Wallin Tannery in Saugatuck - located where the Butler Hotel stands now.

Good

Status: OK Status By: Mary Voss Status Date: 2014-10-27

SDHS newsletter insert, page 162: GOSHORN LAKE Almost Christmas. There should be some sort of fun decided the boys who lived in Dingleville near Saugatuck Tannery. Alfred Wallin, will Dune and the other boys about 14 years old decided a skating party was called for. They wanted some place better than the pond in Goshorn Creek above the tannery. How about a mile or so up the creek to Goshorn Lake, where there was real space to skate. On December 22nd the morning was cold. Cold enough to freeze hard. Would Goshorn Lake ice be frozen hard enough? Alfred and Will decided to check it out. Alfred's father, Franklin B. Wallin, was in Chicago on business, so they checked with his mother, Orcelia Tanner Wallin. She was sick in bed, had been for two weeks, but was getting better. She said check with Uncle Luman Tanner. He thought it would be all right So they grabbed their skates and took off. The ice was really good in most places. By Christmas it would be ready for the boys to skate all afternoon. They decided to go ahead with the party. Alfred turned to look at will and backed into a "Spring hole". He was a good swimmer, but the water was very cold. Every time he tried to pull himself up on the ice it broke. Will grabbed some branches and tried to reach out to Alfred. The ice on the edge of the hole still broke and broke. Nothing seemed to work. Alfred went under. Will ran back to the Wallin home for help. Alfred's mother got up when will came with the dreadful news and organized the men in the tannery to go to the lake to recover the body. They rushed to Goshorn Lake and found the big hole where the boys had struggled. Then they found Alfred's body and brought it back to the house. When Alfred's father came home from Chicago the family was in mourning. Alfred's mother became much more ill and never recovered from the shock. She died January l, l 874 sad to be leaving her "poor little boys" Luman and Van. Alfred and his mother were buried in the Wallin lot in the Saugatuck Cemetery. Lizzie, Alfred's big sister, was 15. She took on the job of mother. She tried hard, but it was too much for a young lady ready to go to college. At the end of the next summer Father was married to Hannah Chadbourne, good friend of Mother and school teacher of the boys. Van remembered he and Luman cried all through that somber affair: Having a stepmother was hard for Lizzie. That fall she went off to Olivet College. Luman and Van became very close buddies, sleeping in the same bed, fighting some times, but always together. That story is told in the book THE MICHIGAN WALLINS by Van A. Wallin, Alfred's little brother. It has also been told in the Wallin family as a warning to stay off thin ice. It was probably the reason Van's grandson Franklin W. Wallin, Jr. was so scared of a scolding, that after he fell through the ice he took his pants off and dried them by an open fire. It also scared Van's granddaughter Frances Wallin Shaw so much she never went near Goshorn Lake. Not even now 126 years later.

The Michigan Wallins By Van A. Wallin (Published by Author) 1930 The subtitle of this volume is "A History from Stratford-on-Avon 1791 to Wallinwood-on-the-Grand 1933." Between those two places the Wallin family stopped in the Kalamazoo Valley where from 1853 to 1881 they operated tanneries. The largest was one at Wallinville (or Dingleville). The site of the factory is now the fifth green at Clearbrook Golf Course. The large square Wallin family home built in 1859 is still standing nearby. Later the Wallins purchased the Douglas tannery and there was also an operating agreement with a facility located at Plummerville. It is one of the most interesting chapters in the book because most of what happened in the Kalamazoo Valley was personally experienced by the author, a son of Franklin B. Wallin. The family was active in the founding of the Saugatuck Congregational Church and Van's description of school days at the old Union school and later at Saugatuck High School is vivid and detailed. He describes a childhood near the millpond and the games that the children played in the woods. Also the great fires of 1871 and how he and his brother fed the workers who stayed up all night to keep the tannery buildings and woodpiles from lighting from the sparks all around them. When Van was still in grade school his elder brother fell through the ice in Goshorn Lake and was drowned. The shock of the accident that took her eldest son brought about the death of his mother a few days later. A copy of the book was given to the Society by Frances (Wallin) Shaw of Grand Haven. source: SDHS newsletter insert, page 175