Omer Courthouse is on National Register of Historic Sites Don't Let Omer Fool You, Change is Something That Goes On All the Time
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Things started to change in Omer right from the get-go. First, they changed the name from Homer.
That was in 1872 when they were establishing the post office and found the town couldn't be named for early settler Frank Homer because there already was a town in Michigan named Homer.
So they did the easy thing: they just removed the "H" and Omer it was.
A recent change is that they had to quit calling it Michigan's smallest city. A sign making that claim has stood outside town for years because it had only 337 residents. But now Omer is the state's second smallest city; Lake Angelus in northern Oakland County takes the honors with 326 residents.
Another change: Arenac County used to be part of Bay County. It was separated in 1880 but a little matter of Gibson Township became an issue. Arenac claimed this township, but Bay County wouldn't release it, wrote Calvin Ennes, in his history of the county edited by Paul Michalke and published in 1903 by the Arenac County Historical Society.
Bay had to hang on to Gibson because the Michigan Supreme Court ruled in 1903 if Bay gave up Gibson it would not be large enough to be a legal-sized county. But if Bay was able to get more territory, Gibson would to to Arenac. Bay failed to get a couple of townships it wanted from Saginaw, so Gibson stayed put.
The old courthouse in Omer has a history you wouldn't believe. It was built to set up the county seat, only folks hereabouts decided almost immediately to move the county seat to Standish. That was a change, too, because Standish first was known as Granton.
The white, steepled Victorian structure standing starkly alongside US-23 at George Street in Omer could tell tales to shiver one's soul:
Of surviving the cyclone of 1895;
The disastrous fires of 1901 and 1904;
The great flood of 1916; and
The devastating ice storm of 1922.
The 120 year old courthouse stood sentinel while the boys marched to Cuba in 1898 . . .
. . . to France in 1916. . .
. . . to Germany and the Pacific in 1941. . ., Korea in 1952, Vietnam in 1967, then Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, etc.
Besides all that, before the courthouse was built there was the 1869 smallpox epidemic in Hoover Town that killed lots of folks. Old Doc Palmer of Bay City sent to Detroit for medicine and saved 774 people who were vaccinated.
The Arenac County Historical Society has a fund drive underway to preserve the old courthouse.
Actually, it is the second Arenac Courthouse. It was constructed after the original building burned to the ground in 1889. Angus McDonnell, the low bidder, erected the stately structure for $2,847, completing it Aug. 5, 1890.
McDonnell lost heavily on the project but the courthouse board added another $123.75 so he "broke even" on the project.
The paint on the brand spanking new courthouse was barely dry when an election was held and the county seat was moved from Omer to Standish.
Omer had been selected as the county seat in 1883 by popular vote from a list of seven places, Sterling, Standish and Omer, picked by the State Legislature, and four selected by the board of supervisors, Saganing, Hoovertown, AuGres and Maple Ridge.
By a vote of 831-609, Standish became the county seat.
The erstwhile county building then became the Omer Masonic Lodge No. 377. The Masons got quite a bargain; they bought the beautiful, new building for $500 in 1892 and used it for nearly a century. Later it was owned by Carol and Robert Britt of Au Gres who preserved the treasured edifice and its contents.
In 2005 the building was sold to the historical society which renovated it. The building now holds old Masonic records and the archives of the Northeast Michigan Baseball League that operated from 1916 to 1986.
Those historic materials all have tales of their own to tell.
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Dave Rogers |
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