Totem Pole Tales- Grace, Michigan- Part 3 Submitted by Nute Chapman From Onaway Outlook November 29, 2013

   CAPTION #1:  C.C.C. Workers from Camp Black Lake.  Two groups of men are getting ready to play ball
in Schell's pasture.  This field has not changed much over the years. ("1933" on photo)


      
   (Continued from last week)

   In the early 1940s a real estate investor named Major Brown had bought almost all of the north part of Bearinger
Township, which included most of the Lake Huron shoreline from the Cheboygan County Line to the Ocqueoc River.  
Brown apparently did not like the name of Carp Lake or Carp River.  He changed the names to Black Mallard.  If 
the smelt run comes back to our part of Lake Huron, this writer would go smelt dipping on the Carp.

   Major Brown, in the early 1970s, sold his timberlands to Abitibi Corp. of Alpena.  Abitibi cut all of the good
timber and leased the land in 1,000 acre parcels to several hunting clubs.  Today the biggest landholder in north
Bearinger Township is the Northland Properties Incorporated.

   Brown used the Ocqueoc Group Camp to host a two-week summer camp for kids, mostly from Onaway.  This was a 
yearly outing for several years.

   The stone footings from the conservation headquarters at Lake Sixteen can still be seen.  One can still see 
the rocks that bordered the flower gardens and driveways.  The Dave Greens lived at the headquarters and are
buried in Section 17 of south Bearinger overlooking Lake Sixteen.  It is call Dead Man's Marsh, so named from 
one of the conservation workers finding a man's skeleton there.  It is believed that the man was a lost hunter
from the Cheboygan area.  My family and the Northcott family have made many trips to this huckleberry marsh.

   In the early 1930s the Camp Black Lake No. 778 was established in Section 19 of Ocqueoc Township.  This was a 
Civilian Conservation Corps (C.C.C.) camp and today is owned by Presque Isle County and is known as the Ocqueoc
Outdoor Center.

   Camp Black Lake sent two Army trucks and several men from the camp to the floods in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  
(That will be another story.)

   Today second and third generation Schell families still own property at Grace.

   Some terms still used by our hunting group in this are are Charlie Cole's Bait, the Stone Road, Molly's Bait, 
and yes, the Stone Pile Bait.


    
--Onaway Outlook November 29, 2013 pg. 3.



Retyped by J. Anderson.