Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

One Hundred Years after The Yesterdays of Grand Rapids : Looking Back on Captain Charles E. Belknap’s Incredible Life and Legacy in West Michigan

2024; Volume: 50; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/mhr.2024.a925092

2327-9672

Colleen Alles,

American History and Culture

One Hundred Years after The Yesterdays of Grand Rapids: Looking Back on Captain Charles E. Belknap's Incredible Life and Legacy in West Michigan Colleen Alles (bio) In a tribute to Charles E. Belknap many years after his death, scholar Walter McPeak wrote that Belknap "lived a dozen . . . [lives] and he lived them to the hilt."1 Few statements about the life of this early Grand Rapids pioneer feel as apt. In addition to his robust life, Belknap was also a prolific writer: a local historian, war historian, and recorder of Native American stories. His legacy today, nearly a century after his death, is marked by myriad accomplishments and many thousands of words. Captain Charles Eugene Belknap (1846–1929) was a Civil War hero who marched to the sea with General William T. Sherman. An accomplished blacksmith and farmer, he was also a well-known politician, first serving as alderman in Grand Rapids' then-seventh ward and eventually becoming the city's mayor in 1884. Five years later he served as a Republican Congressman from the Fifth district to the U.S. House of Representatives (1889–1893). Belknap was also a successful businessman, founding the Belknap Wagon and Sleigh Company. Another bullet point on his resume was his fire service: he became Assistant Fire Chief of the No. 3 Fire Company in Grand Rapids in 1872 and was among those who shaped the city's early fire department. He served on numerous boards (including the Board of Education), advocated for the Boy Scouts of America and Camp Fire Girls (the local newspaper called him the "father of Grand Rapids scouting"), and served on a number of military committees.2 In his personal life, Belknap was a husband (to Chloe Caswell Belknap) and a father of four daughters. With ardor and skill—despite a paucity of formal education (he dropped out of school at a young age)—Belknap wrote about the islands that stood in the Grand River before they were removed, land occupied by Native Americans; he wrote about the first stone schoolhouse (which he attended for a time); the first jail; the piggeries; the discovery of gypsum; toll bridges; the first street [End Page 65] lights; and what he remembered about spending time with Rix Robinson and boating with Louis Campau—two men credited as founding fathers of Grand Rapids, both of whom Belknap spent time with as a boy. In one of his unpublished handwritten manuscripts, Belknap commented that his 1922 book might well have been titled Rough Lumber instead of The Yesterdays of Grand Rapids, considering it consisted so much of stories that might be made from the raw materials of his boyhood.3 Click for larger view View full resolution This sketch of Charles E. Belknap appears in Albert Baxter's 1891, History of the City of Grand Rapids Michigan. By the book's publication, Charles E. Belknap was already a well-recognized figure important to the city's early years. Source: Albert Baxter (public domain). In many ways, Belknap is one of West Michigan's pioneer historians, and while writers like Albert Baxter and Franklin Everett created well-documented, heralded histories of the area (as did the editor Z.Z. Lydens with his 1966 book The Story of Grand Rapids), no writer has provided the same personal touch Belknap did. His writing was generous in detail, yet replete with humility; seldom did he emphasize the magnitude of his personal accomplishments in his writings. His passion for storytelling led him to join the Folklore Association of America late in life. Beyond that—and again, with little formal education—he was an ambitious reader and writer. One of his longer Civil War narratives included a line from a Rudyard Kipling poem, "Vampire"—"a rag, a bone, a hank of hair."4 He went on to be a fan and quoter of Tennyson, too. Belknap clearly revered stories. In one of his pieces, he recounted how as a boy his mother used to read him Charles Dickens; perhaps this explains his lifelong love of stories.5 Belknap—a boy who attempted to enlist in the Union Army during the Civil War at age fourteen—wrote short stories, legends...