Musings & Ramblings about Bridgman By Tom McCort

I am often asked how I came to have so much knowledge about Bridgman history. I will give most of the credit to my mother, Sarah Ackerman McCort. From the time I was a little boy I would listen to her tell about her great-grand parents, George and Sarah Cowls Bridgman, who came from Massachusetts to the western reaches of Lake Township in 1856, and how they and other pioneers eventually carved a thriving community out of the wilderness, which came to be called Bridgman.

 

George and Sarah Bridgman’s daughter (also named Sarah) was my mother’s Grandma Ackerman, and Mom remembered her well. She was her grandma’s namesake and perhaps her favorite grandchild. Mother would sit by the hour, listening intently as her grandmother recounted stories of the early days in Bridgman, and Mom passed these stories on to me. One of the tales that I found particularly fascinating was her grandma’s recollection of being a 16 year-old girl, sitting on the beach one Indian Summer evening in October of 1871 and observing a red glow in the western sky; it was the Great Chicago Fire. And later, as a 24 year-old young lady sitting in the Congregational Church one Sunday morning in 1880, when a young man passed her a note asking her hand in marriage. The young man was Frank Ackerman and they were indeed married the following year.

 

My mother’s tutelage was the beginning of how I came to be so interested in my ancestors and their connection with Bridgman history. But my curiosity didn’t stop there. My Grandpa Ackerman also filled me in on a lot of information, such as how he and other men would dam the creek and cut ice in the winter, store it in the icehouse, then deliver it by horse & wagon in the summer. Grandpa also told me how he got into the nursery business, a subject that I will cover in detail later.

 

By the late 1940s, when I had grown old enough to walk or ride my bike up town by myself, I found to my delight that there were still lots of old-timers milling around in the stores, barber shops and on the sidewalks of the village. When other boys my age were doing the things most pre-adolescent boys do, I could likely be found deeply engaged in conversation with the likes of Nate Shuler, Allie Chauncey, Charlie Myers and many others, all of them well into their 70s or 80s at that time.

 

These men were a wealth of information about early Bridgman, and they were so appreciative of my interest in the subject (probably because no one else had the time or desire to listen to them), that they were more than happy to share it with me. I remember in particular Nate Shuler telling me about the time that my great-great grandfather, Charles Ackerman, who was a blacksmith, shoed a horse for him. Afterwards Nate hitched up the horse and drove across a wooden bridge, whereupon the nails on all four shoes broke off, leaving the horseshoes lying on the bridge. When Nate reported this to Mr. Ackerman, he examined his stock of nails and found that an entire keg was defective – he could break them in half with his fingers, and he had to discard all of them. Of course he re-shod Nate’s horse with good nails free of charge.

 

I thoroughly enjoyed talking with all of these old-timers as a boy, but Nate Shuler was probably my favorite. In his declining years, after I had grown to adulthood and not long before his death, I would stop by his home on South Church Street and visit with him. He was bed-ridden by that time and close to100 years old, but his mind was still sharp as a tack and we had several more good conversations about early Bridgman.

 

The Beginnings

 

(Editor’s Note: To have a real appreciation for how the Bridgman area appeared before it was logged off 150 years ago, we recommend a visit to Warren Woods State Forest, which is administered by Michigan’s State Park Service. It is the last known stand of virgin beech-maple forest in southern Michigan containing outstanding individual specimens of sycamore, beech, maple, and other northern hardwoods. Located approximately halfway between Bridgman and Three Oaks, it is well worth a visit).

 

George Bridgman was no kid when he arrived here from Massachusetts. Born in 1813, he was 43 years-old when in the fall of 1856 he, along with Warren Howe and Charles F. Howe, formed the Charlotte Lumber Company and set up a large steam-powered sawmill near the present intersection of Lake Street and Red Arrow Highway. But he had a vision, and before his death in 1895 Mr. Bridgman had lived to see the heavily forested wilderness of western Lake Township evolve from that sawmill into the thriving farm community which bore his name.

