Beaver Island-Albany War

Oral history recorded by Matt Parbs of Dwight Webber:

"My father was a saw filer for the Curtis Company. He also worked for Bennett Box Company. Once Curtis Company went under, Bennett Box bought the entire filing room-- well the equipment. My son-in-law has the rest of my father's equipment."

A few hours later, Dwight told the story about life on Beaver Island. Recorded is the conversation between Dwight and Docent Bob Alt:

DW: "My grandmother was born on Beaver Island."
BA: "You always heard about people driving to Beaver Island?"
DW: "You couldn't drive over there. They had a barge that would take people there during the summer. During the winter, people tried to drive over on the ice. They didn't always make it."
BA: "This was probably before the Lock & Dams. I bet the current was different."
DW: "It wasn't only that. There wasn't any water."

DW: "Beaver Island had everything you needed to live. Of course there was the Beaver Island-Albany War. They fought over 1,900 acres of kindling."

BA: "Where did you work?"

DW: "Clinton Corn. I left for seven years building church camps. (When I came back) I got laid off when they were having all that labor troubles in the 70's."

BA: "We were just talking about that. A lot of people lost their livelihood because of that."

DW: "Caused a lot of families to break up. Wives divorced their husbands. One of my friends had a sod house. He had to mow the walls because it was a sod house. (With Clinton Corn job), he bought a new house. When he lost his job, he didn't have enough money to keep going."

BA: "Lots of history between Beaver Island and Clinton Corn."

DW: "When I first started as a machinist apprentice at Clinton Corn, one of the guys took me up to the sewing room. The lady in charge of that was Ruth. She was from Beaver Island. She said 'I remember you. Your mother used to bring you over to my house.' She was old enough that she was having trouble remembering things. Turns out, it was my grandmother that was bringing my father to her house as a young man."

I will add commentary and sources to add accuracy over the next few days.