The Tragedy at Shoepac Creek is story of early Germfask and Portage Townships, a tale of pioneers, and isolation and very bad luck. Although it was very well known in its day, by the mid-20th century the story had become almost forgotten. Many details were lost altogether, while others were altered by fading memories, or combined and conflated with other, similar stories.
On May 10, 1962, The Newberry News ran the following short story:
Seek Caretakers of Indian Grave – On Shoepac creek, which empties into Shoepac bay in the southwest part of Whitefish lake, there is an ancient grave of an Indian woman. On the grave marker, enclosed in glass. Is the story of the woman whose bones lie beneath. According to the story on the marker, the woman, accompanied by her two children, were traveling on a search for her husband. They fell ill of diphtheria and the mother brought water to her dying children in her shoepacs. This, it is assumed, is where Shoepac creek and Shoepac bay got their name.
Conservation Officer Alex McLean, on a recent trip through that area, found the grave marker had been used as a target by gunners, and was deteriorating rapidly. The grave has apparently been kept up by a person or persons unknown to the conservation department, and the conservation department would like to get in touch with them to the end that the grave site and its story may be preserved.
But what the writer of that piece did not realize was that the story had already been preserved, and not that long ago, either, thanks to a historian named Emmett William Kiebler. Mr. Kiebler had combed through land records, scoured newspapers, and interviewed the oldest residents, tugging at memories that were more than 70 years old. He related what he learned in his booklet The Lone Survivor, as related to the history of Germfask Township, which had been published in 1956, 76 years after the fact. (read it here https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/003117118).
The story concerns the sad fate of the Wilson family: the parents, George Sr. and Mrs. Wilson (whose name has been forgotten), and their three children: George Jr. (13), Peter (10), and Sarah (7). The family were Canadian immigrants to the U.S. and had filed for a homestead in the spring of 1881, claiming land on the southeast side of Kennedy Lake (called that today, anyway).
Mr. Kiebler says that George Wilson probably helped to build the railroad in 1881, and later worked at McMillan at “no. 2 kiln” for the “Northern Cooperage Company.” (The Northern Cooperage did operate camps in McMillan… but not until 1904, as far as I can tell. This looks like an instance of time altering memories, as I have mentioned before.) In any case, after the railroad was finished George Wilson continued to live and work at McMillan, while his wife and children moved out to the homestead in the spring of 1882.
Friday, June 16, 1882, their neighbor, Thaddeus Mead, stopped by. He lived about a mile and a half to the south, and was returning home with a load of seed potatoes. George Junior was going to go along and help plant them.
The two set off from the Wilson’s home, and Mrs. Wilson and the younger children accompanied them for a little while down the path. After about a half mile later Peter asked his mother if they could cut east and have a look at a nearby lake (probably what is called Lost Lake today, but also possibly Crescent Lake, which was also sometimes called “Lost Lake”). Mrs. Wilson agreed.
George Junior and Mr. Mead continued on south, while she and the other two children disappeared into the woods.
Young George seems to have stayed for a few days at Mr. Mead’s place, because alarm was not sounded until Sunday, when the Wilson cabin was discovered empty. Someone went to McMillan to fetch Mr. Wilson, and twenty-five neighbors formed a search party that spent the next two weeks combing the wilderness. They found nothing. They heard nothing. Not until yet another two weeks had passed.
Mrs. Wilson, Peter, and Sarah had missed Lost Lake, and became quite lost. They continued on southeast, trudging through the swampland until they hit another body of water, the south side of Shoepac Lake (also known as “Cranberry Marsh”). Day after day they followed the lake they hist Shoepac Creek and there they stopped as Peter had become very ill.
Mrs. Wilson and the children had traversed through 3-4 miles of marsh and muck. Sources differ as to where exactly they stopped. It was either at the river head, where Shoepac Creek begins or at the river mouth, where it ends at South Manistique Lake. There are arguments for both places, but most people think it was at the beginning.
Regardless, Peter was unable to continue, so Mrs. Wilson (not much better herself) made a shelter a little way away from the creek out of “boughs, bark, and part of her dress.” There they stayed, praying for rescue, eating grass, green cranberries, bird eggs, and one raw squirrel. They collected water from the creek, marking the path between it and the shelter way with bits of clothing and Mrs. Wilson’s apron. Twenty-nine days passed.
Then a Lakefield man, a Mr. Patch, was working near South Manistique Lake near to Shoepac Creek when he heard a scream. Having not heard of the missing woman, he assumed it was some kind of ferocious wild animal and left immediately. Back in Lakefield, he spoke to David Terry, who had heard about the missing family. The next morning he and two other men set out for the area, where they discovered little Sarah at the creek, filling a shoe full of water to take back to her mother.
They returned with her to the shelter and there found Mrs. Wilson, who had only just died.
The body of Peter Wilson was there too. He had died three days earlier, and Mrs. Wilson had given all of their remaining food to little Sarah. Even so, she only weighed 29 pounds and was taken back to David Terry’s home to recover. Peter and Mrs. Wilson’s bodies were either buried right there, or sent back to their old home in Canada. The tragedy was printed up in newspapers all around the Midwest. The story was sufficiently horrific and well-known enough for mapmakers to include a reference to it on an 1884 map.
The remaining Wilsons did not return to their homestead. They did stay in the area, but only for a little while. Initially, the pioneer community rallied around. Ezekiel Ackley’s family took in George Junior, while William Allen took in Sarah.
Meanwhile, Mr. Wilson had Sarah’s story written up and printed along with her photograph, which he then had her sell to passengers when the train stopped at McMillan. Seems rather cruel to me, but they probably thought they were being kind. In any case, it didn’t lost long. Train authorities revoked their permission when they discovered Mr. Wilson spending all the proceeds on liquor.
It is thought that then Mr. Wilson took his children back to Canada.
E.W. Kiebler, researching in the 1950s, was unable to trace the family further, although he believed that little Sarah Wilson grew up to join the circus as a sideshow performer… whose job it was to tell her horrific tale over and over and over again. Mr. Kiebler reports that George Tuttle was said to have seen her, when the circus stopped in Newberry once. Sarah was said to have been about 40 years old then, so if true, this was around the year 1915.
Unfortunately, the names Sarah, George, and Wilson are unbelievably common. Unfortunately, no one remembered Mrs. Wilson’s first name. Unfortunately, having moved in 1881 the Wilson family missed both the 1880 U.S. Census and the 1881 Canadian Census. Even with all of the resources of the 21st century, I was unable to trace them further either.
In 1947 a group of people (Mr. Kiebler does not say who) erected a monument on the south side of Long Point, “a few yards east” of the mouth of Shoepac Creek. This was to be not only in honor of Mrs. Wilson, but also “all the Pioneers of Upper Michigan”
And less than 15 year later fools with guns were taking potshots at it.
