OVPA Blog

From the 1860’s to the early 1880’s in the spring, Passenger Pigeon flocks darkened the skies as they came north into Michigan nesting. They arrived in such enormous numbers that they broke the branches of trees. People didn’t even have to be a good shot to shoot your fill of them, just shoot in their general direction. Maria Dougherty and her many children were able to move into the Church and Mission School Manse in 1858. But there was no rest for the poor woman. Not only did she have to help out the teachers of the mission with the… Read More »

Two children, out for a pleasant afternoon boat ride one summer afternoon around 1945, noticed a ladder leaning up against the old abandoned house on Gull Island. They pulled up on the rocky beach and, being curious children, climbed up the ladder to see what they could see. The window at the top of the ladder was broken, so they climbed in. Quietly they crept through the bedroom, down the hallway and down the stairs which led to the living room of the old house. Halfway down the stairs they stopped. On the mantle of the stone fireplace was a… Read More »

Church Picnic ca. 1900 – Courtesy “Omena, A Place in Time” by Amanda Holmes Did the people just get up in church one Sunday morning during the sermon and storm out of the little white Presbyterian Mission Church because the sermon was boring, or too long, and then form a new church? Did they not like the preacher? Or was it just too tiresome for them to sit through the sermon twice, once in English, and then once translated into Anishinaabe (the local Indians’ language)? Why on April 18, 1886 did the people of the little hamlet of Omena decide… Read More »