The four most recent COURIER Newsletter Feature Articles are reproduced below for your for your review. 

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 The Bayfield Courier - Quarterly Feature Article

          Harriet and Vermont Johnson

Vermont was born in Bayfield, but moved to Duluth where he graduated from High School. Harriet was born in Minneapolis and moved to Bayfield when she was a year old.

Although the couple spent their early years apart they met at a dance in Bayfield where Harriet was in High School.  For Vermont it was love at first sight.  Harriet succumbed to his charms and they were married on Christmas day in 1942 while Vermont was on leave from the service.

Both Vermont and Harriet were educators.  Vermont eventually became a school administrator and the couple left Bayfield.  They moved several times, but Bayfield was always close to their hearts.  Vermont’s parents, Blanche and Norman, ran a store in Bayfield, and Harriet’s parents operated the Haugen Oil service station.  During that time Vermont helped to organize the Bayfield Trollers Association and ran a charter boat during the summers.

In 1980 the couple returned to Bayfield and immediately immersed themselves in community work.  Among Vermont’s many accomplishments was his term as chairman of the Building Committee for our new Heritage Center.

Harriet kept busy with her writing and civic organizations.  She worked on writing the history of Bayfield and was the featured speaker at the Heritage Center in February 2007, where she told of her recollections of the flood of 1942 to a standing room only crowd during a snowstorm.

Harriet and Vermont complimented each other.  An evening at their home was a delight.  The stories would begin to flow and hours would fly by.  She once told how a group of young people relieved JP O’Malley of a few apples one night. When he saw the group the next day he asked “How were the apples?”  Harriet said, “they would have been better with salt.” JP said, “Come back again tonight.”  The group went back that night and hanging from the trees were salt shakers tied from the branches.

She told stories of the flood, Indian Pageant, juvenile escapades, and sliding down Manypenny and Washington Avenues on the Mystic, (the king of bobsleds) along with picturesque descriptions of the characters who once lived in the city.  Vermont would add to the stories, embellishing them.  Sometimes Harriet would say, Now “Ver!”, indicating that his version wasn’t quite right.

Their home had an “open door” where everyone was welcomed and the coffee pot was always on.  When Vermont and Harriet died just a few days apart, no one was surprised.  It was impossible to think of one without the other.  They were laid to rest on May 10, 2007 and are now together for eternity.

We hope to publish some of Harriet’s historical writings in future issues of the Courier.  You can read many of them now at the Heritage Center.

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                           FALL 2007
The Bayfield Courier Quarterly Feature Article

Marjorie Fisher-Benton:   One of Bayfield’s Early Writers,   

                                                                      by Howard Paap

There is a veritable treasure of artifacts in the basement of the Bayfield Heritage Association Museum, and all speak to interesting aspects of the town’s past.  Some are of the obvious kind like the early hand tools of the famed wood-worker, Theodore Ernst and some are merely papers, folder after folder of them.  Early last fall after I volunteered to help in that basement, by some stroke of luck I was assigned the personal papers of Bayfield’s Marjorie Fisher-Benton and during the length of last winter I worked my way through all of them.  It was a trip I will not soon forget. 

Like many others, after spending her childhood and youthful years here, this woman left Bayfield for college.  Soon it was marriage and along with her husband, spending time managing a shop in New York City’s Rockefeller Center.  Then, as I understand it, winters were enjoyed in Texas with many summers back in Bayfield, and finally in her later years, returning to stay.  Marjorie was one of the founders of the Heritage Association, and I suspect for those who were in at the beginning, her influence can easily be detected today. 

What interests me however, is the detail and breadth of work she did on gathering information on Bayfield’s past.  She left a literal alphabetic array of historic topics from A to Z about “things Bayfield.” Agriculture, Boating, Commerce of all sorts, and the rest of the alphabetic papers fill the folders.  She studied the development of the Apostle Island National Lakeshore, and watched and questioned the establishment of the marina at Red Cliff Creek in the heart of Old Red Cliff.  Surely, if she had survived she would have bird-dogged the construction at Roy’s Point, as well as the shoreline south of town.  She was concerned about the environment but she also understood the need for the region to undertake acceptable growth. 

For some time Marjorie Benton wrote a weekly newspaper column for the Bayfield Press on the history of Bayfield.  I suspect she intended to write that first major history of our town, but unfortunately, she ran out of time.  Her book would not have been a mere photo album of faces and fishing and sailing boats, but a treatise on why and when the town formed, took shape and moved through its 150 and more years.  She would have questioned why certain strategic decisions were made and others tabled.  Surely, she would have caused us to analyze what we are doing today.

Marjorie Benton was an informed observer of Bayfield who left a wide, deep and long paper trail. And she was not alone.  There are other cardboard boxes in the museum basement with different names on them.  Hopefully, readers of this article will think about even more people who spent time here and whose papers might be gathered someday to join those in our museum’s collection. They are part of our town’s story – a story that is only beginning to be told.

                      Howard evaluating accessions

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