an Sims Cemetery History
SIMS FAMILY CEMETERY
History of Sims Township
In 1850 Michigan was a state with huge old growth forests of maple, beech and poplar. As lumbering played out in the Eastern United States, lumbermen flocked to the state to buy up the land and cut the timber. The first major lumber mill in Sims Township was built 3 miles east of Point Au Gres by William Franklin Whitney and his brother, timber merchants from Cincinnati, Ohio. The mill operated on the shores of Saginaw Bay from 1858 to 1888 when it was shuttered and abandoned. In 1880 a large new township was cut out of Au Gres Township, Bay County and named for the mill that created its largest tax base, Whitney Township. Many of the lumbermen had lived in tents on the lake side of Point Lookout, a location that became established as a resort area (accessible only by water) by 1877. Forest fires from 1884 through 1908 destroyed the remaining trees in this area making the land around Au Gres and Whitney townships amenable to farming and development. Farmers from Russia, Germany and England flocked to the rich swampy soil bringing such crops as sugar beets and to establish a new life. Mennonites moved into swampy land 6 miles north of Au Gres and established the Riverside community. The early “Pennsylvania Dutch” were so successful that they attracted families from Minnesota, Indiana, Ohio and Canada. 6 Other pioneer families established the Delano settlement and Harmon City. Multiple fisheries dotted the shoreline from Point Lookout to Tawas providing fish that were shipped across the country. Bay Fish company was owned by the founders of the Wallace Orr subdivision. Hammel fishery became the center of the Hammel Beach community. These communities established and developed. churches, schools and commercial ventures, all within the Whitney Township purview. The year-round population of Whitney township in 1906 lived predominantly along the State Road which ran along the shore line north of Point Lookout and in the farmland rapidly being drained. The area was changing to be more agrarian, populated by people from all across the world, altering the face of the land.

There were no roads accessing the resort area of Point Lookout, only sandy trails allowed local entrepreneurs to sell their wares to the flocks of tourists arriving from Saginaw and Bay City. By 1880, a three-story hotel and multiple out buildings had joined the tent city. Frequent steamers brought tourists from Saginaw and Bay City to enjoy the cool breezes and clean waters for days or weeks. In 1895, Hamilton Mercer Wright, a judge and one time mayor of Bay City, bought the hotel and the steamer City of New Baltimore, and set about improving the conditions for visitors. He built 16 free standing cottages bayside of the hotel for vacationers available to rent by the week or the season, many of which still exist today, owned by heirs of the original tenants. The boardwalk connecting the cottages was later replaced in concrete and extended both bayside and lakeside. Although the hotel, pier and most of the point of Point lookout are gone, Point Lookout continues to be a popular summer resort with families traveling from all over the Unites States and beyond.

The land bayside of Point Lookout was logged over, burned over, and the sandy soil not very conducive to farming; it did however, provide miles of pristine waterfront (except for the remains of the Whitney Mill and pier) excellent fishing and miles of trails for horseback riding and hunting. It is here that the modern history of Sims Township begins.

Edwin Walter Sims, for whom Sims Township is named, was born outside Hamilton, Ontario in 1870. His father Walter Sims, a newspaperman, moved the family to Detroit in 1875 and then to West Bay City in 1876. In 1879, Walter established the Christian Assembly, a non-sectarian Christian organization based on the Word of God, the Bible. He also founded a newspaper. Here Ed Sims grew-up with 4 younger brothers. They attended public school, navigated Saginaw Bay on their father’s launch and small sailboat, camped the shores of Saginaw Bay and learned to love being in nature. Ed was a reporter for the Bay City Times from 1890-1892 and learned from covering the Bay City courts that attorneys earned significantly more than a reporter; this was his major impetus for attending the University of Michigan Law School. After graduation in 1894, he moved to Chicago having understood that the New York business world handed its law business down by inheritance and “Chicago was new and unwalled by ancient customs”. Moving to Chicago, he continued his activity in the Republican Party and was a Ward President by 1898. He went on to be Cook County Attorney, Special Attorney for the Bureau of Corporations in Washington DC, Solicitor Department of Commerce and Labor and was appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt as U. S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois in 1906. He published books against white slavery (prostitution), wrote the text later passed as the Mann Act, was president of the Chicago Crime Commission, and eventually returned to private practice in 1911.

