A Short
History of the
Dougherty House
By Carol Lewis & Jackie Burns
(Except for the last paragraph, which was added as an update, this
article oringally appeared in the April, 2005 newsletter.)
Reverend Peter
Dougherty arrived in
Old Mission in 1839. Under the terms of the United States Treaty of
1836, the government was required to provide for the Ottawa and
Chippewa, a farmer, a blacksmith and a carpenter. Peter worked to also
provide them with a mission, a school, and a Christian education. In
return, the U.S. would open up the lands for sale on which the Ottawa
and Chippewa had hunted, farmed and lived for many generations.
After discussion with the Ottawa and Chippewa, it was decided
to
place the mission on the Elk Rapids side of East Bay. One log building
was completed there before the Native Americans requested Peter to move
to the Old Mission side of the bay. Peter and the Native Americans
built structures for a mission, a church, and a home for Peter on the
shore of Old Mission.
The original log building was moved by the Native Americans
from
Elk Rapids to Old Mission, piece by piece, and rebuilt as a
church. A replica of that church now sits near the original site on
land donated in 1939 by Bertha Gilmore.
In 1840, Dougherty married 21-year-old Maria Higgins,
an educated
woman from Princeton, New Jersey, who returned with him to live her
life among the Ottawa and Chippewa, teaching medical skills,
administering to the women and children, and learning their language.
In 1842 with the help of the Native Americans Peter built "The Mission
House" for his family, about a mile west of the harbor.
Eight girls and one boy were born to the Doughertys while they lived
there,
During their stay in The Mission House, Peter and Maria wrote
and
published, in 1844, a translation in Ojibwa with parallel English text,
of James Gall’s Initiatory Catechism, containing the Ten Commandments
and the Lord’s Prayer. They also made significant contributions to the
study of local tribal language by writing and publishing A
Chippewa Primer for use in the Native American Schools. In 1847,
Dougherty wrote to the Presbyterian Board: "Six years ago the site
occupied by the [Old Mission] village was a dense thicket. The village
now extends nearly a mile in length, containing some twenty log houses
and some good log stables belonging to the Indians…. the Native
Americans have cleared and cultivated some two hundred acres of new
gardens...[and] raised for sale several hundred bushels of corn and
potatoes."
In 1850, the village included 40 log dwellings, a church, a
school and
several mechanics shops. By 1853, the first meeting of Peninsula
Township planned to create nine "highway" districts. But in
1850, the land the Ottawa and Chippewa were occupying in Old Mission
was still the property of the State of Michigan, and when the terms of
the 1836 treaty – which had given the entire Old Mission Peninsula as a
reservation – were re-negotiated, there was no longer any assurance
that the lands of Old Mission
would remain in the Indians’ hands instead of being sold off to white
settlers in large farm lots. As land in Leelanau County across West Bay
was available, the Native Americans used their Government annuity and
purchased acreage near what is now Omena. In 1852, the Presbyterian
Board of Missions had Dougherty relocate the mission near Omena as
well, and continue his work with the Native Americans there.The Mission
House remained in Old Mission, unused and in excellent condition until
1866, when the Doughertys, having bought the deed from the Presbyterian
Church in 1861, sold it to Solon Rushmore, whose descendants turned The
Mission House into the "Rushmore Inn," building a small Victorian porch
on the front for their guests to watch the great steamships come into
the harbor at the turn of the century. The deed to the Rushmore house
did not pass from the Rushmore family for 95 years.
Old Mission had become a thriving community of agricultural
pursuits and resorters, with the Rushmore Inn, the opening of the Old
Mission Inn nearby, the Hyslops’ resort in the village, and the
cottagers who built on the Leffingwell Preserve along Old Mission
Point.
Minnie Lane
Rushmore was the daughter of Sarah Lane,
who served as light keeper from 1906 to 1907 after her husband, John’s,
death at his post. She was one of the few women light keepers on the
Great Lakes, thus binding together in one family two of the most
important structures in Old Mission: Old Mission Point Lighthouse and
the Dougherty Mission House.
The
Rushmore House sold for only the third time when
Maurice Rushmore, sold it to Virginia Larson in 1961. Virginia lived
across the street, and used the house to store her many items, in
preparation for opening the Mission House
as a museum. As recently as seven years
ago, Virginia suggested that Peter Dougherty’s dresser was still in the
house. A builder she hired to do minor
repairs reported that structurally the house was solid. One of the few
three seater outhouses in Grand Traverse County still stands behind the
house.
In
2004, upon Virginia’s death, her sons, David and
Daniel, contracted with the Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy to
sell the house to Peninsula Township, to preserve and protect it as the
last remaining structure in Old Mission representing the beginnings of
European settlement in the Grand Traverse region, and a compassionate
partnership between the Ottawa and Chippewa and the first residents of
European descent in the Grand Traverse region.
In 2005, the Old Mission
Peninsula
Historical Society, working with Peninsula Township and the Grand
Traverse Regional Conservancy, executed an option to purchase the
Dougherty Homestead and its fifteen acres from the Virginia Larson's
heirs. Plans are now being formulated to renovate the house and
develop programs that will illuminate the homestead's central place in
the history of not only Grand Traverse but as part of the westward
expansion of the country in the mid- nineteenth century.