TROTOM "First Thursday" ZOOM
programs for the 2024-25 off-season
Museum members will once again be able to enjoy monthly history programs on the Zoom platform. As the name implies, our "First Thursday" programs take place at 7 PM on the evening of the first Thursday of each month from December through April.
Our lineup for this offseason looks like this:
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December 5-- Werner Graf talked about a new museum he's trying to bring to our area, to house the extensive collection of comic-book art he's been collecting since childhood. Whoever your favorite super-hero is, Werner had illustrations of them going back decades. POW! BAM! ZAP! This program was fun.
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January 2-- Zada Bellew and Cecil Wilson of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi showed and told us about the extraordinary life of Leopold Pokagon, the local chief who kept his people from being uprooted and moved en masse to Kansas. Pokagon got the Michigan Supreme Court to back up his effort to allow his people to stay in this area.
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February 6-- Suzanne Levy took a look back at her ancestor Joshua Chatterson. He was a Civil War soldier, a Three Oaks merchant, a local politician, and a fellow with a sharp wit. Three Oaks native Suzanne, a crack researcher, and came up with some great nuggets that illuminated life on the frontier for folks like Chatterson.
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March 6-- TROTOM Vice President Nick Bogert talked about the history of motion pictures in our area, with a particular focus on the Elm Street theater known over the decades as the Fairyland, Lee's Theater, The Oak, and the Vickers Theatre. Nick had the benefit of exhaustive research done by Priscilla Lee Hellenga, a descendant of Frank and Adah Lee, who built the cinema at 6 North Elm back in 1939. Jon Vickers and Bill Lindblom joined in to talk about their stints running Three Oaks' movie theater.
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​April 3-- As always, our last First Thursday will look ahead, on the new exhibits that will debut at the museum in May 2025. That includes a major display on local doctors, from frontier practitioners like New Buffalo's Reuben Pierce and Three Oaks' Hiram Wilcox right up to 20th century mainstays like Alton Corey of New Troy and John Valentiejus of New Buffalo. We'll also debut a World War II-era kitchen, recalling the days when local cooks altered their menus and practices to support the war effort. Other new displays focus on the saw mills and grain mills in our area, local pioneers' first attempts at harnessing power not provided by man nor animal, as well as the Three Oaks Community Fair, a celebration of bygone days.
Again, links to these programs are given by email to museum members. If you'd like to join us for First Thursday programs, become a member! Send a check made out to TROTOM to PO Box 121, Three Oaks, MI 49128. It's just $15 for and individual membership, $25 for a family membership.​​
TROTOM program featured
at State Historic Conference
It’s a little-known but fascinating chapter in local history— how two young Japanese-American detainees came to live in Harbert during World War II. They were brought out of detention camps by Carl & Paul Sandburg— he was America’s most famous poet, she one of the country’s best goat-breeders.
Museum Vice President Nick Bogert stumbled upon this unlikely saga of Sunao Imoto and Kaye Miyamoto by chance, and wrote about it in Michigan History magazine last spring.
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That story became a PowerPoint lecture-- "The Sandburgs and the Nisei" at the Chikaming Township Hall in Harbert in July, a lecture reprised at the statewide meeting of the Historical Society of Michigan, at Lake Michigan College in Benton Harbor, on the last weekend in September, 2024.
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VIDEOS OF PAST ONLINE EVENTS
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Leopold Pokagon, Potawatomi Chief
Leopold Pokagon was the chief of Potawatomi Indians who lived along the St. Joseph River during the early 1800s, a time when US officials were trying hard to remove Indians to reservations west of the Mississippi. Pokagon, though, successfully resisted that effort. Zada Bellew and Cecil Wilson of the Pokagon Band show and tell about Pokagon's extraordinary life.
See this program by clicking HERE.
Joshua Chatterson: Pioneer Merchant
Joshua Chatterson moved to Three Oaks a few years after the end of the Civil War and played a vital role in shaping the village in the late19th century. Suzanne Sheldon Levy, a Three Oaks native and retired research librarian, has been tracking down the details and stories of her great-grandfather's life for years. Her look at Chatterson's life illuminated many aspects of life in this area during the years Three Oaks grew from a sleepy farming community into a busy manufacturing town.
See this program by clicking HERE.
The Massive Warren Family Ranches
The Warrens made their fortune in Three Oaks in the late 19th century. Thanks to the "cowboy fascination" of Charles Warren, the family bought huge ranches in the American Southwest and Mexico. Dr. David Murrah, former Director of the Southwest Collections at Texas Tech University, lays out the saga of the Warren ranches. A special bonus-- some Warren descendants and others who helped manage the ranches attended the program, and provide their own recollections during a discussion.
To see it, click HERE.
"A Stroll Down Historic Elm Street"
The story behind the storefronts on Three Oaks' main shopping street, from the 1850's to the present. Triumphs, tragedies, disasters, and big personalities all played a role in shaping Elm Street. TROTOM Board Member Nick Bogert collected the stories and the images over two years.
Watch the program by clicking HERE.
"The House of David and World War II "
"Artifactoids"
Five artifacts from TROTOM's collections, described by five presenters, accompanied by graphic illustration in Power Point-style. Learn about dentistry in Three Oaks through the years, about farm-field fossil discoveries, about a long-forgotten sex-and-money scandal that rocked 1920's Three Oaks, about a Civil War cartridge case and the Avery resident it belonged to, and about the wildfires of 1871, which ravaged the area and led to the formation of Three Oaks's first fire department. To watch, click HERE.
1The Israelite House of David, a religious commune based in Benton Harbor, faced many challenges during World War II. As pacifists, sect members did not want to fight, but the House of David took great pains to avoid being seen as unpatriotic. As a large agricultural enterprise, the House of David turned to a new source of labor during the war---- German POW's.
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To learn about it from House of David historian and archivist Brian Carroll, click HERE.
"Harbor Country Hoodlums"
Author Chriss Lyon ("A Killing in Capone's Playground") talks about some of the tough guys and crooks who have spent significant downtime in SW Michigan. Oh, and she throws in some good stories about a few good guys, too.
To see it, click HERE.
"Michigan's Logging Era"
Michigan was a logger's paradise for most of the 19th Century and the lumber industry did massive environmental damage to the state. Historian Hillary Pine shows us how the state recovered from near-ecological disaster, in a Zoom program presented November 19, 2020. To see it, click HERE.
"Fred Warren's Amazing Calculating Engine"
It may be the first calculating machine produced in the US, and it
was put together in Three Oaks way back in 1875. Join TROTOM Board Member Nick Bogert and Notre Dame Computer Science Prof. Jay Brockman for a look at an extraordinary machine and an amazing drama that surrounded its invention.
You can view this program by clicking HERE.
"Three Oaks Flag Day Parade-- Through the Years"
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Sadly, the Three Oaks Flag Day Parade-- a local favorite since 1953--was canceled in 2020, due to public health concerns. The Region of Three Oaks Museum created this look back at a beloved tradition, the parade that, organizers assure us, is still the largest Flag Day parade in the country.
You can see our Flag Day retrospective by clicking HERE.
"Three Oaks Department Stores"
In 1910, the Charles K. Warren & Company store opened with giant wagonloads of shoppers coming to Three Oaks. The village's big company store soon passed to the Hunerjager family, who ran the store and staged village fashion shows for decades.
See the program by clicking HERE.
"The Booms and Busts of Frontier New Buffalo"
New Buffalo careened from good times to bad with astonishing speed in the days after its founding by Captain Wessel Whitaker in the 1830s. Watch the 40-minute Power Point talk put together by TROTOM Board Member Nick Bogert by clicking HERE.
