Offshoreonly.com - erie islands today?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Reed Jensen

Where the hell did they get the name " Put-in-bay"?.. is there a story behind it?.... :eek:

Long story. That's where we finally won our independence as a nation in September 1813.

The French explorer and fur trader Louis Jolliet was the first white man to travel on the lake. An unidentified group of explorers sailed among the islands in July of 1784. They made charts of the islands, naming one of them Pudding Bay because the shape of the harbor (or Put-in-Bay) resembled a pudding bag. Other log books referred to the harbor as Puden Bay.
The first effort to settle on Put-in-Bay ended with the coming of the war of 1812. The workers were busy threshing grain when British soldiers drove them off in fall of 1812 and destroyed the remainder of the crop.

The War of 1812

Western Lake Erie and the surrounding land areas on Ohio, Michigan and Canadian Ontario were the scenes of skirmishes and battles during the War of 1812. The American cause suffered a series of humiliating defeats at the outset of the struggle. General William Hull's invasion of Canada failed, and Hull, in disgrace, surrendered Detroit to the British in August 1812. The force under General James Winchester was annihilated at the River Raisin (Monroe, Michigan), in January 1813. British and Indian invasions of Ohio at Fort Meigs (Perrysburg) and at Fort Stephenson (Fremont) were repulsed in May and August. The turning point of the war in The Old Northwest came with Oliver Hazard Perry's victory over the British fleet in the Battle of Lake Erie, 10 September 1813.
The American fleet had sailed from Erie, Pennsylvania, on 12 August 1813 and arrived off Sandusky Bay on the sixteenth. The British fleet under Captain Robert H. Barclay was sighted by a lookout in the masthead of Perry's flagship, the brig Lawrence, at 5:00 a.m., Friday, 10 September 1813. The Battle of Lake Erie began at 11:45 a.m. and ended a few minutes after 3:00 p.m. British supremacy on the lake came to an end with the capture of the entire enemy fleet of six vessels. The conflict began eight miles northwest of Put-in-Bay and reached its climax at West Sister Island fourteen miles away. The triumphant American captain dashed off a short note on the back of an old letter to William Henry Harrison:

Dear General --

We have met the enemy and they are ours, Two ships, two brigs, one schooner and one sloop.

Yours with great respect and esteem,
O.H. Perry

After the War of 1812, Aschell (Shell) Johnson lived on Put-in-Bay for three years. The next settlers were Henry and Sally Hyde who came in 1818.

The first permanent settler to come to Put-in-Bay was Philip Vroman in 1843. He settled on the island and remained on the island until his death 68 years later.

In 1854 a Spanish merchant name Joseph de Rivera bought South Bass, Middle Bass, Sugar, Gibraltar, Ballast and Starve Island for a price of $44,000. He began to develop to islands building a saw mill and a starve mill in the fall of 1854.
The park downtown is named de Rivera Park in his honor, and a trust is responsible for the park and other land still today.
Put-in-Bay was becoming known for its delicious grapes and excellent wines and as a place where the vacationist, via the steamboat, could "get away from it all" for a few hours. The population grew as farmers came to the island to plant vineyards and as others became involved in the resort business. About 500 persons were permanent residents of Put-in-Bay by the early 1860s.

Local island government was now desired and to this end, John Stone, Simon Fox and others from the three Bass Islands petitioned the Ottawa County commissioners for permission to organize Put-in-Bay township. On June 22, 1861, the electors selected their town trustees. In May of 1876, 15 years later after the three islands were organized as a township, a portion of South Bass was incorporated as a village which you may now refer to as downtown Put-in-Bay.

St. Paul's Episcopal Church was built in 1865 on land donated by Joseph de Rivera. Mother of Sorrows Roman Catholic Church was established in 1866. The Put-in-Bay Telegraph Company was incorporated in 1873, with a two and seven-eighth mile cable between Catawba Point and South Bass Island. In the 1930s dial phones replaced old hand-cranked wall instruments. In May 1906 the street lighting system was converted to electricity.

In its heyday, around the 1850s to the 1900s, several steamships, some holding up to 1.500 passengers, serviced the island on a regular basis.
Put-in-Bay has been a summer resort for more than 100 years. Today Put-in-Bay is a vibrant tourist resort complete with bars, hotels, boating, fishing, a monument, caves and much more. Come visit the South Bass Island, or Put-in-Bay as it is better known, and see for yourself and help celebrate the 220th anniversary of white guys on Lake Erie. :D