Scope and ContentText about Singapore or early activity in the river mouth area: 1. Singapore Shorts - Bob Mersbach's memories that include tales told by Miss "Alice" Baker. 2. A Worker Writes Home - A letter written by Charles Hinkle transcribed by Charles Lorenz. 3. The Last Resident of Singapore by Ben Van Eyck 4. Cappy Brittain's Recollections of Singapore, Collected by Yale Human --- 1 SINGAPORE SHORTS by Bob Mersbach For many years before we retired to Saugatuck in 1986, we vacationed here at a house on Spear Street owned by my mother. On the first evening of each stay my wife, Dory, and I took Miss Alice "Alice" Baker, who lived next door, on a sunset drive along the lakeshore. She loved those drives and always looked forward to our arrival. My mother and Elita Graves, another neighbor, always wondered how old Alice was, but, along with all the others, never discover her age; until one of our sunset drives. Allie used to tell us about the old days in Saugatuck. She watched the Big Pavilion being built in 1909 and saw the new Kalamazoo river channel under construction in 1906 and we learned about some very interesting local history from her. One evening on the drive she mentioned old Singapore and said that when she was a girl 17 years old, way back in 1888, she walked on low sand dunes into the open windows of the second story of structures still there and not yet completely buried. Bingo! It was fascinating to hear and we could hardly wait to get back to the house to tell my mother that Alice Baker was born in 1871. This happened in the early 1950s, so she was already in her 80s. In 1987 (100 years after Allie was there) we were in a group of people on an Audubon chartered trip on the Queen of Saugatuck (later called Star of Saugatuck) which sailed to the Broward Marine dock, and discharged the passengers. We were then permitted to walk around the Singapore site and keep any relics we could find. On that trip we found some square nails and pieces of sand-blown and rounded bricks. Back in the early years of the Dune Schooner rides, the passengers were driven all the way to the beach. along the beach, on a trail beside the North Pier and over the Singapore site. Sometimes a number of old bricks could be seen; the guide always said they were from the old Singapore Bank. --- 2 A Worker Writes Home [A letter written by Charles Hinkle, a Singapore worker about 1837, to his father, William J. Hinkle of Eckford, was discovered in the 1980s serving as insulation in an old western Michigan home. It is now in the collection of the Michigan State Regional Archives at Kalamazoo, but portions of it are missing, and other parts are riddled with nail holes. However, the readable parts still offer a wonderful glimpse of early Singapore. The letter was transcribed by Charles J. Lorenz, an early president of the Saugatuck Douglas Historical Society.] ... I would recommend you ... shall go buy stuff enough to put ... beds. Ask for Millersnett, it comes... pr yard. anything will do for the top part that hangs below the bedstead. Let about 3 feet of the net stuff and about 18 inches of something else below. Make a frame . hang it to the joist over head by 4 strings, then it is complete, they all have them here. [This appears to be a plan for mosquito netting.] I enjoy the best of health. I hope you do the same. Am better pleased with this place than I thought I would. About 2 miles from the mouth of the river, where we boarded first, is a village that is called Newark. There is an Indian burial ground there with about 200 graves in it. There is a great many Indians about here of the Ottawa tribe. Singapore, our place, is coming on slowly but will become a great place no doubt. There is ... but 4 hands on the job. It lies about 1/2 mile by water from the lake and matchlessly beautiful. We board with one Ben Plummer, he lives about 2 miles from where we work. We are building a large house at present. when finished we will board on the ground. At present, our board and lodging is very good. I don't know whether Wilder pays 3 or 4 dollars each week. I don't know what they intend selling lots as yet. If they are reasonable, I think we must have about 2 of them. There has been 2 or 3 vessels in here since we have been here. ... Allegan is a [ ? ] ... they get all their goods up this river with considerable lots of goods landed here. I've learned they have a large steam boat that runs regular up & down. We have 2 small boats owned by Mr. Wilder. We can sail about... There is not a day but we see Indian bark canoe loads of Indians going in and out of our river. They ... are now going down the Lake to Mackinaw to spend the summers.. . Please send to me by the first chance ... that little box of camel hair brushes and pencils that lays on the garret at the foot of my bed for painting signs. My respects to Mother, Rebecca and all of you and may God bless you and keep you well. Chas. Hinkle --- 3 The Last Resident of Singapore by Ben Van Eyck [One source of written history in recent years has