Pirate Perry and the saga of North Bar Lake

By Linda Alice Dewey
Sun contributor

Ella Skrocki of Empire loves North Bar Lake, not only for its beauty and wildlife but for its dark history. Ella’s grandmother, Faith Lewis, once lived on Lake Michigan near the North Bar Lake channel. She would talk about the “land pirate” who used to live there. Skrocki’s mother, Beryl, passed the tale on to her children. Ella says that knowing this makes it even more fun to paddle and swim there. That may be true for you, too, once you know what happened.

“My mom told a story,” Ella begins. “Pirate Perry used to keep his ship back in North Bar after he waved down bigger ships or freighters. He stood on top of the dune [waving a lantern] to bring ships in during storms. They would run aground, and he would go aboard and rob them.”

Some digging by Dave Taghon of the Empire Heritage Museum turned up two accounts that tell about Perry, one written in 1975 by Frank Fradd, the other by John Norton Rohr. Both are recorded in a book called Some Other Day, published by the museum. These articles weave an interesting tale, most of which corroborates Ella’s remarks — except for one thing. This pirate sailed the inland sea in a rowboat, not a ship.

It all began when one Joe Perry arrived here in 1861 with his wife, Martha, and his two boys. Perry bought up all the land on the east side of the lake and proceeded to build a large log cabin just south of the road/path that leads to the lake today. Until then, the lake had no name. After he built his home, everyone called it “Perry Lake.”

Over the next few years, Perry cleared everything but some cedars by the swampy south end of the lake, put in some crops and grew a large orchard. He also built a hut just south of the channel, or “outlet.”

Once that was done, Perry began a new venture — and this is where the story gets interesting. After dusk, Perry “placed a light [lantern] a short distance up the west side of the Sleeping Bear sand dunes” to entice lost schooners to run aground, according to Fradd’s article entitled, “The Perry Family.” When the sailors left their ship to find help, Perry jumped into a “small boat,” rowed out to the grounded vessel, climbed aboard and cleared it out.

According to Rohr’s account, “Old Empire Piracy,” Perry took the stolen goods to his “hideaway” — the little shack beside the outlet. But that outlet overflowed every three weeks or so. When it did, Rohr says that “it was too deep, too wide and too fast” for Perry to cross, presumably to get the goods to his hut. Instead, he would move “much valuable material” at night, taking a path [see map] to Rohr’s grandparents’ home, where he hid it all in their basement.

The overflow of that outlet is a natural event that continues regularly even today, says Taghon. “The lake is spring fed,” he explains, “and Lake Michigan waves keep it blocked up until it finally seeks its way into Lake Michigan … It basically flows through the same channel but varies often. It opens itself up when full enough to erode the bar that Lake Michigan causes.”

“And when the overflow rush was over,” continues Rohr, “it was more quicksand and as dangerous as the east side of the lake, which has horses, oxen and cattle down deep in it.” This quicksand would be south of the current visitors’ entrance to North Bar Lake.

Rohr calls the area around his grandparents’ home “pirate-controlled,” saying that Perry threatened them, making them afraid to say anything to anyone. Fradd’s relatives, on the other hand — four Shauger families and one Ebeneezer Cobb — lived a short mile away and seemed to have been unaware of the Rohr family’s dilemma. Although they verify that Perry “did rob a few sailboats,” they add that he never bothered them. So perhaps Rohr’s family really didn’t talk.

Perry died in 1887. Martha sold the farm, and the family moved away. By 1915, the last of the logs from their home had disappeared.

The lake held its name until the early 1930s, when state surveyors came through and changed it to “North Bar Lake,” for the bar of land separating it from Lake Michigan. Except, of course, for that pesky little outlet.

Linda Alice Dewey is the author of “Aaron’s Crossing: an inspiring true ghost story” and “The Ghost Who Would Not Die.”