The Mary Shurtleff collection consists of documents and images relating to Cross Village and its inhabitants. The collection is arranged in 3 series: Business records, Other collected documents, and Visual materials.
Cross Village is located in northwest Emmet County, Michigan. Over the course of its history it has been variously known as Waganakisi, Anamiewatigoing, L'Arbre Croche, Old Arbre Croche, LaCroix, and Cross Village, after its namesakes, a crooked tree and a large cross in the village.
The Ottawa inhabited the village beginning in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. A Jesuit mission was also established in the village, though abandoned in the late eighteenth century. In the nineteenth century Catholic priests once again served in the village including Father Francis Pierz (1830s), Father Ignatius Mrak (1840s to mid-1850s), Father Seraphim Zorn (late 1850s), Father Loius Sifferath (1860s), and Father John Bernard Weikamp (1855-1889).
Treaties between the United States Government and the Ottawa and Chippewa (several of whom had moved to Cross Village sometime after 1830) resulted in them being granted tracts of land in the area during the mid-to-late nineteenth century. One early initiative was to move the village from the shore to the bluff. In the late 1840s, several Ottawa pooled their resources and gave their chief, Joseph Nawimashkote "full power to purchase land for use at the cross, that we may own it in common" (Shurtleff, 1963, p. 11). Upon his death, the land was to be redistributed to those who had contributed to its acquisition.
Members of the Shurtleff family first moved to Cross Village in 1870. Captain John Wagley, who himself had come to Cross Village in 1865, had established the first district school in Emmet County and engaged John S. Shurtleff to teach there. Two of Shurtleff's sons, Orville Homer and William Melville, went into business together in Cross Village and built a store in 1883. Mary Belle Shurtleff was William's daughter. She wrote a history of Cross Village Old Arbre Croche, published in 1933, 1945, 1955, and 1963, and also collected various historical documents related to the village.
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Resources:
Shurtleff, Mary Belle. Old Arbre Croche : a factual and comprehensive history of Cross Village, Michigan. [Michigan : s.n.], 1963. Available in HathiTrust, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015071304110
"Village of Cross Village." In The Traverse Region, Historical And Descriptive, With Illustrations of Scenery And Portraits And Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men And Pioneers, 141-144. Chicago: H. R. Page, 1884. Available in HathiTrust, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/miun.bad0776.0001.001
Shurtleff, Benjamin. Descendants of William Shurtleff San Francisco: R. L. Shurtleff, 1976. Available in HathiTrust, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/wu.89066307901
