with coffee and fried
cakes, and generous pieces of frosted cake, supper being included in the
$1.00 per couple paid for the evening’s entertainment. After supper the
dance would continue for several hours more until everyone was tired
and sleepy enough to call it a night. Then with the women and children snugly tucked away in their beds in the little bedrooms, and the oil
lamps about the house turned low, the men, who had hurriedly set up a
dozen or more beds along the sides of the dance hall, would tumble in
and try to snatch an hour or two of sleep before the first bell for breakfast sounded merrily through the halls at 6:30 in the morning.
“Not all would spend the few hours of the night in the old tavern.
Farmers who must get back home to look after their stock, and woodsmen who had to reach camp early for the day’s work brought their
teams around to the front door, right up on the sidewalk, to bundle in
wives, sweethearts and children among warm blankets and hot soapstones so that no snow would go into the load with them, and once
tucked in cozily, off they would go with bells ringing and whips racking
as if it was Christmas time.
“It was just a remembrance now, the mossback ball, but one that
would stay in the minds of its dancers for many a long day. They were
fine people, those men and women who helped cut the timber, break
the land, and build the comfortable homes that are scattered now over
many, many miles of Michigan’s great resort region. Sometime I’ll get
out one of my old registers and tell you more about some of them and
their children. Now, I must run off and see what those carpenters are
142
doing to my back walls.”
Petoskey News Review
Thursday, June 29, 1995
First appeared Friday, November 11, 1927
in the Petoskey Evening News
Petoskey News REview
Friday, FEbruary 18, 1977
143
History of the Women’s Benevolent Society
Late in January, 1885 a little girl, from four miles out in the
woods, found her way by blazed trees to the village of Petoskey to get a
shroud of the poormaster, Mr. Rowan, to bury her sister in. Mr. Rowan,
who already had provided clothing and supplies to the limit of his authority, promised to get a coffin, and Mrs. Rowan, hearing the child’s
plea, determined to ask the ladies of the city to provide the shroud and
other needed articles for the funeral. Mrs. Kirkland gave the money to
buy cloth for the garment, Mrs. Clark gave lace and ribbon for trimming,
and Mrs. Rowan and Mrs. Cushman made it, and the little girl started for
her home before 3 o’clock.
The result of this experience was a call through the next week’s
RECORD for a meeting of the ladies of Petoskey for the founding of a
benevolent association. Eighty responded to the call, and the parlors
of the Clifton House were found to be too small to accommodate them
and they adjourned to the dining room. Mrs. Rowan called the meeting to order and stated the object of it, giving the incident related above
and many others where help was needed, whereupon Mrs. Kirkland was
elected chairman and the association was formally organized with the
following officers: President, Mrs. Kirkland; first vice president, Mrs.
Darling; second vice president, Mrs. Rose; secretary, Mrs. S. Dart; treasurer, Mrs. Rowan.
The first two or three years was uphill work with the association,
but they are glad to report that they never turned away anyone who
applied for food or clothing, always finding something to tide over the
time of hardship and want. Since they became thoroughly conversant
with the work of caring for the poor and needy, they have been wonderfully blessed, and have received help in abundance, and a call for help
from them never fails of a speedy and bounteous answer in the form
of warm clothing or wholesome food, as the case may be. Their yearly
gifts in money amount to $100 and $200, and the clothing distributed
has ranged as high as $900, and as many as 100 new cloaks have been
given out in one year.
As the people came to know more of the good they were doing,
the matter was taken up by the schools, who began to give Thanksgiving entertainments to add their mite to the fund. At first this offering
was in the shape of fruit, vegetables, clothing, and other useful articles,
and for a number of years a yearly occurrence was the sight of drays
and wagons distributing this great quantity of goods on the day after
144
Thanksgiving. Then it was deemed more practical to take a money offering, from one cent up, and the children vie with each other in giving
something for charity on this occasion. Then the churches fell into line,
and it has become a fixed custom with them to present the Home Benevolent association with a Thanksgiving offering. The lodges, too,
have their part in this good work and give liberally, the Elks leading
and the National Protective Legion taking second place. Many people
who have left Petoskey for other climates remember the H.B.A. with a
Thanksgiving offering, and the ladies are grateful for more than one $5
bill that has been sent them by old time friends.
Thanksgiving eve has come to be looked upon as their special
night for gathering tithes for the poor, and is the only time in the year
they make an effort to collect money, depending else on offerings. On
this night they give an entertainment, and through the kindness of Mrs.
Cushman it has become and established custom to hold it in the parlors
of the Cushman House, where the best talent of the city is glad to unite
in a good entertainment for this benefit. One of the features of this entertainment is the annual song or poem written expressly for the occasion by Mrs. Lelia M. Rowan, one of the charter members of the H.B.A.
One of the good deeds of the association was the endowing of a
room at Lockwood hospital for the poor which has been used from three
to four months every year. In addition to all this they have taken up
rescue work and more than one unfortunate girl has been led from a life
of shame to noble womanhood, by their loving kindness and care. Two
instances that have happened lately show the gratitude with which this
work is received. One young lady who caused the association about $28
expense, recently, worked out and insisted on paying back every cent
of it, and, just last week, a boy sent them $5 for the kindness they had
shown him when he was needy and they took care of him.
At the present time the officers, with one exception, are the same
as when they organized, Mrs. Kirkland being president, Mrs. Darling, first
vice president; Mrs. Rose, second vice president; Mrs. Rowan, treasurer,
and Mrs. Hankey, secretary. All of them have been residents of Petoskey
for many years, and surely no women of the city know more of the
hardships and suffering than these, who have spent over twenty years
in close touch with unfortunate ones.
Just a word in conclusion about each of the officers. Mrs. Kirkland came to Petoskey in 1873, and was one of the first to arrive by
145
train, her husband coming by boat with H.O. Rose before the railroad
was laid this far. She has always been an active church worker, a popular member of society, and always an enthusiastic helper in any movement for the better interests of the city.
Mrs. Darling moved here 27 years ago last April and has seen
Petoskey grow from a little village to its present size. She has always
been interested in church work and has been a member of the Presbyterian church for years. Her late husband was an elder in the same
church for 40 years. She is one of the best loved ladies in the city and
has a host of warm, true friends.
Mrs. Rose has perhaps the best claim as a pioneer of any of the
officers of the association. Her husband, Capt. H.O. Rose, came here
as early as 1854, when the country was an unbroken forest except for
the Indian clearings, and no one knows better than she the struggles
and hardships of the early settlers in Petoskey and the surrounding
country. She is a devoted member of the Episcopal church, and has
always worked with open hand and complete harmony with the others
engaged in relieving distress.
Mrs. Rowan is too well and too widely known to need any word
of introduction from us. She is also an early settler, and her home has
always been their headquarters and distributing center. These four
ladies have held the offices they now hold since the organization of the
Home Benevolent association, succeeding themselves at each election
for 21 years.
Mrs. Hankey has filled the office of secretary for the past nine
years and has been a very efficient and earnest helper. The first secretary, Mrs. Dart, served as secretary 10 years, and was succeeded by
Mrs. Calkins for two years, after which Mrs. Hankey was elected. In
addition to charitable work she has been prominent socially, and has
fulfilled the many duties of an active life in a happy manner.
It may truly be said of each one that she has given the best of
her ability to this good cause, and while on the eve of this Thanksgiving day we cannot hope their field of operations may be widened we
do sincerely wish them continued success and greater possibilities for
carrying on their noble work.
Taken from Lelia Rowan’s Scrapbook
146
147
148