After getting photos of Elijah and Eliza Goble’s framed portraits (in the back, behind that fancy dress and hat from the 1930s) I eased myself and my camera out of the front room of the Log Cabin Museum in Cassopolis (August 13). But I stopped when I spied a note saying, “Rocking chair owned by Gen. Lewis Cass.” How did an object like that come to this museum, I wondered.
The woman in charge said she didn’t know. She said some museum objects had been at the courthouse, and years later they had been transferred here. But nobody knew how they had come to the courthouse. “Well,” I said, “it’s not impossible that somebody in Detroit might have decided that the Cass County courthouse would be a good place to get Governor Cass’s old chair.” “That’s the way I look at it,” she replied.
So it could very well be Governor Cass’s old chair. It would be even better if we knew how it came to be here.
After visiting the museum, I stopped to take another look at the courthouse. I’m not sure how much county business is still done here. Cass County has recently contributed to the despoilation of the countryside and the loss of small-town community life by building new offices out of town. To get there, just follow the road on the left of the courthouse for about a mile and a half. (I didn’t ask any people from the community what they think about that move, though.)
YTD mileage: 1800.0
wow, this is getting spooky;
I used to live and work in the Cass County area, (back in the 70′s) during my current research on “Hull’s Trace”, I find Lewis Cass as a prominent player.
He was one of three Colonels, serving under Gen. Hull.
I remember Cassoppilus (sp) and Dowajac, as a beautiful country. My wife and I bicycled that part of the world when she was still a college student at Goshen. I did water treatment out of South Bend.
Ronald,
Cass County is one of my favorites close to home. But so is the Goshen area, especially south of town along the Elkhart River.
Do you still do any bicycling?
I had meant to make the title of this article, “Lewis Cass,” but forgot myself. I’ve seen documents, some of them originals IIRC, on which he signed his name as “Lew Cass,” so that got me to speak of him in overly familiar terms.
John
Ronald,
If you want things to get really spooky you should know that I took a class in the biology of water treatment when I was in grad school. It was one that my advisor taught. Some of my cohort got jobs in the water treatment business.
John