The Pines (now Deer Creek Inn & Cottages) & The West Shore Ferry
300 Ferry Street, Douglas, Michigan
Architectural Classification: Folk Revival (vernacular)
Present owner: Deer Creek Inn & Cottages [Kelly and Kevin Sabourin]
Builder: William Tisdale
Date: 1877
Physical: renovated with careful attention to original. Several outbuildings.
Significance: setting among one of Michigan’s premier late 19th century fruit growing landscapes, this excellent example of a local folk Victorian home was the home of an important local builder and later home of a ships captain and family which operated a Kalamazoo Lake ferry. More recently it is operated as a well-known inn. Tisdale and property connected to the writings of James Fennimore Cooper who was a friend of the family.
Recommendation: Obtain listing on Michigan Register of Historic Buildings
William Graham Tisdale. [ b. Connecticut, 1838 / d. 1907]. Married Hannah Matilda Mortenson (b. 1847) in 1866; children: Electa, Matilda, George, Susan, Sarah, William. Built Ferry Street home in 1874.
How William Graham Tisdale came to settle in Douglas in the 1870s is unknown, although his surname suggests that he may have been a part of the Graham family clan migration which came here as part of the Dutcher family (of Douglas) from Pennsylvania (there was a well known builder/farmer by the name of Hugh Graham in Douglas—on Union Street (the reconstructed barn).
William married Hannah Mortenson in 1866. William was a builder and built a very large classical revival house on the hill opposite now known as Tower Marine (destroyed, appears to have been one of the largest homes in the area) for his daughter Susan’s father-in-law, the successful Captain Benjamin W. Davis. Davis was a ship owner who specialized in carrying locally built shingles across Lake Michigan to Chicago. Like many ship captains, he invested in orchards, and hence operated a 22-acre orchard farm on the hill in Douglas where Tower Marina is now located.
The shipping trade was dangerous (but profitable) and many local ‘captains” put their profits into land — particularly fruit growing. Tisdale built a house for himself at the bottom of the same hill. He appears to be one of the area's major builders, building a new wooden bridge that connected Saugatuck and Douglas (1874), a mill for the Dutcher family, a house for Captain William Plummer, located at 456 Blue Star Highway, Douglas (ca.1875) and a tanning factory for the Gerber family (who would later invent the famous baby food here in Douglas) at the at bottom of the hill and at the curve at south Water Street in Douglas.
• Daughter Electa Tisdale Married James Campbell (“Campbell Road” family that built what became “Valentine Lodge”), and moved into the Tisdale home at some point and operated a ferry till 1914. Campbell’s widow Electa took over the ferry until she sold it to her brother George Tisdale.
• Son George Tisdale became a successful ships captain himself, and then settled into the family home. In retirement he carried on the family motor-boat ferry service (two of his boats were named “The West Shore,” and “Isobel”) across the Lake Kalamazoo for passengers, particularly for summer families who lived on Douglas’ Lake Shore Drive who sought easy ways to get across to Saugatuck without a motor car over the bridge. Captain George sailed the Great Lakes and his letters indicate, as the case of many ship captains, that he acquired a rather broad world view. On one of his shipping jobs he spent time at the World’s Fair in Buffalo, New York. My guess is that one of the reasons Saugatuck-Douglas has been well-known for welcoming diversity is that there were so many ship captains around who had seen the many faces of American society.
• Mrs. Tisdale’s father was Lieutenant William White, a Civil War veteran. In 1919 the Saugatuck newspaper reported that Lieutenant White and his daughter and here husband hosted an ‘old soldiers’ (Civil War Vets) gathering at the Tisdale home. “At each plate was a silk souvenir necktie in remembrance of the Custer Brigade of which Mr. White and William H. Dunn were members. The banquet featured the army rations of 1861-65 consisting largely of coffee, beans, crackers and doughnuts gotten up and served in such an attractive style by Mrs. Tisdale as to leave the guests under the impression they were partaking of a six course dinner.” [Commercial Record. October 8, 1919. Cited in Kit Lane, Lincoln’s Ready Made Soldiers. Saugatuck Area Men in the Civil War. Saugatuck-Douglas Historical Society Publication, 2005.]
• Francis Tisdale Overton, granddaughter of George Tisdale, claimed that James Fennimore Cooper, the American writer, was a friend of George Tisdale’s, and the creek running through the property was the creek James Fennimore Cooper described in his book, Oak Openings.
• The Saugatuck-Douglas Historical Society Archives holds a collection of several hundred letters of George Tisdale, written to his family while on his shipping excursions.
Reserarch courtesty of James Schmiechen, Saugatuck Historian, March, 2008.
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