t's a long time between Christmas and Easter for eleven- and twelve-year-olds in the snowy, frozen-thumb area of Michigan. May Whitby saw that in the almost blank faces of even her best students: Millie and Freddy Ferman, Marlene Hurst, and Dallas Snyder. The other students, from the good to the mediocre to the poor, demonstrated increasing amounts of ennui as they descended in category. Teaching was no longer fun with a room full of lethargic, uninterested kids. What could she do?
Millie had discussed her boredom with Marlene. Together they decided to suggest to Mrs. Whitby that they do class projects. They could look up stuff, make models, and maybe dress up like Indians or old-time farmers. Millie and Marlene knew who they wanted to be in their group and they knew what they wanted their project to be about.
May Whitby was enthused about the suggestion. She wondered why the girls had suggested the class work in groups of four but thought the girls wanted to work with their friends in the Distaff Quartet. When, however, Millie asked Dallas and Marlene asked Freddy, May had to struggle to suppress her smile. These girls, and perhaps the boys, were growing up. The boys had readily agreed.
Millie solved any hurt feelings with Carol Kratz and Elly Shooty by suggesting that those girls form a group and have a contest to see who had the best project. Carol and Elly had a problem since Freddy was already taken but Carol came up with Rick Milliken and Elly chose Danny Eicher. Both those boys were among the best students in the class but were not at all in the same boyfriend-material league as Freddy Ferman.
It was decided that the boys would research Huron County history and the girls would interview some of the older residents of the area. It worked out well. Mr. Snider took the boys to Bad Ax to visit the County Historical Archives. From what the boys knew, the area around Elkton was and always had been an American-German community. They did know that Indiana had been home for some Indian tribes, and that Indians had lived throughout all of North America. It had just never entered their eleven-year-old minds that Indians had lived on and hunted the very land on which they were now living.
They learned, to their surprise and annoyance, that the name 'Huron' had come from the French fur traders' word "hures" as used in the phrase "in elles hures," which means "what heads" because of the unusual custom of the Wyandotte and Huron Indians of arranging their hair in grandiose and very large coiffures.
The boys had always heard that the county had been named for the Huron tribe and this new bit of information was confusing and a bit annoying. They didn't want their county named after an ugly hairstyle. There was much consideration and debate. Freddy thought they should stick to the written history but Dallas recommended a more revisionist interpretation.
The compromise decision was that the French had, indeed, named the Huron Indians because of their hairstyles but the county was named after the tribe, not their hair. It just felt better to the boys that they were living in a land named after a noble people rather than an ugly hairdo.
The Indian names of the area were Skenchioetontius and Kandechiondius. Probably one of the names was Wyandotte and the other Huron, the boys decided. 'Onti' or 'Ondi' included in a word meant to "stick out" so both words meant "headlands or peninsula."
French maps in the 1700s noted the area as "Chasse des caster des ami de Francois" or "The beaver hunting grounds of the friends of the French."
The boys also learned that the French and Indian War changed things. The French controlled the area until 1763 when the Treaty of Paris ceded all French lands east of the Mississippi River to England. After the American Revolution, the United States government controlled the Huron County area. The French had traded with the Indians. The Americans drove them out. White settlers, many coming from Canada, began to assume ownership of land in Huron County which at that time also included the current two counties to the south, Sanilac and Tuscola. An act of the legislature in 1859 set the geographic boundaries that children knew in 1944.
Many German Mennonites migrated from Canada to Huron County in the 1880s. At that time, the flat, rich soil was completely forested. Freddy and Dallas had watched trees being cut down and stumps either dug out or blown out with dynamite but even when using dynamite pulling stumps was dangerous and very hard work. The boys looked out across fields that last summer had contained corn or wheat or barley or oats or navy beans or sugar beets. The tilling and planting had not been impeded by trees or stumps and they wondered at the grit and determination of the men who had toiled so hard to clear that land. It stirred their imaginations and made them proud of their heritage.
Part of the boys' research indicated that there were ten cities or towns named Elkton in the U.S. Theirs, Elkton, Michigan, was chartered in 1886. As with all the other towns named Elkton, there was a story of an elk that weighed a ton. In the case of Elkton, Michigan, the elk had entangled his antlers in the clothesline of the town founder's wife.
It turned out to be a great report. The girls had included many stories gleaned from older people who remembered the times in the late 1800s. Most were similar in content: very hard work, fingers and hands and even lives lost while pulling/blasting stumps. Food was not a major problem because the first thing cleared was space for a kitchen garden. Many edible plants grew wild along the Pinnebog River. Produce was plentiful and either dried, canned or, if harvested late enough, frozen in shallow pits dug just deep enough that the food remained in the frozen ground. During a normal winter, the ground usually froze to a depth of 30 inches.
The one story the girls had heard from many people and directly from the man himself was that of John L. Linameyer who, while walking the two-and-a-half miles through the woods from Elkton to his home, had an encounter with a black bear. The bear ambled out of the woods onto the trail and Mr. Linameyer was so surprised and frightened that he yelled loudly. The yell frightened the bear and it ran back into the woods. The girls had been told many versions of the story but they interviewed Mr. Linameyer themselves and chose to tell it as the man himself had told it to them. Even though he was quite old, he was lucid. His version was probably the most accurate.
When they presented their project, the ending got a laugh. Millie and Irene had made a bear costume for Freddy's terrier, Terry. Since it was too much work to make trees they used corn shocks for the "bear" to run out of. Dallas played John L. because Terry would mind Freddy and Terry, even though he made a tiny bear, did a great job. When Freddy sent him out, the dog barked and growled. Dallas yelled and the "frightened" dog/bear ran whining back into the corn shock woods. Mrs. Whtiby didn't select a best project but the kids did. Even Carol and Elly thought's Millie's and Marlene's was the best.