George Adams owned and operated the weekly newspaper in Fowlerville for some 55 years, from July 1874 when he and Willard Hess started a four-page broadsheet until he sold it in 1929. A year later he died. The arrival of a paper was part of the boom that occurred in town after the railroad line was completed in 1871, linking Fowlerville to Detroit and Lansing. Before that this region of Livingston County was a bit of a backwater. Adams said that there were about 500 residents when he and his partner first visited the town. Three years before it numbered about 300.

A newspaper, then as now, generated revenues from advertisements and annual subscriptions. There was a barter system that operated, too. Adams, in those first years of operation, would mention that his wood pile was getting low or the oat bin needed filling and he’d gladly trade a subscription for either of these commodities.

The town in that pre-automobile time must have been a “fragrant” place, particularly on a hot summer day with both outhouses and horse manure. Not everyone had a horse, though. You could rent one with a buggy if you needed to go out in the country, and the railroad (after 1871) would easily take you anywhere else.

For those driving into town from the outlying farms, they could stable their horses at the 10 Cent Barn on North Grand Avenue, that large building across from the fire hall that now houses Carpet Depot.

There was a livery barn on South Grand Avenue, where the parking lot of Curtis Grocery is, offering horse and carriages for hire. Across the street was the Lockwood Hotel and a pair of horses and driver on a bus or hack would meet all trains to carry passengers and luggage to the hotel. Salesmen would arrive by train with trunks of samples of merchandise to show area merchants and often required transportation.

George Palmer purchased the barn and stock in 1899. Later, in October of 1911, he bought the property at the corner of East Grand River and South Second Street (where Linda Walker now hangs her attorney shingle) and moved the livery to a building behind it on Second Street. (The South Grand Avenue site later became the Morlock Basket factory.

Palmer’s Grand River storefront had a card room and sold tobacco products, soft drinks, and a near beer called Tonica. It also offered lunches for 10 cents: a slice of brick cream cheese or a chunk of fresh or pickled bologna. The crackers were free. The place was called Tonica Tavern. My great grandmother, Blanche Horton, who supported the temperance cause, referred to it derisively as the Tonicy Tavern. Her favorite uncle, Bill Durfee, apparently would partake of the drink when in town, and I assume play a few hands of card. The near beer was non-alcoholic, but who knows if there might have been a jug of harder spirits hidden under the counter.

In 1914 the Palmer sons, Fred and George, replaced some of the horses with automobiles for hire. Ten years later, the daughter Mrs. Floss Fretz, set up her Personality Beauty Shop on the west side of the building. She later took over the property, eventually residing in the living quarters in back of her shop and renting out the office space on the east side of the building.  The barn, I’m guessing, was where the parking lot now is.

As a cub reporter back in 1975 I caught the devil from Floss for writing in an article that the Zimmermans, having purchased Fowlerville Lumber in 1926, had owned their business longer than any other family in the Village at that point in time. She let me know this distinction belonged to the Palmers.

As it turned out I was wrong twice more in that article; two other family-owned businesses having been around longer.  In 1921 Clyde Curtis purchased from Frank Rounsville his interest in the Rounsville and Curtis Grocery (located on North Grand Avenue) which had operated as a partnership from 1918 to 1921. He re-named it Curtis Grocery. It continued under family ownership until the fall of 2000 when the business (but not building) was sold to the Rosati’s. With that business having closed a few months ago, the Curtis family is re-opening the store and will soon begin adding to their total.

In December of 1924 George Spagnuolo purchased Navaro’s  Confectionery on East Grand River. Shortly afterwards he started making his famous home-made candies. He and wife Ellen were still making and selling their candy in the late 1980s and served as Grand Marshals of the town’s 150^th Sesquicentennial celebration in 1986.  (The Spagnuolo’s store in Howell, which operated for many years with son Frank as its proprietor and became famous for its Melon Ice Cream, was opened in 1940.)

The train made several stops each day at the depot on the south edge of town. Eastbound and westbound. John Ellsworth, who operated the Exchange Bank, located where Harmon  Real  Estate now is, was a commuter in his later years. Each work day he boarded the train in Howell, where he lived, and rode west to his office, then returned in the late afternoon. On one of those commutes he passed away.

Ellsworth and George Adams were in business together as young men, back in the late 1800s, As Adams related it, “After a time the necessity enlarging the paper was the problem, as there was no surplus money or credit, so Adams invented and built a press largely of wood—upon which he later patented, and in company with John C. Ellsworth, who furnished the capital, purchased the necessary machinery and manufactured it here in Fowlerville. It was known as the Adams Hand Cylinder press, and about 50 were manufactured and sold.”

He noted that they generally started working in the press factory at 6 p.m., after finishing their regular work days at the newspaper and bank, and remained until midnight and “often until 2 a.m., until the factory was discontinued”.

The railroad was more than happy to trade ride passes for advertising in the paper (rather than pay) and in 1891, suffering from ill health, Adams took his doctor’s advice and, using these free passes, headed to Spokane, Washington, to relax and visit with friends. While there, on Sunday, March 15, a fire broke out and destroyed about two-thirds of the business places, those being located on the north side of Grand River and both sides of North Grand Avenue. Among them was the newspaper office.

Adams later paid tribute to his wife, explaining that she hired a couple of boys to recover the metal type and press from the ashes, set up the office in the family home, wrote an account of the fire, and “the paper came out as usual on Friday, only two hours late”.

All of those buildings were constructed of wood and in less than eight months after the fire, the debris had been cleared, new and larger brick structures (known as blocks) were built, the stores stocked, and business resumed.

In Fowlerville, as in many other towns, fire served as an inadvertent tool of urban renewal. In the subsequent years, other fires wiped out other parts of the business district; the last major one occurring in 1905 that took out several wooden stores on the south side of Grand River, east of the Main Four corners.

A few months after the 1891 blaze, the following comment appeared in the newspaper, presumably penned by Adams. “On the day after the great fire, people were here from all parts of the country to witness the ruins and sympathize with us in our trouble. With sad shakes of the head very many of these visitors said, ‘Fowlerville is a thing of the past, it will never recover from this great conflagration’. They did not know the kind of people Fowlerville was made of.”