 

To facilitate the logging and milling operation, and the shipment of the final product by schooner, Mr. Bridgman and the Howes built a pier into Lake Michigan. A narrow-gauge railway was constructed, running from the mill to the lake, along with several branches into the timber, about seven miles of track in all. The rolling stock included the engine and about 33 cars. The area around the mill came to be known as Charlotteville after the company and in honor of Mr. Howe's wife, Charlotte. A few years later, in 1861, the government established a postal designation for Lake Township, calling it Laketon, but people living around the mill still considered themselves residents of Charlotteville. (Editor’s Note: The federal census of 1870 listed the area as Charlotteville).

 

In 1863 the mill was destroyed by fire. Two other mills were erected on the same site and shared the same fate, the last one being consumed in 1870. Since most of the virgin timber had been harvested by that time, this last destruction of the mill prompted the Howes to move on to other pursuits.

 

Anticipating the eventual depletion of the timber, George Bridgman had wisely diversified his holdings during the 1860s, gradually acquiring several hundred acres of land east of the mill, including nearly all of the present-day downtown area. He and other residents began engaging themselves in the growing of fruit trees, grapes and berry plants. However, the market for their produce was limited to what they could sell regionally due to the lack of transportation to more highly populated areas.

 

In 1869 Mr. Bridgman entered into an agreement with the Chicago Michigan & Lakeshore Railroad, granting the company a right-of-way through his land. In return for that, along with a reliable supply of water for their locomotives, the railroad agreed to erect and maintain a depot to serve thearea. Mr. Bridgman then platted and recorded a village near the depot site. Laying of track was completed in 1870 and when the depot was erected in 1871, the railroad company assigned the name “Bridgman” to the stop. The post office designation was officially changed from Laketon to Bridgman that same year. Because the mill and associated lumbering activities had come to an end, Charlotteville faded and assimilated with Bridgman.

 

The coming of the railroad immediately opened the huge Chicago market for the orchard and farm products of Bridgman and other towns along the track. The ensuing years saw Mr. Bridgman and other growers ship thousands of tons of their produce to this virtually insatiable market.

 

The Advent of Bridgman’s Nursery Industry

 

In 1888, farmer and community leader Ozro Baldwin observed that a small patch of his red raspberries had produced an unusually large number of sucker plants between the rows that year, and he conceived the idea of advertising the plants in a little farm paper. Short of ready cash at the moment, he borrowed ten dollars from a friend and sent a three-line ad along with the ten-dollar bill to Wilmer Atkinson, editor of the Farm Journal, Philadelphia, Pa. In due time he received orders for all the plants. In the spring of 1889 he mailed out several hundred folders quoting prices on strawberry and cane plants. This was the beginning of a business that was destined to become a million-dollar industry in Bridgman.

 

As with all successful ventures, others followed in the business. The next year Mr. Baldwin's uncle, Addison Weston, along with Charles Whitten who owned the adjoining farm, started in the mail-order nursery business. Mr. Weston died soon after and his nephew, Frank L. Ackerman (who was George Bridgman's son-in-law), inherited the business. While Baldwin, Whitten and Ackerman came to dominate Bridgman's early nursery industry, many other Bridgman families entered the mail-order nursery trade as time went on. Among them were the Stahelins, Essigs, Dasses and Rokelys. The Rambo and Krieger families, though not in the retail & mail-order trade, operated very successful wholesale nurseries that still exist in Bridgman today.

 

Other enterprising farmers along the track from St. Joseph to New Buffalo entered the nursery business as well – the Emlongs in Stevensville, the Zilkes in Baroda, the Westhausers, Keiths and Knights in Sawyer and the Stromers in New Buffalo, just to name a few. But, the nurseries of Bridgman by far led the pack in terms of the annual number of catalogs mailed out and the volume of nursery stock shipped. Bridgman was indeed the epicenter of Michigan’s nursery industry for more than 75 years.

