Three Additional Victims Aboard the Chicora -- a SDHS Newsletter Exclusive - In 2002 the Saugatuck-Douglas Historical Society had an exhibit at the museum called "Storm, Fire and Ice: Ship Wrecks of the Saugatuck Area." The exhibit featured the story of the Chicora a Graham & Morton steamboat which was last on lake Michigan in January of 1895, perhaps not far from Saugatuck. The Chicory had left Milwaukee early in the morning on Monday, January 21, just missing a message recommending that the vessel not leave that day because of a predicted storm an Lake Michigan. The boat pulled away from the dock and headed across the lake encountering a sudden massive storm and drop in temperature that iced in the east shore ports. There is some evidence that the boat may have reached Michigan waters, but was unable to get into a harbor because of snow and ice. Debris identified as from the vessel washed ashore between Saugatuck and South Haven, but no bodies. Despite an intense and well documented search in the weeks following the lass, and continued search for the remains of the vessel in the next 113 years, it has not, to this date, been found. When the boat went dawn there were 22 men aboard, 21 members of the crew, led by Captain Edward Stines, and one passenger, James Pearl, the village pharmacist. Because of the work that the Society has fostered concerning the Chicora, Dale Balsley of Delray Beach, Florida, coifed recently with a bit of family history. He said that as he reached senior citizen status he feared that he might pass on without relating the story and the information would be lost. "I've been wanting to do this for years just to set the record straight. There were three additional people aboard the Chicory that no one has ever written about. John J. Matteson (most accounts misspell his name Mattison) who was aboard the vessel as night watchman, let his three brothers sneak aboard because they had wanted to visit Milwaukee. All were lost when the boat went down, but a sister, the only member of the immediate family left, was reluctant to tell anybody because three of them were aboard illegally, and they didn't want this wrongdoing on the part of the night watchman to tarnish his memory. The 1874 census shows the Matteson family living at Canadaigua, Ontario County, New York. Parents were Charles, age 33, and Catherine, age 28, a full-blooded Canidaigua Indian. There were five children: Charles Franklin Matteson, born 1882 John J. Matteson, born 188G George Edgan Matteson, born 1884 Fred Harrison Matteson, born 1870 Lillian May Matteson, barn 1873 Lillian married Henry Rotor for Rotoan) Balsley in 1891 in St. Joseph County, Indiana and at the time of the tragedy was living on Miller Street in Benton Harbor which is where her brothers had probably gathered. Lillian Matteson Balsley was the great-grandmother of Dale Balsley, who called the Society for our help in setting the historical record straight. He said he never knew Lillian who died in 1912, but remembers that Lillian's son, his grandfather Ervin Clair Balsley, born in 189, related the story about how his mother had lost, not only the one brother officially listed as a member of the crew on the Chicory, but the other three brothers as well. Another tragedy passed down in the Balsley family is that Lillian Balsley's husband, Henry, was washed overboard from the steamer Frank Woods in 1896 between Chicago and Milwaukee. After her first husband's death, Lillian was married to a man named Foltz, who was a fireman in Indiana. About a month after the wedding he was killed in an accident involving a horse-drawn hook and ladder truck. Dale Balsley says that the family has a scrapbook with a newspaper clipping from the Bents Harbor newspaper recounting the death of night watchman, John Matteson. A# the back of the book the names of the rest of the Matteson bays, also fast }n that tragedy, have been added. Because the Chicory was outfitted and left quickly on the trip to Milwaukee, and no list of crew members was left ashore, far several weeks the number o# these lost was uncertain. Finally Graham & Morton after checking out severs( possible victims issued an official list o#' 23 men lost. In February Archibald Bentley, who was thought to have been a deckhand an the fateful voyage, was discovered cutter shingle belts n Jersey, Michigan, reducing the number of known victims to 22. Charles, George and Fred Matteson bring the list to 25.

This information was OCR text scanned from SDHS newsletter supplements. Binders of original paper copies are in the SDHC reference library.