by Glenn Hendrix
Isle Royale is a large island in Lake Superior and is the most remote place in the eastern United States. It became National Park in 1935. This photograph was taken by my grandfather Glenn Gillespie in 1930 at Chippewa Harbor on Isle Royale. The musicians are members of the Johnson family, who fished and had a small resort at Chippewa Harbor. Violet Johnson is playing fiddle, her father Holger is playing accordion, and Violet’s sister Vivian is playing banjo. Violets’ mother is in the background and the boy is Violet’s brother Kenyon Johnson. If you look carefully you can see their dog Togo peeking over Violet’s shoulder. The Johnson’s were Scandinavians and played many schottisches.
Dorthothy Simonson was a teacher at Chippewa Harbor in 1932-1933. Simonson’s Diary of an Isle Royale School Teacher (Isle Royale Natural History Association) documents her life in that isolated place and time. On December 1, 1932, Simonson tells of a trip by small boat on Lake Superior from Chippewa Harbor to Rock Harbor, a dance at Rock Harbor Lodge, and the return to Chippewa Harbor. The following is by Dorothy Simonson from her diary.
It was such a lovely day that the folks decided to pay their final visit of the year to Rock Harbor. As it is necessary, on Isle Royale, to take advantage of the weather, we agreed to take the day off, and all go.
After we started, we found a much heavier sea than appeared from here, but we kept on rolling and swaying from side to side. Just before we reached Saginaw Point, the skiff broke loose and we had to lie in the trough of the sea, after making a sharp turn almost on the side of the boat. But everyone sat still and said nothing, so we managed to get righted and proceed. By this time, the sky had turned gray and lowering, and I, for one, felt like a mighty insignificant atom in the scheme of things, pitching and tossing in a twenty foot cockleshell on Lake Superior, whose giant fist seemed to pick us up and shake us as a baby shakes its rattle!
We reached Rock Harbor about 11 A.M. and went over to the old Light House where we visited until 3 o’clock. Vivian and I climbed up in the old tower – the view from there is gorgeous. The men decided they’ed like to go on to Rock Harbor Lodge and visit the caretaker and his family there, so we loaded everyone on to the boat and started out.… We picked up three more passengers at Tourist Home [a small resort on Davidson Island] and went on to the Lodge. It was beautiful traveling through the December dusk over a calm harbor, with the snow-coated trees looking ghostly and vague, as darkness swiftly fell. We finally arrived at the Lodge and there they decided to go over to the dining room and have a dance. Violet and I furnished the music on a worn-out violin and an awful old piano. We played Scandinavian schottisches galore! It was a great dance – the men all wore their hats, lumber-jackets and rubber boots. The little kids all bawled when their mothers danced!
We started home at 11:00, and when we ran in to Tourist Home…. Otto Olson … misunderstood the signals and ran the boat on shore. We all had to move to the back of the boat, and then Mr. Johnson tried to get the boat off the rocks. Otto tried to handle the rope, and he and Mr. Johnson had a fight while we all huddled in the back of the boat.…Mr. Johnson finally squelched Otto and got the boat going. We dropped the rest of the crowd at the Light House and turned on and out into the lake. It was still rolling, but not so noisily or what-have-you as in the morning. We had a pleasant trip home and arrived here, singing There’s No Place Like Home, at 1 A.M.… I was so glad to be there!
Dorothy Simmons DIary
Isle Royal’s isolation in the days before recorded music encouraged other families to play music. The John Henry Malone family operated the Menagerie Island lighthouse from 1879 to 1912. An early photograph from the Isle Royale National Park Archive shows three members of the Malone family playing clarinet, fiddle and coronet, with a reed organ in the background.
I played for a dance for park service staff and friends on Isle Royale in 1980, almost 50 years after Violet Johnson and Dorothy Simonson played schottisches at Rock Harbor Lodge, but I flew on a sea plane in the summer instead of crossing Lake Superior in a small boat in December. Our band played on the dock at Mott Island, the administrative and service center for the Park. We had no sound system, but for the caller we managed to hot wire a microphone into an old movie projector. The stars were beautiful and a huge shooting star streaked across the sky and broke into pieces as I fiddled. We also had a great dance, but the park superintendent was concerned that the noise would disturb the nearby wilderness area! I suppose it did, but the moose and wolves did not complain.
