Jackson Ingalls House
The next house on the tour is 106 Park, the Jackson Ingalls home.
The family of Hazen and Julia Ingalls moved from New York to Northport in 1858, and then to Bear Creek (Petoskey) in 1864, where they were the second white family to settle. There they purchased, and operated a stone sawmill, something the family had done for generations. Like most other settlers, they also farmed. Jackson was the oldest son in a family of thirteen children, with 11 sons (including Ammon, who married Lennie Beers) and 2 daughters.
Jackson and his wife Elnora were active members of the Charlevoix community. He worked as a store clerk, something that must have paid well in the 1860s, because he built his large home on Main Street in 1868.
Years later, Elnora survived the burning of the steamer Champlain in June of 1887. The ship went down in Lake Michigan, between Charlevoix and Norwood. Half of the nearly sixty passengers and crew on the ship died, and the survivors spent several hours in the frigid waters before rescue. Patrick McCleary, who has researched the Champlain sinking, reports that “she was credited for being very level-headed at the time of the tragedy and was said to have saved at least one man’s life.”
Copyright 2011 by Charlevoix County History Preservation Society. All rights reserved.