putinbayreservations.com is proud to present this piece from the Put-in-Bay Gazette. For the best South Bass Island journalism, visit putinbay.news and subscribe to the Gazette today!
Living History from Nearly a Century Ago
1930s Middle Bass Club & 1940s Rattlesnake Island Memories By Marie Demer Rader
While researching Middle Bass Club (MBC) history, I was fortunate to find Maggie Kinsey Wood who is now 94 years young with a fantastic memory. Maggie’s parents, Isaac Kinsey II and Phyllis Bigelow, bought my parents’ cottage in the Middle Bass Club in 1926. Maggie spent her summers on Middle Bass Island from birth (1929) until Maggie’s father died in 1936. Maggie makes history come alive: she describes my parents’ cottage from memory (we even shared the same bedroom as young girls), remembers eating and playing slot machines in the Middle Bass Club House (it was torn down around 1950), refers to other MBC members I’m researching as “aunt” and “uncle” and has her mother’s scrapbook with pictures and keepsakes.
Maggie’s Middle Bass Club Memories:
The family traveled to Middle Bass Island on the “Weary Mile” ferry which had a bar upstairs and slot machines downstairs. Maggie’s parents would give their kids each a roll of pennies on the trip so they could have a drink at the bar in peace while the kids played on the slot machines.
Maggie recalls that the Middle Bass Club House had a porch on two sides and when you entered the main door, there were comfortable chairs with a little desk at one end and there were 2 doors that led into the dining room. Two slot machines were located between the desk and dining room doors. The Club House Manager at that time, Don, asked the members to give their children an allowance so that the kids would have coins to “pay” for their mess on the white linen tablecloths as the laundering expenses were high. If a child spilled on the tablecloth, they had to cover each mess with coins from their allowance. Maggie said the “kids ate better that way,” as they wanted to save their allowance to buy a candy bar from the front desk or play on the slot machines.
Maggie’s oldest brother Ike and his best friend Mike Berdan who lived across the street loved to hunt snakes and spent all summer collecting them and putting on “snake shows.” Ike even offered Maggie a dime for each snake she caught. Unfortunately, Maggie wasn’t good at finding snakes; she only caught three snakes that entire summer. At the end of summer, Ike decided it would be fun to bring all the snakes to their home in Toledo without telling his parents. Ike and Mike packed the snakes into glass jars with holes poked in the lids for air and placed them in a big crate (which held probably 150 snakes). Maggie’s parents left the island early that weekend, so the kids rode back to Toledo with another MBC member Jen Baker. Ike innocently asked her if they could bring home a large crate; she said yes so the snakes traveled to Toledo. Maggie’s parents and their neighbors were not happy with this snake infestation. Maggie remembers her father taking Ike and the snakes to the Toledo Zoo and being unsure if her brother was coming back home or not.
Maggie’s Rattlesnake Island Memories:
After her father died, Maggie continued to spend summers on the islands because in 1940 her mother married Hubert Bennett who owned Rattlesnake Island (RI). Maggie affectionately called Hubert Bennett “Uncle Duke” and tells me she is “blessed to have a stepfather like him.” Regarding the ownership of Rattlesnake, Maggie recalls hearing that Uncle Duke bought it for back taxes. According to the Ottawa County Recorders Office, in 1929 the Toledo Trust Company purchased RI (1/3 interest each from Edward Haas, Henry Freyensee etal and Fannie Miller etal). According to the newspaper, Hubert Bennett purchased RI in 1929 for $12,500 and spent $250,000 developing it over the next 2 years. Uncle Duke died in 1951 and in 1952 the Toledo Trust Company sold RI for approximately $100,000 to a group from Cincinnati, the Harbour Island Club Inc, where it became a private Club.
When Hubert Bennett owned RI it was not a private Club; it was his primary residence as he “rented a room” in Toledo. Thus, he spent most of his free time on RI which is located 35 miles east of Toledo and encompasses 65 acres. Uncle Duke’s Williams College classmates and his brother Geoffrey Bennett and his family were the primary visitors. Uncle Duke’s college friend from Texas did all the landscaping on the island.
When Uncle Duke owned it, RI encompassed a dock, an airstrip (where the Island Airways planes landed), a concrete tennis court, a farmhouse, three log cabins (Main Cabin, Tea Cabin and a Guest Cabin) and a block house (electric power plant with gas generator). Maggie fondly remembers the island caretakers, Russell Smith and his wife Ethelda Meyer. They lived on RI full time in one wing of the Main Cabin which had a bedroom, bathroom and sitting room with a fireplace.
When Maggie and her parents were on the island, they stayed in the other wing of the Main Cabin which had a master bedroom and guest bedroom. There was a secret closet behind Maggie’s parents’ bedroom closet, opened by pulling on a clothing hook, where they hid liquor during Prohibition. The adults ate in the main room at a long table with benches on the sides and chairs on the ends under a balcony which was adorned with a stuffed fish (perhaps a swordfish?) which Maggie’s mother caught on their honeymoon. The balcony, accessible only by a ladder, held Uncle Duke’s bookcases and his desk from the Hotel Victory (which survived the hotel’s fire). Maggie enjoyed looking at the New Yorker Magazine cartoons up there. The Main Cabin faced west for Lake Erie sunset views and had an enormous two-sided fireplace (it could hold 4-foot logs) that opened to the main room and a porch. The porch featured a map of the Lake Erie islands inlaid in its terrazzo floor.
