Dowagiac newspapers have long had a sense of the city’s history. For  more 100 years, publishers and editors, from Abner Moon and Berenice Vanderburg to John Eby and “Cardinal” Charlie Gill, have regularly written about Dowagiac history.

It is with this legacy of sharing Dowagiac’s history in mind that the current publisher and editors asked me to pen a regular column for the Daily News. While my job as director of the Dowagiac Area History Museum keeps me busy, promoting our community’s history is important and a regular column will hopefully demonstrate to the readership that the museum is an asset to the community that people need to visit.

So, what qualifications does this Milwaukee, Wisconsin native have to write about Dowagiac’s history? I liked history and museums from an early age, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in U.S. history from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and a Master of Arts degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in public history.

Straight out of grad school, I moved to southwest Michigan in 1998 to be the curator at the museum at Southwestern Michigan College and I am still taking care of Dowagiac’s local history collection, 17 years later.

Today, I know the museum’s collection like the back of my hand and I have done enough research on Dowagiac’s history to make me fluent in the subject.

What became clear to me shortly after moving here is that Dowagiac residents appreciate their town’s history. All cities have their history, but I have found that Dowagiac truly embraces its history. While I always recognized this, it crystalized in my mind on Friday night.

The museum entered a float in the Dowagiac Christmas Parade. The float featured a Round Oak heating stove with a coal fire burning, thanks to Round Oak collector and good friend Bill Krohne. I heard many comments from spectators, with the most common refrain being that they were jealous of my hot stove keeping me and my fellow riders warm. I also heard people — ranging in age from grade schoolers to the World War II generation — that recognized a Round Oak stove when they saw one.

I don’t think every community can claim that its residents recognize its history so well—I have a theory about this, but that could be its own column another day.

This monthly column will primarily highlight Dowagiac history and the museum’s collection, but I may write about interesting happenings at the Dowagiac Area History Museum or I may even tackle other topics that happen to catch my fancy that month. You can expect to see photographs from the museum’s collection in these pages regularly.

Next month, I plan on addressing a topic of interest within the city this month—the former Round Oak warehouse along the railroad tracks, which is in the process of being demolished as I write this. That piece of property has an interesting history that goes beyond the structure that is in the process of coming down.

I am looking forward to this column and I thank Mike, Ambrosia and Ted for the opportunity to explore Dowagiac’s history in the Daily News pages.

 

Steve Arseneau is the director of the Dowagiac Area History Museum. He resides in Niles with his wife, Christina, and children, Theodore and Eleanor.