Clare County — Logging built most of Michigan as we know it. Hordes of lumberjacks—more commonly known before 1900 as shanty boys—bustled through town after town along the heavily wooded acres of mid-Michigan.
Along with this prosperous boom came rougher edges in a infamously sinful town called Meredith, including drinking, gambling, and “Clare County’s first working girls.” Its character was so well-known that the common story reported at the time was if you bought a railroad ticket to Hell, you were most likely on your way to Meredith.
Most villages like Meredith started with a sawmill, mine, or railroad. Clare County was once full of them, with 31 post offices in their heyday. Now it only has six.
Meredith was born practically overnight in the winter of 1883, fueled by the timber barons of the virgin forests. It quickly got on its way to becoming the most busy, bustling, brazen town to stand where the great pines once stood.
First a hotel was erected, named “The Meredith House.” Next “The Carriage House” hotel was built. It was known by its slogan of “47 rooms and a bar” and was outfitted with old ship’s hulls in the walls of the bar to stop bullets.
Then came a boarding house, grocery stores, drugstores, meat markets, barber shops, many saloons, and seedier establishments.
By 1887, the population had risen to 500, with trains stopping multiple times a day.
These shanty boys of Michigan’s shadow towns provided much of the color of American pioneer life. So much so that writer Daniel C. Beard, founder of the Boy Scout’s original outfit, was sent from Scribner’s Magazine to soak in inspiration for his drawings in Meredith.
When Beard arrived, there was no name at the train station. Two feet of snow covered the ground around a shack. Beard stepped in, as a man holding a frozen turkey leg swung it at another man inside, tipping the man over into a red hot stove. Beard knew then he was in Meredith and he grabbed snow to put out the fire as the train left the station behind him.
In town, Beard requested two mattresses at the hotel, writing, “Because I didn’t like the look of the little holes through the floor. The one mattress was pretty thin to stop bullets”.
Prostitution proprietor Jim Carr, “King of the Worst,” and his prostitute “wife,” Maggie Duncan, offered vices for the shanty boys.
Carr came with a nice chunk of change from New York to Clare County around 1870. A 20-year-old from New York, he was able to move freely amongst his passions of manhood, taking a county seat and organizing the lumbering center of the town, free to pander to all desires.
And he did. He was described in his obituary as the “proprietor of one of the dirtiest dens that ever robbed manhood of its beauty or steeped in sin the souls of women.”
The Harrison Cleaver and Standard from the next town over called the many places like Carr’s “a necessary evil in a country like this,” because the paper was propped up by Carr’s lawyer.
Frontier life was tough on women. Some accounts claimed Carr and his cronies would kidnap young women from downstate, drug them, and bring them to Meredith to work. Others were lured in under false pretenses from newspaper ads seeking cooks or maids.
According to Michigan’s Timber Battleground by Forrest Meek, a woman named Edith Stowell had Carr arrested in 1884, charging him with intent to “do great bodily harm.”
Carr reportedly quipped with a sneer, “Is that all?”
In the collection of case files and newspaper clippings regarding Jim Carr and Maggie Duncan, amassed by Jon H. Ringelberg in a historical compendium, finding the facts can be a challenge in itself.
One such case is found in the reports of a young girl sold by her mother to the “Devil’s Den” in April 1889 to cover the mortgage. Procuress Maggie had a mortgage on Mrs. Carpenter’s home, and when the widow was unable to pay, she offered to take her daughter instead.
The girl was notably beautiful, becoming a popular girl at Carr’s house of ill-repute, and reported dead three years later. Seeing as Jim himself died destitute and penniless three years after that, Ringelberg questions the reports authenticity.
Other very true cases came to trial.
Another popular girl at Carr’s brothel in Harrison by the name of Frankie was found dead and beaten in his saloon. Witnesses at the trial reported to have seen her beaten to death by Carr and his bartender Murphy. A man half-drunk was said to have stood up to the moral degradation.
Jim’s response standing over the half beaten girl was, “Oh kick her to death, her; she can be shipped to Saginaw, and a live one will take her place.”
Carr was sentenced to 12 years in prison, serving only one before being released on a technicality. It was out of the frying pan and into the fire, as he immediately faced arson charges.
Their dark path would prove to be a lonely, destitute one. Upon their death in a cold lumber shanty, both Carr and Maggie were put in pauper graves and publicly condemned.
As the lumber prosperity and prostitution disappeared, so did Meredith. As quickly as the hordes rushed in, they poured out. The men who worked from dusk to dark fled out, on to the next boom of industry to vanquish, leaving behind the remains of the poor souls caught up in their lust, avarice, and anger.
With grit and greed, these men paved the path to success and prosperity for our nation in a time of great need, carving the American frontier for better and for worse.
Devinn Dakohta is a contributing writer for Michigan Enjoyer. Follow her on Instagram @Devinn.Dakohta and X @DevinnDakohta.
