Section 36 of Dover Township

Shortly after 1900, William John Crego and Asel Alonzo Crego began buying up timber lands in Otsego County. They went into the lumbering business as the Crego Brothers. The brothers owned 740 acres in Dover Township and they did contract cutting for other landowners.

Part of William's holdings was 40 acres, described as the SE 1/4 of the NE 1/4 of Section 35, Dover Township. The east side of that property lies along the present Kubacki Road a quarter of a mile south of Sparr Road. At that location a farm was established for the care of logging horses. MCRR's track ran along the west boundary of the 40 acres. A Michigan Central Railroad section house was located there, on a spur off the main track that extended about half a mile across section 36.

By 1905, the area became known as Cregoville. There never was a post office, so it had no official recognition. The nearest post office was at Quick, about 2½ miles south on the railroad.

The 1910 census lists Victor Birdsall as one of the MCRR section foremen, along with Angus Gramburk. They lived in the section house with their families. Workers for MCRR also could have lived there.

Railroad maintenance crews were stationed on spurs and on the right of ways, under the supervision of a section foreman. The crews had the responsibility for maintaining a section of track about 5 miles in length. They used handcars as transportation for men and supplies to inspect and repair the track.

In looking at the 1910 Dover Township census in the immediate vicinity of the section house, there is a boarding house or bunkhouses for a lumber camp that accommodates 29 laborers for the lumber company, the head of household being Peter McMillan, a lumber camp cook. It is otherwise difficult to know just exactly how much of the census was a part of Cregoville.

The community would have consisted of a few houses, a boarding house or two, perhaps some log cabins and crude shelters covered with tar-paper. There was a school house that held classes six months of the year. Daniel and May Reid owned the 40 acres just north of Crego's, where they had a boarding house and saloon (this would be the property directly west of the cottage). In 1910 the school teacher, Miss Ula Gold lived in the boarding house. There was a shingle mill at Cregoville. A general store was located at Quick where supplies could be purchased.

Fast forward to the late 20th Century. Cregoville and the lumber industry have long since disappeared, the miles of rail lines have been removed, and in the north-west corner of Section 36, adjacent to where the Cregoville saloon once stood, is a cottage. Built in 1989 on an undeveloped 40 acres with a small pasture that separates swamp and hardwoods, the land likely went untouched since the ownership of lumberman Joseph W. Fordney, who died in 1932 after representing Michigan’s 8th congressional district for 24 years.

Thirty-four years have now passed since the construction of the cottage. But still, after dozens of Christmas and Thanksgiving holidays, golf weekends and lazy summer vacations, the south-east wood lot stayed dormant. Largely unexplored and untouched. Yet after studying the history and rail maps of the by-gone lumber days, and learning of the activity from a hundred years earlier, I believed treasures were waiting to be discovered. Buried deep in the muck, under ferns and rotting wood, artifacts from an earlier time might be found. Then, in early May of 2023, after the snow melt but before the cover of thick vegetation once again concealed the forest floor, I stumbled upon a relic.

A brown beer bottle with Huebner Toledo Breweries Co. Toledo Ohio carved into the glass. At the bottom of the bottle, the phrase ‘Pure without drugs or poison’ - a phrase used during the temperance movement of the early 20th Century.

What started as the The Toledo Brewing Company in 1869, eventually became the Huebner Toledo Breweries Company in 1903, named after John Huebner who joined the company as a brewmaster in 1877 and who then became president in 1893. The company soon became the largest brewery in the region, with an annual capacity of 500,000 barrels.

Despite the company’s dominance, they soon encountered a nearly unbeatable foe – the Temperance Movement. In 1908, the Rose Law was passed, under which counties in Ohio could vote themselves dry. By 1909, the plant produced only 175,000 barrels annually. Ten years later that number would fall to zero. On October 28, 1919, Congress passed the Volstead Act - a nationwide prohibition on alcohol, effectively shutting the doors on the Huebner Toledo Breweries Company.

I feel it’s safe to assume the bottle discovered on the forest floor in the north-west corner of Section 36, was enjoyed by a lumberman more than one hundred years ago. Back when soldiers were returning from the Great War and Woodrow Wilson was negotiating peace in Paris. When Babe Ruth was earning his fame with the Boston Red Sox, and close to a decade before electronic television made its debut. Question is, what other treasures of our past lay hidden below the forest floor?