 

(A note from Tom: At this juncture I will focus on the Weston Nursery and the Ackerman Nursery which are, as you will see, actually one and the same business although it went through various partnerships and name changes. My great grandfather, my grandfather and my uncles were the successive owners and I am therefore familiar with the details. The history of Bridgman’s many other nurseries can be found in this book, written by descendants of the respective owners).

 

As mentioned before, in 1891 my great-grandfather Frank L. Ackerman inherited the Weston Nursery from his uncle, Addison Weston. So as not to confuse customers on the Weston mailing list, Frank continued to operate the nursery and publish its catalog under the Weston name rather than the Ackerman name. Frank’s son, Robert Weston Ackerman, joined his father in the business in 1907. They continued operating the business as the Weston Nursery until 1922 when the last Weston catalog was published. By this time Frank had essentially retired, and son Robert had assumed all the major responsibilities of running the business.

 

In 1923 Robert Ackerman joined with Messrs. O.A.D. Baldwin and R.C. Whitten in combining the Baldwin, Whitten and Weston nurseries into a new business venture called the Baldwin, Whitten & Ackerman Nurseries. Their offices & packing facility was located in the building later occupied by Pemco (now ICG Berrien), which still stands. In June of 1926 Mr. Ackerman and Mr. Whitten severed their connection with the Baldwins and formed the Whitten & Ackerman Nurseries. This enterprise continued successfully until 1939 when that partnership ended.

 

(Another note from Tom: When I was a youngster I asked Grandpa Ackerman why these various partnerships didn’t seem to work out. Without mentioning names and with absolutely no trace of malice in his voice, he kind of brushed off my question by saying that it just seemed like there were always too many guys sitting around the office wearing business suits and not enough guys out in the fields wearing bib overalls. As far as I know these business split-ups were amicable and all of the principal characters remained friends throughout the years).

 

The spring of 1940 saw the publication of the first Ackerman Nursery catalog. By that time Robert’s son, Robert Weston Ackerman, Jr. had been working with his father in the business for several years, and when Robert, Jr’s younger brother Bill came home from the war he, too, joined them in the business.

 

The war years were a great boon to the nurseries. People were earning a lot of money in war-related industry, but they had few places to spend it due to the shortage of goods. The production of automobiles, washing machines, refrigerators and other durable products had been suspended for the duration of the war. One commodity not in short supply was nursery stock, and folks spent large sums of money on the landscaping of their homes.

 

After the war, the returning veterans were marrying, building new houses and starting families at a record pace. It was the beginning of the baby boom, which lasted through the 1950s, well into the 60s. This bode well for the nursery industry because each new home required nursery stock for the landscaping. My Uncle Bill told me that during those years the Ackerman Nursery would typically send out 300,000 catalogs in the spring and another 200,000 in the fall. If you were to conservatively calculate that each catalog, on average, returned an order for just a dollar or two, you wouldn’t have to be a mathematical wizard to get a rough idea of annual cash flow – and that didn’t include income from the “walk-in” trade at the packing house and later at the garden center. That was a lot of jack sixty years ago. Come to think of it, that’s a lot of jack today.

 

The Ackermans built a new office complex in the early 1950s, and a few years later they were one of the first nurseries in Berrien County to conceive the idea of opening a garden center. These buildings are now occupied by the Southwestern Medical Clinic.

 

Grandpa Ackerman passed away in 1956, after nearly a half-century in the nursery business and almost exactly 100 years after his grandfather, George Bridgman, came to the area. His sons Robert and Bill continued in the business for many years. In the 1970s they developed and built Shawnee Mobile Home Park, at the time one of the most modern and attractive parks of its kind in Berrien County. Because this new venture consumed so much of their time and energy, they gradually exited themselves entirely from the nursery business.