Whisky Creek and the County Seat

By Caleb Jackson The Oceana Echo Community Columnist

Last week I talked a bit about the burgeoning society of Oceana County during its infancy. In keeping with that theme, I would like to talk about the development of the local government and a bit about that community, which we now know as Whisky Creek.

By 1855, aside from Whisky Creek, there were two more blossoming communities: Pentwater and Stony Creek. What a fine selection of creeks we seem to have in Oceana! Hartwick and Tuller, the authors of our beloved, “Oceana County Pioneers and Business Men of ToDay” recount the election of the first board of supervisors that occurred in February 1855, in the words of one of our earliest setters, Harvey Tower.

“Just how our county machinery was put in motion, I presume very few ever heard. In February, 1855, the Act to provide for the organization of Oceana, Mason and Manistee Counties was passed by the Legislature, and the first election of our county officers was held at Stony Creek…on the first Monday of April following.” (Hartwick and Tuller, 1890, p. 32)

He then names who was elected to what offices and states that the Clerk, Register, and Treasurer-elect all needed to file their oaths by a certain day for the county to begin “having a legal existence.” This, however, seems to have been put off until the deadline arrived, at which point the officers-elect and several other citizens gathered to debate whether or not it was even worth it to establish their own county. The short and skinny is that supporting a separate county would be costly, and it may have been easier to remain attached to Ottawa County instead. But it would seem that this idea was unappealing to most, and it was finally decided that the elected officers should file their oaths after all. However, there was only one little snag. The nearest officer qualified to officiate their oaths resided in White River, and it was already 2 p.m.

The men took an hour to locate some horses, took off, had their oaths officiated and made it back to file their papers just 10 minutes before midnight. To quote again from Harvey Tower’s account of the journey, “To say that the rain fell in torrents, would give but a faint idea of the storm encountered on the ‘home stretch’ of that romantic ride. I doubt if it ever rained harder since the time of Noah.” After filing their papers in the nick of time, the new county treasurer, Amos R. Wheeler, reportedly remarked, “Tower, I don’t believe a little good Bourbon would hurt either of us.” Tower, who was elected county clerk, wrote this of the matter, “What could Tower do but take a little? Ye teetotalers, say, say, ye severest, what would ye have done?”

The first board of supervisors met June 1, 1855, and according to Hartwick and Tuller, “it required no trick to establish the county seat at Stony Creek which was done.” This, however, only lasted a short time before the board of supervisors met again and moved the county seat to Whisky Creek, which is where it would remain until it was finally moved to Hart in 1864.

Lastly, I would like to leave you all with a brief side note regarding the naming of Whisky Creek. Doubtless, many of you who have been there were disappointed to learn that the creek actually contained nothing more than plain old water. Well, the reason for calling it Whisky Creek seems to have been addressed, albeit indirectly, in Hartwick and Tuller’s book. “As far back as 1849,” this is the same year that the settlers arrived, mind you, “whisky had been sold on Sec. 17, Claybanks, and occasionally at other places since, but only spasmodically and surreptitiously.”

It is interesting to read about the attitudes regarding alcohol in Oceana during this time period, as the temperance movement almost always crops up. Even in the above tale recounted from Harvey Tower, he addresses the “teetotalers” when commenting about accepting the bourbon. Hartwick and Tuller also tell us that by 1860, “No regular saloon had been established… and no organized temperance effort made.” To think that someone was regularly producing and selling whisky on Whisky Creek in this time period with no interruption… well, I think the settlers probably appreciated it greatly.