The Tea Cabin was designed for entertainment and was located next to the cement tennis court which had a big tree on one side with a Bald Eagle nest. The Tea Cabin had a pitched roof with a fireplace and seating at one end and a kitchen and a few tables at the other end where the kids ate meals cooked by Mrs. Sampson.
The Guest Cabin had 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a large lounge with a fireplace and a tiny kitchen. It had a screen porch that also faced west for a perfect view. When Maggie’s older brothers came to the island, the family stayed there.
The farmhouse was located next to the airstrip and had an asparagus patch, a lavender patch and a flagpole. Maggie fondly remembers eating asparagus with fresh butter. No one lived in the farmhouse.
Uncle Duke owned a sleek Hacker Craft boat with an open cockpit on the bow which they used to go back and forth between Catawba and RI. Unfortunately, the Navy confiscated the boat during WWII and the family had to buy a new boat for transportation.
Like most Lake Erie islands, RI had abundant wildlife. The family and their guests hunted Reeves pheasants (whose tails grow to four feet in length) and wild turkeys. Their dogs chased rabbits; Maggie’s dog (Schnops, a Dachshund) would find the rabbits and start the chase then Uncle Duke’s dog (Lumpy, a New Foundland) would stand 10 feet back to catch the rabbits and finally the caretaker’s dog (Belle, a black Cocker Spaniel) would corner the rabbits Lumpy missed. Maggie said this trio was highly successful in keeping the rabbit population under control. A cow named Molly lived on the island to provide fresh milk. She used her horn to open the large wooden handle into her screened stall when she needed to escape the biting black flies. Molly made an annual trip to PIB to meet a bull being ferried over by either the Miller Ferry or a barge. There was even a “pet duck” who followed the caretaker Russ while he was mowing the lawns. Maggie assured me that they never ate that duck.
At the onset of WWII, Maggie’s family had a young boy, Richard “Dickie” Morley, come live with them to escape the bombing in England. The families knew one another because of business: Uncle Duke was President of the Toledo Scale Company and Dickie’s father was President of the Avery Scale in England. Dickie was a year younger than Maggie and they became great friends. They swam, played with the animals and explored the island. In one of their many adventures, Dickie slipped and fell down one of RI’s cliffs; he hit a rock and had a huge bruise, but thankfully survived the fall. Dickie returned home to England safely after a few years. Dickie and his wife returned to RI for a quick visit years later with permission granted by RI’s private club.
One Christmas vacation, Dickie and Maggie traveled by boat to RI to spend the week. On New Year’s Eve, the slush ice came in so they were unable to take a boat back to Catawba the next day as planned. The caretakers raised a special flag on the farmhouse to alert the mail plane that it needed to stop on the island. The mail plane saw the flag, stopped, picked up Dickie and Maggie and dropped them off in Catawba to Maggie’s parents.
Maggie enjoyed being on the water and learned to sail at a camp in Michigan as a young girl. In the early 1940s, Maggie and Marney, a daughter of her mother’s friend, entered the Put-in-Bay Regatta. They were in a “little Nipper” in the final race of the Regatta and finished dead last. The judges and participants cheered enthusiastically because the regatta was finally over – and it was past cocktail hour. Maggie is still extremely proud that they completed that race. Another story involves fishing in a small trolling boat with her parents. While her parents fished, Maggie knitted argyle socks. Maggie loved being on the water and was more into knitting than fishing, so she went along with them on fishing trips equipped with her knitting needles.
Typically, on Saturday nights, Maggie’s family went to Put-in-Bay to Jim’s Place which was a restaurant/bar. Maggie recalls singing a Bicycle Built for Two along with the older woman who played the piano (this sounds like Sue Snyder). Maggie ventured out with the other kids to ride the merry go round (not the same one that’s there today), roller skate (on the upper level) and bowl (on the street level) at the old Colonial. Maggie remembers having to reset the pins for her older brothers who were bowling, renting tandem bicycles and visiting the caves.
I’m writing this story from my cottage in the MBC where I feel a connection between both of Maggie’s Lake Erie homes. I see RI (located just west of our “Grove” on the western most point of the island) and her MBC cottage (just east of mine on Grape Avenue). I’m fortunate to have met Maggie and hope I did her justice in sharing her memories and preserving a little slice of island history. If anyone is interested in learning more about Maggie’s Island memories, please email me at: marie.rader@gmail.com.
The previous piece is published in this month’s Put-in-Bay Gazette. The Gazette has been producing incredible independent Put-in-Bay island news for over 40 years. If you have any interest at all in what is happening on South Bass Island, we urge you strongly to subscribe to the Put-in-Bay Gazette. One-year online subscriptions are only $15, and print subscriptions are available as well. To subscribe please click here.
