The main house at the Clovers ca. 1900 – Courtesy Omena Historical Society
The other half of the story of Jeannette and Sidney….is the story of our twice postmaster, Sidney Keyes.
Kalchik’s sawmill in Omena – Courtesy Joan Kalchik-TenBrock
Sidney was born in Branch County, Michigan in 1839, and was raised on a farm. In 1847 when Sidney was 8, his parents moved to Iowa where they remained for twenty one years. By 1868, when Sidney was 29 years old, he had watched his older brother William suffer the death of his wife not once but twice, (not until the age of nearly 50 did William finally marry yet again and start a third family), Sidney Instead came with his father William Keyes from Iowa to the Mission Farm in Omena which they operated for one year. Sidney then went to Northport, where he was employed as a clerk.
In 1876 Sidney started up a store or trading post about a mile south of Omena along the bay, perhaps with the help of his father. His dealings were in wood, ties, cedar posts, etc.
Sidney had been busy buying up timberland and by 1880 he had 110 acres south of Omena which adjoined Jeannette and her husband Hiram’s property, and with his other tracts in the county he had about 400 acres total. By 1881 he was overseeing the shipment and sale of Leelanau County lumber, and had “made his fortune in lumber”.
Omena Postmaster
From 1881-1887 Sidney was the Omena postmaster doing his job out of his trading post. Small town postmasters have their finger on the pulse of small villages, and Sidney was, during this time, accumulating a large circle of friends and business associates who were “staunch admirers of his unalterable integrity”. Sidney would have gotten to know Jeannette Ballard during this time.
Then Sidney’s life began to change. His father died in September of 1880, and in 1884 Sidney left Omena with his sister Mrs. Richardson to take his mother back to a sister in Iowa. By 1886 Sidney was back in Omena for some business changes. He and his business partner, C. H. Litney, dissolved their partnership. This is the year little Charles Ballard died leaving Jeannette alone with little Harry and his intellectual disabilities. Shortly afterward she went to stay with her mother in Rhode Island.
Postcard drawing of the Hotel Leelanau buildings and environs from Grand Traverse Bay ca. 1910 – Courtesy Omena, A Place In Time and Omena Historical Society
Jeannette and Sidney Marry
Time passes, and then in 1889 there is news that Jeannette and Sidney (now 49 and never married) are wedded on Christmas Eve in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Sidney, who is described as “a genial, whole-souled gentleman,” is offered a job as Superintendent of The Leelanau Hotel,(originally the old mission school up on Omena Heights), and …. in 1884 Sidney becomes Omena’s Postmaster again, for the second time.
Sidney and Jeannette spend the following years transforming his old trading post and home south of town into a “quintessential Victorian Summer Resort”…the Clovers, which opened in 1898. Located on a slight elevation overlooking Grand Traverse Bay it was appropriately named. According to “ a History of Leelanau Township”, “Its 22 acres were covered with clover blossoms, and the air was filled with their fragrance, plus, in springtime, the fragrance of the Siberian Crabapple blossoms, the lilacs, and the wild roses.”
Back in the 1880’s travel would have involved railroad or boat down the west of Lake Michigan to Milwaukee or Chicago, then railroad or horse and wagon from there on. It would have been a long and arduous trip! Yet Sidney and Jeannette traveled long distances many times trying to improved their lives…. and finally, they did!
Thanks to Lina Phillipich and Marsha Buehler for their research, The Traverse Region, published 1884, Traverse City Record Eagle 1917, History of Leelanau Township and Omena, a Place in Time