The following is an excerpt from the Suttons Bay Sesquicentennial Celebration publication.
Laura Lindley’s book includes a profile of Cassimere Boischer & Harriet LeDuc who built their cabin on the shore of Suttons Bay back in 1855.
Boischer is remembered as Cassimere Dearwood, his last name begin a literal translation from the French.
He was issued the first patent, or deed, for land in this region; he operated the first sailing vessel out of Suttons Bay; and he was undoubtedly the first man in the community to entertain a national figure. No less a personage than General Sheridan called on him one day to discuss the smuggling that was prevalent in the upper lakes at that time. The General was then in command of a government boat that apparently was tracking down smugglers.
Born in Three Rivers, Quebec, on Jan. 25, 1827, he left home at the early age of 14 and spent several years as a saltwater sailor and later, on boats that plied the Great Lakes. When navigation season closed, he wintered in Detroit. It was during one of these off-season, in 1855, that he met and married Harriet LeDuc, a vivacious little French girl of 16 from across the river in Sandwich, Ontario.
By the time they reached Detroit, ice was forming in Lake Erie, so they wintered in that city. In the spring, Dearwood, then a married man, added his brother-in-law to the ship’s crew and resumed the voyage to New York City where De Belloi had business that consumed most of the summer. So it was October before the schooner returned to Detroit. De Belloi decided to go no farther that season, but Dearwood, eager to return to his land, picked up his bride and caught the last steamer for Mackinac Island. At the straits settlement they engaged a fishing boat to take them and their meager belongings to what was to be their homestead on Suttons Bay.
Here on Nov. 7, 1855 they set foot on their own land. With the help of an Ottawa Indian they immediately set about building their log cabin. A big cedar served as shelter while the cabin was being built. Title to the land came June 10, 1856. Curiously, the certificate bears the name of Cassimere DeRoot, instead of Dearwood. That was what the land office clerk understood the young sailor to say when he pronounced the Americanized version of his name with his French accent.
It was a lonely but happy winter the young couple spend in their new home. Their cabin had been made tight against the winter storms. Split hollow logs formed a good roof over their heads. Two small windowpanes admitted light. A packing case served as their first table. Other furniture was fashioned from the cedars about them.
They found the Indians friendly. At Peshawbestown, a Catholic Mission, which they attended, had been established 10 years earlier.
The obtained supplies at the trading pot operated by George Keller, one of our earliest pioneers in this region.
The Tom Lees had built a cabin just a few months earlier on adjoining property to the north. It was here that the young wife stayed when spring came and her husband returned to his boat. While staying in the cabin, her first child was born, Aug. 28, 1856. She was the first white girl born in the township. They called her Jane. She became Mrs. Joe Kuemin, Sr., who lived to be 77.
Deerwood hired a small crew of Indians to peel hemlock, more for the below deck ballast than for cargo although there was a good market for this bark at city tanneries.
The Dearwoods were among the first three or four families to settle in this community. The Suttons preceded them by just a year; Tom Lee by a few months; and perhaps Lorenzo Quackenbush was in this first group. Andrew Palmer and James Lee, for whom Le Point was named, came in 1858. About this time the Bates family moved in from Northport and settled near Quackenbush on land now included in the former Ferdinand Eckerle farm about a mile south of town.
The Dearwoods had nine children, including Jennie, Rose Belanger, Katherine Kiessel, Mary Richards, Joseph Dearwood among them.
Rose married Eugene Belanger in 1861. Eugene was a lumberman, farmer and miller. They owned and operated Belanger’s Grist Mill. A railroad track came right to the mill where they shopped out many bags of flour.
Rose and Eugene had 11 children.
