Leelanau “old settler” Kasson Freeman combined hard work with humor in difficult times

By Linda Alice Dewey

Sun contributor

When Kasson township was organized in 1865, it was named in honor of Pam Peplinski’s great-great grandfather, and its eldest resident, Kasson Freeman, Jr., who was then 46. Many years later, the annual “Old Settlers Picnic,” held at the beginning of each August in Burdickville at Old Settlers Park, originally commemorated Kasson Freeman’s Aug. 3 birthday, which was coincidentally also the date our first white settlers, Mr. and Mrs. John E. Fisher, landed on Leelanau’s coast in 1854. They decided to celebrate with a picnic, then made it an annual affair.

According to an address by W.S. Anderson at the 25th Old Settlers Picnic, Kasson Freeman was a tailor born in Chautauqua, NY. In his early twenties, he moved to Fon du Lac, Wisc., where he met John Fisher and his family. The Fishers subsequently came to Glen Arbor but stayed in touch with their Wisconsin friends.

Then came the 1861 Homestead Act, in which the U.S. government gave 160 acres to any citizen of age who would settle on it for five years. Kasson Freeman followed and settled in central Leelanau County.

In his 1896 speech commemorating the fourth Old Settlers Picnic on his 77th birthday, Mr. Freeman noted that the Homestead Act, which brought so many settlers to this area in the 1860s, was a great step for women (alas, unmarried women only) as well as for men, since it left the door open for both genders. It was also open to all races, be they “black, white, skyblue [sic] or scarlet…”

Mr. Freeman and his wife hailed from fruit-growing land in New York, which Wisconsin was not. Once they heard from the Fishers and also from settler Charles McCarty that the soil and climate here were perfect for raising fruit, that sealed the deal.

Kasson Freeman landed at Glen Haven on December 1, 1861, with his tent and camping gear he used for deer hunting. (The man was a champion sharpshooter.) That night, 6 inches of snow fell. He hired someone to make him a hand-pulled sled; then Mr. Burdick, “the proprietor of what is now Burdickville,” sailed him across Glen Lake.

Freeman set out on foot, pulling his sled, in a southeasterly direction through “woods, woods and nothing but woods” for 2 ½ miles. He set up his tent by a spring (now Cold Spring Road) and stayed there for a year, near what is now the Maple Valley Nursing Home.

By the end of a year, the “novelty” of this camping adventure had worn well off, and grim reality set in. He decided to get to work. Following the “red man’s trail,” he made an eye-opening trip to Traverse City, stayed for several days, got cleaned up, slept in a warm bed, then hauled back equipment and provisions and began felling trees to clear his home site.

Being completely new to this task, he had a hard time. Neighbors who had been through it advised him to fell the trees into the wind, but he found that trees leaning the wrong way had to have other trees fall on top of them to force them to fall in a row.

It was gruesome, difficult, life jarring work for a man without a power saw, and he came to look like a scarecrow. “My hat had gone to seed, and my boots had been peeling from the bottom until my toes were in plain sight, and I had scarcely enough clothes on to wad a gun.” Every meal was the same—pork, bread and gravy, cooked by his neighbor.

After cutting 32-foot logs for his house, he went to Detroit to buy everything else it would need, built it, brought his family over, then cleared his farm and planted fruit trees ordered from Chautauqua County. The cabin stands today.

Life went well at first. His fruit brought premium prices in Traverse City. He was elected county surveyor, and his wife, who practiced medicine, became the local physician.

Then, disaster struck—not once or twice, but over and over. A valley, Freeman soon learned, is not the best place to grow fruit; his trees succumbed to a killing frost, three years in a row. He completely lost his hearing. His sister and father, who had moved to neighboring acreage, died.

Life became a hodge-podge. Now a surveyor, he moved to Suttons Bay, where he was also selling farm equipment in 1881. He had even patented a fence-making machine for lumber mills, which he promoted throughout Michigan and at least Ohio, and was used in the operation of a lumber mill in Suttons Bay, which also acted as his agent.

Yet his wife’s health was also deteriorating, and the Freeman’s moved to Grand Rapids. She died in late 1883.

Mr. Freeman moved back to Leelanau and was back on the ticket for County Surveyor in 1884, but then leased out his property to a doctor’s family and went “south” for the winter. The paper said he would summer in Leland. However, his oldest son, who was married, was struck with tuberculosis at age 26, and father, son, and daughter-in-law moved to Louisiana in search of a warmer climate. Both his son and daughter-in-law died.

Freeman stayed in Louisiana for many miserable years afterward, but Leelanau called to his soul. And so at 73, in the late spring of 1893, he headed north, taking in the Chicago World’s Fair along the way, and came back home for a visit.

What a surprise to see the wonderful changes upon his return! “Farms cleared up with nice, modern built houses, large framed barns, fine stock with beautiful horse teams in the place of the old Buck and Bright oxen, and the fields as smooth and green as a billiard table, not a stump or root in sight.” Traverse City, a “queen” of a city, made him want to shout.

The picnic originated as a mutual celebration, open to everyone. In a visit with the Fishers, he mentioned that Aug. 3 was his birthday. Mrs. Fisher remarked that was the date she and her husband disembarked at Glen Arbor, and they decided to have a picnic. Attendees at that first picnic decided to make it an annual event. Mr. Freeman would attend these picnics dressed in a high silk hat, a well-pressed suit, and a silver cane, with his white goatee brushed until it shone.

By November, he was re-elected as county surveyor, and in 1894, according to the Leelanau Enterprise, built his new home in Burdickville.

Though he went deaf at an early age and lost so many loved ones, Kasson Freeman’s joyful, humorous outlook on life always left gales of laughter in his wake wherever he went. His loud anecdotes and quips always made people smile. For example, when he took a man to court, the proceeding was described in the Enterprise as “amusing.” He was very old, deaf, and served as his own lawyer. He won the case.

In 1896, Freeman opened speech at what he called the annual “people’s picnic” by saying, “I believe a bigger, jollier lot of old foggies [sic] never got together in this or any other state … But I think it a little risky to insist that a man make you a speech that cannot hear one word he says. He may stop before he gets through, or he may get through before he stops.”

Mrs. W. C. Ray, another settler who lived by the Glen Lake Narrows, said of Kasson Freeman, “He went about with laughter in his eyes and humor on his tongue … His presence was a cure for blues. No one could quarrel with him because he’d down them with laughter.

“Laughter,” she continues, “is like sunlight—a cure for shadows. We are all better for having known Kasson Freeman.”

In spite of life’s hardships, and having returned to Leelanau, Kasson Freeman appeared to be a happy old man. He died in 1898 in Burdickville.

Many thanks to the Leelanau Historical Society for their help. Quotes are from the booklet, Remembering Kasson Township, published by the Kasson Heritage Group, with other facts gleaned from A History of Old Settlers Picnics and Old Settlers, published by the Old Settlers Picnic Association.