Life Back Then: Ladders, Liquor, and the Gales of November

Quirky small-town notes from the 1890s

From The Chelsea Standard, November 28, 1895

The small towns of Washtenaw County were never short on drama or humor. In one week’s paper, Milan and Maybee squared off over something as lofty as fire ladders. The Milan Leader insisted the fire chief had “full control” of them, while the Maybee Courier hinted that the rival editor had perhaps been “climbing that ladder, too.”

Meanwhile, the Saline Observer reported that West Main Street was lively on Saturday afternoon when “three old silverheads from the country” overindulged and began “playing the monkey act” in the street, down on all fours and in other “unaccountable positions.” The editor sighed, “What else can we expect of the boys when the old heads set the examples?”

Saline redeemed itself, though, with a bit of local pride. Detroit stockyard records showed the town as Michigan’s top shipping point for livestock, with “six or more buyers full of business and push,” the paper boasted.

Farther north, the Chelsea Standard told of grimmer scenes. A furious November gale tore across the Great Lakes, wrecking ships and claiming sailors’ lives. Four bodies washed ashore near Sarnia, and wreckage littered Michigan’s coast from Charlevoix to Bay City. The paper called it a “wild time on the lakes,” with storm-battered boats limping into Chicago and lifesaving crews battling “perilous missions of mercy.”

The Chelsea Standard archives can be found online at https://www.chelseadistrictlibrary.org/