Though Ed Sims established his family and professional life in Chicago, his heart remained on Saginaw Bay. In 1908 the family bought state property behind Whitestone Point and later the shoreline from George Prescott. In this year, he and his family sailed on his father’s boat all along the shoreline of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan recording the devastation of multiple forest fires. In 1910 he bought his first shore frontage south of Point Lookout from George Prescott and Margaret Oakes and set about building a summer retreat for his family. He built the initial “Sims Ranch House” in 1910. His acquisition of land around Point Lookout continued unabated until World War II by which time he owned 5 sections of land west of Point Lookout and more than one section on Point AuGres.

Until 1917, 16,700 acres of land, encompassing two parcels known as Town 19 and Town 20, were under the governmental control of Whitney Township. Ed Sims determined that 35% of the taxes in Whitney township came from the area around Point lookout (Town 19) and 65% from the northern and eastern part of Whitney Township (Town 20). Since the government was controlled by residents of the more populated portion of the Township (Town 20), taxes were not equitably divided and Town 19 roads were neglected and in bad shape. Ed Sims appeared personally in front of the Whitney Township Board asking for just division of the highway funds in 1913, 1914 and 1915. Each year the Board promised a more equitable division, but in actuality nothing was done. In 1915, Sims approached bank presidents and politicians in Arenac County about separating Town 19 from Town 20. He had all voting members of Town 19 (this was before Women’s Suffrage) pledge that, if Town 19 were made a separate township from Whitney, they would never vote to remove the county seat from Standish. With this promise and using canny political maneuvering to remove the opposition of Frank Warren, then Supervisor of Whitney Township, to the separation of Town 19 from the Town 20, a petition signed unanimously by voters in Town 19 was presented to the Board of Supervisors in Standish on October 10, 1917. While the original petition proposed that the new Township be called Point Lookout Township,8 Supervisor Warren unexpectedly suggested that the new Township be called Sims Township. The amendment was made and the resolution creating the new Township was passed by unanimous vote of the Board of Supervisors of Arenac County. Oct. 30, 1917. Thus, Sims Township was born.

Ed Sims continued to foster improvement in Sims Township throughout his life. In 1926, the U. S. government decided to build a new Federal highway from Jacksonville, Florida to Mackinaw City, Michigan. The initial route of US 23 was to go through Omer, Michigan and extend up through the center of the lower peninsula paralleling the paths now taken by M-65 and I-75. In Aug 1927, Ed Sims wrote a 3-page letter to the State Administrative Board, the State Highway Commissioner and the Highway Advisory Board of the State of Michigan recommending that the route of US 23 be altered to follow the shore line of Lake Huron advancing arguments about the increase in taxes if the shore frontage, and Point Lookout, were further developed and stated, “Michigan is a great automobile producing state. It has a waterfront of more than 2200 miles, Touring is becoming very popular. The state already has miles of cement road along its water front. When the gaps are filled in it can offer the nation a scenic highway within sight of or available to the water front from Detroit … to St. Joe.” His campaign continued for 3 years with dinners at the Chamber of Commerce in Standish, invitations to Governor Fred Green of Michigan and the State Road Commissioner for holidays at Sims Ranch, and detailed correspondence with members of the U. S. Congress. It finally came to pass that U.S. 23 was completed in 1932 as it presently stands. In 1938 he authored a brochure about Harbor improvement at Point Lookout, Michigan. While this was not built until the 21st century, the ball was set in motion more than 60 years earlier.

Sims Township, the smallest township in Arenac County, has fewer than 13 sections but remains one of the loveliest areas of Michigan. It offers beautiful waterfront, fishing, hunting and recreation pastimes. Our residents run large scale farming operations, small home trades and vacation homes abound. The tax base is broad and offers residents an excellent quality of life. Thanks to the many strong-willed pioneers, enterprising entrepreneurs such as Hamilton Mercer Wright and the actions of Edwin Walter Sims as well as those who came after, Sims Township remains an excellent place to live.