The Wallooner | Winter 2021
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Two Families
200 YEARS ON WALLOON The Legacy of the Gedge and Morsches/Call Families Bill Morsches, left, and his good friend Howell Gedge (back, center) enjoying Walloon time with Howell's son Si and Bill's granddaughter Katherine (Kash) East, around 1912. Notice the old boathouses in the background. (Photo courtesy of the Call family)
By Lauren Macintyre
"W
e've known each other for like, forever." That's a comment many people make today about longstanding friends or neighbors, but never was it more apt than in the case of Walloon's Gedge and Morsches/Call families, lakefront neighbors for over 100 years. Both families trace their roots to Anderson, Indiana, a town that is very well represented on Walloon Lake. Both live on a tiny road off Country Club Shores, facing a beautiful area of the lake dubbed "Buzzard's Bay." Houses in
that area, some of the oldest on the lake, reflect an era when lake houses truly were "cottages," where a simpler life could be enjoyed. The Gedge and Call families cherish their legacies on the lake and have done a remarkable job of preserving them.
THE GEDGE FAMILY
Llewellyn Howell Gedge and wife Jessie McConnell Gedge were the first of the Gedges to arrive at Walloon. Owner of Gedge Brothers Steel Company in Anderson, Howell, as Llewellyn was known, took an early retirement after selling the company, and moved to Orlando, Florida. In the 1890's Howell, along
with Jessie took a train trip from Orlando through Cincinnati to Clarion, to first establish the Gedge legacy on Walloon. The Gedges brought their children as well as the maid and gardener. Howell, like his good friends John McIlwraith, Ed Cockrell and Bill Morsches, all with connections to Anderson, came to the lake to hunt, fish and socialize. The four friends called themselves the "buzzards'' of Buzzard's Bay. An avid golfer, Howell is credited with leading the group that founded Walloon Lake Country Club (WLCC) in 1904 on a nearby farm, then (continued on next page...)