been the creative writing classes offered by many community education and Elderhostel groups. This piece, on the last days of Singapore, reads like one these efforts, just before the professor reads the paper and says, "Don't try to use fancy words and images. Just write it! " However, the source is more complicated than that. Peter Moerdyk worked for the Netherlands Information Agency, an archive gathering branch of the old Netherlands Museum in Holland in a special program during the Depression and continued this work for many years. This one-sheet description of the last days of Singapore was found in a collection of items concerning area history that he uncovered. Many of the items that he added to the archives were translated from the Dutch and this might have been one of them, cps indicated from the one "untranslatable " word. (One Dutch dictionary translates "muiberlenrommel " as 'junk collected that relates to the task at hand. ") William O. Van Eyck was an active historian in the Holland area. The only Ben Van Eyck who can be easily found in the records was a carpenter who was recorded in a 1920 Holland city directory.] Singapore, at the mouth of the Kalamazoo River, was once a place of great activity. The rich, fertile, vast Kalamazoo river basin constituted its hinterland. Lake Michigan, the second largest of the Great Lakes, and among the largest bodies of fresh water on the globe, played at its door. The rediscovered paradise of Michigan extended as the Horn of Cornucopia from up out of the boundless West. Pressure of over-population in Europe brought floods of new-comers, seeking homes and opportunities. And Singapore flourished. But Singapore had yet to reckon with the winds and the shifting sands. And these two have today completely covered the once thriving metropolis. Not a shed nor a shred - only a memory: as a dream in the drama of human aspiration, remains. Finally a single solitary three storied apartment, unoccupied, abandoned, still clung to the side of the encroaching avalanche of sand. And into the easily accessible ground floor of this building shifted shiftless Jim Nickols, the fisherman. Jim owned a sloop. Its bowsprit was hickory, battered and loose. Its spar was a "natural," and could bend as Jim could bend -- there was no cross grain in either. But the wind marched the hill. Into the building it entered. Jim had to move upstairs, and Jim bent with the winds' decree. Stool and bench and truck and "muiberlenrommel," hooks and traps and tools and boat repairs, well, they were his own, and with one's own a bachelor can do what he wants. But the winds never rest for long. In time this second story retreat of the lone fisherman came in turn of invasion. So Jim picked up his pack and baggage and again he moved upstairs. Grand was the view, but tedious was the ascent, and exertion was not to be commended, according to the philosophy of life of hermithood. Eventually the third loft was as easily invaded as the first, and the shovel remained coated with rust. Again Jim Nickols, as his counterpart, his boat mast, bowed to the inexorable and bent with the wind. And now his home is buried completely; and of the fisherman there is only this legend. --- 4 Cappy Brittain's Recollections of Singapore, collected by Yale Human Singapore's economic foundation was the hemlock tree. A lumber mill, operated by Dunning and Hopkins, was the core industry. In 1857 an economic panic made them insolvent and the firm was taken over by Johnson and Stockbridge. Stockbridge operated a lumber yard in Chicago, and the partners established a tannery on the lakeshore south of Douglas. This created a two-way payload for the sailing ships -- lumber to Chicago, and tan hides back to Singapore, where the lumber mill's by-product hemlock bark or tanbark) was stockpiled. A fleet formed: Schooners 100 to 150 feet long. Among them were the Johnson, the Stockbridge and the L.B. Coates. Singapore thrived. There was a big company store and two saloons. These in turn produced a cemetery located 100 or less yards northwest of the present foundations where Cook's caretaker's house stood. Stockbridge's son was buried in Singapore cemetery. Later Stockbridge moved to Kalamazoo and then on to Washington as a United States Senator. After his death Mrs. Stockbridge caused the son's body to be exhumed and removed to the Kalamazoo cemetery. She may have foreseen what the future held for Singapore. By 1890 all the residents were gone, and the few remaining buildings were yielding to the winds and shifting sands. As Shelley said, "... boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away." [Leonard S. "Cappy" Brittain, was the son of Lakes Captain R. C Brittain of Saugatuck. The son earned his own captain's papers and for several years sailed on the Great Lakes before taking over operation of the Saugatuck Chain Ferry from his father-in-law, Jay Myers. This brief account of an interview with Cappy was found in his papers by Mrs. Carl "Dolly" Bird, who cared for him in his later years.]