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November 30, 1998Long-ago trip leads to Aloha's nameHawaiian heritage has little to do with unique township titleBy DAN SANDERSONRecord-Eagle staff writer CHEBOYGAN - You're more likely to find a logger than a lei in Cheboygan County's Aloha Township, a place that has little in common with palm trees and ocean breezes. Even the story of how it became Aloha is still in question, 95 years after the fact. There are two competing versions, both with roots in the Detroit and Mackinac Railroad and long-ago trips to Hawaii. According to Audry Casari, who collects history of the area, the village was initially a cluster of homes on the west side of Mullett Lake about seven miles south of the city of Cheboygan. The community was then part of Grant Township. Because everything was so far away, including schools, the settlement wanted to break off on its own. Grant objected, but the county board finally approved the split in 1903. Even though the place already had a name - Patterson's Landing, after Robert Patterson, who owned much of the property - Aloha was offered as an alternative. How that happened, though, is in question. According to one version, H.S. Watermen, a chief engineer on the Detroit and Mackinaw Railroad, had traveled to Hawaii and saw a volcano erupt and suggested the village should be named after the volcano. The name of the village was changed from Patterson's Landing to Aloha Village. According to a second version, the president of the Detroit and Mackinac Railroad also traveled on a annual trip to Hawaii from Boston with the National Order of Masons. He learned that aloha meant greeting and farewell and suggested the name for the township. "He suggested the name because it means welcome, happy greeting and had such a warm connotation," Casari said. Before Aloha got on the map for its name, though, the area made it into the history books as the place with "the only man in Michigan to be killed by a bear." Franklin Devereaux was a Civil War Veteran who served in the 25th Michigan Infantry. He returned to the state after the war, married and had a child. One day, Casari said, Devereaux and his wife were in a canoe when the waters became rough. The canoe tipped over and his wife drowned. Devereaux was never the same, Casari said. He had a hut of hemlock bark, brush and stones and he would only sleep inside when the weather became unbearable. Devereaux picked and sold blackberries to make a living. In 1883, he was picking berries when his dog ran into a bear. Devereaux went to the dog's defense and the bear attacked him. He got off a shot from his musket, but was killed. "He lost his life, but so did the bear; they found them both dead," Casari said. The tale has been written up in several books and has "become sort of a folklore for the area," she said. Joyce Barr, the Aloha Township clerk for the last 31 years, said the village today includes the small area of homes around the Aloha State Park. About 1,000 residents live in the township. Casari is part of a group gathering information about the township for a book to mark the year 2000. A museum is also being planned. Casari said the township doesn't have any exchange programs or links with the state of Hawaii other than its name. "The name was just chosen initially and that was the end of it," Casari said. "They just copied the name, that's all." |
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