Exciting Times in Rockford

Although Rockford is known as a quiet, peaceful city at the present, it has had its share of excitement since it was founded. Of course when this location was covered by primeval forests it is reasonable to suppose that there was very little excitement here but we can well imagine that there was considerable hustle and bustle when the Hunter brothers and Smith Lapham were engaged in building their dam and mill. In those days it did not require a very large crowd to change the solitude of the forest into a bedlam of action. Also, we can safely leave to your imagination the excitement that prevailed here when the ice left the river in the spring of the year and the logs came surging down in the freshets. We "oldsters" who have a faint recollection of the old lumbering days have vivid memory of those exciting times. There were the usual allotment of "thirst parlors" in Laphamville in those days and when the lumber jacks struck town after having been housed in the seclusion of a lumber camp all winter there was a plenty of excitement. Laphamville, or Rockford, as it afterwards became known, was always the political nucleus of Algoma township and the old time "town meeting days" were always fraught with excitement. In early day., when there were not so many diversions and so many other interests to attract peoples attentions, town meetings were always red letter days in the pioneer calendars. Rockford was no exception to the rule, and many are the yarns that were spun of the exciting times that were occasioned by the elections of the pioneer era. With Rockford in its present phase and, if a crime of such magnitude were committed today we could well picture the excitement that would prevail in the case of the Barbour Murder. This crime was committed here in 1860 and it stirred the emotions of the town the very roots. For weeks nothing else was spoken of. There was much talk of tar and feathering, and some of the real hot heads were for lynching the poor culprit, who was immediately apprehended; but finally the excitement died down and the law took its course. The next year, when the war of the Cessation Succession was started, Laphamville was again a raging cauldron of excitement. Meetings were held nearly every night and patriotism ran riot. This community was strongly abolitionist, although there were a few that held to the theory of State Rights, and their arguments served to keep the pot of excitement boiling. This community sent more than its quota of men and boys into th e ranks of the Union Army. When the war was over, history states that the conquering heroes were received with open arms by the community, and great excitement prevailed here for a month or more when the various outfits were released from service and returned to their homes. Along about this time the lumber industry was in its prime and the Railroad era was opening in the United States. It was necessary to find transportation for the immense amount of lumber that was demanded by the pioneers of the great west. So in 1866 The G. R. & I. was built through Rockford. To say that this occasioned some excitement locally would be putting it very mildly. The various contractors who prepared the roadbed and laid the rails recruited their help from the towns along the way, and Rockford furnished its share of laborers. The gangs had to be housed and fed and this unusual influx of foreign labor disturbed the usual serenity of the town. Another period of excitement locally was occasioned by the campaign that was carried on here to put the railroad through from Saginaw to Muskegon. This road never did materialize for our city, but was built through Greenville and Cedar Springs, and old timers still remember the excitement consequent on its location there. Rockford has had three big fires, of a size to almost wipe out the entire town, but each time it has arisen phoenix-like and was built up bigger and better than ever. The fire of 1870 was perhaps the biggest holocaust and wiped out all but three buildings. The oldest residents can still recall the excitement of those occasions During these years Rockford was rather a wet spot on the map of Kent County. There were at that time five saloons in town and the evils that accompany the liquor traffic were very much in evidence. Of course, there were some people here that did not approve of this condition and they started a White Ribbon Campaign. A lodge of Good Templars was organized, and flourished for a number of years, occasioning much excitement by their efforts to squelch the liquor business of the town. Some of their efforts resulted in near riots. A second murder was the direct result of this turmoil when an inebriate named Boyd shot and killed the banker Johnson. The town was very much upset by this tragedy, as it was also by the drowning of the Pickett boy and the fatal injury of his uncle, who was blown to bits by the discharge of dynamite, which he attempted to set off in an effort to dislodge the boy's body from the river bed. The excitement resulting from the proposal to build an up to date brick school in the year 1872 can be imagined. We need only to hearken back a few years to the building of our present fine school to visualize the commotion in the community that such a proposal produced at that time. There are always some people who get hot and bothered when any advancement is proposed, and they can create quite a tempest in an otherwise serene environment. The war with Spain in 1898 disturbed this community quite a bit as there were a number of our young men recruited to the ranks of the army, and their departure and return were the cause of considerable local excitement. The collapse of the Canning factory caused quite a flurry at least in the financial interests of the town. Many of our citizens lost their hard earned savings, when this industry folded up and left them holding the bag. In the year 1900 the town again became feverish at the proposal of the Hirth-Krause Company to come to Rockford. There was much argument pro and con, and everyone was much excited when the decision was finally reached to locate this industry here. That was a red-letter day for Rockford and certainly merits mention, as a period of great excitement. Another stressful period was when word came that the Armistice was signed closing the World War. The whole town turned out to a big celebration, and this was repeated with full measure when the Knights of Pythias put on a great celebration in honor of the returning dough boys in October 1919. Rockford had sent one hundred and twenty of the flower of her youth into the service and they were justified to make a gala occasion of their return when the war was over. This little resume of exciting times in Rockford serves to show that this is an up and doing place. We do not claim to be perfection, and our history contains both the good and bad. What we claim is that Rockford is a live town. Things happen here. Life here is interesting. The public spirited citizens are, and always have been, in the ascendancy, and that is what makes Rockford such an interesting city.