Collections

The collection documents the history of Saint Charles, Michigan, the Bad and Shiawassee rivers, canals, steamboats, sawmills, public waterways and routes, coal mines, river restoration, and the Greve family.

This is an excellent local history collection of Saint Charles, Michigan, 1800-2011, collected, researched and created by a local historian and researcher, Dale Greve, from 1980 through 2011. The collection documents the history of Saint Charles, Michigan, the Bad and Shiawassee rivers, canals, steamboats, sawmills, public waterways and routes, coal mines, river restoration, and the Greve family in research notes, scrapbooks, maps, reminiscences, photographs, newspaper clippings, reel-to-reel tapes, videos, archaeological surveys and studies, articles, and mitigation plans and project reports.

The collection is organized first by size with oversized materials placed at the end of the finding aid. Letter-size materials are in Boxes 1-23 and legal-sized materials are in boxes 24-27 and 29.Boxes 1-18 are each cubic foot boxes, 19-28 are .5 cubic foot and Box 29 is .25 cubic foot.

After size, the collection is organized by topic and format, and then alphabetically. Boxes 1-18 consist of materials previously in binders, documenting Saint Charles, the Bad and Shiawassee rivers route, canals, steamboats, and sawmills. Boxes 19-22 document the river route from Saginaw to Saint Charles, canals, coal mines, the Bad and Shiawassee rivers, the Greve family, houseboats, motor boating, fishing, the Saginaw Valley waterways, and river and steamboats charts, graphs, and history documented in a variety of formats. Box 23 consists mostly of river studies. Box 24 consists mostly of Greve’s original notes on his research. Boxes 25-26 include most of the Saint Charles history photographs, although some are found also in Box 19. Boxes 26-27 consist mostly of reminiscences on reel-to-reel tapes and videos.

The oversized Saint Charles materials include a volume on the Coal Mine Era in Saint Charles. The first two oversized folders include folder 1) mostly oversized photographs and other oversized related materials; and folder 2) mostly oversized maps and related materials.

2021 Addition: In 2021, boxes 28-29 and four oversized folders were added to the collection. These materials are arranged alphabetically. Box 28 contains St. Charles materials gathered by Dale Greve, including: interviews, maps, certificates, research notes, articles, a report, and a CD, Up River from Saginaw to St. Charles, a forgotten history, 2019. The majority of the collection is a gathered history report of St. Charles, 1822-2020. Additionally, there is a detailed report of the history of coal mines in St. Charles with location, details, and images of almost all the coal mines there. There are two typed transcriptions of 1982 oral history interviews of Aldo Hulien (1905-1986), probably conducted by Dale, and of Jeannette Mason (1890-1986), conducted by Aldo’s wife, Lillian Hulien (1907-1995), who adds her memories. (Their vital statistic dates from Social Security Death Index.)The interviewees tell their story and experience of what it was like living in St. Charles. There are no permission/release forms for these interviews in the collection. There are also maps and research notes composed by Greve of the Bad and Shiawassee Rivers.

Box 29 has legal-sized materials that include Abstracts, a letter, a list, and a story. The letter was written by Dale Greve and sent to Bob Przybyzski. The letter outlines all of Greve’s research on St. Charles mines, and his offer to help Przybyzski if he ever needed it (see Letter to Bob Przybyzski, 2017). The list is items compiled by Greve that were lost from the past and present in St. Charles (See Items Lost to the Village of St. Charles, Past and Present, 016). The story is nine pages long and is about the life of a St. Charles coal miner in 1929 (see St. Charles Coal miner’s life, 1929).

The four oversized folders, #3-6, include St. Charles architecture blueprints, maps, abstracts, a certificate, a graph, and a panorama. Folder 3) is a Certificate of First-Aid Training by the Bureau of mines for Charles Krause. Folder 4) has two blueprints, one of an engineer’s office from a mine and the other being the complete 1946 St. Charles sewer system. Folder 5) has a panoramic picture of Shiawassee Lake, a chronological timeline of St. Charles coal mines, and abstracts. Folder 6) has a map of the Bad and Shiawassee rivers routes and park plan for St. Charles.

The collection consists of 2077 scans of images and 18 CDs of a miscellaneous photographic collection, 1901-1962, mostly 1925-1945, and undated, which were scanned in 2010.

The collection includes 2077 scans of images and 18 CDS of the Society’s miscellaneous photographic collection of glass-plate negatives, photographs and negatives, 1901-1960s, mostly 1925-1945, and undated. The collected was temporarily loaned to the Clarke so it could be scanned for preservation purposes in 2010. These images include Burt Lake, Pickerel Lake, Bay View, Charlevoix, Harbor Springs, Oden, Petoskey, Pellston, and Walloon Lake, Michigan, people, stores, and buildings and tourist sites on Mackinac Island. Major topics documented include Camp Algonquin, now a YMCA camp in Hastings, Old Petoskey Hospital, little Traverse Hospital, winter sports and queens, portraits of many unidentified people, boats, cottages, logging, fishing, Miss Ethel Shepherd’s art classes, and a wedding at the cottage of O. J. Laylander at Burt Lake. Some images were taken by Foley Photography Studio (Traverse City, Michigan). A descriptive list of folder labels of the originals is in the front of Box 1.

The collection consists of 2,000 scans of images and 47 CDs of a miscellaneous nineteenth century photographic collection, which were scanned in 2013.

The collection includes approximately 2,000 scans of images and 47 CDs of the LTHBM miscellaneous photographic collection of glass-plate negatives, photographs and negatives, mostly nineteenth century. The collection was loaned temporarily to the Clarke Historical Library so it could be scanned for preservation purposes in 2013. Images in the collection include mostly Petoskey (Mich.) centennial, buildings, churches, hotels, the hospital, railroads, streets, numerous people, and businesses, as well as mills located along Bear River, the waterfront, boats, and steamships. Other Michigan locations documented in the collection include Alanson, Pellston, Bay View, Boyne City, Boyne Falls, Carson, Carp Lake, Charlevoix, Cross Village, Harbor Springs, Oden, Onaway, Pellston, Sturgeon Bay, and Walloon Lake, as well as Camp Daggett.

Boxes 1-7 include an inventory of images and prints of all scanned images. Images were scanned both at 600 and 72 dpi. Box 8 contains the CD-ROMS. The original collection was returned to the LTBHM. For further information see the inventory in Box 1.

A backup copy of all the scans and CDs is in a separate location in the stacks.

The collection was kept in its original order during processing. The collection contains only scans of original photographs, while the LTBHM maintains the originals. All digital CDs contained in the collection are housed in CD cases, but are not individually stored in folders.